The List: 13 Aug 1998 (49/140)

Eli's—rill

COMEDY REVIEW

My Last Week With Modolia it any

Ben Moor’s latest show is a hymn to twentysomething underachievers which speaks to the nerd in each of us. In this romantic comedy, our hero (temporarily) finds true love with an eightysomething, with whom he shares a capacity to see imps.

Despite a generous peppering of some truly imaginative absurd humour, the overall structure is narratively weaker than Moor's previous shows, and lacks his former unremitting intellectual boundary-pushing. A worrying undercurrent of worthiness pervades the piece, with an overdose of epigrammatic insights such as ’we fear for failure more than hope for success'. We must hope Moor makes it through these rose-scented years to thorny new pastures. (Gabe Stewart) a My Last Week With Modo/ia (Fringe) Ben Moor, P/easance (Venue 33) 556 6550, until 37 Aug (not 18) 4.20pm, [850/050 (EB/£7.50).

DANCE REVIEW Numb

" triﬁr-‘R‘sﬂéiyi’sLs-“ﬁa Numb: once more, with feeling

The title says rather too much about the show: if you come out with any significant feeling, you’re doing well. Camille Thoman can certainly promote herself effectively, with glossy leaflets and fulsome words, but her solo is a masterpiece of Fringe banality. The gratuitious strobe lighting and nudity, the minimal movement, it's all been done before, and rather more interestingly. Be diverted for a moment by her hands fighting like spiders on her body, assemble the jigsaw of her limbs and torso as she waves them slowly above the wall, but don't expect to have much to talk about when it's over. (Don Morris)

a Numb (Fringe) Camille Thoman, C Too (Venue 4) 225 5105, until 31 Aug, 4.45pm, £5 (£4).

STAR RATINGS

*‘ki’i‘k L“? ‘l. :I'it‘

itti *‘k‘k

theatre 0 dance 0 comedy

" 5 Bostonian Cyndi Freeman's very

-irony«coated camp sensibility all her

COMEDY RBIle

Greetings From iiollywood we sit-a

Thisbracingly funny quartet of autobiographical monologues is

own LA, Confidential or Postcards From The Edge. As a former comic traded gags for storytelling, Freeman wcirics in a sub-genre. stand-up theatre. with an expert.

own. Freeman suggests a shrewd.

neurotic cross between Linda

Fiorentino. Cher and Madeleine

Stowe. Perched or sprawled on a

sihreodipped plastic iounger beneath a poster otherself as

femrnef’fataie, this piercingly intellectual feminist in the'blacit Spandex dress regales us

at her misadventures in

. cynical,"sieazoid Los Angeles.

.rl‘l'oilingjgas a waitress. she has an affair-With Brad Pitt's standoin and

"relivesiier stint as the humiliated

(star of a soft-Core cable-TV flick in

excruciatingly hilarious detail.

only at‘the end does Freeman

: ~ u . ;. . 0; '45,“ y’.% z, .r

Biondei ambition: Greetings From Hollywood

veer from the bizarre realities of ia~La Land via her incarnation as Cherry a transvestite's star~struck daughter ripe with bubble-brained ambition. Thelcharacter is the engine for a trash/glam fantasy send-up of 8-movie

Neither it nor the first monologue are as incisive as the middle two. {Stilh there's no gainsaying Freeman‘s talent as both writer and performer.

I: (Donald ,i-iutera) .. xx Greetings From Hollywood (Fringe) Calder’s Gilded Balloon ll (Venue 36) 226 215 Z, until 31 Aug, 5pm, £6. 50/5. 50.

THEATRE REVIEW Contracts sews

Luke is HIV-positive with an emphasis on the positive. Rather than merely lamenting the loss of a young life to the disease, Contracts explores the various dimensions, both good and bad, involved in making sexual choices and dealing with the consequences. Taking the story of a young AIDS sufferer and turning it into entertainment is a risky venture but Outhouse Productions succeed with wry humour and integrity. Multimedia visuals attract attention, but it is the specially-composed songs by Jake Tatton which raise the creation of this talented cast above similar efforts. Combining pathos with a hard-hitting treatment of the reactions of family, friends and lovers to supposedly ‘alternative' sexualities, Contracts opens eyes and hearts. Moving yet relentless, Outhouse and Theatre Workshop have developed an absorbing dramatic work. (Caroline Brown) 5 Contracts (Fringe) Outhouse Productions, Theatre Workshop (Venue 20) 226 5425, until 15 Aug, 5.30pm, £5 (£3.50).THEATRE REVIEW

I ticked A Slag's Deodorant sees Not so much a walk on the wild side as

a scrabble under the bed, this is a surprisingly moving and even life-

affirming evocation of the most unconventional of relationships between the most unprepossessing of people. A crack-addicted prostitute and a hapless, broken man find solace in a parody of marriage; amid the squalor there is a kind of beauty that is conveyed with vibrant, irrepressible wit. Cora Bissett's dazzling performance elevates her character from the standard tart-with-a-heart to a foul-mouthed street philosopher with unexpected charm. Already nationally acclaimed, this is set to be a Fringe highlight. (Hannah McGill)

% ILicked A Slag’s Deodorant (Fringe) Arches Theatre Company, Observer Assembly (Venue 3) 226 2428, until 5 Sep (not 77, 24) 3. 70pm, £8/f 7 (f7/f6).

I licked A Slag‘s Deodorant: not the pits at all

National

Youth Theatre

Edinburgh Season 98

The List: 13 Aug 1998 (Issue 339)