list.co.uk/festival Previews | FESTIVAL MUSIC
ALIEN LULLABIES – SONGS FROM A DECAYING FUTURE Fiona Soe Paing’s latest eerie work PLAY Identical twin DJs with opposing music tastes leave it all up to the audience
TITANIA: A SOLO CABARET How Titania escapes the Bard’s blues
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Part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Made in Scotland’ showcase, Alien Lullabies presents the dreamlike, unsettling sounds of Aberdeenshire-based electronica artist Fiona Soe Paing. Stitching together heavy beats, disorientating sounds and disembodied vocals, her songs create a uniquely eerie atmosphere, partly due to their disregard for lyrical immediacy. ‘Only a few of my songs have actual words,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes I sing random words from a Burmese phrasebook. Sometimes I write real lyrics but that’s the part I find most difficult.’ Her live shows are taken to another level by
Zennor Alexander’s fantastical, dystopian, at times disturbing films. ‘The music and visuals are perfectly matched,’ she says. ‘My music sparks off visual imagery for Zennor, which he turns into animation. Although each can exist as a separate entity, the overall show is definitely more than the sum of its parts. It’s a surreal and immersive experience that really takes you off somewhere else. People say that it’s quite mesmerising – and also a little creepy.’ (Matt Evans) ■ Summerhall, 560 1581, 14–23 Aug, (not 17 & 18), 10.35pm, £10 (£6). Previews 12 & 13 Aug, £6.
Like most good dance parties, PLAY came about after a disagreement over a techno remix of the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’. Identical in looks if not musical taste, the Mac Twins were at odds over playing the track – Lisa felt it didn’t have that zigazig ah, but Alana was sure it did. In the end, they came up with an ingenious arrangement: let the audience decide what they want, what they really really want. ‘And thus, the idea for our immersive, interactive DJ show was born, and what a messy, but necessary birth it was,’ they explain together. ‘For years we’ve bickered in the booth about what to play and it took us a good few years to realise the magic is in the clash.’
As well as choosing the music, the audience join
in a live game, featuring ‘power up levels’, which as far as we can tell, is a little drinking ‘pitstop’. ‘It merges our theatre backgrounds, our love for our old Sega Mega Drive and our love for clubbing all in one show,’ they say, but ultimately, it’s about enjoyment. ‘We want everyone to not take it too seriously and just have fun and a shimmy.’ (Rebecca Monks) ■ Gilded Balloon, 622 6552, 13–15, 20–22 & 28–30 Aug, 12.30am, £10. Previews 6–8 Aug, £5.
Having been a member of the Polish company Gardzienice, who are known for their ensemble theatre, Anna-Helena McLean admits surprise at her choice of a solo show: ‘I had been involved in tragic Greek classics for a good while and wanted to do a play about the foolishness and joy in life.’ Attracted to the fairy queen from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she set about challenging the Bard’s unsatisfying characterisation. ‘I couldn’t believe such a woman, queen, lover,
priestess would be mute by the end of the play and wanted to give more depth to her journey with music and by telling the story from her perspective,’ she says. Her training as a classical cellist has been put at the service of a ‘dark cabaret’ which has the audience acting as the chorus to Titania’s tale. Rather than simply retelling Shakespeare’s story of a lover’s bet, McLean is intrigued as much at the prospect of rescuing Titania from her marginalisation as she is in celebrating performance as a communion between audience and actor.
Through her musicality, energy and vision, McLean promises an emotive, provocative take on a familiar comedy. (Gareth K Vile) ■ Summerhall, 560 1581, 7–30 Aug (not 10, 17, 24), 6.25pm, £12.50 (£10). Preview 5 Aug, £10.
LE GATEAU CHOCOLAT: BLACK Singer and drag artist’s most intimate piece to date, inspired by his battle with depression
In recent years, Le Gateau Chocolat has rapidly become somewhat of a household name among more seasoned Fringe-goers. This year, however, even his biggest fans are in for a whole new kind of show as the cabaret legend bares all in Black.
Inspired by his struggle with depression, Black is Gateau’s most intimate piece to date; an epitaph to close friends whom he has lost to the condition. ‘With this show I intended to explore Black as a state of mind,’ he explains, ‘the memes of Black: black sheep, black and blue, black dog, black music . . . ’ As with most of his work, the show is autobiographical, but aims to engage with the idea that, in his words, ‘regardless of sexuality, colour, background, we’ve all been black at some point.’
Set to the soundtrack of Wagner, Gershwin, Nina Simone and Purcell, with some Whitney Houston thrown in for good measure, the singer and drag artist describes the new work as bittersweet, like dark chocolate. Expect the same larger-than-life, booming vocals, electric personality and killer costumes but, with Black, Gateau ultimately hopes to leave his audiences with, ‘a deeper understanding of depression and the lessening of our obvious differences.’ (Nina Glencross) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, 8–30 Aug (not 17), 4.50pm, £11–£12 (£10–£11). Previews 6 & 7 Aug, £8.
6–13 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 69