Festival Theatre
JIM ROSE CIRCUS Flat return for Fringe legend 0.
The return of the Jim Rose Circus to the Fringe has been heralded with all the fanfare of a second coming — a strange deification, considering the show is set in Hell.
Sadly, the carnivalesque sideshow atmosphere of yore has been obliterated in favour of overtly sexualised escapades. A tired—looking Rose plays the Devil. surrounded by scantily clad minions and Warthog. a heavy metal band whose members will do anything to get through the gates of Hell.
The result is a muddled mix of the commonplace and the truly ludicrous. The first stunt of the evening. in which Rose swallows and regurgitates a series of razor blades, simply doesn't get the crowd's blood pumping. And when one of his female performers imitates a mental health patient and takes a knife to her genitalia to the tune of ‘Only Women Bleed' — after pretending to masturbate on stage — the audience reaction is a mix of nervous laughter and blank-faced disapproval.
a punk concert. she spends her
Padded out with metal covers — ‘Highway to Hell' and ‘Welcome to the Jungle' both get a look in - and completely bereft of any sense of wonder or amazement. this once— Iauded spectacle could effectively have wrecked its reputation as one of the most celebrated acts on the Fringe. ‘I didn't want to come back to Edinburgh until I had a show that would top all my other shows.‘ Rose crows at one point. You should have stayed away, Jim. (Yasmin Sulaiman) I Udderbe/Iy's Pasture, 0844 545 8258, until 25 Aug. 7 7.45pm, 87250—278.
GREENSTICK BOY Hearts and bones broken 0..
In her one-woman show about falling in love with a heroin addict. Maggie Cronin of Doctors fame entertains her audience with winning. bittersweet humour. Entitled Greenstick Boy after a ‘greenstick fracture', a slight and sometimes hidden injury to a young person's bones. Cronin revisits her doomed relationship by picking up. then tidying away. old records and books.
Cronin keeps the audience at a distance by calling her character M and the man in her life D. but is candid about her experience of growing up Curious and poor in a small English town in the 1970s. After meeting D at
her silly behaviour and her ignorance of his drug problem, which escalates out of control.
Cronin plants herself firmly into the past, recounting how she moves on from D to East Midlands College drama school. how she survives post- graduation poverty and how she eventually blooms as an actress. But at the play‘s peak. which contains the last word on M and D's relationship, Cronin‘s performance fails to build to an appropriately devastating crescendo. and the show ends on an unresolved note as Cronin picks up her suitcase and hurries off the stage. (Theresa Munoz)
I Assembly Rooms, 623 3030, until 25 Aug, 7 7.50am, El l—Cl2 (BIO—El I).
adolescence trying to impress him. Hovering over Ramones and Sex Pistols records. she ruefully recounts
SIMON CALLOW - A FESTIVAL DICKENS
A rich performance of moving, entertaining tales 0000
Having taken his celebrated one-man show The Mystery of Charles Dickens around the world, British thesp Simon Callow is no stranger to the Victorian writer and philanthropist. Here, Callow performs his second solo Dickens show under the sure-handed direction of Patrick Garland, this time eschewing the postmodern literary biography for a more straightforward staging of a pair of the author’s lesser-known short stories, ‘Mr Chops the Dwarf’ and ‘Dr Marigold’.
The first of the two 40-minute playlets (originally composed for an 1861 reading tour) concerns a circus performer who attempts to move up - or enter into — society after wining the lottery. The second (published in a Christmas 1865 edition of Dickens’ periodical All the Year Round) is about a ‘cheap-jack’ or street hawker who suffers a terrible family tragedy. Both tales indulge Dickens’ penchant for eccentric characters, macabre occurrences, sentimentality about the impoverished working class and social commentary on the inequalities of a class-based society.
Enormously entertaining and ultimately very moving in their own right, the stories nonetheless benefit from Callow’s rich performance of them. His grasp of the verbal and body language of the titular characters really brings their stories to life. In fact, it’s so good that you completely forget most of what’s coming out of Callow’s mouth is description and exposition, too much of either of which can easily scupper a monologue. You’re left feeling that you’ve just watched a play proper (well, two) rather than what’s essentially a glorified book reading. Dickens would, no doubt, have been proud. Not least because the author was himself a popular public performer of his own works, some of which he read to audiences a century-and-a-half ago in the very hall Callow’s show takes place in at this year’s Fringe. (Miles Fielder)
I Assembly Ree/its, 623 3030, until 25 Aug, 2pm, [77.504320 (5375—878).
100 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 21 Aug—4 Sep 2008
FAWN A muddled monologue 00
While perhaps the simplest form of theatre to stage. the monologue is not the easiest to pull off successfully. Fawn, a fantastical narrative about a girl transported from a forest into a netherworld of alternative realities. never quite rises to the challenges it sets itself.
Beginning in disarming fashion with a Blair Witch Project-style scene in which the lead runs on the spot into a forest projected onto a white screen. the narrative quickly becomes muddled. Much of this is due to a confusing performance from lead Geraldine Dulex, who fails to differentiate Sufficiently between the various characters she inhabits. She is not helped by equally ham-fisted writing. Lines such as, 'Fucking steroids. you are powerful over both body and mind' soon begin to jar as the seams of the play begin to show and any intended significance gets lost.
The insertion of Hamlet into this mix. with Dulex at one point portraying an actor preparing to play Gertrude. is similarly clumsy. seemineg an afterthought dropped into a generally shoddy script as an emergency procedure. There are promising themes here. such as the relationship between parents. children and nature. but the play is so flawed in its execution that it never quite effectively communicates them to its audience. (Miles Johnson)
I Sweet Grassmarket, 0870 24 I 0736, until 24 Aug, 1. 10pm, £7.50 (£76.50).
ETCETERA Weird and wonderful — but what’s it all about? 000
No strings attached (well. not many) in this experimental piece of puppet theatre from avant-garde Polish company K3. Three puppeteers. dressed from neck to ankle in black. animate a series of string-free two-foot tall magnolia-coloured cloth mannequins (and a single stringed one) in seven consecutive scenarios that play out in similar ways. The
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