Reviews: Edinburgh Fringe Roundup

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe, with just under a week still to run, has been its usual melding of international artists, fledgling companies and students vying for audience to see their offerings. With comedians dominating the program you would be excused in thinking that theatre would be scarce and hard to find between the great wealth of stand-ups and sketch troupes. However, the wide range of shows on offer is as varied as ever with many of the performances demonstrating some real quality. Here I’m going to look at the best ones I saw over my two weeks and those which I think anyone would enjoy if they have the chance.

A favourite show of mine was Memoirs of a Biscuit Tin by Derby’s Maison Foo. Telling the story of a house, in this case literally – the protagonists the wall, floor and chimney, searching for its missing elderly tenant, Mrs Benjamin. The simple but wonderfully vivid imagery used in the performance told the tale in a smart and inviting way; you truly believed a hat was Mrs Benjamin’s beloved or that a milk bottle was a randy milkman. It was both fragile and robust with an authentic voice behind it; a beam erupted across my face when Mrs Benjamin’s neighbour referred to her as ‘Duck’. Whilst the structure wasn’t perfect, any tweaking would run the risk of disrupting the effusive qualities of this great piece of theatre which leaves you unsure whether to laugh or cry.

Lockerbie: Unfinished Business is verbatim theatre at its most expository; taken from the unpublished accounts of Dr Jim Swire whose daughter Flora was murdered on Pan Am 103 with writer-performer David Benson playing Swire himself. It is a hard-hitting exploration of both the bombing and its effect on those bereaved where the audience, presented with Swire’s lecture on his experiences after the tragedy and his continued pursuit of justice, are delivered some truly compelling theatre. Benson’s Swire is engaging and restrained in his delivery of the cold facts but the cracks in the defences are evident, the grief seeps through them – the characterisation is superb. Whilst many know the headlines of this as yet unresolved tragedy, Benson and Swire’s collaborative effort allows its audience to see the suffering and unfamiliar truths behind the newsprint.

Lidless, by American playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, traps its audience inside a claustrophobic box from which they cannot escape the unfolding drama. This box is both literal and metaphorical, the show performed inside a small white structure on the venue’s stage. The starkness of the staging complements the subject matter; Alice is a former Army Interrogator whose pill induced amnesia has caused her to forget the horrors of what she did at Guantanamo Bay 15 years ago, until the arrival of Bashir, a former detainee. Referred to almost flippantly at times as ‘Gitmo’, the modern resonances of Guantanamo haunt the piece and give it an unnervingly eerie feel. It is expertly written with blistering dialogue, not least that between Alice and Bashir in the former’s florist shop, her new employment after demobbing, and powerfully acted, Greer Dale-Foulkes as Alice’s daughter Rhiannon is outstanding. It was best piece of writing I saw all festival.

The piece that has fast become the topic of discussion in all the coffee shops frequented by fringe-goers is Tim Crouch’s The Author, an acerbic look at the audience within the context and confines of the theatre. Originally staged at the Royal Court last year, those watching are presented with just the audience and sit through excruciating revelations from the ‘performers’ amongst them, ‘audience members’ walk out – some of these are staged and scripted – and as a participant observer are forced into questioning their own role and acceptance of what goes on around them. Is it ok to do this because it’s in a theatre? Whilst The Author goes out of its way to be offensive and assault its watcher, you can’t help but keep thinking about it days after seeing it.

Bristol based writer-performer Tom Wainwright’s show Pedestrian is a more introverted affair, but nonetheless maps onto us all. In the piece Wainwright appears to host a one man therapy session with his goldfish. The fish in question is also deeply rooted in his subconscious as, in his dreams, it is chasing him from a closed branch of Woollies down the pedestrianised high-street whilst peering at him through its beady, monocled eye and gulping down a soya latte. It comes to symbolise much of what Wainwright appears to dislike about the world, this is his personal battle against modern commercialism, people with clipboards and the moral high ground – he calls them ‘chuggers’, charity muggers – and Tesco Metros. It is disaffection from modern society brilliantly and absurdly realised with stunning backdrop projected visuals.

The youthful exuberance of Little Bulb’s Operation Greenfield was a refreshing change from the more than unusually dark offerings that frequent the fringe. Following the development of a band of youngsters preparing for the Stokley Annual Talent Competition from their frequent meetings at the local Christian Club or burgeoning love affairs it is a joy to watch from start to finish. The wonderfully stilted performances of the four talented multi-instrumentalist actor-musicians coupled with the sun-kissed aesthetic of a Wes Anderson movie make for a show which was either smooth or staccato in all the right places and for all the right reasons. Multi-layered reminisces including summer fruits squash, a Bowie inspired dream sequence, and the song the band enters into the competition about Zechariah’s vision of Gabriel in the Temple loads the piece with fun and memories of a time when for all of us that kind of life would have been ideal.

Another show looking at freshness of youth is RashDash’s Another Someone; a vibrant cocktail of music, song and dance which is wonderfully supplemented by a lilting, if a little knowingly kooky, script. Looking at what it is to innocently dream and to want to be someone, the show kaleidoscopes into an infectiously enthusiastic performance which the audience picks up on instantly. While the narrative meanders, the talented performers are top notch and entertain with every second they are on stage – even when not involved in the action. Wildly energetic and with some star turns too.

The Wake, which along with Another Someone makes up The Bedlam’s late evening programming block, is another top show. This absurd and meta-theatrical farce becomes one man’s lesson on life, love and legacy as he comes to terms with the death of his father and separation from his wife. There are great plot turns in the narrative, which is a triumph for a play which doesn’t have much of a plot – it instead buoyed along by sharp performances and a sparklingly witty script, and with the unseen arriving at every turn this is a story which will keep you beaming throughout.You can do far worse this year than stay at the Bedlam of an evening for reasonably priced drinks and two top shows.

Bryony Kimmings’ self-referential Sex Idiot explores the performer’s journey post-diagnosis of what a she calls a ‘very common sexual disease’ via a re-working of Dylan tunes, destruction of floral arrangements and some very intimate audience participation. As she tracks lost loves and seemingly gets nowhere, the show fast becoming a 21^st century female High Fidelity with Chlamydia, the vestiges of the lovers become discarded into an ornate dentist’s spittoon. Whilst Sex Idiot doesn’t have the overt intellectual feel of more conceptually heavy works of performance art, it is fantastically good fun and far more accessible than what can be seen as its highbrow contemporaries. Kimmings has made a show which is highly personal and her final act of ‘bathing’ – not wanting to give too much away – feels truly redemptive.

Quirky to the point of estranging when you first start watching it, Made in China’s Stationary Excess is a slow burning treat which cannot fail but make you smile at 11.15 in the morning. Relating tales of rural America whist maniacally cycling on her exercise bike, enacting increasingly messy acts of preening performer Jessica Latowicki wins over the audience with this bizarre concoction with aplomb. Essentially looking at what we try to do to ourselves in pursuit of looking good, a goal so horribly changeable and subjective its like trying to get somewhere on an exercise bike, that when that penny drops and the show comes into focus, its metaphor is magnificent. Soundtracked almost exclusively by a dull, pinging bell and the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, the show is fun, bubbly – quite literally – and yearns for the audience to get the joke; when you do, it’s a hoot.

Plasticine Men’s Keepers is a celebration of stage minimalism in which the two talented performers tell the tale of Thomas and Thomas, the keepers of the Smalls lighthouse of the Mubles coast in South Wales - with great accents - two hundred years ago. It is a brilliantly choreographed and sweetly comic piece with every wipe of the lighthouse’s glass or splash of swirling sea foam is enacted with precision. The performers’ stage-craft is clever and using only a ladder or mess tin they create truly evocative piece of theatre that is executed with really pathos and panache, creating a lasting haunting atmosphere which remains for days after the watching.

In terms of invention within a style of theatre Others by Paper Birds is the most innovative take on verbatim theatre seen at the Fringe. Focusing upon women whom they see as their opposite these three performers engage them in conversation through letters and emails. An Iranian theatre maker, a prisoner and Heather Mills are questioned and their responses form the basis of the show. What happens next is most interesting, the performers now explore what we assume about these women, how they are perceived or maligned, what we almost parasitically want to know about them. Our assumptions go through the same process of questioning and response. It is a truly inventive show which tenderly examines our similarities with those believed to be unknown to us in a thoroughly unassuming way. With the aid of great live sound and clever interaction with their set, Others is touchingly truthful and causes you to re-examine what we assume about everyone we meet.

Squeezed into the underbelly of Milne’s Bar, just off Edinburgh’s main Prince’s Street drag, Dave sits you down and, beer in hand, recounts why he feels he cannot lie. The play, Honest by Northampton's D C Moore, follows Dave as he recounts his life in a less than glamorous department of the civil service and his relationship with his nephew. It is an intimately accurate portrayal of Dave's banality in which the colourful anecdotal episodes he tangentially wanders into create a world where his London comes vividly to life. Whilst, like Dave’s story, the plot wanders on the journey from night-out to his brother’s house, Moore’s writing is constant in its clever usage and style. Trystan Gravelle gives a sparkling performance and, in the close confines of Milne’s, engages every single audience member with his intense glare or softening gaze. It is this intimacy that makes Honest such a great experience, it is a show where those watching see a very talented actor up close and tell a really brilliantly written, comic and brutally truthful story.

Idle Motion, a young company from Oxford, bring their show The Vanishing Horizon to the fringe with more suitcases than you would normally expect for a cast of their size. However, these cases are the set for this curious and whimsical show which cleverly charts the history of pioneering female aviators in 1920s and 30s through the recording of a radio documentary and woman tracing her absentee and recently deceased grandmother. It is the wonderful stage-craft with the cases, of which there are roughly fifty, that remains after leaving the theatre but this is not to say the performance is lacking. The script is considered and carefully informs the audience without both showing and telling whilst the physicality inventively creates worlds and environments simply with minimal fuss or pause. It is a show which, off a small budget, creates something very special.

This year's Fringe has had many other great shows that I missed but these were the few that stood out to me. Other Fringe favourites like The Edinburgh Mosque offering affordable and delicious curry every lunchtime with a donations bucket for the Pakistan floods, Black Medicine Coffee Shop on Nicholson Street or the garish 'enjoyment' of a night in Frankensteins are all musts but it was the theatre which really made these two weeks. So, if heading northward (or south if you live in Orkney), see as much as you can and try following @fringebiscuit on Twitter for up-to-date news and reviews from the festival.

You never know you might enjoy your self!

Image courtesy of IdeasTap.