Please, Not the Face
What little laughter Please, Not the Face generates is not even audible over the hubbub of the Wednesday night bar crowd beyond the curtain.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle ****
3BUGS weave a convincing illusion of thrown-togetherness around their production of Brecht’s scathing polemic against class and wealth divides.
Tea Dance ****
A gentle introduction to a couple of simple ballroom dance steps, with two genial instructors and a break halfway through for cocktails and canapés. Just the ticket.
Pas Perdus ****
Do many hands make light work, or do too many cooks spoil the broth? Les Argonautes seem determined to find out, and do it entirely through trial and error.
Edinburgh 2010 – David Leddy and Sub Rosa
In which I talk to writer and director David Leddy, of Fire Exit Ltd about his critically acclaimed show, Sub Rosa (Hill Street Theatre), a Victorian gothic promenade through a dark world of secrets and revolt.
Death of a Samurai ****
If you or I tried cross-pollinating plot elements from Shakespeare and Japanese exploitation cinema with aspects of characters from anime, manga and folklore we’d end up with some hideous, limping mutant thing.
101 ***
If the intention of 101 is to push us to define our own boundaries, it doesn’t really push hard enough; everything’s well within the tolerance of a typical Fringe audience. But it seems more likely the intention is to give people the power to opt out, then show them that they don’t need to use it, even when doing things that might be a little way outside their normal theatre comfort zone.
Sub Rosa ****
Six ghosts stationed around the building recount the tale of the Winter Palace music hall and the power struggle between its manager, Mr Hunter (a Mason) and the newest chorus girl, Flora – and it isn’t a tale for the easily-made-queasy.
Odyssey ****
This is Schrödinger’s Odyssey: it’s neither Homer’s Ancient Greek epic, nor is it wholly Dominic J Allen’s mid-apocalyptic refashioning, yet it’s both.
The Master and Margarita
Where Bulgakov’s novel is a sweeping satire concerned with entire classes and communities, the OUDS production focuses closely on the individual characters: a more dramatic approach, but one that reduces the scope of the themes and ideas from a communal to a capital level.
