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Festival film see page 65 0 Festival art see page 72
COMEDY Chaucer In The Sky With Diamonds it Canterbury wai/s
In Chaucer's time there was no LSD, only bad bread, but a dose of either would have struggled to liven up this limp collection of bawdy tales.
Now, I can't remember whether Chaucer was so relentlessly oo-er- missus, but the sheer volume of innuendo in these revamped Canterbury Tales began to cloy twenty minutes in. In updating Chaucer, the moral underpinning of the tales has been exchanged for dull platitudes and it is clumsy and inept with its contemporary references.
There was the odd moment of sparkle, but overall this is just licentious pantomime suitable only for the seriously inebriated.
(Ross Holloway) . Chaucer In The Sky With Diamonds (Fringe) C (Venue 34) 226 5705, until
VMUSlC THEATRE
Berlin cabaret style is applied to Lulu
25 Aug, 1 7. 75pm, £7.50 (£5.50). Lalu *** their control. The songs themselves are given bright S/iCk Wedekind adaptation glides over original and varied arrangements. and are delivered with CQMEDY . Composer Chris Jordan has taken Frank Wedekind’s enough toughness to avoid the kind of sentimentality SlmOfl Bllgh *** late-19th century plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box to which the musical format is prone and which would Bligh’s Bible-bashing bashing is brill and turned them into a through-composed piece of be most inappropriate for the bleakness of Wedekind's Simon Bligh’s breakneck hour of music theatre which smacks of Berlin cabaret even as it vision. Catholic-bashing is a corker. He takes draws freely on the musical styles of the last century. The problem for anyone staging the original plays is his audience on a whistle-stop tour of Anders Nyborg’s production for Denmark's Odense fathoming out the deeper purpose behind that vision — a Catholic life, tying his Liverpool Internationale Musikteater is all red curtains, smoke is it titillation or political commentary? - and it's a family into snippets of church history. and severe lighting, creating a sultry, vaguely decadent problem exacerbated in the musical format which Bligh equates his Aunty Pat’s cooking piano-bar setting for this story of the sexually necessarily glides over the detail of the script. For all with the torture practices of 4th voracious Lulu and the men who fall for her. the show’s slickness, it's hard to keep emotionally century Popes, lays into sadistic It's stylishly done, crisply choreographed and well engaged or to have a sense of where the story is
teachers and hilariously details his senile Nan’s response to the last rites. There’s the odd lazy gag, and Bligh is by no means the first comic to point out that priests are a bad lot, but delivered by the leering Scouser in a
sung, tightly performed by a live band and acted with heading. (Mark Fisher) a sense of edgy alarm that suggests the characters are I Lulu (Fringe) Assembly Rooms (Venue 3) 226 2428, until driven by forces - sexual and social - quite beyond 28 Aug, 70.30pm, £9/£ 70 (£8/£ 9).
rubber kilt, even the old chestnut of late-night theatre. puberty but already sad beardy hacks in loud shirts. Asbestos Uncle
about Eve’s lack of originality in sinning (Ross Holloway) weirdies). They casually drop difficult Eggs is a seamless flow of peculiar,
seems fresh. i By The Numbers (Fringe) Frantic words such as 'diaspora’ into their innovative and sometimes provocative
(Jack Mottram) Redhead Productions, Randolph Studio comedy, along with obscure references ways of making you laugh.
E Simon Bligh (Fringe) Comedy Store, (Venue 55) 225 5366, 77 8 20-24 to the likes of Max Ernst. Oh yes, you I’m sorry Skitters; the posh kids always
Assembly Rooms (Venue 3) 226 2428, Aug, 70.50pm, £6 (£5). can tell they've been to university win. (Ross Holloway)
until 28 Aug, 70.30pm, £9/£ 70 alright and you’re well within your l Asbestos Uncle Eggs (Fringe) Fat Fat
(f8/f 9). COMEDY rights to despise them. Pope, Garage Theatre (Venue 87) 221 Asbestos Uncle Eggs **** But don’t. Go see them, because 9009, until 28 Aug, llpm,
THEATRE The posh kids know the sketch this bunch have more comic ' ' . f6 (55).
By The Numbers *‘k‘k‘k The Fat Fat Pope hail from Cambridge. inventiveness in their little
Late night satisfaction from Three, out of five, of their number sport pinkies than a month of
RGdhead ill-advised facial hair at this stand-up
Frantic Redhead Productions always performance, '
throw up some interesting theatre (barely out
each year. Their inter-cultural, inter— of
generational works are to be
celebrated for being in the true spirit
of the Festival. In By The Numbers the protagonist, Harry, has songs in his head. But he is caught between forces represented by mathematics and gambling and with a nihilistic streak a mile wide he is plummeting in a downward spiral. Jon Leith, as Harry, has a presence that virtually grabs you by the throat and pulls you into the story right from the first. His energy invigorates the whole piece. A more than satisfying piece
Asbestos Uncle Eggs are fit for lovin'