COMEDY PREVIEW Brendon Burns Knows
Heaps
'I was a teenage Australian with heaps of opinions and Ms, I was dead before I started.’ Beginning in London in 1990 as a failure of a stand-up, Aussie comic Brendon Burns is now surfing a successful wave of a career. He's even bagged a job with Channel 4 as the host of the Eleven 0’ Clock Show which hits screens this Autumn. Reviews of Burns’ stand-up show are a mix of plaudits and criticism of his politically incorrect humour. He bites back at these comments: 'There's a message underneath,’ he says. ’If people get offended, then they aren't listening properly! I guess it's a bit preachy but I need to justify my own existence and not just be a dancing monkey boy.’ Expect Burns to concentrate this year on what he sees as double standards in what people find offensive. If you listen real hard, you might just get his point. (Simone Baird) a Brendon Burns Knows Heaps (Fringe) Brendon Burns, Calder's Gilded Balloon /I (Venue 36) 226 2 757, 7-37 Aug, 9pm, £8 (E 7).
THEATRE PREVIEW Kamikaze Freakshow
John Kamikaze is the frankest man in showbiz. His sales pitch for his bizarre cabaret troupe is refreshingly expletive enriched: ’As fucking performing artists we fucking push back the fucking perimeters, and we're always prepared to push them fucking further. It's circus, it's cabaret, it’s real, live full- on, in-your-face dangerous. Everything you see actually happens, there’s nothing faked.’
Kamikaze boasts a troupe which includes Powertool, a dwarf who performs feats of strength with a part of his anatomy normally reserved for coming and going (’he's only 3ft Bin, but he’s immense') and Crash, a woman with a very experienced throat. 'Chairs, table legs, there’s nothing that she Wt” not swallow. A lot of people find it a Freudian experience,’ says Kamikaze. (Steve Cramer)
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fi Kamikaze Freakshow (Fringe) Calder’s Gilded Balloon at La Belle Ange/e (Venue 37) 226 275 7, 7—37 Aug (not 72, 76) 9. 75pm, [8 ([7i
THEATRE PREVIEW Princess Sharon
Every kid delights in rebelling against their parents. But it's not just some stroppy adolescent phase in Princess Sharon when a young Prince gives his parents the proverbial two-fingers by choosing a clumsy, painfully introverted ugly duckling to be his bride Appalled by what the neighbours, let alone the royal subjects, will make of the scandal, his guardians set about ridding the court of the unfortunate blemish.
Using their hallmark blend of dark absurd comedy and precise choreography, Scarlet — letting blokes in the cast for the first time ever — explore our compulsion to belong to a race of clones, together with notions of personal and social freedom.
’There are numerous systems that we live within, and are slaves to, which we are often not even conscious of,’ believes Polish director Kasia Deszcz. ’Very few people have Sharon’s strength and resist the pressures to conform.’ (Claire Prentice)
a Princess Sharon (Fringe) Scarlet Theatre, Traverse (Venue 75) 228 7404, 7 7—23 Aug (not 77) times vary, f9 ([6). Preview 77 Aug, 5.30pm, £6 (£4).
THEATRE PREVIEW Transmission
Does the world really need another production exploring Aids issues? The 1157 Performance Group thinks so, making a Fringe debut with a production of two halves. Part I takes the form of a panel discussion between five very different characters, from a boy scout to a holistic healer, with interaction invited from the audience. Its realism Is In marked contrast to Part II, which is based round seven monologues complemented by sensual choreography. See them separately on alternate nights or take in the whole picture over two.
Freud and tongue: Kamikaze Freakshow
THEATRE PREVIEW Crave
Form over content: Vicky Featherstone'
Many plays divide critics; Sarah Kane's hack them apart like a machete. Her '. two major works to date ~1995's Blasted and this year’s Cleansed - depicted r: rape and torture with such an unflinching eye that many pundits declared them too repulsive for public consumption. Others saw them as dealing validly with the atrocities endured daily in the world’s troublespots: tackling the worst of humanity, paring away the Tarantinian glamour, ' leaving savagery exposed like raw flesh.
For the past eighteen months. Kane has been writer-in-residence for g ‘. English touring company Paines Plough, while Vicky Featherstone has been the company’s artistic director. Now Featherstone - who directed last year's Traverse hit Anna Weiss - returns to the Traverse with Kane’s new play.
Crave.
’lt's completely different to anything she's written before,’ says Featherstone. ‘It will probably divide opinion, not because of the content. but because of the form. The content is very simple - it’s four people in a city, all seeking something they believe one of the others can give them.
'But the form has no narrative - I think it will be something people will have an instinctive emotional response to. it’s incredibly mesmerising: the; emotional rollercoaster of it gives me goosebumps.’ (Andrew Burnet) 4 2e Crave (Fringe) Paines Plough, Traverse (Venue 15) 228 7404, 73 Aug—S Sep (not Mon) times vary f 9 (E 6). Pr0views Tue 77, 3pm; Wed 72, 5.30pm, f 6 (£4).
'We're av0iding cliches really,’ says writer/director/performer Matthew Scott. ’Most of the theatre pieces I‘ve known concerning HIV and AIDS have. been about a gay man talking to his doctor or a couple (if gay men In a bedsit suffering together. This has quite a heterosexual angle to it because that's something that realiy needs to be addressed.’
(Fiona Shepherd)
% Transmission (Fringe) 7 757 Performance Group, The Famous Grouse House (Venue 34) 220 5606, 7—76 Aug, 9pm, [8 (f6)
COMEDY PREVIEW Sean Lock
Sean Lock has got the goggliest eyes in showbiz. Somehow he also seems to have the goggliest jokes: BjOrking about in the Office; the harrowmg
tale of the Donkey Boy; and a particularly strange line in home videos. All of which means he doesn't get on telly much — so doesn’t he mind his less-talented contemporaries becoming better- known than him?
'You can be damn sure it’s crossed my
mind,’ he ret0rts. 'But I don't wander
round like a zombie, saying "Give . . . me. . .what . . I . . . deserve!" or "Why aren’t I more FAMOUS!" I haven't gone straight to the top, but
I I'm taking the picturesque route.’
So he won’t be wanting that Perrier award then? 'People talk about it like it's so important, like it's the 400 metres, but it's just a load of bubbles isn't it?’ (Ed Grenby)
a Sean Lock (Fringe) Pleasance (Venue 33) 556 6550, anti/37 Aug (not 77, 25) 8. 05pm, f 9/f 8 (E 8/£ 7). Preview
6 Aug, 8.05pm, £4.