Lots more
shows on the timetable today, including our first two physical theatre events.
This genre of event tends to involve two words which when combined may send you
screaming. They are French and Mime. But fear not, it’s going to be alright.
Sword And I
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House
This is one
of the major Free Fringe venues – a rambling multi-storey pub south of the old
town, and as with most venues, plastered with posters, flyers, and lists of
show times scrawled on whiteboards and blackboards. The stairwells are somewhat
narrow at the Counting House, and with queues of Fringe goers snaking down them
several floors to street level, it’s a good way to meet people, whether you
like it or not.
Sword And I is a highly entertaining hour of
mime from Bruce Faveau, a tall and agile Frenchman with an exotically
globe-trotting background (and accent). There is a linking storyline of a man
and his incredible (invisible) sword threaded throughout. The sword seems to
confer superpowers on the man, or at least super celebrity. His portrayal of
flying up into the atmosphere using just his body would have shamed the special
effects team on the recent Man of Steel
film.
Not so sure
that the small segment wherein he employs his voice talents to tour a blow-up
globe is so effective, but his vocal sound effect skills are nonetheless commendable
and an excellent complement to his miming ability. A couple of segments – one involving
his highly prominent and mobile Adam’s apple – are not appropriate for
youngsters, so do be aware; there was at least one family in the audience who’d
ignored the 14+ age restriction and were doubtless not looking forward to explaining
to their nippers what the lanky French guy was miming doing to the invisible
lady with his bobbly throat thing.
brucefaveau.com
Brain Sex
Assembly George Square
Or more
accurately, one of them temporary portakabins around the edge of George Square,
so don’t waste time wandering around the magical astroturfed central square
itself, though it does look very pretty with its Spiegel tents and scrubbed-up
carny atmosphere.
BrainSex has
everything a modern popular science show should have: Diagrams! Brain scans!
Actual doctors (on film)! Electrocution! A cheeky live rat! And no Brian Cox.
Timandra
presents a properly researched piece on the differences between the genders - whether apparently real
or perceived – from a variety of perspectives: measurable, biological, social
and so forth. Plus there are filmed sequences involving motorbikes and planes. She
covers chromosomes and cortices, neurons and axons (no, not the old Doctor Who
monsters, more’s the pity), with a variety mixed media (as I understand the
young people refer to ‘bits with films’), costume changes, noiresque torch
singing and finger measuring.
As ever,
yours truly is both fascinated by the subject and afeared of being brought out
of the audience for a Merrick-like display of my uncommonly configured status.
But I need not have feared, as Timandra’s approach is inclusive of the whole
spectrum of sex and gender. Plus some meathead show-off guy was only too eager
to jump up and volunteer for the electric pain test anyway.
Props also
to co-stars Socrates the rat and Giles on the control panel. Extra nibbles for
them both.
Inspector Norse
Assembly George Square
Or more
accurately, one of them big anonymous conference centre / university hall
buildings vaguely near George Square. Follow the chalked directions on the
pavement to venues One, Two and Three (how they think these themed venue names
up, I’ll never know).
Lipservice
Theatre bill Inspector Norse as a ‘self-assembly
crime thriller’ and they’re not wrong. A lot of thought and hard physical effort
has clearly gone into staging this show, much of which (literally) revolves
around a hulking wooden fold-out backdrop which serves as police station, cabin
in woods, morgue and so forth. Also worthy of note is the sheer volume of knitted
items on display, from the inevitable Lund sweater worn by the inspector to the
tree leaves to the knitted props. The coffee was my favourite, even if it did
plop out of the woolly pot in a distressingly scatological manner.
A two-woman show
from Maggie Fox and Sue Riding, this show is an entertaining, silly spoof on all
things Scando, from IKEA (natch) to the Killing
to Bergman to the inevitable ABBA. I probably could have done with less dated
material about the long defunct super group and more spoofing of Nordic Noir
thrillers, but there is still much to recommend: the easy Vic & Bob / Eric
& Ern chemistry of the performers, the silly costumes (I rather liked the
spooky Walpurgisnacht trolls, even if their noses looked rather genitular), and
most of all the sequence involving hapless fluffy animals hitting the front of
the car.
Some of the
scene transitions could possibly do with either a stage hand in black to lend a
hand or else made intentionally more haphazard, the transitions are currently
somewhere between not really slick and not really hilariously clumsy. Most
refreshing to see two older female performers doing this sort of show, and not
leaving it all to the chaps and younger folks. Plus, they are having a mass
knitathon for more woolly props this coming Saturday.
NiteKirk
Greyfriars Kirk
Then we went
off to Mums Great Comfort Food on Forest Road, just round from Teviot Square,
for a la carte sausage and mash. Bespoke bangers are yum.
This left us
just enough time to nip round to Greyfriars to experience a bit of their NiteKirk
set up. Basically they transform the old church into a sort of quiet contemplative
(I’m sorry, I have to overuse the word) ‘space’, for sitting, meditating,
praying and so forth. There are tea lights and sand gardens and origami
Hiroshima cranes and harpists and Latin chants.
All of which
appeals to the Ocelot not one jot, as enforced silence is Kryptonite unto my fidgety,
insecure need to constantly chatter, read, pull faces and generally act like an
ADD sufferer after a few Red Bulls. Herself is far more still and spiritual
than I, so a compromise is reached and we leave after she has soaked up the
benign quietude but before I explode, or at least start humming to fill the ‘space’.
Note of
warning: the Kirk has an oak planked wooden floor, which creaks like a pirate
ship as you walk around. Not conducive to quietly sneaking out of the NiteKirk experience
halfway through in your walking boots, as we discovered. Take slippers.
LEO
Assembly George Square
Or more
accurately in the big theatre building on the southern edge of the square. We
have literally no events in the astroturfed bit at all. Probably because we’re
too tight-fisted.
LEO (I suspect
the capitals are important – is it an acronym?) is our second bit of physical
theatre of the day, and yes it is Mime. And quite possibly French or
French-Canadian. Mime appears to the primary francophone export.
What we get
is an hour of masterful physical strength and balance, combined with a simple
but effective set and some technical cleverness. A man with a briefcase and a
hat sits in a room. He soon discovers the room’s gravity is at 90 degrees to
the rest of the world. Before long he is inching up the wall, levitating by the
ceiling and having great difficulty drinking from a bottle. The performer – I’m
going to call him Mr Leo because I haven’t time to look him up right now – is bloody
fit.
The stage is
divided between the room set wherein he is sliding and hefting his body around
in contravention of the laws of nature, and a full-size screen which twists the
‘real world’ 90 degrees so we can see the world as he experiences it. You
really have to flick back and forth between both to get the full effect. Simply
watching him throw his hat up and down looks magical.
Midway
through, we get some chalk drawing and then later some unexpected CGI
enhancements – a persistence of vision effect toward the end is particularly
effective. Very clever, very skilful.
Greg Proops
Gilded Balloon Teviot
Right to the
top of the highest tower of Hogwarts – sorry, that Teviot building – for a long
awaited (by me) hour with Mr Proops, who once billed his Edinburgh show as One Fine Bitch. Age has not wearied him,
nor blunted his teeth, as he rails against most everything with equal venom.
The audience is not spared his barbs, though I am not a fan of comedy sets
where the comedian repeatedly measures and judges our responses (Oh you didn’t
get that / C’mon people / Wooo tough crowd etc) as I find this just tends to
alienate the crowd.
The ghost of
Bill Hicks rears up a few times, which is always welcome to this old Goat-Boy
devotee, with swipes at Bush, Clinton, Iraq and so forth. Some of it does feel
like a set from the 90s, and some of the American-oriented material – rednecks
and NASCAR for example – went a little over even my Amerophile head. But any
Proops is better than none. Come back to Britain Greg; then you can take the
piss out of us with every bit as much bitter familiarity as you do America and
Ireland. (But maybe drop the attempted Scottish accent)
Real Horror Show
Assembly Roxy
Two reasons
for going to see this late night black comedy theatre: one, it’s brought to us
by the excellent Colin Hoult and two, the title’s a Clockwork Orange gag. In
many ways, this is more like Mr Hoult’s previous comedy shows – a series of
dark, freaky sketches with a small number of fellow performers (in this case him
off of Kinky and Mannish and some other fine people). Where his solo show Characthorse this year is all Gilliamesque
whimsy and comedy, Real Horror Show
displays his talent for macabre in your face characters and bleakness. In retrospect,
it would sit well along TV offerings like Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.
There’s torture,
screaming, chavs, murderers and sellotape, strung together in a shared setting which
I contend is a dystopian future Britain, and Herself counters is the World
Outside Our Window, which I think adequately reflects either our political differences
or at the very least our varying impressions on what a benefits office looks
like. The segment in pitch blackness is atmospheric, but don’t worry, there’s
not too much jumping out at the audience. Or maybe we just got lucky that
night.
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