Festival Theatre
Telephone Booking Fringe 0131 226 0000 International Festival 0131 473 2000 Book Festival 0845 373 5888 Art Festival 07500 461 332 RUNNING ON AIR Charming road show in a camper van ●●●●●
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Your ticket for this site-specific show directs you to the rear of the Pleasance Courtyard, where a bright orange French VW camper van is parked in the corner. Writer and performer Laura Mugridge turns up in welly boots and a flowery summer dress, looking like she’s just stepped out of The Good Life, and the select audience of five are invited to climb into ‘Joni’, where various roles are assigned: C90 mix tape player, baggage handler, map reader and Laura’s husband, Tom. What follows is a very sweet, gently humorous road play based on Laura and Tom’s experiences driving their wedding present from Cornwall (where they got hitched) to Edinburgh, where Joni broke down last year. The VW’s cramped confines, the degree of audience participation – there’s a musical jam session using toothbrushes, spice pots and other knickknacks – and Mugridge’s relaxed, quirky performing style make her Fringe solo debut a thoroughly enjoyable immersive multimedia experience. The journey – cue projection onto the inside of the windscreen – concludes with Mugridge revealing the real reason why she staged her show in her van and what, exactly, the title means. Charming. (Miles Fielder) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 29 Aug (not 23), times vary, £9–£10 (£8.50–£9.50).
CALL MR ROBESON Inspirational story of legendary singer ●●●●●
Having suffered a setback by losing his voice during the world premiere run of this show in Edinburgh three years ago, writer and star Tayo Aluko subsequently took it on tour around the world. This year the monodrama about the life of African-American singer and race activist Paul Robeson returns to the Fringe, and, happily, Aluko is on much better form.
Robeson came to fame as a singer and film star in the 1930s, and the prejudice and harassment he suffered as a black man radicalised him years
70 THE LIST 19–26 Aug 2010
list.co.uk/festival
order is settled by feats of athleticism on the swings. Broncoing (jumping off a swing while kicking it 360 degrees) and playfighting, the cast conveys the physicality of young boys, spending much of their time upside-down or rolling in the grass in dynamic scenes choreographed by Lucy Deacon and Moritz Linkmann. Apart from narrator David (a
captivating Martin McCormick), as the drama builds around an unnamed event involving Decky and the children become men, a second cast takes over in a switch more risky that the acrobatics. It’s a successful shorthand and uses the attachment of the audience to the first cast to strengthen feelings of the loss of youth. That growing up is painful to do is a
concept to which all can relate, and director Ben Harrison provides a bittersweet portal into everyone’s past. (Suzanne Black) ■ Traverse @ Scotland Yard, 228 1404, until 21 Aug, 7.30pm, £17–£19 (£12–£13).
REEL-TO-REAL Less chat more dancin’ and singin’ please ●●●●●
Much has been made of Reel-to- Real’s impressive technical credentials, which allows live performers to perform iconic song-and-dance numbers against a backdrop of footage from classic film musicals. In fact the background projections, while cleverly interwoven with the live action, are essentially an expensive gimmick whose impact gradually diminishes as the show progresses. Moreover, it’s a bit of a risk to have unknown performers singin’ and dancin’ alongside Gene Kelly, Marilyn Monroe and Fred Astaire – I mean, who is your eye going to be drawn to? The series of instantly recognisable routines is strung together by a paper thin story about a pair of siblings competing for the spoils of their father’s will, their journey taking in various exotic locations around the globe. Whatever. The producers should simply have allowed the songs, including ‘Some Enchanted Evening’, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’, to push the action along. As things stand you’re left twiddling your thumbs for long passages between numbers, which is a shame as, apart from an ill-advised mash-up of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ and ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight’, the set pieces are mostly entertaining take-offs of the originals. (Allan Radcliffe) ■ Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 30 Aug (not 24,) 6pm, £13.50–£15 (£12.50–£14).
DECKY DOES A BRONCO Winning revival of site-specific coming-of-age drama ●●●●●
Reviving its award-winning 2000 production of Douglas Maxwell’s site- specific play Grid Iron set up home in a Canonmills park. In a circular arena focused on a swingset David, a self- confessed ‘pathological reminiscer’, dredges up childhood memories. For five boys in 1983 Girvan Star
Wars, ice poles and youth centre discos are the cultural touchstones as they make clumsy headway into adolescent masculinity where pecking
ahead of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. But his politicisation also led to Robeson being hounded by the US government and media, and after embracing Russian communism in the 1940s, he lost his career and liberty. Armed with an appropriately robust vocal talent, Aluko does a fine job of singing and talking us through the incredible life of the international star and outspoken champion of his people and of oppressed workers around the world who never gave up the good fight. (Miles Fielder) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 30 Aug (not 23), 6.15pm, £8. S E N O J S A L G U O D
WHILE YOU LIE Brave exploration of identity, the body and sexuality ●●●●●
Sam Holcroft’s first work for the Traverse, Cockroach, explored the interplay of genetics and politics. In this new play the conversation is continued, but here more specifically in the realm of sexual politics.
Ana (Claire Lams), a young emigrant woman who feels passed over as a
secretary at her office and unattractive to her boyfriend (Andrew Scott- Ramsay) abruptly leaves her relationship, and instead offers sexual favours to her boss (Steven McNicoll) in return for promotion. He reveals an inclination to BDSM while his patient, suffering wife (Pauline Knowles) turns a blind eye to the affair in return for home improvements. Meanwhile, an executive for a charity offering plastic surgery in the developing world (Leo Wringer) becomes frustrated when his requests for donations constantly lose out against self-interest, an alarming augury for the ‘Big Society’. Zinnie Harris’ production handles the tone of this piece, which treads the
line between strong drama and farce with accomplished deftness, nicely integrating a recurrent theme about female anxieties over the body which might feel like carping in less skilful hands. Holcroft sets up a subtle and complex dialectic between biological urge and a series of flawed definitions of civilization: this piece has none of the simplistic ideological projections of The Selfish Gene about it, instead seeing its characters as influenced by shifting power relations created by unstable definitions of the self.
If the dénouement is a little too brusque for the play’s good, all of the performers work well with the material, with Wringer’s mad physician (the structurally crucial outside observer to the other characters’ madness), and McNicoll’s kinky boss both particularly strong. This is not a perfect play, but its brave consideration of identity, the body and sexuality make it compelling viewing. (Steve Cramer) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 29 Aug (not 23), times vary, £15–£17 (£11–£12).