rim/8m FESTIVAL
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DN DEATH RDW WITH WDDDY ALLEN
Keith Wickham’s ability to impersonate leaves his one-man show so crowded with celebs that at curtain call there's hardly room for himself. Trevor Chamberlain. the chameleon nerd at the centre of this persona storm. is a Midlands failure bent on electrocuting himself for a murder he may never have committed. Trevor's last tape and testimony takes us on a tour of his fantasies. from Hollywood and his arrest at the Oscars to the court case with Woody Allen as his defence lawyer.
Every trick in the book is successfully utilised to maximise the voices through which we see this grand and wonderfully bizarre fantasist strut his stuff. (Ronan O‘Donnell) I DI Death Row With Woody Allen (Fringe) Comedy Factory. Marco’s (Venue 98) 228 9116. until 29 Aug. 6pm. £4.50 (£3.50).
CAUGHT — STILL/HANGING
cum-mm juggling“ m
V THEATRE URDDDBADA
For the first ten minutes this drama by Brazilian company Mimus Mundanus looks like it’s going to shape up to be a real Fringe find. Angular physical movements, elemental chanting,
‘Beware the blonde woman’ whose head appears, enigmatically, above a curtain from time to time.
(£4)-
arm. the nape of the neck. becomes a shelf, an edge. the rim along which colours roll. Balls drop into and explode from the body. The sense of randomness and chance built into their routines creates an hypnotic illusion. the feeling of witnessing ritual. complex and liberating. And the kids love it. (Ronan O'Donnell)
I Caught - Still/Hanging (Fringe) Gandini Juggling Project. St Bride’s Centre (Venue 62) 346 1405.
The Gandini Juggling Project returns to St Bride’s. the atmospheric venue near the Haymarket. The converted church is a perfect setting. as the meditative simplicity of Gandini‘s opening sequence gives way to turbulent waves of movement and music. This somnambulist‘s dance. combined with fragmented sentences and sound effects. cuts a sculptured zone that
always remains fluid. An , until 27 Aug (not 21).
6pm. £5 (£3).
RLS - THE HEW MUSICAL ADVENTURE
Buccaneers. treasure maps, nutty scientists — the fantasies of Edinburgh’s finest sickly dreamer. Robert Louis Stevenson. always excelled the realities of his troubled existence.
Sadly. the same standard applies to this ambitious musical biopic which attempts to cram 44 eventful years into two hours of spirited crooning. At a song per situation.
Urucubaca: lacks drive
Beyond that, however, I am left as baffled by Urucubaca as I am by its entry in the Fringe programme. Despite the play’s extensive use of English, the logic of the story eludes
earth, fire, spirits and Latin me and, once the production has rhytims . . . all those exotic qualities shrugged off the physicality of the normally absent in British theatre. opening scene, it becomes a
Even when the more conventionally shapeless blur lacking in forward structured plot sets in there’s a drive. (Mark Fisher) promising hint of Twin Peaks llrucubaca (Fringe) Mlmus Mundanus, surrealism as we are warned to Marco’s (Venue 98) 228 9116,
alternate days until 3 Sept, 6pm, £5
make this enjoyable enough. but the lack of depth doesn‘t dojustice to the life of a complex and
. intriguing man. (Naomi
Conran) I RLS - The liew Musical Adventure (Fringe)
Edinburgh Footlights f Theatre Company. Reid Concert Hall (Venue 8)
until 3 Sept (not 21. 28 Aug). 6pm. £6 (£4).
V THEATRE WING SPAN
Rachel Amy explores. through an intelligent
intermixing of tnyth. song
female desire for freedom from both men and from
1 each other. While myth represents a beautiful
and the modern-day tale of Alice and Sally. the
ideal impossible to attain. its presence nevertheless helps undermine the categories which limit
women. The compromise
the play reaches is one in which a friendship
between women is
possible. (Ronan
O'Donnell)
; I Wing Span (Fringe)
: Girl’s Best Friend
Theatre. The Wee Red Bar (Venue 61) 229 1003.
until 28 Aug. 7.05pm.
£4.50 (£2).
f I Romeo and Juliet (Fringe) Estonian Youth
plagued by over-eager enthusiasm. and those brave enough to perform Shakespeare in a foreign‘ language to a British audience are often tempted to ham it up in an effort to convey the meaning. It is a tribute to the maturity and professionalism of the Estonian Youth Thetare that neither of these pitfalls is ever in evidence.
This is a pared down and intense Romeo and Juliet by turns playful.
5 passionate and violent —
but perhaps over-easy on the tragedy. The company makes free and confident use of the courtyard space. the sword fights are ' sudden and frightening. the lovers compelling and convincing (the programme informs us they have recently married) and the solid.
; unrelenting nature of their
fate is given a powerful central focus in the form of a stone column around which the action revolves. The fact that the production is in Estonian should discourage no one
I — the performances are so
strong and the direction so imaginative that at the end you feel as though you have understood every word. (Robin Hodge)
Theatre. Demarco Foundation. (Venue 22) 558 3371. 15—27 Aug. 7.30pm. £4 (£3).
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THE MEN WHD KNDW
Ends). comes the comedy duo of Martin Plimmer and Michael Magenis — beings whose observations resemble those of a trade mission from Mars. This is how superior but insane aliens would prepare their elite sales team for a foray into UKania. Their flip-chart covers every topic from ‘Green Sex‘ to ‘Michael Portillo'. On what to do on ‘Meeting A Bull‘ one must tie a red hanky to the
elbow of a blind fiddler
and run like fury. A hilarious Fringe evening starts in the company of these two cerebral teasers. (Ronan O‘Donnell)
I The Men Who Know (Fringe) Pleasance Cabaret Bar (Venue 33) 556 6550. until 23 Aug. 6.30pm. £5/£7 (£3/£6).
THE
‘ IMPORTANCE or BEING 2:ERNEST
TV monitors run and TC-
; run segments of Wilde-
on-lilm; sound tapes bark
out unheeded instructions;
two performers exchange inconsequential dialogue
and. in a curiously low-
tech touch. an over-head 1 projector beams binary
patterns on a screen. And - it all happens at the same . time.
The idea of this production by Peter Ireland and Company is. i presume. that by
dislocating ()scar Wilde
and throwing in unrelated fragments ofcomputer- age philosophy. the collage of sound and
vision will acquire its own
' new meaning. Sadly it
"T
From a parallel dimension (BBC Radio 4's [xmse
doesn't. partly because the actors lack the presence or physicality to persuade
v you that there is method to their madness. but
mainly because they neglect the old-fashioned
values of clear-headed
communication. (Mark Fisher)
I The Importance of Being 2:Ernest (Fringe) Peter Ireland and Company. Southside (Venue 82) 667 7365. until 29 Aug. 6.20pm. £4.50 (£3.50).
the script tends to run like :1 Penguin abridged history. with a surfeit of unnatural scene-setting conversation.
V THEATRE
RDMED AND Some entertaining
characters and 1 Youth Theatre consistently good tunes PTOdUCUOflS tend to be
Keith m: eta-elem Nerd
42 The List 19—25 August 1994