Mumble Theatre

Greenside @ Infirmary Street
Aug 25-26 (23:10)

Script:  Stagecraft:  Performance: 

Leaf is essentially a patchwork quilt of capers, japes & nonsense under which we audience members may snuggle & giggle warmly for an hour. As we are swept from the ‘infamous moors of Berlin’ to the period drama of Georgian England, we are given the loosest pretensions of a story revolving about the lovequest of chess-loving chemical engineer Mark. The most remarkable thing about watching Leaf, in fact, is how its actors – led by commander-in-chief Helen Potter – can keep a straight face during the show. In a recent interview with The Mumble, Helen described her creation as;

larger than life comedy that is both entirely based on the truth, and an absolute load of fictitious nonsense. As quintessentially British as the queen eating her roast dinner off a Boris bike seat (perish the thought!)… Leaf is a show that combines the emotional rollercoaster of a socially awkward chemical engineer, with the wild chaos of a sketch-show.

A sketchy play in both senses of the word, Leaf is still a fascinating – & funny – watch. A lot of thought has gone into the stagecraft of Leaf; its visually exciting, while the voice-overs work superbly. This play is comedy bombast at its most fluent & foppish best. Some moments are freshly hilarious, while others are just dodgy pun-making, but with the latter being delivered with such overenthusiastic confidence that these turn out to be kinda funny n’all. Leaf also gets a bit taps-aff towards the end, & with a lung-bursting rendition of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ to finish, this wonderful late-night watch was a perfect way to finish my Fringe for 2017.

Reviewer : Damo

A Play, a Pie and a Pint
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Aug 28-Sept 2

Before a backdrop of a huge page from an adolescent notebook, scribbled with drawings and philosophical ponderings, a man trudges back and forward in a tired dressing gown making a cup of tea. A throbbing soundtrack tells us he’s only human after all. The phone rings and a conversation with an old friend, takes him back to a place he’d rather not be. It’s the 1980’s and Billy, a 5^th year boy with journalistic ambitions, has access to the school’s Gestetner printer. What could possibly go wrong? Well given his publication is called the Cumnock Finger, plenty.

The play by Stuart Hepburn explores the relationship between three school friends over three decades. Billy (Ryan Fletcher) is a wannabe intellectual who knows a good book is for being seen with, not reading. Eddie (James Mackenzie) is cool and knows life is for living, not writing about. Deansy (Gavin Wright) is their sensitive specky pal, not terribly sure about anything. The characters are well rounded and their youthful disregard, for actions having consequences, will be all too familiar with many in the audience. With a capella singing and a strong, what-happened-next narrative, this is a sound start to Oran Mor’s autumn season.

Reviewer : David G Moffat

August 27th
Assembly Rooms

Script:  Stagecraft:  Performance:

For a long time I have been interested in Scientology. I’ve seen the South Park episodes, Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Master and the documentaries, visited their Museum of Death and Visitors Center in LA and even wrote a song about them. I have yet to be audited, but I’ve always been a bit paranoid about going that far. Maybe they’re smarter than they appear…? Anyway, one thing I have learned is that it’s a very brave thing going up against them and certainly revealing their secrets. Although I think that after the South Park episode half the world knows their big revelation you used to have to pay a hundred odd grand to reveal. All praise Xenu! Anyway, for that fact alone Cathy Schenkelberg, the protagonist of the show, deserves a lot of credit. And while she doesn’t have any major new insights, she does give us a fairly indepth account of how the cult took a great deal out of her, both personally and financially.

The problems with the show however were the often hammy acting and the fact that it assumed a lot of the audience. In particular of the dense brain washing language used by the Scientologists. As it manically flipped between life and auditing I was often lost in the dense vocabulary of the cult. I respect shows that don’t dumb down for an audience but the vocabulary of Scientology is niche knowledge at best. Even for someone as fascinated by it as I am. Never the less the gist was got and the ever increasing sums of money projected behind her were an effective graphic illustration of how Scientology may in reality be nothing but a marketing scam. Another interesting point made was that the aim of Scientology is to make the Able more Able, which may explain why they do so little for actual charities. Truly a cult of the elite. Anyway, if you have an interest in cults and haven’t seen the Master, the South Park episodes and the documentaries there is much to learn here. Although if you haven’t I’ve only got one question – where have you been the past twenty years?

Review by Steven Vickers

C Venues
Aug 25-28 (13:50)

Script:  Stagecraft:  Performance: 

Now this is what its all about, the Fringe. We who live in the misty north of Britain have our fair share of culture through the year, but it is quite piecemeal & nothing too unconventional to our tastes. Then August comes along & a nuclear bomb of immense variety explodes into the city, & one must be rabbit-swift to catch even the minutest portion of the blast. But if one is lucky enough – & also daring enough to step outside the ‘couple of comedians & a play‘ mode of many – then we might just stumble across a show such as a Treasure Trove of Shadows, as I did yesterday.

It all begins in Shaanxi, China, the home of the Terracotta Warriors & also the 2,000 year-old folk tradition of shadow puppetry. Alas, as tour manager Wayne Sam admitted to the Mumble, this tradition is ‘dying,’ with the modern generation preferring to be entertained by the vast panoply of electrical means available in 2017.  Enter multi-media artist, Feng Jiangzhou, who has decided to create a futuristic version of shadowplay & elevate it to high theatre. Feng told the Mumble, ‘we deliberately avoided focusing on the history, intent & explanation of shadow puppetry. Our aim was to focus more on theatrical expression  placing the play into the criticisms of reality.’

The end result is a bizarre & bold, mish-mash, neoclassical pastiche of Chinese folk stories, played out by a youthful, bright & bubbly cast, while a sophisticated saxophonist accompanies events with some smart sound-art. At all times, behind the proceedings, some simply amazing visual set-pieces are wheeled one-by-one before our eyes. This show is a visual delight, indeed shadowplay for the 21st century, but the story is unfortunately a little difficult to follow – despite the English translation being beamed onto the wall – a literary Wasteland, which even wanders into Macbeth at one point (!?).

However, watching Treasure Trove of Shadows is more of a transcendental experience which shines a time-warping telescope half-way across the world to the villages of China, where Shadow Puppetry once ruled supreme. Then, at the end of the show, the audience is invited onto the stage to witness the art of shadowplay in its purest form, & one hopes that someone in this crowd, or more likely in China, will fall in love with the artform & perpetuate it for posterity.

Reviewer : Damo

Assembly Rooms
Until the 26th (21.05)

Script:   Stagecraft:  Performance: 

Catherine & Anita is a powerful & flippant piece of theatre. The brainchild of American writer/director Derek Ahonen, he has chosen as his mouth-piece the electric watch that is Sarah Roy, a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Together, they tell the story of Catherine & her invisible friend, an idealised & actualised symptom of her madness, who supports her through both the childhood causes of her madness & the inevitable fall-out in her later, adult life. I don’t want to talk about the story too much, as a prior knowledge to events would deflect somewhat from the intensity of the dramatic interplay between the audience member & Roy’s ruminatingly, chin-strokingly decisive performance. All I can say is that the multi-layered plot peels off like an onion in an exquisitely smooth progress throughout Ahonen’s worldscape.

As Roy chitters away through all her angsty girliness, we become almost as one with Catherine, so powerful is the acting. I cannot praise highly enough how bold this play is, when a make-believe best friend becomes a massive, almost tangible presence on the stage – a rare feat which seemed easy putty in the hands of Roy. Indeed, her gothic, slightly deranged, but unquestionably courageous performance was at first unpleasant & a little corrosive to observe, then increasingly superb as the plot levels clothed her & we began to understand what was going on. Both an exploration of insanity & an expose on the darker corners of the world we undoubtedly share, C&A is a fascinating foray into the theatrical demense, & one which should be applauded for both its bravery AND its quality.

Reviewer : Damo