Fringe Friends

Joe & Caitlin see shows and talk about them.

[fringefriends]

Derby Day

Derby Day is on at Gilded Balloon until 31st, at 15.00. Tickets are £10. Caitlin saw the show on the 7th.

“Although the cast give mostly skilled and emotional performances, the play itself is outrageously melodramatic - reveal after reveal, fight after fight, it’s enough to give the audience emotional whiplash, and by calling in tragedy on tragedy manages to avoid giving any sort of interesting commentary on any single one.”

You can find the full review on Broadway Baby.

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Fault Lines

Fault Lines is on at Basic Mountain until 31st (not 11th, 13th, 18th, 19th or 25th), at varying times. Tickets are £10-£13. Caitlin saw the show on the 6th.

“The patter of the conversation is great and the characters are real, distinct people for the audience to root for, but the story itself builds and builds until the final third, when the audience are slapped around the face with a relentless series of twists and reveals.”

You can find the full review on Broadway Baby.

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Clairvoyant

Clairvoyant is on at C Nova until 31st, at 15.55. Tickets are £6.50-£10.50. Caitlin saw the show on the 6th.

“Each character is strong, and there’s no doubt by the end that Mackenzie is a capable and flexible comic actress - it just would have made more sense to sell the whole thing as a one-woman sketch show, rather than mould it into the flimsy pretence of having something more to say.”

You can find the full review on Broadway Baby.

[fringefriends]

Ross & Rachel

Ross & Rachel is on at Assembly, George Square until 31st (not 17th), at 12.30. Tickets are £6-£11. Caitlin saw the show on the 6th.

I’m writing this in Assembly’s (very very nice) lounge, and I can see some of the show’s team; they’re so close, I could call them over. Maybe I will, might show them this.

Ross & Rachel is very, very clever and its single actor, Molly Vevers, really carries what is already an expertly crafted script. Vevers plays both halves of a couple in their forties - they’re sort of actual Ross and Rachel from Friends, which works as a frame of reference for what must be 90% of audiences. It’s really smart, actually - because you know the couple, and you saw them over those ten years, you already know their whole backstory, their personalities; so it doesn’t matter that they’re both played here by a woman from Scotland in a dressing gown.

This is no Victor/Victoria - the two dialogues weave together, and are (thankfully) not gendered at all - apart from a few phrases which call back to the sitcom. It’s very honest about the realities of relationships - as the flyers promise - and if it wasn’t for being a little heavy on the swearing, the dialogue would be perfectly pitched. Vevers is really enjoyable to watch, and swings through the solo performance with ease.

Bit that wasn’t that clever: the stage is set with nothing except a round, shallow pool of water, six tealights (three either side) and some fairylights overhead. Gradually, Vevers lowers herself into the water, and washes her face and hair with it so that by the end she has gone from entirely dry to almost entirely wet. I’m almost definitely missing something here, but I have no idea how that connected to the piece.

Bit that was very clever: after Ross has (spoilers!) gone into hospital, there’s a segment of dialogue which I can only assume must be printed as one word per line: ‘How is...?’ ‘Sugar?’ ‘Diagnosis.’ ‘Coffee?’ Eventually the words move to just become ‘Coffee? Coffee? Coffee?’ again and again, at each member of the audiences. Vevers keeps her pitch level; each ‘Coffee?’ is delivered identically. As a result, a rhythm starts to emerge that sounds a lot like a heart monitor, which can’t be a coincidence. Suddenly, Vevers stops. The silence is palpable. 

Other bits: there’s some parts that are described that you then realise were one of the pair’s dreams. That’s okay, it works, but it’s used a few times so that by the climax - where it would be most powerful - it’s pretty easy to guess what’s gone on. That said, the dream segments are the best written; the bit about the key will make you squirm.

[fringefriends]

Jethro Compton presents Sirenia

Sirenia is on at C Nova until 31st, at 19.25 and 20.25 each day. Tickets are £7.50-£13.50. We saw the show at 19.25 on the 5th.

Caitlin

People have been banging on at me to see a Jethro for ages now and I never have because I’m a cheapskate and it all seems a bit much for me. This ticket was free (thanks Sophie!) so we went. 

It was a good decision. Seeing a Jethro is basically not like seeing a Fringe show at all because they’re site-specific with a decent set rather than your usual students shuffling tables through a curtain. Like, normally I don’t even care that much about set but the inside of a lighthouse (is there a real word for that?) for Sirenia was amazing, from the impressively realistic clutter to the backlit shutters to indicate the weather outside.

Buuuuut when the best part of your show is the set, you know you haven’t quite nailed it. Sirenia is clunky in its writing - scene changes are covered by expositional radio news reports, and the parallels in the story might as well have neon signs lit over them as they’re so heavy-handedly pointed out to us. Plus, the ‘twist’ at the end was a bit underwhelming. 

Rob Pomfret does a stunning turn as lighthouse-keeper Isaac; he’s fraught with emotion, and plays perfectly to the size of the tiny room. Evie Tyler, as the mysterious girl he brings in from the storm, is at her best when shivering and holding on for life and a little grating whenever she has more to say. That said, I’m fairly sure any melodrama on her part was down to an unclear character rather than lack of ability. It is Jethro, after all. 

Joe

I mean, yeah. That pretty much covers it: however gorgeous your set and tech (those shuttered windows, nnnnngghh) it’s a bit of a waste of time if you’re gonna use it to news-report-exposition your way through a predictable story.

That said, my current obsession with darkness in theatre found plenty to enjoy once the power died in the lighthouse (no, I don’t think there is a word) leaving the only light sources a torch on the floor and the occasionally-passing beacon outside the shutters. In any larger space you’d have lost everything in the dark, but when you’ve got a dozen people squished onto benches less than a metre from your face, a bit of torchlight sets a beautifully cinematic scene in which for Pomfret to tell his tragic should-have-saved-her-but-didn’t tale.

[fringefriends]

CUT

CUT is on at the Underbelly, George Square until 31st (not 18th), at varying times. Tickets are £9-£13.50. We saw the show at 18.00 on the 5th.

Joe

Well, this was one hell of a show to pick for my first of the Fringe. We’re met by an usher who leads us to an obscure room deep in the uni, warns that we will be in total darkness, and that if we have to leave we should shout the safe-word ‘CUT’. 

My favourite Theatre Thing right now (fueled mainly by my sheer adoration of Christopher Brett Bailey’s utterly life-changing This Is How We Die) is creative use of darkness, and CUT certainly tried its darnedest in that department. Moments in total darkness, often with roaring, distorted sound, were both tense and intense, the audience straining their remaining senses to guess where the single performer would be when the lights came back up. 

It’s definitely got the potential to be a pretty effective way to tell a story about being stalked, and a sequence playing on the inability to see through a window at night without turning off the lights verged on brilliance - but ultimately however intelligently you use your total darkness, you’ve still got to maintain that when the lights are back on. 

Don’t get me wrong, none of it was bad, not even close, but it wasn’t ever completely immersive. I think a lot of this was the decision to seat audiences down either sides of a strip of stage. Looking across into the faces of other audience members is always a sure reminder that you’re in a theatre, and once you’ve remembered you’re in a theatre (and not home alone with a stalker outside) it’s all too easy to look at a woman clambering on the floor making a clingfilm spiderweb and see... just that, instead of the poetic image she’s trying to create.

Caitlin

Yeah, the spiderweb bit was definitely the moment where I stopped taking it too seriously. CUT scared the hell out of me to start with - if you tell me I can’t leave without a safe word and then throw me into total darkness then yeah, I pretty much sh*t myself. I spent most of the first ten minutes trying to stay conscious and stop shaking.

Eventually, the dark episodes feel familiar, and you can concentrate on the show. That said, you’re never really allowed to get comfortable - the short scenes separated by pitch black are a relentless ambush on the senses. Weirdly, the longest scene being the climax of the story - the meeting of the hunter and the hunted - meant that it was one of the least tense, as the lights stayed on for more than a few minutes. 

It should be said that Hannah Norris is phenomenal in this. Seriously, she’s warm and then absolutely insane and then she’s smiling again. She welcomes you in and says that ‘Hannah’ is outside, waiting to come in and honestly it took me a while to be sure that there wasn’t more than one woman performing - that’s how cleanly she flips character, or personality, or mood or whatever.

CUT is confusing, and sometimes this works. Sometimes it becomes dull - the episodes about the tiny woman with the scissors don’t make a lot of sense along with the rest of the narrative so I sort of stopped paying much attention to those, mostly worried that Norris was going to do something dangerous with the pair of sharp silver scissors in her hand. (I’m a nervous audience member, you might have noticed?)

For a piece that discusses a woman being stalked by a man, sexually assaulted and then wreaking her violent revenge on him, there wasn’t much about gender in there. I’m still not sure if it was refreshing or disappointing that way, but it meant that I took more away from the visceral elements of the play than from the story it was telling, even though the script is fantastically constructed. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though every element of CUT is absolutely on point, it doesn’t all meld together that well.  

[fringefriends]

Riding the Hype Train: Caitlin

Less than 24 hours before we arrive at the Fringe, Caitlin finally gets her shit together - here’s the five (and a bit) shows she’s got high hopes for this year.

The Main Yvette

I’m always super keen to see shows about how crap and insane being a woman is but this seems the most insane (and least crap) of the bunch. It’s also listed at Performance Art/Game Show so god knows what’s in store, but I’m up for it.  [More information...]

Fake It ‘til You Make it

I’d sell my arm to get a ticket to this. I know it’s getting a lot of hype so maybe this isn’t the most original Fringe pick ever, but it’s an uplifting show about depression and everything I’ve read makes it seem so genuine and real and GREAT. [More information...]

Tonight with Donny Stixx

A new Philip Ridley oh my goddddddd. Sure, it seems like standard Ridley but then ‘standard Ridley’ is basically an oxymoron in itself. I’ll be seeing this on day one, and then probably a couple more times.  [More information...]

Boys

I think this is my favourite play I’ve ever seen. This time I’d like to see it with a cast that really matches the strength of Hickson’s text. [More information...]

This Will End Badly

From Rob Hayes, the writer of 2014′s Awkward Conversations with Animals I’ve Fucked, I have almost no idea what this is about, and I don’t care. Awkward Conversations messed me up for days in the best kind of way. Rob, I put all my trust in you for this to do the same. Don’t let me down. [More information...]

Honorable mention because I only like the title: Me, as a Penguin

I love penguins, but I hate kitschy, gimmicky theatre about coming out/fitting in - it’s time to change the record. 

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Riding the Hype Train: Joe

The five (and a bit) shows Joe’s most excited about after a flick through the programme for this year.

Giant Leap

“Foul-mouthed” comedy about the team tasked with writing Neil Armstrong’s infamous ‘small step’ line... for a faked moon landing. Conspiracy theories tickle me at the best of times, and everything about this promises to be daft and hilarious and right up my street. [More information...]

Face to the Wall

A multimedia retelling of a school shooting. Hands down winner of the Most Interesting Show Blurb award (”Let me tell you what happened. No, don't interrupt. Actually I don't want to talk about it anymore. Fine. There were children. They got shot.”) Face to the Wall could well be a pretty harrowing experience, but most likely not one to miss.  [More information...]

Bruce

Puppetry can either be great or really bad. Ditto mime. Bruce contains both, but the puppet in question here is an adorably gormless block of yellow foam called Bruce. And just like that, I’m sold. [More information...]

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons

Let’s be honest, there was no way I was going to turn down a show called Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. But somehow the premise of Lemons, a world where the number of words you say in your lifetime has a finite cap, manages to be even more memorable than its title. Lemons. [More information...]

Moby Alpha

Outer space and classic literature hold almost opposite positions on the list of Things I’m Interested In, so I was sitting on the fence for a while about Moby Alpha, a two-man retelling of Moby Dick set in space. But the only lighting is from LED strips around the visors of the actors, and that I’m definitely into. [More information...]

Honorable mention cause I’ll probably chicken out of actually seeing it: Fiction

It’s in total darkness and you wear headphones. I feel like I’ll regret seeing this, but I’ll also regret not going. [More information...]

[fringefriends]

Previously, on Fringe Friends...

Double-decker stand-up

“Field was forced to acknowledge his own unpreparedness as his reactions to walk-outs became gradually less funny and more bitter… towards the end you could see the light dying behind his hipster-spectacled eyes.”

Bestiality as suicide

“This one-man piece started out as a series of puns, drawing on the niche crossover of jokes about one-night-stands AND dogs, and quickly descended into a pretty disturbing portrayal of the character’s loss of sanity and eventual suicide.”

Two-dimensional tragedy

“Not really a saving grace, but the only thing that kept Red Tap/Blue Tiger from being totally dull was the borderline hilarity of how two-dimensional the characters were. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was a parody.”

Read the whole article over on the Edge, if that takes your fancy.