FESTIVAL 9am— 1pm

DANCE PREVIEW Aki Sato Solo Dance Performance

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Aki Soto communes with nature

Forget back to basics, it's back to Nature from now on. From Capability Brown to Andy Goldsworthy we have seen nature used as a sculptural form. But Japanese dancer Aki Sato uses nature as a performance rather than a visual medium. For three years she communed with Nature every Saturday in New York's Central Park weather permitting. ’| Join nature. I dance With wind, birds, and sky, and it gives me a sense of freedom,‘ she says.

In her Edinburgh show she has re- developed some of her Central Park work to create seven solos. Mixing a range of styles including ballet, pantomime, tap and modern, she has created her own ’new style', completely inspired by nature Seven solos tell the st0ry of one woman who sets out on a journey. She encounters sandy dunes, hard winds, sea and space, eventually entering the spiritual landscape of her own mind. (Robin James)

I Aki Sato Solo Dance Performance (Fringe) Randolph Studio (Venue 55) 225 5366, 24, 26, 28, 30Aug, 77.30am, £5 ([4).

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30 THE “31’ 22—28 Aug 1997

THEATRE PREVIEW The Pugilist

The recent Tyson-Holyfield fight/snack was the perfect publicity stunt for Awarehaus Theatre Company. Their new play The Pug/list is set in the now-one- step-nearer future when boxing has been banned and, needless to say, has gone underground.

According to writer Brian Keeley, the two-hander deals not only with the boxers' ‘involvement in something potentially lethal but self-irifiictecl‘, but also with our odd sense of entertainment, the 'complete fascination we have for fighting It’s hr‘irrifying, but you can't look away.’

Hailing from Aberdeen, and

proudly boasting of being the only profeSSIonal theatre company in North East Scotland, Awarehaus are characteristically modest in both their expectations and their outlay. ’We can’t afford a stage crexv, so in. the writer and Props Department,’ confides Keeley And what he wants from Edinburgh? ’I read somewhere that the average audience for a Fringe show was seven people. Eight, and I’ll be happy.’ (Ed Grenby) I The Pug/list (Fringe) Aware/Tans Theatre, Famous Grouse House (Venue 34) 220 5606, untr/26Aug, 72 75pm, £6 (£4).

THEATRE REVIEW Valium a **

It's that old deVIl called Love again, only he’s fallen in With a bad crowd, loitering on this partiCuIar street Corner With Lust, Jealousy and Repression. Valium is essentially a love quadrangle which ends in tears and then some Ga/ is, ill Truman Capote terms, a king rat, a lippy philanderer. Kay is his pissed-off partner Rachel is smart but bored with Peter, a mother's bOy who believes sex is a chore reluctantly undertaken by married cOuples. The perfoririances are engaging enough, but the script is a little flat and the story plods at times Relationships really can be murder (Rodger Evans)

I Valium (Fringe) Optimism, C (‘v’enue 79) 225 5705, until 30AM], 7 7 30am, £4 ([3)

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The last moments of tin young women

at the me of their execution. The play is

a hymn to life. lore. friendship and faith.

A solo perionnance hi the (ireek actress

tiaria Panoutsou.

Preiieii Aug. 20th 9:45-ll:205 Aug. 25th3llth midday I2: I5 - I:45 £5.00 it 3.00) cases .

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T0flff THEATRE

‘0 Venue 40 - The Quaker Meeting House 7 Victoria Terrace. Tickets 220 (HO!)

Richard Earthy captivates in You Are My Mother

THEATRE REVIEW ' You Are My Mother

* ‘t * * The misleading description in the Fringe programme says this 'explores the I disconcerting fusion of identity between mother and son'. But it isn’t some ; histrionic Oedipal drama. Instead, it looks with compassion at the difficulties i of caring for a senile parent. If that sounds far too worthy to have made a gripping plug in the programme, don’t be put off. A captivating solo performance by Richard I Earthy gets the essence of mother and son, beautifully weighted and I sympathetic to both. : Written by writer/actor loop Admiraal in 1982, the nuances of the disease are so convincing, there is no doubt the play is autobiographical. Mrs ; Admiraal’s anxieties, facial movements and irritating memory lapses are all nicely underplayed and the ambiguous reaction of the son, sympathy and frustration, judged to perfection. It is so personal a work, that for another actor to take it on with such 5 success seems remarkable. An impressive piece of acting, which is marred only by the play being a little too drawn out. (Stephen Naysmith) I You Are My Mother (Fringe) Backchat Theatre, The Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 I 6550, until/lug 30, noon, £6.50/f7.50 (£5.50/f6. 50).

: THEATRE REVIEW The Designated Mourner a air

sounded promising However, whereas

Henry was an appealing, appalling

indIVIdual, The Designated Mourner

features three entirely unsympathetic characters Earnest daughter Jay is in

awe of her father, pompOus Howard,

; who enjoys lecturing and hectoring his

embittered resentful son-in-law Jack.

' Without grvrng away the unfolding

storyline, this extended literary parable

deals \‘JliIl more than Just the death of

mere bodies, and manages to maim a

few sacred cultural cows along the

way

With the unexpected Illness of the

actor who plays Jack, director Daniel

' Brooks, working With a script, has

stepped into the role (very ably) for the

whole run Claire Coulter’s

performance is remarkable for its

quiet, still concentration But despite

being a play full of worthy qualities, It

risks being as pretentious as the literati

it despises (Gabe Stewart)

I The Desrgnated Mourner (Fringe)

Tarragon Theatre (Canada), Traverse

Theatre (Venue 75) 228 7404, until 30

Aug (not 25) times vary, [8 (£5).

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