August 9-15, 17-29

17:00, (1h)

Pleasance Courtyard, Venue 33

Script:  Stagecraft:   Performance: 

The DugOut theatre company fed us another jam packed comedic romp filled with takes on modern living. The play moves in and out of serious thinking using humour to make its points, of which there were many. Inferences, such as the iconic swan to represent beauty, were used as a prop for engaging the audience. This was a fun way to reflect on, and sympathise with, the demands modern life makes on all of us.

The engagement the play asks of the audience is as sporadic as the quick and amusing treatment of each subject it touches on. Four characters find themselves on a pedalo in the shape of a swan in open water. The first line ends with a joke that immediately gets the audience laughing. The cast take turns to reminisce and come up with the idea of listing things in life that are now behind them. This happened when a book appeared.

The cast dance, sing and follow their emotions as well as each other’s in a discourse that still remains quick and snappy allowing for so many feelings to come forth and play upon accompanied by more jokes. There is a sense of fluidity emphasised by letting things run their course throughout the play. From the lit stage, to the audience, then to the complete room, this is also was very human. The pendulum swings from things that are beautiful to things the world would be better off without but even this is played down while preserving the general sense of the play that flows from meaning full, to meaning less.

No need for shock or even action when the dialogue conveys this much information. All-inclusive yet clean, the story fills an hour of entertainment peppered with laughter. Delightfully moving in fluency, the mood is one of reflection and construction, emphasized by the water that surrounds them and the dire situation they find themselves in. There is something for everyone in a play like this as it probes the stark realisation the four face with each other and the world around them.

Besides the jokes, the flow of comedic values elicits a smile supporting the play throughout and on into its finale. Once it has ended, it left us in good humour but also relaxed in a come-what-may sort of mood. Sharp, witty, concise – if you’re a fan of comedic discourse, this is the play for you.

Reviewer: Daniel Donnelly

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuneqzYp_FA

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

Dundee Rep Theatre are launching a nation-wide photographic Instagram competition in advance of the autumn tour of their hugely successful production ofThe Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil.Two winners – one chosen from each age category – will receive four tickets to see the show at a venue of their choice (subject to availability), as well as having their photographs displayed at all five venues. They will also each receive a year’s subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan, including Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

Ten of the best photos will be displayed at Dundee Rep Theatre as part of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil exhibition which opens on the 12^th August – just in time for the start of the game shooting season!

Joe Douglas, Associate Artistic Director of Dundee Rep Theatre and director of the production says: “The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil touches on so many stories, themes and issues across Scotland – from crofting communities to riggers in the North Sea. I’m looking forward to being inspired by some creative photographs from this beautiful country of ours.”

To enter the competition all you have to do is take a digital photo and upload it to Instagram using the hashtag #cheviotphoto. The subject of the photo can be up to you but the image should reflect Scotland’s historical and/or current political and economic story. Thematic examples include images of, derelict landscapes, land ownership, Scotland’s resources, The Clearances or Scottish cultural identity.

The competition will be divided into two categories (12-16 year’s old and 16+) with one winner selected from each category. The competition will end at Midnight, 25^thof July and be judged by Joe Douglas, Associate Artistic Director of Dundee Rep Theatre and Director of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil and Nicola Young, photographer and Communications Director at Belgrade theatre.

The Cheviot the Stag and the Black, Black Oil was written by renowned British playwright, director and political theorist John McGrath, who often took up the cause of Scottish independence in his plays.

Thursday 30^th of July 2016

The End of Year Showcase

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What do you want from student theatre? I would say youthful exuberance, playfulness, energy, a developing confidence, skill and artistry; but also that the art has ideas as well as giving pleasure. Well, this production certainly provides all of these and in the words of the poet, John Dryden, “There is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not what to follow.” So, in that spirit, and as space doesn’t allow a comprehensive commentary, I’ll comment on parts of the show that sprang up before me.

The show begins with a dance routine, The Lion King, and the dance troupe led by the impressively energetic Whitney Bell certainly sets the energy bar high as a pride of lions prowl around the stage to The Lion King theme tune; the opening dance successfully fulfils its function:  to encourage the audience to participate and prepare them for the games to come.

Following on we have a monologue from Finlay Eagleson playing what is now a stock comic character of British culture─the old-fashioned school master in a mortar board and cape: in my imagination, ranging through from the comics of my youth (The Dandy with Winker Watson and Mr Creep), the Ealing comedies, to popular music, The Smiths Headmaster Ritual springing to mind, with “Sir doing the military two-step/ down the nape of my neck.”.

One for the audience this as in this performance, a warm up for the evening show, there are many in the audience who work in the college ─ mind you, the gentleman sitting next to me whispers in my ear, “Takes me back to 1974 when I worked in…”. So still fresh in the mind for some. The sketch is essentially a roll call of names, reflecting the title of the piece, and for those old enough it certainly stimulates memories of the days, not so long ago, when the teacher with or without a mortar board would spend an eternity reading out the register pausing for sarcastic commentary on behaviour, attitude and work: occasionally enhanced by flying chalk or a board rubber for those deviant enough not to respond with a timely “Here sir!”.

The comedy here though comes from timing, gesture and from the emphasis and repetition of certain words: in this case the word “tweak” and its variations, as in one of the milder punishments of the past, the tweaking of the ear; Eagleson savours the word as if he is about to eat it, reminding me of the way Rowan Atkinson savours and elongates words for comic effect; I am also impressed with the way Eagleson had the confidence to pause for emphasis and use facial gestures to suggest the inner emotional strain caused by taking a register; a success and very funny, exemplified by the audience laughter. We also see the influence of Atkinson and his comtempories developed and made explicit in a later sketch, entitled Blackadder.

Another sketch that sprang up at me was Magic Mitchell; an old-fashioned variety show magic trick of the pick-a-card variety involving audience participation. I’ve no idea how he did the trick, but the whole thing was a lot of fun, enhanced by a member of the audience with an infectious laugh; Mitchell is another performer with a great face for theatre and he certainly was able to engage the audience in his act. I particularly liked the Tommy Cooper allusion when turning to ask the audience member with the pack of cards: “You didn’t shuffle the cards did you?” looking genuinely nervous; perhaps he was, who knows, the trick worked.

The second half of the show begins with a shift to a darker mood. The sketches exploring themes ranging from the sinister effects of developing technologies to the effects of an all-encompassing mass media, through interpretative and thought-provoking dance in Technology Takeover with the dancers moving surreptitiously in the gloom behind a flickering screen displaying well known mediums/logos and the message Weapons of Distraction prominent on the screen; the performance is brief but exemplified another theme of the show which is developed through references in dance to The Wizard of Oz and a solo Ben Taylor singing Music of the Night through the gloaming : the theme revealed in the conclusion to The Wizard of Oz when the wizard is revealed to be an old man pulling levers: the reality behind the deceptive curtain. Here I’d like to give a mention to Taylor’s performance, not always note perfect, but certainly a moving rendition of the song, and like many of the other performers, Taylor has an expressive face that does communicate with the audience.

I’d also like to mention the Shakespearean swopping of gender roles that worked to great effect in some of the sketches. In particular in Shakers a satire on stereotypical male behaviour where the male roles were taken by females, in this case Whitney Bell and Rebecca Stringer disconcertingly admiring the cleavage of the bar maid played by Beth Bradshaw (insert your own sexist clichés here, you’ll know them all). The switching of roles defamiliarized the situation making it more effective, but as usual: the drink provoking the desire, but taking away the performance.

As mentioned earlier, another very funny sketch was entitled Blackadder with impressive performances from Rob Joseph, Finlay Eagleson and Shane Mitchell. The sketch I presume is taken from the show, so guaranteeing effective comic dialogue; what I liked here is Rob Joseph’s Stephen Fryesque turn as a legless (literally on both counts) pirate captain, delivering his lines with perfect timing but also having the confidence to adlib effectively with the other performers but also with the audience: calling out “Bless you!” when an audience member sneezes. I also liked the clever update of the script to reflect the EU referendum: Finlay’s character hilariously unable to pronounce Calais properly, and having to be corrected by the legless pirate. They were also clearly enjoying themselves.

The show delivers on everything you would want to see in student theatre; perhaps in the second half the occasional sketch became a little didactic in terms of the themes of prejudice/equality and diversity, forgetting to show not tell; but then again modern education always demands that you’re ready for inspection: “Here sir!” But taken overall there is no serious disruption to the enjoyment of the production, all involved should be commended for their efforts, and I left the theatre with a line from one of the Blood Brothers sketches in my head: “Nothing’s sad, ‘til it’s over”, again reminding me of recent events.

Reviewer: Paul Rivers