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comrpv PREVIEYV Chris Addison
Youn comic is an Englishman on boar s
‘l was looking for a fairly neutral phrase that l associate with Englishness,’ says Chris Addison of the title of this year's fringe show, Cakes And Ale. Englishness has been a recurrent theme for Addison, and this particular version of his nationality has just been playing to appreciative audiences in Montreal at the Just For Laughs Festival.
But how will his version of national identity play to a Scottish audience? ’Well, it's not specifically a Scottish audience at the Festival, it’s an international audience. Besides, Scottish people aren't restricted to Scottish things, and the show itself is about the foibles of being English, it laughs at where I come from, it doesn’t claim we're better than anyone else. You can only write about what you know, and lam English. To claim to be anything else would be patronising.’
This is Addison's third fringe as a solo act, and his growing reputation should pull healthy audiences of all nationalities. (Steve Cramer)
3 Cakes And Ale (Fringe) Chris Addison, Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 6550, 5-28 Aug (not 8, 22) 7.30pm, £8. 50—£ 9. 50 (£7. 50—£8. 50). Previews 3—4 Aug, £4.
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THEATRE PREVIEW
Rum and Vodka 8: The Good
Thief
Conor McPherson’s two early plays share the craic again
Conor McPherson has got two plays at
the Festival this year and he doesn’t know anything about it, he’s just too busy with a new play - ’I don’t know what to do with it', he says. He's currently working on Saltwater, which will star Brendan Gleeson and Brian Cox, his follow up film to his corker/ Went Down .
But he's happy to talk about his two early monologues. 'Rum and Vodka is about a guy who goes on a three day binge and loses his job. The Good Thief is about a protection racketeer who is supposed to be scaring somebody but ends up going across the country with the wife and children of the bloke he's supposed to be scaring.’ Ever the demystifier of his own writing, when asked about common themes that run through his work he answers: 'I think they’re just
full of mad bastards or ordinary people
who go on extraordinary adventures.’ (Paul Dale)
a: Rum and Vodka 8 The Good Thief (Fringe) Sal/y Vaughan And Richard jordan Productions, Assembly Rooms (Venue 3) 226 2428, 4—28 Aug, 6pm, £9/£ 70 (£8/£ 9). Preview 3 Aug, £5.
THEATRE PREVIEW Birth Rite: Sex, Drugs And A Restless Soul
Religious dogma questioned in one-woman show
Arriving from New York on a wave of critical acclaim, Elizabeth Hess's bittersweet one-woman performance recounts the wild and stormy liberation of a young woman trapped in a world of religious dogma and sexual repression. Based around Hess's experiences as the daughter of a Mennonite minister, Birth Rite is in part a critique of religious narrow mindedness, but, as Hess is keen to point out, it’s all pretty far from academic: ’She’s suddenly free to take it all on for better or worse. It's not all gorgeous for her; some of it’s scary, some of it's unknown, but all of it’s allowed, embraced.
'l have a
problem with religion:
all the answers, and I don't want answers, I want all the questions! As a minister’s kid I'm very skittish about sermons. I won’t be ramming a damn finger down anybody’s throat. That’s the last thing on earth I want to do!’ (Olly Lassman) (a Birth Rite: Sex And Drugs And A Restless Soul (Fringe)
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THEATRE PREVIEW The Zero Hour
More scary stuff from The Riot Group
Two Fringes ago a collaborative band of gutsy American college kids tantalised theatrical tastebuds with a jump-up-and-holler show called Why I Want To Shoot The President. Last year they blew audiences away with the award-winning Wreck The Airline Barrier. Brilliantly scripted by Adriano Shaplin and acted within an inch of its life by him, Drew Friedman and Stephanie Viola, the production was a brittle and brutal journey into America's dark, pus-filled brain and blistered, hurting heart that left me massively shook up yet wanting more.
Now the Riot Group is back with The Zero Yard, a study of personal and institutional power that may very well surpass its predecessors in terms of scary intensity and nowhere-to-hide honesty. ’This play is spooky and quite violent as well,’ says Shaplin. 'It's made more than one person physically ill. We've had a record number of walk-outs.’
The Riot Group was born when its various members attended college to study theatre. ‘But we realised that our department stank,’ Shaplin recalls. 'There was no vision, no passion, no danger.‘ So they had to dig it out of themselves. As Shaplin says of their onstage existence: 'Every night there is a risk of serious injury.‘ (Donald Hutera)
i: The Zero Yard (Fringe) The Riot Group, The Garage (Venue 87) 227 9009,
6—28 Aug, 7.30pm, £7 (£5).
Elizabeth Hess, Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 6550, 4—28 Aug (not 8, 22) 6.05pm, £6. 50—£7.50 (£5.50—£6.50). Preview 3 Aug, £3.50.
COMEDY PREVIEW Keith Johnston’s Gorilla Theatre
Freewheeling comedy with the guru of improv ’He’s really regarded as the Godfather of improvrsed comedy,‘ says director Deborah Francis-White of Keith Johnston. This year, Johnston appears with a group of young comics from The Old Spontaneity Shop, with a show which, Francis-White assures us, is genuinely spur of the moment, as so much improv isn’t.
The fun proceeds from a succession
of audience suggestions, where one comic is designated director, and the others actors. He/she must direct a scene in the style of whatever is suggested, then the audience rates the performance; either yelling ’banana’, if successful, or calling for the dreaded forfeit if not.
Audience participation is also called for, though Francis-White assures us it’s nothing to be afraid of: ’A lot of audience participation is about scaring the audience, but we’re more gentle. No one gets humiliated, we just want them to join in the fun.’
(Steve Cramer)
.1: Keith Johnston ’5 Gorilla Theatre (Fringe) Old Spontaneity Shop, Gilded Balloon (Venue 36) 226 2 75 7, 6—28 Aug, 7. 75pm, £8 (£7).