This was probably one of the most frustrating performances I have watched, on account of it being one of the best shows around when each segment is being reviewed separately, but as a whole piece, it was difficult and confusing.  I saw the show with another person who agreed with this opinion afterwards.

The music is done by a trio who use a variety of instruments, such as; a double bass, a fiddle, a bass, acoustic and electric guitar and some of the percussion family.  They perform on stage throughout the entire play and are my favorite element of the show. Their mixed sounds of hillbilly rock and blue grass create another dimension to the performance, and the sound effects produced are brilliant accessories to the atmosphere.

The costumes; corsets and stockings, vests, braces and Levis – are authentic to mid 19th Century America and the accents are also well done, to help set the scene for this cirque style western. The ability of each performer is stellar; well delivered lines, facial expressions and timing, all are on form and they each perform more than one character each. Subtle costume changes help to differ between the varying characters, which is all done on stage in front of the audience and the musicians also move to new parts of the stage to help outline scenes with a change of location.

****

However, there is a complicated story line of one plot and two sub plots too keep up with. I am not sure if it was because we got too caught up in paying attention to the quirky details of the show, or if we were just too tired by the stifling heat of the venue, but neither of us managed to fathom out the story to any mutual end. We discussed it at length afterwards, but our perceptions had varied well outside feelings and opinions about the performance, into disagreeing on the actual plot line itself; as to which actor played each character, and indeed at one point, even who each character was meant to be!

****

Reading up about the show prior to viewing it is advisable, having some context on the characters in advance will be of great use to an audience member. Parlor girls, drunks, bar brawls, murder, singing and comedy all feature in this Breadknives production. FOUR STARS

****

Reviewer : Bobbi McKenzie  

Assembly Rooms

24th-30th

15:30

*****

The creation of this eye-catching, wit-soaked, taboo-popping piece of contemporariness was a brave moment in the artistic spheres, but glad I am that RCS-trained Johnny Knight made the effort. Last week I saw a great piece of Dance theatre from wheelchair-bound Catherine Bowditch, & this week – unwittingly I might add – I found myself watching Wendy Hoose. ‘I’m sure that girl has no legs,’ I thought when looking at her as she lay in bed, clad in sexy lingerie awaiting her tinder-summoned one-night-stand. ‘Her legs must be under the bed in a secret compartment,‘ I thought as the covers were whipped from her in shock by said tinder-fellow after he found himself groping thin air. ‘Fu*k, she’s got no legs,’ I thought as she began to move about the bed on her arms. This was real life. Suspension of disbelief had no place in this theatre.

*****

*****

Wendy Hoose, by production company Birds of Paradise, is a true triumph of modernity… the OBP (obama-becomes-president) of the early 21st century that breaks through our Victorian thespianity. Bristling with the comedy forged from the bantering of Paisley folk in full flow, & flavoured with poignant touches every lover can relate to, Wendy Hoose is a wee Weegie masterpiece. Performed to sign-language, which appears as a TV in the bedroom, & with an audio description inbetween the dialogues, Wendy Hoose can be enjoyed by anyone… able-bodied or no. It pushes brusquely at our inbuilt social restraints until they snap & fall to the floor like the shackles of suffragettes, leaving all who observed Wendy Hoose a little wiser, & a little more liberal… an effect very few plays, or playwrights, could ever achieve. As I upped from my seat at the final curtain, a fellow in front of me piped up, ‘that has restored my faith in theatre,’ – which just about says it all really. FIVE STARS

*****

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

Underbelly

24th-30th

12:20

***

There is a play extant in the world that contains some of the most exquisite wordplay & soul-penetrating pathos… its name is Scaramouche Jones by Justin Butcher. The play opens at 10:30 PM, the last Millennium eve, with Jones returning to his dressing room after a show at the circus. Turning to the audience, as he rapidly approaches his centenary & his death, he goes on to relate the story of Jones’ first fifty years of life – beginning with his bastard birth to a prostitute. The thing is, after an hour or so you really do hope he’d hurry up & die – there is a certain & inevitable tedium that comes with an old man waffling through his past in normal society, so translating it into entertainment is not, I dare say, a perfect way to conduct a piece of theatre.

*

Pete Postlethwaite as Scaramouche Jones in 2009

*

There are clever touches, some beautiful Victorian English which slide-shows verbally over a lovely tour through Africa & continental Europe, including some harrowing descriptions of digging mass-graves during the Nazi genocide. Thom Tuck is also an excellent Jones, & if one enjoys experiencing the very quintessence of acting, then his rendition is well worth experiencing.  But one is left ultimately with the feeling that most fringe shows are between 45 & 60 minutes for a reason, & if production companies can reduce Shakespeare to within those confines, then surely they can do the same with other plays. Disembarking from my raft of criticism, however, Scaramouche Jones may tickle certain sensibilities – but it will not be to every one’s taste. THREE STARS

***

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

Traverse Theatre 

7th-30th August

Times Vary

£8-£20

 *****

“Who said smashing things up was a bad thing”

This powerful play involves three women who struggle in different ways with self-destruction and self-acceptance.  The play cleverly switches between the three characters, two of which live in the same building.  Ann suffers from severe mental illness and cannot resist the urge to destroy everything in her flat from mirrors to wall paper and eventually the floor boards.  She hasn’t left her house for two Christmases and survives on tins of food in her cupboard.  Her neighbour is aware she has difficulties and tries to speak to her through the door, but she faces her own problems suffering from a relationship break up, seeking solace in the bottle and smashing a mirror and tv, which cuts and disfigures her face. The 3^rd character Sam, is a woman who struggles with her gender identity and has made the decision to live as a man; but beaten up by thugs and rejected by many women, Sam struggles with self-acceptance.  She is attracted to Ann’s neighbor and thus their lives are inextricably linked.

*****

A harrowing tale which would be difficult to watch but for the outstanding script and touching humour, which carries and engages the audience,  and tackles many real issues of self-destruction, social isolation, self-harm, becoming housebound and losing touch with reality.  Mercifully the ending is positive for the three characters and hope is the parting emotion. Written by Olivier award winner Stef Smith, directed by Orla O’Loughlin and acted by Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Anita Vettesse and Emily Wachter.  A highly professional and polished performance which sensitively addresses the all too common difficulties of our times.  Don’t miss this show! FIVE STARS

*****

Reviewer : Sophie Younger

Bedlam Theatre

August 22-30

21:30

£9 (£8)

****

​

This was a daring and inventive piece but quite difficult to experience; a modern classroom version of Sartre’s Huis Clos, where 3 characters are placed in a room (two students and a young teacher in a detention room) and mentally torture the hell out of each other for what at times seems like eternity.

There was quality acting across the board, but Olivia Duffin who plays Taylor really put on an electric performance, throwing in some quite shocking moments. Sometimes you’re not sure if you are meant to laugh or not, either with her or because of her behaviour. Her aggression, racism and increasing levels of disrespect are appalling. However, despite her behaviour, her fighting attitude and audacity gives her a weird kind of kudos and fosters concern for the root of her obvious frustration.

It wasn’t as easy to have sympathy for the bland, incapable teacher, even though it’s clear he is way over his head trying to keep control of this rapidly unravelling situation. His obsession with following the prescribed rules gives him no space to get real and talk honestly with the students, which underneath their aggression is what they actually need. The play touches on some important sad realities of classroom dynamics in Britain today; the fact that the personal problems of the students, including racism, Islamophobia and the hypersexualisation of adolescence are beyond the remit of the teacher even though they spill over into the classroom situation. It also underscores the fact that many British teenagers now experience the pressures of a social world from which most teachers are completely divorced and are helpless to guide them, especially if they come from a completely different background.

The pressure mounts as the play continues, forcing the characters to reveal some of their personal histories, fears and frustrations, but it’s thinly veiled or outright hostility that drives the process. As the power struggles and shifting alliances intensify, you’re no longer sure who you like and you dislike, until you are forced to accept them as full human beings rather than one-dimensional characters. This gradually rounding out of the characters is what gives the play its power.

In a way the detention room became like a therapy room, a modern Breakfast Club, but empathetic sharing and listening it certainly is not, except perhaps on the part of the audience. Interestingly, two friends joined me for the performance, and one was full of sympathy for the teacher’s predicament and the other nothing but contempt for his weak character. I wondered how the rest of the audience felt. The strong acting and lively pace certainly makes it worthy of FOUR STARS.

****

Reviewer: Lisa Williams

Summerhall

20th-30th

16:55

****

Luke Wright is no ordinary Essex boy… for a start he can write, & as he bellows out his tumbling waterfalls of words we soon find that he can write bloody well. Like Carter USM without a guitar, his epic monologue sees his personal pilgrimage through the ideology of punk-poet Johnny Bevan. His story is set against two backdrops – the first being the excellent charcoal sketches of London VJ-d onto the wall behind him, & the second is a thirty-year retrospective of his – & my – zeitgeist. In fact, the way he manages to penetrate my memory mists with his needle-sharp, catalytic mimesi, was amazing – a series of images stitched together that managed to cram three decades of life & popular culture into less than an hour.

Poetically the guy is first rate… flowing freely from form to form, metre to metre, with an imperceptible ease. We get classic iambic pentameters, novel rhymes (student/improvement), the sweet cynghanned of the Welsh Bards & some snappy, rappy free verse that shows off the very best of this guy’s command of his lingua franca. Through his spiky tale, he weaves together dystopian visions of tower blocks with student passions, followed by the rushing excitements of Britpop & New Labour. From there the internet age dawns, & we see Luke growing into his role as the quadragrammic (quadraphenia meets instagram) mod-poet to perfection. An oratory masterpiece & a time-capsule, this play is classic – although its audience is a generational one, narrowing the scope for its proper reception & understanding. Despite this, just listening to Luke’s energetic wordplay is a cool experience we English-speakers should all enjoy at some point in our lives. FOUR STARS

****

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

Gilded Balloon

Aug 21-31

18:30

Jane Goodall – with a monkey

Ever wondered what an intellectually-bubbling coffee-shop girl dreaming of Broadway would do on a quiet morning at Central Perk – well Rebecca Perry’s Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl would be pretty damn close. With a dash of cabaret & a hint of the vaudeville, Perry’s rampant Canadian imagination flashes its way through a series of willowing scenes, painting detailed, photo-poetic portraits of her customers along the way.  The angle is she’s an anthropologist studying the punters in her ‘jungle’, along the way conjuring up an ideal boyfriend & a meeting with Bournemouth’s anthropological heavyweight, Jane Goodall.

There’s some great observations along the way, as when the plight of the typical coffee-shop girl’s aversion to seeing her ex-boyfriend is tortured every morning when he pops in for a barista on the way to work.  Every now & then she breaks out into jazzy songs, a little bit like that scene in Grease when a wistful Frenchy conjures up a kaleidoscopic dreamworld far from her saloon.  Of these numbers, the jangling classic, ‘Zing went the stings of my heart,’ was sheer lyrical & melodious ambrosia.

A slick, theatrical & accessible performance – she is at one hand girlie-fied chick-lit, & on the other a consummate family entertainer. Her characters are well-drawn & while all fluffy up front, beneath the show we have the Walter-Mitty-like undercurrent of those utopian worlds we real people all secretly dream about. FOUR STARS

****

Reviewers : Emily Oakman & Damo Bullen