list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL THEATRE
DONALD ROBERTSON IS NOT A STAND-UP COMEDIAN Stand-up, don’t fight ●●●●● THE ZULU Storytelling from South Africa with mixed results ●●●●●
I KILLED RASPUTIN Putting the 'mad' in mad monk ●●●●●
Coming-of-age comedy can be twee or cringeworthy. Not so with Donald Robertson Is Not a Stand-Up Comedian, which explores the trials of boyhood and manhood with deadpan wit and a real even-handedness: it’s a joyous thing indeed.
Writer and performer Gary McNair, playing a nerdier version of himself in a shiny suit, explores stand-up comedy as a means of self-preservation, mentoring the titular teenager Robertson (Michael Kelly) through a vicious bout of bullying by teaching him the art of the humorous comeback.
Parodying and homaging several comedic styles, theatre and comedy blur in this hilarious, beautifully observed paean to growing pains. The two characters’ experiences overlap, suggesting nothing much changes the older we get – it’s just a bigger playground to run from. Riffing on male identity, and what it means to belong in an increasingly isolated society where innocence has been replaced by cynicism, it’s dense with ideas.
Poignant, astute and hilarious – and you may never regard He-Man’s Castle Grayskull in quite the same way again. (Lorna Irvine) ■ Traverse, 228 1404, until 24 Aug (not 18), times vary, £18 (£8–£13).
The Zulus were a warrior nation who ruled over much of Southern Africa before the colonial armies arrived in the early 20th century. In The Zulu, award-winning actor and theatre director Mbongeni Ngema uses the storytelling tradition of the Zulu culture to recall the history of the tribe, in particular its rise in prominence under its leader Shaka in the 19th century and the violent battles to maintain its stronghold in the following decades.
It begins in energetic fashion with a burst of traditional song as Ngema and a young actor appear in tribal costume. Ngema sets the scene, describing how his blind grandmother used to sit him down and tell him stories from Zulu history. He gives a passionate, committed performance
and it's fascinating to hear how the actor's own ancestors were connected to these events. But after a while, The Zulu becomes laden down with so much historical information. For those with a particular interest in this period, Ngema's performance adds life to the history but for those with a more casual interest, the play is at times more of a struggle to engage with. (Gail Tolley) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 25 Aug, 12.45pm, £13 (£12).
Comedian and writer Richard Herring's new play has the free-wheeling style of a Marx Brothers’ comedy, playing fast and loose with historical accuracy – and film noir tropes. The gorgeous set, with large screens cunningly
framing flashbacks, is perfect for journalist EM Halliday's (Joseph Chance) investigation into notorious healer Grigori Rasputin's murder. Herring traces the prurient fascination with news-feeds back through the ages, and a gossipy tone persists: from Catherine the Great's equestrian 'outings', to royal in-breeding, no taboo is left unmolested.
The cast are uniformly excellent: Justin Edwards, gruff and deadpan as Rasputin, has a Russell Brand swagger; Joanna Griffin has vaudevillian presence as a maid and the sausage-toting Fuhrer; Eileen Nicholas is as elegant as she is acerbic as Prince Felix Yusupov's wife. But it's the priapic, pan-sexual prankster Prince Felix's show all the way: Nichola McAuliffe's performance is an absolute fruity delight.
Intelligent and dark, the script is nonetheless undercut by some exclamations like, 'Oh, shit’, or strategically placed knob gags – well, it is a Richard Herring show, after all. (Lorna Irvine) ■ Assembly George Square, 623 3030, until 24 Aug, 3.35pm, £12-£14.50 (£11-£13.50)
RETURN TO THE VOICE High-impact musical theatre ●●●●●
Return to the Voice by Wrocław-based music / theatre company Song of the Goat was always going to have a lot to live up to. Following the universal eulogising of their remarkable Songs of Lear in 2012, this new work was specially commissioned by Summerhall, with St Giles’ Cathedral as its setting. And rather than telling a Shakespearean story through song, it was going to tackle Scottish traditional music, delving into ancient Gaelic song in collaboration with Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies and musicians from the Western Isles.
It was probably inevitable that the final work would fall short of these lofty ambitions. But more interestingly, Return to the Voice raises quite significant questions about what we expect from theatre, and about our emotional involvement in performance.
The show itself starts with a brief set from Scottish traditional musicians, before the 12 singers of Song of the Goat take to the stage for an hour of beautifully arranged Gaelic songs, dripping with raw emotion and almost unbearable in their emotional intensity. It’s tempting simply to surrender to the visceral power of the music and the inexorable pull of its repetitions and shifting harmonies – but there’s a big question: why is this theatre? There’s little – bar a bit of movement and singers emoting to each other – that goes beyond a conventional music performance, and on those terms, Song of the Goat’s admittedly powerful evocations fit right into the ‘holy minimalism’ that eastern European composers such as Górecki and Kancheli have pulled off with much more subtlety and imagination. The raw emotional honesty of Return to the Voice hits like a hammer, but take a step back and the cracks start to appear. (David Kettle) ■ Summerhall @ St Giles Cathedral, 560 1581, 13–16, 18–21, 25 Aug, times vary, £15 (£13).
14–25 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 79