My Fringe: In Brief

MY FRINGE: IN BRIEF

My personal recommendations and top picks based on the productions I had time to catch in my short visit to this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

// Highlights //

• Gecko's Institute 
Pleasance Courtyard

• Philip Ridley's Tonight With Donny Stixx 
Pleasance Courtyard

• Le Gateau Chocolat's Black 
Assembly Hall

// New company to watch // 

Disparat Theater 
Rebounding Hail, Underbelly Cowgate @ 11.20

@disparattheater

// Returning company to watch //

Caligula's Alibi 
Idiots, Pleasance Courtyard @ 14.15

@alibitheatre

// Performers to watch //

• Sean Michael Verey @Sean_M_Verey
Donny, Tonight With Donny Stixx

• Ash Henning @AshHenning
Miss Pennywise, Urinetown: The Musical

• Samuel Skoog 
Carl, Cleansed

• Holly Kilpatrick @hollykip
Laura, Rebounding Hail

• Apphia Campbell @apphiacampbell
Nina Simone: Soul Sessions

// Creatives to watch //

• Ed Burnside, director; Black
@EdBurnside

• Will Cowell & Jonnie Bayfield, creators; Idiots
@WJCCaligula / @JonnieBayfield

• Lucas Hnath, writer; The Christians

Gecko's Institute

edfringe.com

Edinburgh Fringe Day 3

Final day, managed to squeeze in another couple of shows before (literally) running for my plane home.

#13. Urinetown: the Musical

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Assembly Hall @ 11.45

I was stunned by this incredibly ambitious production of Urinetown, which was executed expertly by a cast of graduating students from RCS. 

Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis' 2001 Broadway hit, recently seen in London in Jamie Lloyd's brilliant production, is a satirical comedy set in a dystopian future where a twenty-year drought has caused a crippling water shortage making private bathrooms unthinkable. All toilets are in the form of public amenities, run by the corrupt mega-corp Urine Good Company at extortionate fees as an attempt to control consumption. There are harsh laws forcing citizens to pay to pee, and if they don't they face being sent to the mythologised penal colony Urinetown. The oppressed masses rise up, as may be expected, led by the simplistic but big-hearted Bobby Strong, everything you'd expect in a musical hero, in an attempt to win free peeing for all! A pretty absurd concept, granted, but an effective one.

Our narrator is Officer Lockstock (strong turn from Joel Schaefer), a sadistic enforcer of the law under the thumb of UGC's CEO Caldwell B Cladwell. He is assisted by the cuttingly perceptive Little Sally, a street urchin. The show satirises politics, capitalism, bureaucracy, populism and socialism - in other words, no one is safe! It also satirises the musical as a form, in hilarious songs like 'Too Much Exposition', considering what factors might kill a show. 

The production is slickly directed by Ken Alexander and exuberantly choreographed by Paul Smethurst, with a great toilet-like set and effective lighting. But the cast take the production to another level and it is to the production teams credit that we can keep our focus solidly on their performances. This cast are quite frankly phenomenal. Sublime voices, real energy and commitment and some memorable interpretations of some of musical theatre's greatest roles. I liked how many used their own accent; Scottish and Irish voices are prevalent alongside Bobby's expressive American. It is rare to hear regional British dialects on the musical stage; it is ever so refreshing.

The performances are pant-wettingly funny, handling the rapid plot and challenging songs with ease. All those in lead roles do so to an extraordinarily high standard, showing great ability as well as technique.
The cast I saw included a charming George Arvidson as Bobby whose voice soars, the wonderful Brigid Shine as Hope, a delightful Jenny Hayley-Douglas as Little Sally, and the ravishing, hilarious Ash Henning as Miss Pennywise who owns the stage better than some with decades of experience. They are supported by a fantastically strong, characterful ensemble who make a joyful sound. Run, Freedom, Run is a highlight, as is Ash Henning's raucous rendition of It's a Priviledge to Pee. 

This production of Urinetown is a testament to the world-class training delivered by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Some of the best young musical theatre talent around.

#14. Idiots

Caligula's Alibi

Pleasance Courtyard @ 14.15

Another company founded on East 15's Acting and Contemporary Theatre course, in the last few years Caligula's Alibi have won several awards and started to make a real name for themselves. Idiots is a raucous, absurd, irreverent piece about Dostoyevski, his work, his life and his afterlife. It centres on his most autobiographical piece, The Idiot, and uses it as a lens through which to see a certain vision of a purgatory-bound Fyodor whose benefit claim is being examined by a Bureaucrat forcing confrontation of several age-old demons. 

Jonnie Bayfield's performance as the famed writer - and as his character Prince Myshkin, and also as a form of existentialistic cabaret host - is something to behold. Although that said, his Dostoyevski is rather disparaging of blogs... Ahem. Awkward. Well, as he said, these days everyone has an opinion! It is a brilliant performance subverting any notion you may have had of the fourth wall, audience anonymity and passivity, natural plot progression etc. etc. etc.! Stewart Agnew, Adam Colbourne and Jessica-Lee Hopkins are fantastically theatrical in their own gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed roles. The performance is underscored tirelessly by Jonathan Hopwood live on distorted guitar, kick drum and various other noisemakers.

It is a passionately irreverent, comedically tragic look at the life and death of this great - or bad - man. How will he be judged? That's up to you. 

Creators Will Cowell and Jonnie Bayfield have produced a wickedly funny, theatrical, unpredictable, crude, intelligent piece of theatre. Caligula's Alibi once again prove that they are a force to be reckoned with.

That's the lot! Fourteen exciting pieces of theatre from some extraordinary artists. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe should formally be appointed one of the great wonders of the world; it truly is one of the greatest catalysts of and platforms for new work. The artists who take part are often doing so at great financial, social and personal cost and all involved deserve to be applauded. I simply cannot wait until next August for another summer of risk-taking, rule-breaking, inspiring theatre. 

edfringe.com

Double-bill part one: #6. Constellations

Constellations by Nick Payne

Premiere:  Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London (13 January 2012)

Published by Faber and Faber 

A double bill of two tremendous Royal Court plays today to make up for lost time. First off is Nick Payne's stunning Constellations, one of the Royal Court's big successes of the past few years. It was originally produced in the intimate Upstairs space, and then quickly transferred to the Duke of York's in the West End, followed by a Broadway run, a U.K. Tour, and tomorrow finishes its second West End run at the Trafalgar Studios.

Nick Payne's concise two-hander tells the infinite stories of Marianne and Roland's relationship through quantum multiverse theory. Payne fits more into this short play than many writers can fit into epics, dealing with notions of free will, friendship, love and bee sex, all with incredible intellect but more importantly, with heart. The centre of it all is a very real boy-meets-girl romance, which grounds the complex scientific concepts in relatable human experience. 

At one point Marianne, explains multiverse theory; “every choice, every decision you’ve ever and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes”. Payne, in a stroke of brilliance, puts this theory into action.

Through the heart of the often hilariously juxtaposed repetitions is the electric pulse of real human pain, and this is what makes this play so exhilarating.

In this one relationship, you see infinite possibilities play out. Take their meeting, for instance. They meet at a barbecue. The first time you see the scene play out, Roland shuts Marianne down, saying he is in a relationship. Then you see the same scene again, but Roland has just come out of a relationship. Then he's married. Then, finally they are able to get passed the start of the conversation as neither of them has reason to object. This patten plays out across the play as the focus falls on key events; what they do after their first date, one of them cheats on the other, they meet again and may or may not get back together, and so on. The story itself is touching without being sentimental. Payne uses this framework to discuss free will and scientific theories, but does so as if he is exploring the options, playing with it to figure it out, rather than having preconceived answers that he is serving to the audience. 

Through the heart of the often hilariously juxtaposed repetitions is the electric pulse of real human pain, and this is what makes this play so exhilarating.

While we see the chronological trajectory of the relationship, we occasionally jump into the future, working backwards as the final days of the relationship are revealed. Marianne is terminally ill, and Payne explores all the depths of this unflinchingly. Payne's final kicker is that time itself, in quantum multiverse theory, is not how we conceive it; it is not a straight line. He delivers this in one final hopeful scene. 

The writing is a gift to creatives; it is meticulously written and structured but leaves incredible freedom to the actors and director to play with it to find their own understanding of the characters. This seems perfect; there are as many different versions of this play in performance as there are possibilities in the multiverse. That is exciting, confident writing. 

Payne's play is sensitive and clever, and certainly cememnts Payne's reputation as one of our very best contemporary playwrights. I would urge you, if you can, to get to see one of the last performances of Michael Longhurst's stunning production at the Trafalgar Studios. If you can't, grab a copy of the script and discover your own multiverse. 

Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins in the original West End production

Runs at the Trafalgar Studios until Saturday 1 August 2015. Tickets available here.

Buy on Amazon here.

#5. The Pitchfork Disney

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Cosmo
Disney in the 2012 revival.

The Pitchfork Disney by Philip Ridley
Premiere: Bush Theatre, London (2 January 1991)
Published by Methuen Drama

Philip Ridley's debut play, The Pitchfork Disney, was a controversial hit when it premiered at the Bush Theatre in 1991, and Edward Dick's 2012 revival at the Arcola was heralded as a prophecy that had come of age. Aleks Sierz credits it with sparking the new wave of in-yer-face writing during the 1990s from writers like Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. Is all this praise really due?

It is without a doubt a bold debut, announcing the arrival of an audacious new writing talent. Ridley sets it in a dimly lit room in the East End of London, inhabited by infantilised twins Presley and Haley Stray who fantasise they are the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Their agoraphobia is extreme; the only time either of them leaves the flat is to restock on chocolate or the medicine their parents used to take.

"You know why the ghost train is so popular? Because there are no ghosts. Once you know that you can make a fortune." Cosmo

They live stably in the stagnancy of exchanging stories about the past, their dreams, and horror stories of the outside world to keep reality at bay. That is, until Presley spots a beautiful young man on the street outside who is apparently sick, and invites him in. It is Cosmo Disney, a sequinned perfection who makes a living eating insects alive onstage. Cosmo, along with his sinister associate Pitchfork Cavalier, aggressively invades the safety of the twins world. Worse still, Cosmo is drawn to Haley's vulnerability and knows exactly how to exploit Presley's attraction to him.

The power play between the characters is fascinating. Ridley sets up a very dynamic relationship of mutual reliance between Presley and Haley in the first section, before disrupting it in Presley's desire to please Cosmo. Cosmo brings with him a different bag of tricks for surviving the world, which he demonstrates for Presley. His ethos in life is this: "You know why the ghost train is so popular? Because there are no ghosts. Once you know that you can make a fortune."

Mariah Gale (Haley) & Chris New
(Presley) in the 2012 revival.

What is truly impressive is Ridley's ability to marry harrowing psychological realism with poetic fantasy. Presley and Haley have regressed to childishness, living in the house of their dead parents. His depiction of their curious mental state and their desperation to rediscover the comfort and safety of childish innocence, is shrewdly accurate. The centrepiece of the play is Presley's mammoth monologue where he invents the beautiful but cruel child murderer, the Pitchfork Disney himself, in a story which climaxes in the destruction of the world in nuclear fallout, before ending with invincible solitude as the only survivor.

Ridley's writing is intensely poetic. Writing of this potency is rare even in from the more experienced playwrights, yet Ridley shows his unequaled ability to conjure even the most disturbing images. From the sizzle of burning snakes, to the crunch of cockroaches being eaten alive, to the howls of rabid dogs, his imagery is unique, expressive and affecting. There is something primal and visceral in the imagery Ridley uses that doesn't weaken with age - it grabs something deep in your soul and refuses to loosen its grip.

The play itself, in all its surrealist strangeness and storytelling fervour, is like a nightmare itself. It seems to exist in the nowhere world of dreams, where the recognisable is suddenly alien and the cruelness of life is uncensored. Ridley finds a palette of aggressive imagery and characters caught in dream-state. The gothic vision of East London with its echoes of Cold War paranoia, desperate violence and sexual hysteria is rooted in a wider commentary on a society of anxiety and fear. Nothing is gratuitous - it is meticulously economic storytelling. Ridley's prophecy, over two decades on, still feels timely.

What is truly interesting about this play, and indeed all three in the unofficial 'East End Gothic Trilogy' - The Pitchfork Disney, The Fastest Clock in the Universe and Ghost From a Perfect Place - is that for all the imagery of post-apocolyptic worlds and abandonment, the plays are still very much set in the real world. This is interesting when compared to later plays like Mercury Fur which are in fact really set in some sort of dystopian apocalyptic future. The Pitchfork Disney experiments with these ideas, but there is something even more haunting in the fact that they are fantasies in the minds of his characters.

The Pitchfork Disney is a modern masterpiece; it is, in fact, little wonder that it is credited with rewriting the rules of British theatre.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Cosmo) and Mariah Gale (Haley) in the 2012 London revival.

Buy on Amazon.
Philip Ridley's new play, Tonight With Donny Stixx, will play at the Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. Find out more here.

#2. How To Hold Your Breath.

How to Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris
Premiered at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square (4 February 2015)
Published by Faber & Faber

I was lucky enough to see Vicky Featherstone's production of How to Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court in Spring this year, and found it quite a perplexing piece. Despite the confident production and impressive performances from Maxine Peake and cast, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It is with this in mind that How To Hold Your Breath is play number two in the Play-a-Day project!

Zinnie Harris' play is what you might call an 'ideas play' - and there are certainly a lot of ideas in it. The main arc centres around an economic crash on a scale as yet unseen, which turns the entire Eurozone into a kind of post-apocolyptic, lawless mess. This is within the concept of a Book-of-Job-like struggle between an apparent demon, Jarron (which interestingly means 'cry of rejoicing'), and Dana, who refuses to let him settle a perceived debt after he mistakes her for a prostitute and sleeps with her. But Dana has more important things to worry about, like an interview for a new grant to fund her study of customer-business relationships. After the disastrous interview, perplexingly she is asked to Alexandria for a follow up interview. Dana's pregnant sister, Jasmine, travels through the failing Europe with her, and a hapless, useless guide-come-guardian angel of a Librarian pops up along the way with recommendations of good self-help books, failing to be any sort of help.

There are some moments of incredibly passionate writing, which reveal the depth of Harris' powers.

Shortly into her journey, she discovers the banks have collapsed overnight. They have no money, no transport, no food and an increasingly desperate need to get out. They become refugees, forced into degradation. All of this, Dana believes, is as a result of Jarron trying to force her to beg for his money. All the while, Dana stays focussed on the interview - if only she can get to Alexandria and get the job all will be fine. Meanwhile, the Librarian is always on hand with a wealth of wittily titled 'How to...' books which, inevitably, fail to help Dana.

Maxine Peake (Dana) and Michael Shaeffer (Jarron)

It is a play about its ideas, not about its characters; each character becomes more of a symbol. Jarron seems to represent the demonic reduction of relationships to financial transactions, the Librarian a sort of inert guiding light married to the consumerist ideology of quick fixes, Jasmine and certainly her unborn child some sort of fragile, damaged purity. And what of Dana herself? Well, her insistence that she can find her way back to the old order, that she will get a job and get paid and be able to buy a nice new flat and solve everything, and her focus on hating what she sees as an external aggressor that is destroying a healthy way of life... To me, this seems to make her a confused symbol of the old order itself; crumbling, dehumanising, desperate - but insistent.

While Harris' primary focus may not be on the characters but on what they stand for, her ear for dialogue is unique; it has a rhythm and a patter that is somehow heightened just enough to be perceptible, but not enough to feel wholly alien. There are some moments of incredibly passionate writing, for instance in Jasmine's tirade after she miscarries her child, which reveal the depth of Harris' powers.

In the very final moments of the play, Dana finally gets to start the interview we have seen glimpses of throughout. But at what cost? Her unborn nephew has perished. Her sister drowned. Europe has fallen. She is no more than a shell of what she used to be, pumped up on adrenaline administered by a demon. Should she in fact, as the Librarian tries to convince Jarron over her dying body, be left to die? Would that not be kinder? Caught between being tempted by the jewels of consumerism and running from them, she finally gives in to the tempting demon. If we stop thinking of her as a person, divorce ourselves of the instinctive responses, and think of her as a symbol of a dying system... Are we really satisfied that this is the best we can do? Could we not let it die, and in its wake find something new?

Of course, the playwright seems to strongly sit in the 'tear it up and start again' camp, and pushes her morality through to the end. What's missing from this debate altogether is the counterargument, as hell-bent capitalists are turned into economic refugees. It is a shame there is not more of a sense of debate. Harris does hold a lot back in terms of answers to the small questions, perhaps with a view to leave the focus on the big issues, but the danger is that the audience or reader may get sidelined by her more ostentatious ideas.

Harris presents us with a harrowing potential future if we carry on as we are going, in a play full of ambiguity, surprising wit and theatricality. Harris' dialogue style is distinctive and her voice as a playwright is powerful, even unique. The play itself will naturally divide audiences and readers for its disturbing political and cultural resonance - and will potentially frustrate some for having its heels firmly dug in on one side of the fence. In production, too, it will certainly present a challenge. It is exciting writing, though - I'll certainly be rushing to get tickets for Harris' next play!

Maxine Peake (Dana) and Christine Bottomley (Jasmine) in Vicky Featherstone's production.

Buy on Amazon here.

#1. Blink

Original cast: Harry McEntire and Rosie Wyatt

Blink by Phil Porter

Premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh (2 August 2012)

Published by Oberon Modern Plays

So here goes, play number one is Phil Porter’s Blink, a punchy two-hander. Blink tells the story of outsiders Jonah and Sophie. Jonah moves from his sheltered Presbyterian home to a flat Leytonstone, East London. Sophie had lived with her father, until his recent death. With the unbidden delivery of a video baby monitor, connected to a camera in Sophie’s flat, Jonah begins to observe her while she pretends to be unaware. Eventually the safety found in the distance of this voyeurism is disturbed when Jonah figures out that she is in the flat upstairs, and their connection spills out into the real world.

"Love is not a cast iron set of symptoms. Love is whatever you feel it to be. Love is neither dirty nor clean." Jonah

The first line comes from Jonah; “This is a true story, and it’s a love story.” This playfully opens what is a wonderfully theatrical play, turning the characters’ audience address into two people confiding in the audience their own experience of a relationship. As a form of memory play, Porter relishes the opportunities for dissonance in the recollection of events between Jonah and Sophie, and finds real humour and silliness in their story. Porter has mastered audience address in this piece, creating a real depth and need in his characters.

For the first part of the play Jonah and Sophie seem to be in separate worlds, not engaging with the other. Then suddenly, the worlds cross over, with both Jonah and Sophie filling in for characters in the other’s story but without necessarily fully becoming them. There is a rather fun stage direction on the first instance of this; “If there’s a brief moment of confusion at the point of transition, all the better.” There are clear indications throughout the script that the piece acknowledges its own theatricality, which opens up lots of opportunities for play in performance. It also bridges the gap in the storytelling, allowing key scenes to become immediate rather than recounted.

Eventually, of course, the two characters interact themselves, as their stories gradually align. This process is beautifully drawn by Porter; he finds all the opportunities for mundane absurdity and surprise in the inevitability of their meeting. It is then even sweeter when the two finally have a conversation, decoding the layers of fantasy the audience have been complicit in them building around themselves.

Porter delivers one final surprise, just as it seems the play may veer off into sentimentality. There is no fairy tale ending; no neat bow. There is a feeling in this that the audience is being given the story up until now, but it will go on and who knows what might happen next week, or next year. It lives up to Jonah’s description of love in his opening speech; “Love is not a cast iron set of symptoms. Love is whatever you feel it to be. Love is neither dirty nor clean.”

With that description in mind, it then becomes apparent that while telling the central, albeit unconventional ‘love story’, Porter examines other forms of love in Jonah and Sophie’s lives. Be it their relationship with their parents, estate agents, doctors, random strangers that they collide with in the street, or the mangy fox that lives in the garden.

In this emerges the idea of love growing out of a need. Jonah and Sophie certainly need each other, and indeed have a certain need for the other characters that cameo in their lives – yes, even the mangy fox! But that said, in Porter’s play that doesn’t diminish the validity of the love. The final resolution suggests a very natural ebb and flow of relationships, and through even the most fleeting of these relationships we may come to find a better understanding of who we are.

Photo by Sheila Burnett

Buy on Amazon here.