Festival Theatre DINNER FOR ONE Endearing skit pales in comparison to legendary film version ●●●●●
For the uninitiated, a little background is required here: an 18-minute film made in 1963 is one of the most frequently repeated television broadcasts of all time, shown every New Year’s Eve across German TV channels, and to many in that great country one of those things inaccurately assumed to be quintessentially and ubiquitously English, like Beefeaters and awful food.
Dinner for One features Miss Sophie, an old lady with a glint in her eye, and her butler James, whose job it is to serve her at her annual birthday dinner and charge the glasses of her gentleman callers. As all four are now long dead, it is also James’ duty to empty those glasses and impersonate this culturally diverse band of admirers. The film of Dinner for One is a
phenomenon, and as such this stage version cannot but court (sadly unfavourable) comparison with it. Chris Cresswell starts out nicely as the doddery but precise James, but his depiction of the butler’s multiplying degrees of inebriation simply cannot match Freddie Frinton’s uproarious physical comedy. It’s a fun quarter- hour, but you may be better off saving a fiver and visiting YouTube instead. (Laura Ennor) ■ Hill Street Theatre, 226 6522, until 30 Aug (not 17, 24), 1.50pm & 2.30pm, £5 (£4).
HOT MESS Believable take on the hazy suspended reality of a messy night out ●●●●●
S E L T T E B L E N I
An otherworldly pair of twins with only one heart between them, a couple whose sexual closeness is as great as their emotional disjunction, two people with the uneasy taste of a one-night stand still in the backs of their mouths, and ex-best friends who’ve grown 72 THE LIST 12–19 Aug 2010
list.co.uk/festival
apart, simultaneously wanting to recapture the good times and faintly repulsed by what the other has become. These four people form the twisted square that is Ella Hickson’s third Fringe play. Familiar, and at the same time
insightful, this piece is characterised by a rare naturalness, both in the writing and the acting. Hickson’s much-lauded dialogue is frequently very funny while also being believable in the mouths of her characters. Somewhat removed from reality by the gaps it leaves – the unnamed island setting and occasional lyrical arcs of narrative – Hot Mess at the same time feels so very real. In the way lovers feel like every lyric on the radio is all about them, and a song about anything can match a night out so perfectly, the music in this nightclub setting (played by a live DJ) does not feel contrived, but serves rather to heighten the
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heady emotional intensity of a fine play. (Laura Ennor) ■ Hawke and Hunter, 226 0000, until 30 Aug (not 28), 6pm, £9 (£7.50).
PRIMADOONA Turning tragedy into comedy ●●●●●
Life has heaped a lot of lemons on Doon MacKichan: death, divorce, illness, a career in voiceovers. It’s given her some treats as well, to be fair: children, two Emmys, the ability to Flamenco dance. The accomplished comedy writer and performer turns the bitterness of the former, drawing on the latter, into fodder for her one- woman show. The resulting comedic survival memoir describes some of the worst times in her life, playing her pain for laughs. What in less capable hands could be a self-pitying diatribe or grotesquely misjudged is presented as a well-balanced blend of heartache and mirth, MacKichan’s skill with pen and on stage delivering a polished, professional and relatable show that revels in the irony of her comedy career and tragic home-life.
Through a range of sketches and impersonations that exercise her
range, small moments count for a lot. The quirky way she starts the show, assiduous use of props and costumes and a startlingly energetic simulation of intercourse are marks of her experience. With Primadoona, MacKichan hasn’t made anything so pedestrian as lemonade. (Suzanne Black) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 30 Aug (not 17, 24), 5.30pm, £11.50–£12.50 (£10.50–£11.50).
BLACKOUT Simple, brilliant, and in the second person ●●●●● Imagine you’re Davey Anderson, a playwright whose work has never shied away from the realities of life in working class Glasgow. The National Theatre, in partnership with children’s charity Barnardo’s, puts you in touch with a teenager who you’re going to call ‘James’, who is serving a probationary sentence for a violent crime. Imagine James tells you his story over a cup of tea, and with his permission you write a monologue from it. The script is in the second person.
same sudden violence that thousands of kids like him are, into a beautiful piece of multimedia, multiform theatre. Imagine you’re watching Tom Vernel, in the central
role, snapping from innocence to unhinged malevolence with just a tiny flicker of his jaw, or Danielle Stewart steely and magnificent as his mother. Imagine that the other actors, morphing and moving around him, pulling him about on a set they shift and dance with, become his id, take on his triumphs and his glee, and hand them back to you.
Imagine you’re the director of ThickSkin, a brand new Imagine you’re watching a piece that, with grace and
theatre company, set up with the exclusive aim of creating innovative, visual work. You take the script and break up the lines between a cast of very young, Glasgow-based actors, almost none of whom are professionally-trained, not that you’d be able to tell from the power of their performances. Together you make the story of this skinhead kid, fascinated by facism and chock-full of pop culture, capable of that unflinching clarity takes you right inside the head of someone you’d previously felt unable to sympathise with, if you’d thought about him at all. Imagine that his story is addressed directly at you, as though you’re the one who’s had all these experiences. Imagine that. (Kirstin Innes) ■ Underbelly, 0844 545 8252, until 29 Aug, 2.55pm, £6.50–£10 (£8–£9).