Traverse Theatre

Stay

10/010/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Stay, it turns out, is a musical, but lest that word should conjure images of hordes of costumed performers, leaping and gyrating across a stage, let me quickly point out that this is the latest in the Traverse Theatres’s A Play A Pie and A Pint season. It’s a two-hander. But its smallness of scale is more than made up for by its sweet, affecting nature and for the insights it offers into its difficult theme.

Rowan (Craig Hunter) and Kit (Daisy Ann Fletcher) meet up in their favourite corner of the local park. Rowan is carrying an urn containing somebody’s ashes: he’s finally prepared himself for the task of scattering them in the duck pond, but he needs back-up for this grim task and, of course, Kit is there, dressed in her hospital scrubs, ready to make jokes about every aspect of this solemn occasion.

The two of them were once lovers but four years ago something went badly wrong – and yet, somehow, Rowan doesn’t want his current girlfriend here today. For this challenge, Kit is the perfect choice…

Written by Jonathan O Neil and Isaac Savage and directed by Melanie Bell, Stay is a deceptively simple piece, its quirky plaintive songs recounting a poignant story about a relationship gone awry. Rowan is steady and dependable, Kit adorably scatty, forever taking the narrative off in unexpected directions, but together they have something special. Both leads deliver the plaintive, haunting songs with considerable skill and the piece is cunningly written, luring you in with its seemingly innocuous narrative, before heading off into darker territory and deftly delivering a climactic gut punch.

If I wanted to nitpick, I’d say there’s one song too many after that change of direction; nevertheless, Stay is a delightful piece of lunchtime theatre that will make you laugh and cry in equal measure.

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

And… And… And…

07/10/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Though still at high school, Cassie (Caroline McKeown) is already a committed eco-warrior, working tirelessly to organise regular beach clean-ups in her locality. She takes every opportunity to lobby big corporations to plead on behalf of environmental causes and lately has even taken to making her own clothes from natural fibres. But as the climate change disasters inexorably mount, she finds herself increasingly obsessed with the subject. And it’s an obsession that threatens to overpower everything else in her life.

Meanwhile, Cassie’s best friend, Claire (Tiana Milne-Wilson), has her own pressing issues to contend with. Her mother is steadily succumbing to a deadly lung disease after years of smoking cigarettes and is no longer able to work. The final demands for rent and electricity are coming in on an almost daily basis and Claire desperately needs to find a paying job. The only possibility she’s discovered is the chance to apply for an apprenticeship at a locally-based multi-national plastics manufacturer, a company that she knows Cassie openly despises.

Isla Cowan’s And… And… And… is a topical story from Strange Town Theatre, one that isn’t afraid to address the horrifying scale of its central premise and to openly accept the impossibility of finding an easy solution – indeed, there’s a strangely satisfying meta-twist in this tale that comments on its own artificiality, the very idea of finding an ‘answer’ within the confines of a fifty-minute play.

The two leads give compelling and nuanced performances and the duo’s friendship feels utterly palpable. This is a youthful and exuberant approach to the subject, created for and by the generation who have been handed the poisoned chalice of a devastated planet. The frustration they feel is written large. Katie Innes’s simple but effective stage design is created mostly from heaps of detritus, an approach that serves as a constant reminder of the play’s theme, while Steve Small handles the direction with aplomb.

The play’s conclusion – that everyone needs to do whatever they can to reduce their personal carbon footprints and work together towards a more optimistic future – may not be exactly earth-shattering, but nevertheless, it comes through loud and clear.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Disciples

06/10/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Disciples is a compelling piece of performance art, combining poetry, music, movement and visual imagery. Conceived and directed by Rachel Drazek and written by Ellen Renton, it’s about belonging and expectations, interdependence and joy. It’s also about giving people the chance to take up space – especially those who are often denied that opportunity.

The five-strong cast of disabled women and non-binary people bring Drazek’s vision to life: this is the “bold and beautiful new piece of dance theatre” she aspired to make. The creative process, we learn in an illuminating after-show discussion, was a collaborative one, the piece devised in rehearsal before being shaped by Renton. It shows: the performers’ agency is palpable. The resulting production is nuanced and doesn’t shy away from difficult emotions, but the layering of ideas ultimately adds up to something joyful and positive, reinforcing the idea that we are all connected and inter-dependent.

The costumes, by Zephyr Lidell, are simple but striking, each performer clad in a single, shimmering colour. Visually impaired musician Sally Clay (yellow) is all optimism; her singing voice is ethereal and she plays the harp and ukulele with aplomb. But she’s more excited about the dancing: post-show, she reveals that this is a long way from her comfort zone, and that she’s delighted to have been challenged in this way. Indeed, this point is echoed by Rana Bader (red), who seems to embody passion and strength; she is bursting with energy and exuberance, making a gazillion press-ups look easy. She’s not used to demands being made of her, she says; in rehearsal rooms, she sees her non-disabled peers being given detailed notes, while she is patted on the head just for turning up. She prefers being pushed.

Laura Fisher (lavender) is a dancer, so graceful and elegant that they take my breath away, while Irina Vartopeanu (green), uses BSL in a way I’ve never seen before, incorporated into the piece, not as a straight interpretation of what others are saying but as an expression in itself. She’s vivacious and somehow diaphanous.

Emma McCaffrey (orange), last seen by B&B in the excellent Castle Lennox, explores the idea of inner rage; they are an engaging performer with a bold stage presence and bring the humour needed to balance this play.

Disciples is a thought-provoking, sensory piece, and well worth catching if you can.

3.6 stars

Susan Singfield

The Sheriff of Kalamaki

03/09/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

In this unusual two-hander by Douglas Maxwell, Paul McCole plays the eponymous law-keeper. It’s not an official role but alcoholic Dion is proud of the title, even if he did choose it himself. He swaggers (and staggers) his way through the bars and clubs of Zakynthos, seemingly unaware that he’s being used as a lookout by the local drug dealer. He’s a loveable character, his cheery bluster doing little to hide just how damaged and vulnerable he really is. His existence is precarious but he seems to be coping – until his apparently straight-laced brother, Ally (Stephen McCole), comes looking for him, after almost thirty long years…

Maxwell eschews a duologue in favour of two almost completely separate monologues, a structural device that mirrors the brothers’ estrangement. Dion, when we first meet him, is alone – as he has been since 1994. When Ally shows up, the ensuing conflict shows us how this situation began, and then it’s Ally’s turn to find himself bereft and isolated in Kalamaki, a solitary figure standing on a cliff, facing his demons, while in the town below him, everyone else is having fun. The script’s construction makes for an oddly unsettling experience, but I think it serves the story well.

Gemma Patchett and Jonny Scott’s set design is suitably stark: a raised platform, overshadowed by a huge, curved sheet that represents the sea and sky. This works well on a figurative level too, the brothers dwarfed by the natural world, the quarrel that once seemed so all-consuming now rendered petty and insignificant. After all, the planet’s burning: Ally’s plane is half-empty; tourists have turned their backs on the island’s unbearable heat and unpredictable wildfires.

Jemima Levick’s direction is lively and pacy, highlighting the superficial contrasts between the two men, while the real-life McCole siblings are both formidable performers, creating a convincingly acrimonious relationship. Their differences are slowly peeled away, revealing their essential similarities and exposing the myths we tell ourselves about what ‘a good life’ really is.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Ship Rats

19/09/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s the year 1880 and Jessie (Madeline Grieve) is in big trouble. She’s just murdered her husband and she’s covered in his blood. He’s the captain of the ship she’s currently aboard, a cruel tyrant who recently condemned an innocent cabin boy to fifty lashes for stealing a biscuit. He probably had it coming, but still, his crew are unlikely to be sympathetic.

To make matters worse, Jessie has sought refuge in the cabin of the ship’s Chinese cook, Jin Hai (Sebastian Lim-Seet), a man with probelms of his own. Shunned by the other members of the crew, he is planning a daring escape from the ship – but, try as he might, he cannot find the box of matches he needs in order to make his departure go with a bang.

When the inevitable hue and cry kicks off, Jessie and Jin Hai realise that they’ll have to ignore their respective differences and hide out together. In doing so, they begin to realise that they actually have quite a bit in common. Their conversation takes in a range of subjects: colonialism and Chinese medicine; murder and morning sickness; ginger and gunpowder.

Alice Clark’s spirited two-hander, a co-production between Òran Mór and the Traverse Theatre, is inspired by the adventures of the playwright’s own great-great-grandmother, a seafaring lass with a colourful backstory. The fact that the two protagonists in Ship Rats speak like contemporary Glaswegians out on the lash is initially jarring but, once I settle into the rhythm, it makes for a fun-filled fifty minutes, even if the tone is sometimes relentlessly frenetic.

Grieve offers a rollicking turn as the amusingly foulmouthed Jessie, while Lim-Seet makes an astute foil for her bawdy barrage of invective. If occasionally Jessie and Jin-Hai seem to possess the kind of insight that really only comes with the advantage of historical perspective, well that’s acceptable, given that this wants more than anything else to be a commentary on the toxic nature of Empire.

Director Laila Noble keeps the action propulsive enough to ensure that the pace never flags and Ship Rats has me entertained right up to the final scene.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Edfest Bouquets 2023

August in Edinburgh, and the Fringe was back with a boom! As ever, after seeing so many brilliant productions, it’s been hard to select our favourites, but it’s (virtual) Bouquet time and so, in no particular order, here are the shows that have really stayed with us:

COMEDY

John Robins: Howl (Just the Tonic)

‘Raw and achingly honest….’

The Ice Hole: a Cardboard Comedy (Pleasance)

‘An inspired piece of surreal lunacy…’

Dominique Salerno: The Box Show (Pleasance)

‘One of the most original acts I’ve ever seen…’

The Umbilical Brothers: The Distraction (Assembly)

‘An amorphous mass of nonsense – but brilliantly so!’

THEATRE

Bacon (Summerhall)

‘A whip-smart, tightly-constructed duologue…’

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel (Traverse)

‘Part slapstick, part comic-opera, part mad-as-a-box-of-frogs spectacle, this is something you really don’t want to miss.’

Salty Irina (Roundabout at Summerhall)

‘Fresh and contemporary, all minimal props and non-literal interpretation…’

Dark Noon (Pleasance)

‘A unique piece of devised theatre, sprawling and multi-faceted…’

JM Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K (Assembly)

‘A gentle but powerful production…’

One Way Out (Underbelly)

‘The piece is brave enough not to offer a solution…’

SPECIAL MENTIONS

After the Act (Traverse)

‘We have to learn from what has gone before…’

Woodhill (Summerhall)

‘Though unnervingly bleak, this does offer a glimmer of hope…’

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Traverse)

‘The closest I’ve ever come to experiencing an acid trip in the theatre…’

Susan Singfield & Philip Caveney

After the Act

06/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

In 1988 I was in sixth form. I was (am) straight, and didn’t think I knew any gay people at all. No one was out. Nonetheless, when Section 28 was introduced – banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools – we all thought it was stupid. Not just cruel and regressive, but thick. We knew we couldn’t be encouraged into being gay, that no amount of advocacy by teachers – teachers! – could ever change who we were. Outlawing any positive mention of queer people though, that could hurt. We were only kids, but even we could see that.

Breach Theatre’s After the Act shows just how much hurt there was. This musical, written by Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett, with an original score by Frew, is a verbatim piece, relaying the experiences of LGBTQ+ students, teachers and activists who struggled and fought through Section 28’s fifteen-year reign. It’s both shocking and compelling, an object lesson in how to stage a polemic. By turning the words into songs, Breach Theatre give them extra weight and meaning, turning some into plaintive refrains and others into angry protest chants.

There are six performers onstage: two musicians (Ellie Showering and Frew) and four actors (Stevens, Tika Mu’tamir, EM Williams and Zachary Willis. Under Barrett’s direction, this is a lively, insistent piece; indeed, thanks to choreographers Sung-Im Her and Anouk Jouanne, the actors are always in motion, the interweaving stories physicalised into a complex web. Although the production is a serious one, focusing on some very real anguish, there are also moments of humour, of light shining through the darkness.

Much of what we’re shown is shocking. A couple of lesbian protestors disrupt the six o’clock news, and Nicholas Witchell – who wrestles one of them to the ground and puts his hand over her mouth so that Sue Lawley can carry on and read the day’s stories – is lauded as a hero rather than being done for assault. Another particularly striking statement comes from a member of Haringey Council’s Lesbian and Gay Sub-Committee, who notes, “We are at a disadvantage because we can only use rational argument, while the opposition are tapping into irrational fear and bigotry.”

In the end, though, this is a triumphant piece of theatre. Stevens skewers Margaret Thatcher’s self-righteous ignorance in a comical depiction of the ex-PM: if she sounds ridiculous as she defends her nasty law, they’re her own words; she’s hoist by her own petard.

After the Act is vital viewing. Section 28 might have been relegated to the history books, but trans kids are in the middle of the same old battleground. We have to learn from what has gone before.

4.6 stars

Susan Singfield

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel

06/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Occasionally you see a production that not only exceeds your expectations, but sends you out of the theatre exhilarated by its sheer invention. The Grand Old Opera House Hotel is one such play, a piece that fearlessly swings for the fences and hits all of its targets bang on. Part slapstick, part comic-opera, part mad-as-a-box-of-frogs spectacle, this is something you really don’t want to miss.

Aaron (Ali Watt) arrives at the titular establishment for his staff training and quickly learns that the recently rebuilt hotel is suffering from teething troubles. The electronic door numbers keep changing without warning, the lights flicker constantly and Aaron can hear people singing. A staff member tells him that, back in the day, the place was an actual opera house. It burned down sometime in the 1920s, killing the show’s cast in the process. Could Aaron be hearing their ghosts?

One of the singers he can hear is actually his opera-obsessed colleague, Amy (Karen Fishwick) – but Aaron doesn’t know that. He naturally thinks the place is haunted. If he just met up with Amy, in person, it would all be explained in an instant, but in a building with so many rooms, that’s not going to be easy…

It’s almost pointless to talk about the plot other than to say it all makes a twisted kind of sense. This delicious, sprawling extravaganza galumphs merrily through a whole gamut of different moods, characters and connections, barely stopping to draw a diaphragmatic breath. Isobel McArthur’s script is playful and exciting, while Ana Inés Jabares Pita’s set design opens up and interconnects like a Chinese puzzle box. Director Gareth Nicholls keeps his six-strong cast on their toes, moving through a whole series of lightning-fast costume changes, interacting, singing and sometimes even dancing for all they’re worth. It feels as though there are a lot more than half a dozen people on that stage. And in a way, there are.

McArthur keeps the pot simmering throughout, moving inexorably towards a tantalisingly prolonged conclusion. This is that rarest of creatures, an ambitious production that takes plenty of risks and somehow never puts a foot wrong. If you’re looking for something you’ll remember long after the final curtain, you’ve come to the right place.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Adults

06/08/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Zara (Dani Heron) has got things sorted, or as sorted as they can be, given the current state of the world. Admittedly, being a sex worker isn’t exactly living the dream, but her brothel is an ethical one – run as a workers’ collective – and she’s proud of the judgement-free service she and her colleague, Jay (Anders Hayward) provide. But still, it’s more than a little awkward when a new customer turns out to be her old teacher…

Mr Urquhart, or Iain (Conleth Hill), isn’t best pleased either. He was nervous anyway, and now he’s scared and embarrassed; he feels exposed. He’s only here to see if acting on his vague attraction to young men might help alleviate his misery, because he can’t go on as he is, hopeless and desperate, sick of his job, his marriage, even his kids…

As if the classroom reminiscences weren’t cringey enough, when Jay turns up – late – he’s got his baby daughter in tow. How can any of them collude in building a fantasy, when reality keeps intruding?

I’ve been a fan of playwright Kieran Hurley’s work since I saw Chalk Farm way back in 2013. He can always be relied upon to offer witty, thought-provoking material, with relatable, convincing characters, and Adults proves this once again. Both Zara’s skittish bravado and Jay’s reckless desperation are perfectly captured by Heron and Hayward, but it’s Hill’s depiction of Iain’s self-loathing and defensiveness that drives the piece. He’s done everything right, hasn’t he? So why does it all feel so wrong?

Directed by Roxanna Silbert, Adults has a stillness at its core, leading the audience to really listen, to hear what all three characters say, to see them for the complex, fascinating people they are. We’re all doomed, the message seems to be, so we might as well try to offer each other a bit of comfort while we can. Every generation will blame the one that’s gone before; it’s the way of the world. And every generation will fuck things up in their turn; we never manage to create that ‘better world’ we always say we want for our kids. It’s tragic – but here it’s belly-laugh funny too.

Sharp, incisive and hugely entertaining, Adults is another must-see offering from 2023’s TravFest.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

ChildMinder

10/06/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Edinburgh-born Joseph lives in New York, where he is a celebrated child psychiatrist. He seems to be living his best life, with a beautiful, clever girlfriend, as well as a stellar career. But Joseph’s success is built on shameful foundations and a reckoning looms. Reparations need to be made on both the micro and the macro level – for his own transgressions as well as his country’s.

There are two distinct strands here, each echoing the other, their links compelling if not always quite clear.

On the one hand, we have a pretty straightforward ghost story, its origins laid bare in the opening scene, where Joseph (Cal MacAninch) is confronted with a repressed memory from when he was five years old: his baby brother’s murder. This shocking revelation opens the door to other carefully-buried feelings of guilt, and Joseph soon finds himself tormented by the ghost of a thirteen-year-old patient, Sam (Ben Ewing), who holds the doctor accountable for his death.

On the other hand, we have a meditation on the nature of colonisation, symbolised by Joseph’s relationship with Cindy (Mara Huf), a Native American anthropologist. Cindy’s culture, all-but erased by white settlers, has now been commodified for their entertainment, and the couple indulge in an ‘authentic’ 1700s dinner in a fancy Manhattan restaurant. At first, the pair are in celebratory mode. After all, Cindy has just completed her PhD. But, as Joseph insists on sharing a long and rambling fantasy, a feeling of unease begins to grow, and it’s a relief when Cindy calls him out, and the allegorical nature of his proprietorial daydream is made evident.

This is an ambitious piece of theatre, and the actors are clearly revelling in its complexity. Ewing is particularly striking, both as the mysterious “wait”-er and the troubled Sam. The set, by Kenneth MacLeod, is stark and simple, the squares of light redolent of the glass-box apartments on Edinburgh’s Quartermile, ex-home of the Royal Infirmary, where Joseph used to work. These borders also serve to hem the characters in, trapping them in a claustrophobic nightmare.

For the most part, Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir’s direction is flawless, imbuing the piece with all the gravitas it requires. Even the scene transitions are eerie, each prop moved with intent – all carefully choreographed for maximum impact. However, all this precision makes the use of dry ice especially irritating. It adds nothing; it’s just invasive, obscuring the stage and making the audience cough.

I like what McClure is trying to achieve here. It’s an exacting script with a vast scope. I’m not sure it always comes off – a little more transparency wouldn’t go amiss – and it’s certainly not a crowd-pleaser (there are five walk-outs in tonight’s show). But we need theatre that pushes boundaries and challenges our expectations, and ChildMinder certainly gives us that.

3.7 stars

Susan Singfield