5pm - 6pm festival
THEATRE REVIEW
ELEKTRA-lA-LA
Ghost Road’s reinvention of Sophocles‘ text is in many ways quite ingenious. By finding a comic side to the play. they have found a new and moving angle on the tragedy. while still keeping the fatalistic rhythm pounding. Jacqueline Wn’ght plays Elektra as Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 — trying to unsex herseifas she prepares for Judgement Day. indeed.
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Elektra-la-La: complex yet enthralling
this show is a wonderful cross-dressing Freudian hotchpotch of ideas and images. almost an externalised Elektra complex; while Ferdinand Lewis‘s passionate blues offers a filmic counterpoint to the action. Often misfiring orjust silly. this nevertheless has a fragile and unexpected beauty which is quite enthralling. (Grant
I EIektra-la-La (Fringe) The Ghost Road * Company. Moray House
Studios (Venue l69) 556 0l02. until 3i Aug (not 25) 5. i5pm. £5 (£4).
Forbidden Flute: out of time
FORBIDDEN FLUTE
Hate to piss on someone else‘s parade. but this new musical from Cambridge is a real mess. I-‘nrbidden Flute has an unwieldy battle of the sexes plot. a magic flute. someone dressed as a bear and a row of shoogly doors on wheels.
The best that can be said is that the cast seem to be having a laugh. A generous cash donation from Stephen Fry was partly responsible for the project getting this far.
Maybe. like Fry‘s character in l’ctcr'x Friends. the company will look back on this escapade in fifteen years time and giggle. (Catriona Craig)
I Forbidden Flute
. (Fringe) Porpoise
Productions. Gilded Balloon (Venue 38) 226
2l5l. until 3i Aug.5.45 ; ' ‘h . ’i" St‘ h p....£7(£5). THEATRE REVIEW :‘B'Sniiai'lii‘mgi-‘i m” ”k * * Commotion. Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 6550. * * DO" JUAN until 3| Aug. 4.50pm.
Waiting For Godot
Strange-looking people on the liigh Street is hardly unusual at this time oi year; to tind them pertorming Beckett in German ls more ot a novelty. Purists might view it as sacrllege, but tor Markus Bentler - who directs Warten Au! Godot and plays the imperious Pono - it’s the culmination ot a love- attair that goes back to his discovery ot the play when he was twelve. ‘l think it can be understood in any language,’ he clalnis, ‘and i want to share it with everyone.’
Dentier - who tounded Ille Komodianten theatre group twelve years ago in Kiel, north Germany - decided that Beckett’s vagrant protagonists Vladimir and Estagon would be most at home in the streets. ‘In these days, you cannot tind tramps in the country,’ he observes. “We pertonn in the city wherever we can tied a tree.’
A tree, ot course, is one ot Beckett’s tew staging requirements - which helps detrey the cost ot a European tour whose only box ottlce is a whip-
Waiting on the street corner: Markus lientier and iierbert italuza as Pono and
Lucky
round at the end. luckily, a tow tatty old hats - which double perfectly tor this task - are another at the piay’s bare emntiais. (Andrew Burnet) Warten Au! Godot/Waiting For Godot (Fringe) "teeter Die Korniidlanten, llunter Square ( Venue 94) 23/25 Aug, 4m, tru.
£8l£7 (£6/£5). Don Juan in a flower shop . is a recipe for rampant romancing. Unfortunately. it is also an excuse for ridiculous poetry and for a plot which. in attempting to avoid being predictable. merely becomes ludicrous.
Though hampered by a weak script. these former Complicité members are lively entertainers who grab every opportunity to pull the comic punches. while Bernadette Russell as the endearing youngest daughter ofthe florist fires the show with her enthusiasm.
Using the tricks of physical theatre. this is a light-hearted performance which revels in its pranks and its descent into
MEN’S STYLE AND FITNESS
Richard Dyball and Dominic Maxwell didn't get much joy out oftheir heavy-handed script as they sweated it out in the inferno of the Pleasance attic. The show is a kind of Mm Behaving Burl/v set in the world of men’s magazine publishing with the duo playing loathsome Sum/(tr Sport-type execs ready to screw anyone to stay at the top.
When it all goes wrong they end up in therapy. discovering how despicable they really are and starting up again with a magazine for the New Man. For both journalists and men every
Don Juan: causing a commotion
opportunity exists to be H t t !I exploited. But didn’t we BVIew s 3' ra In 8 air tad , know that? Mar‘ - gyms”, ‘ ° * t t t * Unmissable FitnesS(Fringe)Thc * i * WM"! seeing Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 6550. until 31 Aug (not * * Below ave'age 27) 5.45pm. £7/£6 * You’ve been warned (£6/£5). R E D S H I F “Red Shift live up to their reputation for w». ‘ s stunning literary
adaptations with this striking stage version”
- The Independent
“...not only have audiences found
, themselves caught up in Bartleby’s
BARTLEBY plight bUt unable to
put him out of their A STORY OF WALL STREET
minds thereafter” From the novel by Herman Melville
- Glasgow Herald 12 - 31 August Theatre Workshop,
Venue 5.00pm “stylish, unsettling and impressively 0131 226 5425 MW £7.50, £5 COI‘IC - The Guardian
Guardian Critics’ Choice Edinburgh ’96
The List 23 Aug-5 Sept 1996 is