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Fringe previews {THEATRE}
MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE / THE PLEASURE OF BEING: WASHING, FEEDING, HOLDING Adrian Howells creates an intimate and equal exchange between performer and audience
Glasgow-based performer and the Arches artist-in-residence Adrian Howells has two shows debuting at the Fringe this year, May I Have the Pleasure and The Pleasure of Being. In the first, Howells muses upon the irony of feeling isolated at a wedding and invites members of the audience to join him for a last slow dance. In the second, a one-to-one experience, Howells treats participants to a TLC session that includes a luxurious bath, a fluffy towel and Belgian chocolates. ‘We need pleasure in our lives,’ says Howells. ‘I’m offering
audiences a chance to engage with what it means to experience total pleasure, total care. I’m bathing you, drying you, holding you and feeding you chocolates, really giving you an opportunity to give yourself up to it. And with May I Have the Pleasure . . .? I’m offering a moment of one-on-one intimacy through dance, but within a collective experience.’
Howells has been conceiving this kind of intimate performances for the past ten years. Having grown weary of playing to audiences of up to 700, where he felt any meaningful connection to individuals became impossible, he rejected big crowds for increasingly smaller ones. That trend found its apotheosis in Foot Washing for the Sole, Howells’ award-winning 2009 Fringe show in which he treated audience members to a foot spa. But he’s gone one better still with The Pleasure of Being. It does, indeed, sound very pleasurable, but there is, Howells says, a deeper meaning. ‘I went into one-on-one work because I wanted to really connect with an individual and make it something cherish- able and genuine. And there are moments when you puncture the performance and it is something real.’ (Miles Fielder) ■ Both shows Traverse at the Point Hotel, 228 1404, May I Have the Pleasure . . . ?,17–28 Aug (not 25 & 26), 7.45pm (18 Aug, 3pm), £17–£19 (£12–£13). Previews 15 & 16 Aug, £12 (£6); The Pleasure of Being, 19–28 Aug (not 20), times vary, £12.50.
S A D N U D H T E N N E K
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE Revival of a musical masterpiece by highly acclaimed ensemble SNAILS AND KETCHUP Darkly comic story told through aerial choreography
REMEMBERING ANNABEL Edgar Allan Poe-inspired show by tipped Scottish company
The result of a return to form after his musical Merrily We Roll Along was critically panned, it wasn’t until Sunday in the Park with George proved a hit that Stephen Sondheim added the celebrated second act, in which the action jumps forward 100 years.
Philip Howard, musical director of RSAMD’s acclaimed One Academy, which is bringing Sondheim’s hit to the Fringe, adds some context to the show: ‘You can tell that it was created in a workshop environment as there’s a real level of experimentation about it,’ he says. ‘One of the major themes of the play is an artist going back to basics and the nature of artistic creativity.’
A fictionalised account of the creation of an
impressionist masterpiece, Georges Seurat’s ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’, the play takes a look at art and human relationships with a comprehensive eye that transcends decades. ‘It does delve into universal human relationship issues, but what makes Sunday . . . unique is the way it takes Seurat’s painting technique and creates a musical and dramatic equivalent.’ (Kirstyn Smith) ■ C Chambers Street, 0845 260 1234, 3–29 Aug (not 15, 22), 3.35pm, £12.50–£14.50 (£8.50–£12.50).
Glasgow-based Singaporean performer Ramesh Meyyappan has set himself quite a challenge with his new show, Snails and Ketchup. Based on a darkly comic story by Italo Calvino, ‘The Baron in the Trees’, and developed with vertiginous performance company Iron-Oxide, it’s about a boy who abandons his dysfunctional family and makes a new home for himself high up in the canopy of a forest. That synopsis might sound like it perfectly suits Meyyappan’s physical theatre skills, but in order to ‘stage’ it he had to learn the art of aerial choreography. ‘It is a challenge to ensure I’m not just showing off tricks on the ropes,’ Meyyappan says, ‘but that I’m letting the story unfold through the characters. If people want to interpret this metaphorically they can. For the boy the environment of the trees seems less brutal than that of his home life. So Snails and Ketchup does stress the resilience that many children from those types of brutal environments show.’ (Miles Fielder) ■ New Town Theatre, 220 0143, 6–28 Aug (not 9, 16, 23), 5pm, £12–£13 (£10–£11). Previews 4 & 5 Aug, £7.50.
F E S T I V A L
Cathartic Connections, all students or graduates of Queen Margaret University, already have something of a home team advantage in the theatrical bazaar that is the Fringe. More important, though, is the clutch of admiring reviews for their 2010 debut, Pale Moon, which was praised for the way it combined textual with physical elements, and a gutsy vigour with a meaningful message.
Hoping to recreate that success this year, the eight performers and one lead playwright eventually settled on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’ as a stimulus for this year’s show. ‘It has a lot of powerful imagery and is really quintessentially Poe,’ says company member Andrew Simpson, explaining how the group, attracted by the poem’s noirish feel and themes of memory and regret, then sought to turn it into a story with something relevant to say about the modern world. Simpson describes their protagonist as ‘a fish out of water in his own mind’, a humdrum bailiff with a wild past, who goes on a vivid journey down the rabbit holes of his own mind, inspired by memories of a lost love. (Laura Ennor) ■ theSpaces on North Bridge, 0845 557 6308, 8–13 Aug, 3.05pm, £7.50 (£5). Previews 5 & 6 Aug, £5.
4–11 Aug 2011 THE LIST 73