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list.co.uk/festival Reviews | FESTIVAL THEATRE
PARDON / IN CUFFS Justice served cold in dark vignettes ●●●●●
THE OUTSIDER Repetitive comedy on the strangeness of our modern lives ●●●●● GOING VIRAL Daniel Bye turns his informative performance style to contagious diseases ●●●●●
These short experimental vignettes, based on Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon’s documentaries, show a disparate group of criminals and the lengths they will go to in trying to prove their innocence.
On a revolving circular stage under a stark light, a trio swap roles, bringing pathos, sexual tension and abrupt mood swings. Clara van den Broek, in evening gown and heels, brings spiked glamour to the role of both the imperious judge and HIV- positive prostitute, interrogating herself. Korneel Hamers charges the air with menace, a brutish misogynist whose justification for beating his wife is simply that ‘she is a woman’. Valentijn Dhaenens is a vulnerable man from Mali, or providing comic relief as a swindler performing a ‘three-cup shuffle trick.
Their justifications become absurd, heart-rending or melodramatic and the rhythm veers between staccato bursts or languorous interludes.The cast of three are superb, even if the format can feel contrived, rejecting conventional narratives for high drama. Yet the imagery and performances far outweigh such misgivings. (Lorna Irvine) ■ Traverse, 228 1404, until 30 Aug (not 17, 24), times vary, £18 (£13).
It’s a promising if not especially original set-up. Finnish magician and actor Janne Raudaskoski’s wide-eyed alien crash-lands on Earth and proceeds to explore the various strange activities that we humans get up to: eating and drinking; shopping and having babies; working and fighting. Duplicating himself across two person-sized
plasma screens, Raudaskoski delights in interacting with his video selves, even jumping into filmed scenarios with a gracefulness that makes his trickery entirely convincing. There’s a bit of sleight- of-hand, a bit of audience interaction, a twinkling model airplane. And lots of bubbles.
Kids would no doubt love aspects of
Raudaskoski’s gentle, reassuring show – that’s if they can get past the slow pace and the extensive repetition. His interactions with technology are undeniably impressive (as are the countless roles he plays in the filmed snippets), but they’re fairly limited in their scope, and his insights into human life – war is bad; love is a funny thing – are hardly revelatory. It's full of touching moments but unlikely to be a show that lives long in the memory. (David Kettle) ■ New Town Theatre, 220 0143, until 30 Aug (not 18), 5.30pm, £12.
After shows like The Price of Everything (a rumination on kindness) and How to Occupy an Oil Rig (which looked at protesting against fossil fuels), Daniel Bye’s become well-known for his informative, TED talk-influenced performance style. This new show isn’t about the internet, as its
name might lead you to think. Instead, it’s about biological viruses – specifically, epidemics and how contagious they are. The news might have forgotten about Ebola, but Bye clearly hasn’t. The story he tells here is a fictional one (though it often sounds all too real), alternating perspectives between the ‘super-spreader’ of a virus that causes people to weep uncontrollably, a doctor trying to contain the outbreak and a version of himself, giving us a short masterclass on the science of epidemics.
His rigorous research and engaging performance style lend Going Viral a winning charm – in the way that a play about a deadly infectious disease can ever be charming. And although it’s just the right balance of entertaining and terrifying, it feels like it needs a little injection in pace to make it truly unforgettable. (Yasmin Sulaiman) ■ Northern Stage at Summerhall, 560 1581, until 30 Aug (not 19, 26), 2.10pm, £12 (£10).
THE FRIDA KAHLO OF PENGE WEST Monobrows and monologues from unlikely comic double act ●●●●●
From writer and director Chris Larner, Fringe First winner for An Instinct For Kindness, comes a satire on art, theatre and friendship
Olivia Scott-Taylor plays timid, virginal Zoe, a sharp contrast to Ruth (Cecily Nash) whom she befriends when she is kicked out by her actor boyfriend. Ruth is a horror, a praying mantis in polyester, who makes Katie Hopkins look refined and Zoe, pushover that she is, lets her stay over at her humble abode in Penge West (‘Penge – a cross between minge and pension,’ Zoe sighs in one of her bittersweet monologues). The results are a tad predictable: the two women
stage an amateurish play about the life of Frida Kahlo, called My Womb is A Paintbrush, which has some genuinely hilarious and un-PC side swipes at Kahlo’s iconography, Leon Trotsky and the po-faced art world, but the dialogue is often a little dated. Nonetheless, the two women perform with brio, especially Scott-Taylor who brings wit and pathos to Zoe. With a nicely judged twist and sharp observations on the showbusiness establishment – and the hangers-on who want to break into it in spite of limited ability and egos the size of Mexico – this is a charming riff on the pitfalls of pretention from an unlikely but comic double act. (Lorna Irvine) ■ C nova, 0845 260 1234, until 31 Aug (not 19), 5.10pm, £9.50–£11.50 (£7.50–£9.50).
13–20 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 91