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Reviews {THEATRE}
(G)HOST CITY Hear and now ●●●●●
First thing in the morning, I’m standing on top of Calton Hill looking out to Arthur’s Seat, Princes Street and the Pentlands. It’s a view I never tire of, but on my headphones Jenny Lindsay is giving a different message. ‘Edinburgh, you old tart,’ she’s saying. ‘Your knickers out to dry.’ This is my starting point for (g)Host City, a series of
downloadable poems and stories designed to be heard in situ around the capital. Local performance poet Lindsay highlights Edinburgh’s peculiar combination of visual splendour and tourist tat, a place that is both the cradle of the Enlightenment and home, here on the hill, to the pretend hippy religion of Beltane. It is not a vision they give you on the tour buses and is all the better for it. Neither do the tourists get to hear much about the suicide attempts off the North Bridge, the subject of Lindsay’s second contribution, ‘Jumper on the Bridge’, a wry commentary on a population more concerned with interruptions to the daily commute than the pressures that can lead a 16-year-old to take his own life.
Over in the graveyard of St Cuthbert’s Church, Alan Bissett tells a story of a dope-smoking encounter in ‘I Take Bribes’. It’s a tale made all the more credible by the sight of a party of homeless men sitting among the tombstones. Credibility is not the concern of Momus who enlivens my bus journey through town with a couple of his unreliable bus tours. They claim to focus on the final stops of various routes, but actually focus on the wilder part of the Scottish maverick’s imagination and can be enjoyed at any point in your journey. Apart from Laura Cameron Lewis’s ‘Quantum Physical’ that requires you to shuffle round the Central Library, the Momus tracks are the only ones I heard that have movement built in. This ‘virtual festival’ is a generally static experience and more than once I found myself leaving the intended site and listening in transit. As the project develops, it’d be good to see a more dynamic response to the city. (Mark Fisher) ■ www.virtualfestival.org
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UNTITLED LOVE STORY Stories of love and loss that disappoint ●●●●● VIEWLESS Alice in witnessland ●●●●●
Untitled Love Story is the first of David Leddy’s productions for years to be set in a conventional theatre. And, while the Venice-set meditation on lost love contains the lyrical writing and formal innovations that have made his past work so exciting, the use of space can also be blamed for its failure to catch fire. Staging the show in a converted church does tie-in with the conceit of having the audience close their eyes and meditate at key points, bringing to mind the collective contemplation of prayer and also allowing us to shut out the surrounding environment in a way that is quite powerful. Perhaps we should have been allowed to keep our eyes shut for the meat of the show, four melancholic stories told by a priest, a historian, a writer and the collector Peggy Guggenheim. The vastness of the auditorium, occasional technical glitches and the conventional separation of spectator from performer means that aspects of these fragmented tales struggle to come through. This leaves you longing for a more intimate staging, or the kind of immersive site-specific audio-tour that Leddy pioneered with Susurrus. (Allan Radcliffe) ■ St George’s West, 225 7001, until 29 Aug, 6pm, £15–£17 (£12–£15).
A paranoid story of Orwellian bureaucracy played for comically sinister effect, this short piece feels unfinished. We’re introduced to two officers from the Witness Protection Programme, going about their daily business in a warehouse. From there we’re led into the experience of one man taken in under Witness Protection, bamboozled by the increasingly surreal requests of various departments: here the play takes a Lewis Carroll turn, as dogs, magpies and hunchbacks line up to parrot the regulations.
Viewless has some good points to make about the way official systems are programmed to operate with apparent disregard for individuals, and what this can do to lives. It’s devised and directed with ingenuity; there are some great uses of film and movement, and it’s really boosted by three excellent performances by the cast: Robbie Jack and Finn Den Hertog as a variety of WP Officers are especially enjoyable. However, at times it’s overwritten into melodrama, and there’s a sense that there’s no research grounding the piece or connecting it to reality, meaning that it doesn’t pack quite the political punch it thinks it does. (Kirstin Innes) ■ Hill Street Theatre, 226 6522, until 29 Aug, 6.30pm, £9 (£7).
THE ADVENTURES OF ALVIN SPUTNIK Poignantly Pixar-esque underwater adventure ●●●●● Alvin Sputnik’s poster comparison to Wall-E is an apt one, although other Pixar parallels would fit equally well. As in Finding Nemo, this underwater world is vast and filled with danger. As in Up, there are moments of heartbreaking grief. And like Wall-E, Alvin himself is nearly wordless, delighted by odds and ends from a bygone era – and adorably cute. The story is told through a mixture of animation, theatre and puppetry, with brief musical interludes, all conjured up by solo performer Tim Watts. His use of sparse lighting is extremely effective in depicting the vast blackness of the ocean, and his very basic rendering of Alvin’s physical presence imbues the character with warmth and humanity. Borrowing elements from Pixar as well as echoing the melancholy sentiments of Tim Burton’s better work (we’re sure there’s an Edward Scissorhands music cue in there), Alvin Sputnik could be accused of imitation rather than creation – but only by the most jaded and cynical of critics. Everyone else will love the performance for its beautiful, heartfelt simplicity. Just remember to bring some tissues. (Niki Boyle) ■ Underbelly, 0844 545 8252, until 28 Aug, 6pm, £10–£12.50 (£9–£11.50).
25 Aug–22 Sep 2011 THE LIST 55
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