list.co.uk/festival Previews | FESTIVAL THEATRE
SQUALLY SHOWERS Young Fringe stars Little Bulb explore new territory
Between 2008’s Crocosmia and 2010’s Operation Greenfield, Little Bulb Theatre have won most of the major theatre awards at the Edinburgh Fringe. This year, they return with the third in their trilogy, Squally Showers.
‘The characters aren’t related at all,’ says artistic director Alex Scott, ‘but there’s a common theme, which is growing up. Crocosmia deals with very young children, Operation Greenfield is about teenagers, and this is a show about when you’ve graduated from being a teenager and you’re a young adult. That’s sort of the age that we’ve just gone through.’
Little Bulb are well known for their use of live music. But
Squally Showers, set in the 1980s, focuses instead on dance and movement. Scott explains: ‘It’s completely different to anything we’ve done before because we’re exploring the world of dance theatre and dance logic. We’re not trained dancers, but we’ve always seen our work as choreography. ‘Music is incredibly important to the piece,’ he adds. ‘It’s just that we’re using recorded music. It’s very eclectic, and people can expect a lot of juxtaposition between classical pieces and more flamboyant, full-on, 80s-inspired dance music. That reflects the fact that we’re interested in a form of classical dance but also the effect of instinctive dance that everyone does when they go dancing, the more cheesy moves.’
And although it’s been a challenge, the company will be constantly refining the piece throughout August, and inviting the audience to offer feedback too. ‘It feels very much out of our comfort zone,’ admits Scott. ‘It feels like we are doing something very new and a bit raw. That’s very exciting, and I think Edinburgh is the perfect place to test it out.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, 2−24 Aug (not 4, 11, 18 Aug), 9pm, £12 (£10).
H S A N R E T E P
R E Z Y D U O C N H P U R
I
I
R E D N M E C N E R O L F
MELMOTH THE WANDERER Irish company Big Telly gives Gothic Maturin classic its theatrical debut
CADRE Examining the meaning of the fight for freedom GOOD MOURNING! VOSTBIL Florence Minder comes to terms with loss through linguistic inspiration
Oscar Wilde’s uncle, Irish cleric and party animal Charles Maturin, wrote Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820. It’s strong stuff, a Gothic condemnation of the Catholic Church with a Faust-influenced hero who sells his soul to the devil and then decides he wants it back. Edgar Allan Poe loved it, as did Dostoevsky and Maturin’s more famous nephew. Irish company Big Telly dials up the creepy in
this acclaimed production, the first ever theatrical adaptation of the book. Everyone apart from Melmoth is in a crude, slightly oversized mask. It’s broad-brushstroke theatre: fast, visual, physical, with lots of bangs, flashes and big laughs as well as shivers, all done in the surrealist Irish tradition. And all with a dark love story at the heart. The company describes it as ‘Saw meets Fawlty Towers meets Flann O’Brien on a dark, dark night’. There is cannibalism, torture, sacrifice, as well as Spanish monks, squeaky toys and a table of death. Shame Oscar is not around to see his uncle’s masterwork reach the stage: sounds very much his thing. (Anna Burnside) ■ The Assembly Rooms, 0844 693 3008, 2–25 Aug (not 6, 13), 4.10pm, £15 (£12). Preview 1 Aug, £14 (£11).
With the world’s media camped outside Mandela’s hospital, it’s an important time to revisit the history of his nation’s civil rights movement. In his follow-up to 2008’s Fringe First-winning Itsoseng, playwright and actor Omphile Molusi presents an epic story of one black South African activist’s struggle from the 1960s to the present day. ‘I’m exploring issues of land, race and humanity,’ he says, ‘what we call in South Africa ubuntu. Cadre is inspired by my uncle’s life, and one thing he said to me was the famous quote (by the German philosopher Hegel): “The only thing we ever learn from history is that we never learn anything.”’ It’s a situation that the world at large, pacified by the memory of apartheid’s end, should be made aware of. ‘Currently in South Africa we act like we don’t understand what we fought for,’ says Molusi. ‘This year we celebrate a hundred years of the Native Land Act, yet many who were thrown out of their own land don’t have it back. Poverty has risen since democracy. Cadre is about the sacrifices individuals made in order for South Africa to change, but also a reminder that Mandela wasn’t the destination − he was the beginning.’ (David Pollock) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, 4−25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), times vary, £18−£20 (£13−£15). Preview 3 Aug, £13 (£6).
Although the Institut Français has a year-round remit to champion the French language, it doubles as an intriguing Fringe venue. Florence Minder’s Good Mourning! VOstBil might be performed in English, but it connects to the grand European tradition of personal performances made by auteurs. ‘I was trained as an actress,’ Minder explains.
‘But I have been doing my own work for three years.’ Based on her grief at the loss of her mother, Minder’s monologue is a stand-up-style routine that questions the role of language in human experience.
Finding that her ‘French version’ was ill-equipped to deal with grief, Minder ‘introduced the American version’. Liberated by English – there are French supertitles – Minder is able to be funny about the stages of mourning. She continues: ‘When I found myself in a shitty situation, I started to live in English. I was in need of new words – like the Inuit people have a hundred words for snow. I needed more snows.’ Stripped down and humorous, Good Mourning! VOstBil satisfies the comedic demands of the Fringe while unashamedly addressing a serious matter. (Gareth K Vile) ■ Institut Français d’Ecosse, 225 5366, 13−18 Aug, 8pm, £10 (£8).
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 87