#beatsnorth

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Amy G on summerhall.tv

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Beats North Review

Beats North at the Roundabout, Summerhall

Three excellent performances are central to this well-constructed, well-balanced piece.  The two acting performances from Assad Zaman and Tom Booth, while they reveal separate stories, intertwine in the stage business and mutual voicing of offstage characters.  Mariam Rezaei orchestrates the show live onstage with a mixture of turntablism and sampling which is fundamental to the integration of the performances and is technically perfect.  The combination generates moments of power, humour and delicacy, allowing the stories to unfold in a framework which offers support and contrast, and which provides both an agency in the drama and an intimate, sometimes teasing commentary.

The twin narratives are coming-of-age stories.  Both actors create the differing vulnerabilities of their characters’ age-groups with aching precision: the gap between about-14 and about-18 must be the one of the biggest social gaps in human lives, especially for boys and especially when Tom Booth’s Jack is a relative innocent and Assad Zaman’s Al is quite worldly – increasingly so as the piece progresses.

The play is about the formation of masculine identity, explicitly about the role played by music in this process but also about the role of others, particularly fathers but also peers.  The social construction of maleness is presented here as resistance to traditional brutalising for the most part, emphasising negotiation and reconciliation as each character is formed and performed.  Nothing po-faced about the production, though: these abstract topics are addressed with tenderness and a beautiful lightness of touch by the director, Amy Golding.  There is an important audio-visual refrain referring to puppetry throughout which serves to highlight the impulsions and discontinuities that little boys are made of.  The stories switch back and forth in alternating timelines, throwing thematic rather than dramatic light on each other.  Golding’s sure direction is also apparent in the onstage but off-story interplay between all three performers, enabling Rezaei’s choral function and drawing the audience into a number of good visual gags. 

It is heartening to see young companies tackling the big issues – and there’s none bigger than culture and identity – with such verve and ingenuity.  Five stars from me.

Alexander Laing

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Lovely Review in the Scotsman for BEATS NORTH! 

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Beats North has been nominated for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence at the Edinburgh Fringe!! 

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Beats North review in The List

A touching theatre double-bill that reminds of the power of music at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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Catherine Love: My top Edinburgh Fringe picks - Blogs - 14 Jul 2014

In addition to our top picks, Catherine Love combs through the Fringe programme with her highlighter to offer some more recommendations

... Another top pick from Catherine Love, Whats On Stage 

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Edinburgh fringe 2014: the hot tickets

Beats North - A Hot ticket for Ed Fringe!