Reviews & features: Fringe
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Songs of Lear
17 Aug 2012
A sublime version of the Bard’s tragedy, in its purest form
Imagine King Lear in pill form, the Shakespearean equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum. Or contained in a single firework. What about Lear: the new fragrance from Christian Dior? Baffling as this all sounds, it’s pretty much what…
(remor)
17 Aug 2012
Potent micro-theatre probes a couple’s break up
The most potent things always come in the smallest doses: shots of espresso, measures of vodka, and in this case an 11-minute piece of dance that cuts to the core of a couple’s broken relationship. Even the wooden box that performers Marta Barceló and…
Othello – The Remix
17 Aug 2012
Energetic reimagining of the Moor of Venice
The third of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s highly successful adaptations of the bard – following The Bomb-itty of Errors and Funk It Up About Nothing in recent years – Othello: the Remix reimagines the Moor of Venice as an American rap god, recently…
As Ye Sow
17 Aug 2012
Strong performances and mounting tension in well-conceived ghost story
Without the use of special effects horror can be quite tricky to bring to the stage with the result that ghost stories are usually the sub-genre of choice for the theatre. The audience can fill in the gaps that clever editing or CGI would usually…
Waiting for Stanley
17 Aug 2012
Keep calm and carry on clowning
A woman with a red clown nose waits on a luggage-filled railway platform for her wartime sweetie to return. As her wait grows, she raids the suitcases around her, each contributing props to a captivating series of tales drawn from the experiences of…
Oh, the Humanity and Other Good Intentions
17 Aug 2012
Marvellous quintet of short plays with excellent performances
Marvellous quintet of short plays with excellent performances Isn’t self-consciousness a ball-ache? It ups the ante, rather, as if all eyes are on you and you’re barely making sense, let alone delivering the goods, and you still haven’t found what…
Good Grief
17 Aug 2012
Meandering musical hour of delightful schadenfreude
Gone Rogue’s likeable, funeral-set musical might start off in a subdued atmosphere of deep sorrow, but by the end of the show most of the mourners have ended up half naked, high on hash cookies or reeling from shocking family revelations. Using a family…
The Shit / La Merda
17 Aug 2012
Howl of human emotion makes for unforgettable theatre
Raw, touching, intelligent and mesmerising, Cristian Ceresoli’s The Shit is an unforgettable piece of theatre that reveals our universal inner thoughts, fears, desires and memory with almost frightening accuracy. Comprised of a powerful and…
Going Green the Wong Way
17 Aug 2012
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show Displaced San Franciscan Katrina Wong is a dedicated environmentalist: her school-age performance poetry about the rape of Mother Earth gave way to her first job canvassing for conservationist…
Rubies in the Attic
17 Aug 2012
Inspired and uplifting cabaret-style show
Ancestry, lineage and belonging form the basis of The Ruby Dolls’ Rubies in the Attic, an invigorating and fun piece of theatre. Comprised of music, close harmony singing, puppetry and physical theatre, this show uses each Doll’s family history to chart…
The Council of the Ordinary
17 Aug 2012
B-Boying takes a turn towards the dark side
It’s beat battles and break moves but not as you know them, in this triple bill from breakdancing troupe Bad Taste Cru. As well as flipping themselves into spins, the Cru, originally from Northern Ireland, also demonstrate the dance’s potential to…
Newland
17 Aug 2012
Funny and intelligent jazz-inflected Western
Love and betrayal jostle for the starring role in this non-traditional Western from the talented cast of M&T Productions. Within the first two minutes of the fast-paced musical, murder, betrayal and cover-ups tumble forth, causing the sheriff of…
Perle
17 Aug 2012
Gem of a show exploring grief and loss
Perle shows a life on pause. A man sits in front of a television, feeding it one VHS tape after another. At first he seems like any other screen-junkie, swapping the big wide world for the small screen, but gradually an unshakeable grief reveals itself.
The Golden Cowpat
17 Aug 2012
Lo-fi Jackanory with ukulele-to-blues soundscape
Farmer Hector has fallen on hard times. The pigs and geese have been sold, his once robust vegetables are puny and small. Salvation comes from the rear end of a cow. Betty, an ornery beast much given to tipping her herd-mates, produces 24-carat…
Rainbow
17 Aug 2012
Overwrought, overwritten trio of monologues
Playwright Emily Jenkins can’t resist a flourish. In Rainbow, three vaguely interlinked monologues, barely a noun goes unadorned and awkward similes come thick and fast. Like ill-educated cheetahs. If someone sweats, it’s ‘like a horny pig’. Breasts…
Circus in Hand
17 Aug 2012
Hand made circus puppetry with a human touch
There can’t be many circuses at the Fringe where you can behold a ringmaster standing on a giraffe’s head or a tap-dancing zebra. But then there can’t be many circuses at all where the performers are made from neat slices of stretchy fabric, adorably…
Dracula: Sex, Sucking and Stardom
17 Aug 2012
A thoroughly camp vamp
Jonathan Harker leaves his fiancée Mina to go to Transylvania, where he has some business to transact with the mysterious Count Dracula. When he gets there, he finds a jazz-handsy vamp obsessed with travelling to England and auditioning for Andrew Lloyd…
Clinton The Musical
17 Aug 2012
Ex-president inspires high-energy, catchy musical from talented ensemble
Former United States president Bill Clinton should offer any theatre production – let alone an all-singing, all-dancing musical – some great inspiration for material is a given. But, from his inauguration through to his sexual relations with ‘that…
Man 1 Bank 0
17 Aug 2012
Patrick Combs takes on the money men
Half the challenge of putting on a great show at the Fringe is about finding a great story, and Patrick Combs certainly has that. Better still, it’s true. A young man, with a sea of credit card debt, deposits a $95,093.35 junk mail cheque into his local…
Meine faire Dame - ein Sprachlabor
16 Aug 2012
Radical reimagining of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady gives much food for thought
Sitting down in the audience for Swiss director Christoph Marthaler's Meine faire Dame is something akin to entering a conversation class in a language you have no knowledge of. At first, it's completely baffling and you doubt you'll ever make sense of…
Confessions of a Grindr Addict
16 Aug 2012
Conspiratorial reminiscences and anecdotes make up this compelling take on dating in the modern age
Felix is getting ready to go out for a date, his first in ages. For a long time he’s relied on meeting guys via location-based gay dating app Grindr, for not much more than, well, you know. The thought of an actual date, with the boy right there in…
MacBeth in Scots
16 Aug 2012
Dark and unsettling new take on a classic
While referred to as ‘The Scottish Play’ in theatrical circles, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a tale of ruthless ambition and the rise and fall of a tyrant has never been adapted for, or performed in, Scots. Robin Lorimer’s new version, which gives the Bard’s…
Rémy
16 Aug 2012
Vivid Napoleonic re-imagining written and performed by talented Claire Gaydon
On the strength of this, the first show produced under the banner of newly formed theatre company Everything I Own, writer/performer Claire Gaydon is a talent to keep an eye on. Her historical drama, which unfolds in the aftermath of Napoleon’s reign of…
The Fantasist
16 Aug 2012
Imaginative treatment of mental health
The visionary-idealist-romantic of the title is a French woman named Louise who is tormented by her bipolar disorder. As the show opens we find Louise in a hospital in England where she is receiving treatment. She’s got a good, caring nurse and a dear…
Strong Arm
16 Aug 2012
Thought-provoking look at transformation and self-betterment
At the age of 13, Roland Poland weighs 20 stone. In his early 20s, he’s a muscle god, pumped up on four-hour gym sessions, hourly protein shakes and arcane shark’s fin supplements. But in breaking himself so that he can grow even stronger, has he lost…
