Festival Theatre
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WHEELS OF LIFE From Russia - via Glasgow - with love «00
It's hard to call Wheels of Life. the new
production by Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, a ‘play' as such. Huddled in the intimate Theatre Workshop venue, the audience is confronted with a macabre toy box of intricate artistic contraptions; a captivating maze of spinning wheels and Singer sewing machines, all elegantly fashioned into the graceful yet terrifying gothic structures upon which their creator. Russian artist Eduard Bersudsky, has built his reputation.
Since the establishment of the Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery in Glasgow in 1996, Bersudsky has captivated Scotland with his unique moving sculptures (famous works include his much-lauded Millennium Clock at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh).
As an exhibition of both new and old works by Bersudsky, Wheels of Life is a fascinating and curiously moving piece. Miniscule figures, carved to the most intimate detail, are better observed with the binoculars handed out at the entrance. while the shadows cast against the walls by the delicate lighting are childlike yet darkly humorous. But there's an inconsistency of emotion that jars, the sublime often turning too quickly to the crass. It‘s this that prevents Wheels of Life from becoming what it almost is: an uplifting. operatic mechanical tribute to the complexity of existence. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
I Theatre Workshop, 226 5425, until Aug 25, times vary, 535 (533).
NOCTURNE
Spare, nuanced monolgue on grief OOOO
In Adam Rapp‘s monologue the absolute tangibility of one person's grief is paralleled with the inescapable fact that triggers it. In it, a 32~year~old man reflects on the day, 15 years earlier, when he accidentally killed his younger sister. From this moment, all the comfortable assumptions of his bourgeois suburban upbringing crumbled, his family disintegrating into madness and recrimination. Our narrator has exiled himself from his (and Rapp's) hometown of Joliet Illinois to an impoverished and bookish life in
New York. From here, gentle moves toward some form of rapprochement with the protagonist 's dying father are mixed with the uncertain rebuilding of his life as a novelist.
This theatrically spare piece. which, aside from a little back projection is pretty much a short story delivered on stage, derives immense power from Rapp's capacity for observing
everyday detail, with the odd surreal
metaphor thrown in for good measure. Peter McDonald’s nuanced delivery
‘ captures all the loneliness and
alienation of his character, while Rapp's rich language adds immense pathos to this man's social and sexual dysfunction. You'll long to go home and phone a parent afterwards.
(Steve Cramer)
I Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until IO
Aug, times vary, {TI 4—l.‘ I (5 (f..‘i()—£.‘I I).
JONNY WOO: INTERNATIONAL WOMAN OF MR ‘E’
Moving and darkly comic one- (wo)man show coco
Jonny Woo. drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears
ARCHITECTING The history of catastrophe 0000
onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than disguise the self underneath and allows his multiform creative talents to shine through. Woo exploits the self- conscious facade of the drag queen to inhabit the roles of dramatic monologist, spoken-word poet, cabaret songstress. lip-synching transvestite and quick-witted comedian. The result is a one-(wo)man show, loosely based on a brush with drug-induced death, in which emotional truth sits alongside enthralling entertainment.
The emotional journey adroitly takes in Shakespeare. Christina Aguilera and Edith Piaf via the Magical Flying Drag Queen, a macabre short story and a breakneck, pill-popping version of ‘Pretty Polly Piper'. A subject that could be disastrously earnest in less ironic hands is rendered moving and darkly comedic as Woo encompasses the full role of a clown: both humorous and tragic.
It would be churlish to complain about slightly lengthy costume
changes when Woo barely pauses for breath in this masterclass in every theatrical genre. His make-up doesn't run and not one word of the surprisingly literary script is out of place; all the better to reveal the fractured heart that lies beneath the gold leotard. (Suzanne Black)
I Gilded Balloon Teviot, 668 7633, until 25 Aug (not 73), 9pm, 28—89 (27—28).
wannabe (Kirsten Seih). NTS workshop are to be congratulated for their sponsorship of Rachel Chavkin and Davy Anderson’s
As the UK slips into a free market-induced recession, the idea of apocalypse, be it environmental, economic or cultural, is bound to play on many a mind. It’s timely, then, that TEAM, the vigorous and zestful young American company who brought Particularly in the Heartland to Fringe audiences in 2006, should return with this dazzling contemplation of the history of the end of history.
A young architect (Libby King) arrives in post-Katrina New Orleans to facilitate a housing development started by her late father. Amidst the devastation, she finds a bar whose hostess (Jill Frutkin) introduces historian Henry Adams (Jake Margolin) and Margaret Mitchell (Jessica Almasy), author of Gone With the Wind, who, by a time warp characteristic of this company, are regulars. From here, a brilliant conceit, full of mad Pynchonesque digressions draws parallels between the catastrophe of the antebellum South and the modern disaster of capitalism in a contemporary New Orleans, haunted by an appalling movie mogul (Frank Boyd), who is engaged in a blockbuster remake of Gone With the Wind and an exploited Scarlet O’Hara
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by turns spectacular, funny and warmly intimate piece. In a world in which ‘Charisma beats the shit out of morality’ as one character puts it, TEAM are unafraid to take a position. Yet, the issues raised by the modern carpetbaggers of New Orleans and Iraq aren‘t oversimplified - there are as many complexities to an architect developing a gated community where a black working class neighbourhood had existed as there are in accusing Margaret Mitchell of racism.
Through all the frenetic physical work, enchanting song and scintillating dialogue, a case is made for the architecture of history itself, which modifies our responses contingent upon the recorder, just as the design of space alters our behaviour in houses, which are frequently imagined as burning or collapsing in this dystopian modern America. The ensemble is, to an individual, splendid, and, while the piece could profitably lose 15 minutes of its two hours, this is as clever and thoroughly endearing an entertainment as you’re likely to see this Fringe. (Steve Cramer)
I Traverse Theatre, 228 I 404, until 24 Aug (not 77, 78), times vary, [TM—E 16 (L‘lO—L‘ I I ).