Venue 13

Aug 6-14 (17.20)

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Script:  Stagecraft:   Performance: 

The Mumble loves Venue 13 – a classy wee corner of the Fringe’s theatreland off the bottom of the Roral Mile, it consistently brings a series of clever productions full of youth & interest. Our first peep behind the curtain this year invites the audience members into a bubbling pool of cool character interactions as a guy in a box meets a guy out of a box underneath a bauble-heavy tree. Created by David S. Craig and Robert Morgan, & brought to Edinburgh by Yuffa, at first we are presented by some pretty physical theatre. Eventually, the two chaps finally meet, & we discover one is French & the other American -& soon they are acting like a bickering, married couple.

So what happens? Well, we are actually given a wonderful insight into the blossoming of human relationships, human friendships, all framed by a lovely little set of pastel-cinctured boxes. With Please speaking only English, and Moitie only French, the chief dynamic is the growth of understanding between the two men – which one could apply to internatal cultures just as well.  It’s all rather good fun, & just as the adults snigger at the rude jokes in the Simpsons while the kids are glued to the cartoon shape-making, so too does Head à Tête contain something for all. A most charming piece of theatre that at half an hour is really perfectly pitched.

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

B’est Restaurant
Dates: 4-29 August 2016

Script:  Stagecraft:   Performance:

The Interactive Theatre International presents the world-renowned Faulty Towers, The Dining Experience, as it returns to Edinburgh for it’s ninth consecutive year.  Joined by a new cast, Suzanna Hughes (Sybil), Benedict Holme (Basil) and Oliver Harrison (Manuel).  From the first step into the side courtyard the terrific trio have our giggle-boxes gently warmed, as they introduce their famous 70’s British sit-com characters we all know and love.  The three actors closely resemble their character; Holme in his ill-fitted brown Basil suit and lank, side-combed hair.  Hughes fashioning Sybil’s tight-curled hair and loud pink ruched bust and matching heels, while Harrison dons the classic waiter uniform and Manual’s submissive stoop.

We are led (or pulled) to our shared tables and thereafter-culinary disaster ensues!  Only a third of the three-course act is scripted, so anything can happen and no show is the same!  Between and during each course we are exposed to inappropriate insults and hilarious disorganisation.  The threesome reenact our most adored TV scenario….  Basil torments Manuel; Sybil torments Basil, just as per the TV sit-com.  After two hours of endless laughter, the strangers sitting tightly around your large shared table become your comrades throughout the chaos.

During this sold-out show, the audience are immersed into every feeling the actors portray.  The performers give their all to the show, sweat pours from their heads and veins pop out from stress.  Basil tries to maintain order by being exceedingly polite to the dining guests, while chasing Manuel around the restaurant.  Manuel’s lovable character steels the show; he plunges himself into Manuel’s personality and expressions.  It could have been so easy to exaggerate the character, yet Harrison performs it so naturally. Mistaken English and amusing innuendos leave our sides spitting.

The cuisine is ok – however we are not there for the food, it’s the non-stop entertainment happen around us that makes it a most memorable evening.

Reviewer : Sarah Lewis

The George Hotel

gust  4th – 28th

£39.00 – ( £43.00)

Script:  Stagecraft:   Performance:

After weeks of waiting in eager excitement, The Wedding Reception’ was finally upon us.  Located in the Hanover Suite at The  George Hotel in central Edinburgh, this place was going to play host to Will and Kate’s wedding reception. With a gathering of family members and so-called best friends lingering in the foyer, you are catapulted into a moist mayhem of chatter, chaos  and bewilderment; the wedding planner, the mother-in-law and the best man create an accurate sense of realism. Like a detective , you begin to wonder who is who? Its all rather surreal, finding yourself feeling like you are actually at a wedding reception ….   Awesome !!!!

With five well-sculptured central characters, five tables & a convincing set design this worked well. A production of ingenious ideas, exhilarating, mind-blowing, uplifting and fresh. To take one of life’s delicate subjects such as marriage and create a side-splitting piece of well-scripted and improvised theatrical art was cheeky, yet smart.  This is a show that sucks  the audience in, forging an immediate bound between cast and the guests – plus there’s a three course meal, wine and a genuine feeling of togetherness all adding to the occasion .

From the creative team that brought you Faulty Towers this production follows in similar footsteps.  Produced with precise and obvious intentions to allow as much improvisation as possible, the true art of theatre is apparent. I have never witnessed anything like this before.   As the tale unravels and the truth escapes, while relationships fall apart and love is found, the show delivers a wonderful & warm succession of artistic beauties. How more real can a show get !!!  It was fictional but factual, emotional but heart warming,  diverse and delightful, with a twist that even a cork screw could not have anticipated!

Highly talked about and highly recommend, this show is a must see.   Turn a dreich , tired Scottish day into a bursting ray of sunshine by allowing yourself to be transported into a world of fun. laughter, social education and screaming loved ones.  Executed and delivered with professionalism and a great script behind them these actors come into their own and leave us wishing we could get married everyday. You are more surprised and baffled after you leave than when you had arrived.

Reviewed by Raymond Speedie

Formidable, brave and strong willed, Mary Seacole had an indefatigable drive towards both healing and entrepreneurship. I’d brought my 12 year old Caribbean-born son along to hear about a famous Caribbean woman who had to fight discrimination to simply go where she was needed, and the recognition of whose legacy is controversial even today. Most of the people in the audience could have been his grandparents, but it would also be of interest to teenagers who like their history. It has certainly done the rounds of schools, where perhaps more direct audience engagement would work well.

Cleo Sylvestre, also the co-author of the play along with Judith Paris, stayed unwaveringly on form with her delivery of such a colourful and flamboyant character; spicing up her narrative with pompous generals, grateful Cockney soldiers and her Jamaican mother taking her out into the country to learn how to ‘pick bush’. Her accents were generally exactly on point, except for the American general insulting her over her skin colour, and the lilt of her Caribbean-British accent veering more towards Trinidad than Jamaica at times. But if you haven’t lived in the Caribbean, you wouldn’t notice a thing.

The set was sparse but she made good use of the space she had. Judging from Seacole’s one known photograph, Sylvestre was visually the perfect choice for the role. As the nurse and business woman was also known for her flamboyant outfits and her love of style, Cleo flounced in, dressed in bright Victorian garb, complete with corset, petticoats and giant pearls. Being a stickler for details in period drama, I would have preferred her to produce a classic handkerchief than a modern tissue to dab her face under the hot lights. She cleverly used the case of ‘simples’ or herbs as a prop for her various adventures of sailing the seas or riding in a London carriage. Her facial expressions and body language brought us the full spectrum of emotion; every Caribbean immigrant’s disappointment at cold, grey, dirty London, without a mango in sight, and she made us feel the horror and despair at the slaughter in the Crimea. The sound effects and voice overs helped us to transport us to a different time and many different places around the world, and this could have been used with greater effect to vary the experience as the play continued.

She touches lightly on the racism and discrimination rife at the time, and made clear the understanding of her lighter-skinned privilege from ‘good Scots blood coursing through my veins’ from her father, a Scottish military man. However, knowing the identity crises that continue to haunt Caribbean people from the mixed-race elite, it was interesting to note that she would be happy to be ‘born as black as any nigger’. Her feeling that it was her destiny to serve her Queen and country helped her to find a way even when doors were closing in her face at every turn. Just as you wonder what gave her the strength of character to continue she proclaims, “I am richer for the courage I have seen in others”.

As the author Andrea Levy said, her story would make a great film. This well-crafted show certainly makes you want to read her autobiography. It must have been very difficult to cut down her extraordinary and adventurous life down to an hour of storytelling. An accomplished and greatly experienced actress, Cleo Sylvestre was perfect for the part, and impressive from the start; she delivered the hour-long solo show story with warmth and flair. Much like her heroine, she didn’t miss a beat.

Reviewer: Lisa Williams

Assembly Roxy

Edinburgh

July 3rd

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Twenty years ago, in New York of course, the 24 Hour Play was born. Write it overnight, give it to an energy-bubbling bunch of actors, perform it the next night. Twenty years later, Edinburgh-­based Asylon Theatre took up the challenge, with five sterling mini-troupes filling in the gaps. Who would win first place in the pan-Olympian Games – judged by industry experts –  & get to develop their play further… only two hours of riveting, unpusillanimous theatre will tell. Asylon’s artistic director and project producer Marta Mari, was MC for the evening, & you could really feel her love for the project trampolining from the introductions.

Trade Off by Diane Stewart

The five plays were short, snappy, tri-acted affairs; we had the Orson-Wellsian  ‘Community’ which rejected a superfluous ‘knobber’ from their ranks, we had the Female top-brass in the war against men battling with the idea of castrating their prisoners, we had the young lass & older mother-figure debating do with a wounded assassin, & we had the clown who had misread a poem & turned up at a suffragette meeting by mistake. That same poem, by the way, had been given to each of these playlet’s authors the previous nigght, the product of the Polish poetess, Wislawa Szymborska.

Some people flee some other people.
In some country under a sun
and some clouds.

They abandon something like all they’ve got,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens.

Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles.
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.

What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away,
someone tries to shake a limp child back to life.
Always another wrong road ahead of them,
always another wrong bridge
across another oddly reddish river.
Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away,
above them a plane sort of circles.

Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while.

Something else will happen, only where and what.
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes, with what intentions.
If he has a choice,
maybe he won’t be the enemy
and will let them live some sort of life.

Pieces of Colour by Lisa VillaMil

The winning piece of theater, as if they were a modern-day Aeschylus or Euripides victorious at the Festival of Dionysis, was Pieces of Colour by Lisa Villamil. When they came out, the three characters seemed to be talking as if they were on their own – talking over each other as three separate entities – but each shared a suffering, that of an absence of identity amidst the world. We were presented with the Invisible Girl (Katrina Bryan), an outcast & misunderstood visionary (Philip Kingscott,) & the tortured ‘beast,’ an angry, world-hating & equally misunderstood, child-estranged mother (Isidora Bouziouri). As eventually came their interactions, there sprung a primeval community – well, apart from the ‘beast’ who we will perhaps see more of the when the play is further developed. Only time will tell.

Reviewer : Emilia Smarts

Photography : Sally Lewis