list.co.uk/festival STEFAN GOLASZEWSKI IS A WIDOWER Follow-up to mercurial performer’s 2008 Fringe hit ●●●●●
The multi-talented writer, actor, comedian and musician follows his award-winning one-man show Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved with a second monologue that tackles a similar subject, though from a very different perspective. Where the previous play concerned a teenage London lad – loosely based on the author – who fell head-over- heels for a girl who then dumped him two days later, the new one is about an old man who looks back over the years of his ruinous marriage two years after his beloved wife died in the year 2054. The futuristic setting allows
Golaszewski to pepper his bittersweet narrative with humorous asides about the fate of the Olympics, global warming and Iraq. Meanwhile, the main narrative once again swings back and forth from ecstasy to agony in a series of superbly performed crescendos.
Given the new narrative perspective, however, this is a much darker show than the one that wowed Fringe audiences last year. And having a narrator who’s a swine rather than a charmer makes it a less comfortable experience, though not one that should put people off buying a ticket. (Miles Fielder) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 30 Aug (not 24), times vary, £14–£16 (£10–£11).
SPACEMAN Solar ` test ●●●●●
This is the kind of show that divides audiences, in a Marmite love it or hate it kind of way. Clearly I fall into the latter category, because this one-man show felt like 45 minutes of slow torture.
Performer Paul Rous of Aberdeenshire-based Dudendance cuts a powerful figure on the stage. And at one point, when he examines his arms with a robotic meticulousness, before attempting to smoke a cigarette, the piece almost becomes engaging. Other than that, the painstaking speed with which he crosses the stage dressed in
Festival Theatre
something akin to a Victorian nightgown, rolls around the half-lit floor, or walks on all fours panting like an asthmatic dog, all feels incredibly self-indulgent. Similarly, the intermittent NASA
recordings, which speak of ‘breached co-ordinates’ and ‘post-op comms’ are meaningless to the layperson and do nothing to draw us in. Video footage of somebody rolling on a beach also fails to ignite the piece – not least because it’s only fully visible from half the auditorium. (Kelly Apter) ■ St Stephen’s, 0141 565 1000, until 31 Aug (not 24 & 25), 5.30pm, £7 (£5).
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL School for vandals ●●●●●
RB Sheridan’s classic comedy has much to recommend it in our current era of vacuous celebrity tittle-tattle and grotesque self-interest. Yet the normally admirable Cal McCrystal’s production seems to have read the text so radically against what it seems to suggest that here we have not so much a deconstruction as a destruction of the canonical comedy of manners.
Here Sheridan’s play becomes a celebration of the kind of affluent wastrel B-list lifestyle he condemned, with a cast of such should’ve-known- betters as Lionel Blair, Marcus Brigstocke, Stephen K Amos and Phil Nichol spending a good deal of time
breaking from the script to promote their shows and egos amidst a lot of mock corpsing and school play slapstick.
This cheery act of cultural vandalism is at first given an uncertain welcome from a vaguely tittering audience, but as the nigh-on two hours proceeds you start to sense a certain anger. By the time of the famous screen scene, one wishes the item in question, rather than concealing one performer, had been drawn across the entire stage. Eat your own genitals before you see this poorly performed and ill-conceived travesty. (Steve Cramer) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 31 Aug, 4pm, £13.50–£15 (£12–£12.50).
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5 – 31 August 2009 | 15.40 | Pleasance Above After a sell-out run in Berlin, Lucy Foster brings her award-winning performance to Edinburgh
By Lucy Foster Written and performed by Lucy Foster
Lucy Foster is launching a really big campaign. This one will be the one where things really change. This one will make us feel like different people. Or not even like people any more. Like birds, like trees, like the sea, like the mountains. A delightfully comic devised play about trying to change the world, only to discover a few distractions along the way...
5–31 August 2009 15.40 Overall first prize winner at the 100° Festival in Berlin 2008
20–27 Aug 2009 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 67