FESTIVAL THEATRE | Reviews
IRONS Heart-rending comedy play about a transgender football fan and her mates ●●●●●
Three West Ham fans meet religiously to watch Premier League football matches. It’s their escape from the humdrum of daily life. But times are changing and the simple comradery of the football terrace is challenged by contemporary values. As one of the lads asks: ‘What’s the world coming to when one of your best mates turns into a bird in front of your eyes?’ Playwright and director Colin Chaston has written and directed
a play that is – at face value – about a transgender football fan becoming accepted by his gender normative mates. But really, Chaston’s play is all about the dynamic between friends. Ash (later Ashleigh)’s gender swap is a device to display the fears of two friends about a modern and changing world they don’t understand. It is a heartwarming, funny and genuinely emotional play
which could so easily have drifted offside. Importantly, Chaston manages to introduce a transgender woman without making it feel like a gimmick. And in moments of high emotion, Ashleigh (when revealed as a woman) drives the building of a new type of relationship between the friends, which forms the rich and textured centre of this play.
Irons is a simply sublime comedy: the trio dance, and sing ‘Let’s Go Fucking Mental’ when goals are scored, which has been known to provoke audience participation. Chaston’s play has an innovative heart, but its pace and staging is remarkably straightforward and joyously fun. In a time when transgender issues have become a prominent point of discussion across the western world, this script is a reminder that there is more to the matter than headlines and petty arguments on the internet. (Adam Bloodworth) ■ Greenside @ Infirmary Street, 226 0000, until 27 Aug (not 14, 21), times vary, £10 (£9).
BUBBLE SCHMEISIS Warm, gently provocative questioning of Jewish identity ●●●●●
If rubbing down a chunky, balding Jewish guy with soap and a mop is your kind of thing, Bubble Schmeisis might be the show for you. Even if not, it’s got loads going for it – not least the astonishingly supple klezmer music from clarinet and accordion duo Dan Gouly and Josh Middleton that greets you as you walk in and punctuates Nick Cassenbaum’s quirky, engaging vignettes of Jewish life. He hangs his tales – of circumcision, a school trip
to Israel, a first trip to Spurs – around a broader narrative of his visit to the Canning Town Schvitz (bathhouse), where he gets the schmeising (wash- down) of the show’s title by its elderly regulars. But if those subjects sound like Jewish clichés, that’s kind of the point – Cassenbaum gently prods and questions these well-worn images of his culture to question what it means to be a British Jew today. It’s far from a worthy offering, though, and
Cassenbaum is disarmingly informal. For anyone with connections to Brick Lane, the North Circular or South Mimms services, it’ll sound warmly familiar; for anyone else it offers a friendly, gently provocative perspective on Jewish experience. (David Kettle) ■ Summerhall, 560 1581, until 28 Aug (not 15, 22), 3pm, £11 (£8.50).
90 THE LIST FESTIVAL 11–18 Aug 2016
THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM An entertaining if slightly hollow production ●●●●● CALLISTO: A QUEER EPIC Gay stories fall short on emotional impact ●●●●●
With the popular emergence of atheism in the western world, the Anglia Ruskin Creative theatre company have their finger firmly on the zeitgeist in a show that, while lacking depth and sophistication, will interest anybody who believes in intellectual honesty and free inquiry. Young poet Percy Shelley has written a pamphlet that is bound to get him into bother with the Oxford University College. Its demands for proof of the existence of a God do not go down well with Lord Eldon and, if the college finds him guilty of authoring this document, Shelley could find himself quickly kicked out of the establishment.
The show never really poses any serious questions around the subject and no theological queries are ever really tackled, leaving not much meat hanging on the bones. However, it does address the idea of free inquiry and does so with enough humour and wit to entertain if not provoke deeper thought.
The performances are full of joy and energy, lifting the piece. It means well and does a sufficient job of grabbing attention, though it perhaps doesn’t do so for the right reasons. (Alex Eades) ■ theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, 510 2384, until 20 Aug (not 14), 12.10pm, £8 (£6).
A 17th-century actress struggles to keep her illicit marriage to a woman secret; maths genius Alan Turing strikes up an unlikely friendship with the mother of his lost first love; a Nebraska woman takes her first steps in the adult entertainment business in search of the porn actress she has fallen in love with; on the moon in the 23rd century, an android falls for its human creator. With its epoch-straddling, Cloud Atlas-style
colliding storylines, writer Howard Coase’s Callisto from theatre company Forward Arena more than lives up to the ‘epic’ of its title, cramming as much storyline into its 70 minutes as four more traditional Fringe shows. Thomas Bailey’s smooth, fluid direction ensures the intersecting plots are lucid and strongly characterised. The cast is universally strong, with James Watterson in particular bringing welcome moments of calm and reflection as Turing.
By the end, though, there’s a question of what it all amounts to – and whether it really shines any fresh light on same-sex relationships, let alone celebrating their universality down the ages. And despite its admirable cleverness, it’s a show that’s surprisingly light on emotional impact. (David Kettle) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 29 Aug (not 15), 11.50am, £8–£10 (£7–£9).