2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #5
House + Amongst the
Reeds
Somalia Seaton & Chino Odimba
Assembly George Square, Box Theatre
Two sisters and a mother reunite in the family home after
one sister has been away for five years, having been incarcerated and dealing
with drug-induced issues in Somalia Seaton’s new work entitled House.
As Patricia (Pat) arrives, she and sister Jemima (Jem) gingerly, in
spits and starts, reunite, slowly developing an old familiar rhythm of sister
bantering, joking, and even duet singing as they remember other times. As Pat (Shvorne Marks) repeatedly assures with
a face shining with newfound pride that all is now well with her and “I’m
focused ... on living,” Mama arrives, unaware that Pat has been invited to help
celebrate her birthday.
The sullen face and tightly pursed lips with a frosty stare frozen
in another direction is Mama’s greeting to her returning prodigal daughter. Her later accusation comes with all the gall
that Michelle Greenidge can muster for her Mama: “You walk into this house, and
the walls come tumbling down.”
No matter how much Jem (a sincere, shy but persistent
Rebecca Omogbehin) tries to awaken recognition in her Mama that she might be
glad to have her other daughter back again, the more it becomes clear that the
chasm may be too great for the two of them to cross. Over a birthday dinner, eruptions explode,
silence deafens, and truths long kept as secrets ever so slowly begin to emerge
and then to spill as a waterfall.
Powerful performances abound in this spell-bounding drama of
a family’s unveiling of an unspoken sin that has poisoned their lives far too
long. With sensitive, well-timed
direction, Róisin McBrinn has assured that this new play has a strong birthing
and a promising future.
Rating: 4 E
On the same bill as a second act is Chino Odimba’s Amongst the Reeds, a strangely intense
but overall unsatisfying piece about two immigrant teenagers living on the
streets without proper papers. Rebecca
Omogbehin is a Somalian girl who meets in a soup kitchen a dirty, disheveled,
and very pregnant Vietnamese girl, Gillian (Jan Le). The story jumps about in time and place with
moments of the extreme realism of birth pains and screams and of surreal
replays of the girls’ first encounter, as if some or all of this may be a
dream. What is real and what is not is
at time unclear as Gillian lives hidden away from authorities in a cluster of
bags and blankets, hidden in reeds.
While the horrors of young immigrant women seeking desperately asylum is
visually visceral, this particular story is much weaker than the performances
that these two actors give in attempts to bring it to life on the stage.
Rating: 2 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #6
Verge of Strife
Nick Baldock
Assembly George Square, Two
“You have to know how much more I feel things than other
people,” the extremely handsome man of twenty with face fair and curly locks to
his shoulders demurs to his friends.
With language rich in metaphor and flowing with such ease as if it could
be actually sung, Nick Baldock’s Verge of
Strife is a beautifully moving, naughtily funny, and totally engaging
glimpse of the too-short life of the English Edwardian poet, Rupert
Brooke. Often employing the sonnets and
letters of the man himself, the script and the direction positions the young
poet as an Apollo -- the sun god and keeper of poetry, music, and truth (his of
course). At the center of his own universe,
Rupert is constantly encircled by his many friends, admirers, and both lovers
and would-be lovers (female and male).
“I know how to make everyone like me,” he admits at one point, then adding
coyly. “Being young and beautiful helps
of course.”
And stunningly beautiful in person and in performance is
Jonny Labey (BBC actor famous for his role on “EastEnders”) as the charmingly
self-centered Rupert. Often in pose
almost as if a Greek statue in some gallery, he brings an intensity that
reaches out into the audience and touches each person glued to his every smirk,
glance, and move – each often made for full dramatic effect on his audience, both
on and off stage. “They dance and dance
and dance around me,” Rupert says of his many friends. Yet the pained looks he gives them, the
ambivalence he expresses on whom to love and when, and the outbursts of
deep-set emotions that sometimes erupt in anguish and anger reveal his own struggles
in knowing and accepting who he is as a bisexual man of high words in the post-Victorian
period of aristocratic England.
An outstandingly talented ensemble of Fergus Leathem, Kirsten
Callaghan, Emma Barclay, and Sam Warren play a variety of the literary and
socialite satellites revolving around the life of Rupert in his Cambridge and
beyond days. We meet him and them on his
twentieth birthday and follow their revolutions around Rupert until the fields
of Greece claim him in 1915. Their
voices pepper the tale of his life’s story with short remembrances and personal
takes, with one outwardly gay admirer recalling, “Rupert was not nearly as nice
as people remember, but he was a lot more clever.”
For a Fringe performance, Verge of Strife has set (Emeline Beroud) and lighting (Matt Cater)
designs quite elaborate and period appropriate to support the excellent
directorial decisions of Quentin Beroud.
Scenes, friends, and aspiring/rejecting lovers shift, blend, and even
intertwine in the manner of a flowing verse.
We are left with lasting, haunting, mesmerizing images and words of this
renowned poet now remembered most for sonnets written on his way to a grizzly
death in the Great War, words such as “If I should die, think only this of me.”
Rating: 5 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #7
F*cking Men
Joe DiPietro
Assembly George Square, Two
While audiences may be flock to F*cking Men drawn by the advertised promise of a “frank, funny, and
full-frontal play” (all of which of course is true), what they soon discover is
there is much more under the covers than just a few naked bodies. The script of Joe DiPietro (prolific,
award-winning playwright and book writer of Memphis)
and the current Fringe three-man cast (cut from the original 2009 cast of ten)
combine to tell a spellbinding, moving, and message-rich set of stories about
the loves and lives of contemporary gay men.
Ten interlocking scenes are each announced by a lone man in
some state of undress standing at audience’s edge as he delivers one line that
will play an important part in the subsequent scene. Each paired love scene retains a character
from the past and introduces yet another as the play’s men continually search
for their next trick, one-time relief, or love of their lives.
A closeted soldier is quick to say in the opening scene to
his young, gorgeous pick-up as the paid-date unzips his trembling pants, “I’m
not gay ... I’m in the army ... I just want to try this once.” His journey to acceptance of self and a
possible lifelong love with this same rent boy will be just one of the stories
that will fade in and out of the many scenes.
Along the way, we will meet a tutor and his student, that student and
his Grindr hook-up, an aspiring playwright with a porn star, an out playwright
and a closeted actor – all who help weave stories of men who are hot for
“fan-f*cking-tastic” sex but who are as often looking for some way to do more
than to “simply connect.”
Harper James, Haydn Whiteside, and Richard De Lisle play the
ten characters in such ways as to portray individual personalities that are
distinct and make it quite easy for the audience to discern and remember who is
whom, even as one scenes blends into the next.
As heated scenes alternate between darkened park bench to steamy sauna
to rented hotel or dorm room and on to expensive penthouse apartment, the
entwined men and their stories lay bare such issues as loneliness, fidelity,
and authenticity of and to self that not only gay men, but all men and women
face as they seek, find, and struggle to keep the love relationships of their
lives.
Be very clear, F*cking
Men will titillate and delight with its hot scenes of love-seeking and
love-making between these three beautiful men; but do not be surprised when a
tear or two emerges in the final scene when one soldier finally bursts out of
that closet door because a rent-boy has found a sugar daddy who does not want
his body, but only to ensure his happiness.
Rating: 5 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #8
The Freckles Effect
Mel Lawman (Book & Lyrics); Matt Finch, Owain Coleman
& Tom Cory (Music)
Triple Dare Musical Theatre Productions
Greenside Emerald Theatre
Part Matilda, part
Annie, and largely a feel-good story about
an abandoned, past-around foster girl named Anne Drew, The Freckles Effect sets out to be a ___, toe-tapping musical set
in the 1930s coastal town of Bibury-by-the-Sea in South Devon, England. Mel Lawman’s script follows the now-familiar
trail of an orphaned girl (yes, with the required red hair and this time
freckles, too) who shows up in a community where her forward, adventurous,
non-conforming ways soon make her a pariah to jealous kids and moms alike but
eventually wins all their hearts and a set of loving parents. The playwright’s lyrics and the music by a
team of Matt Finch, Owain Coleman & Tom Cory are pleasant enough for the
young-voiced cast; but few pieces of the twenty-plus hit home for gold.
The Edinburgh Fringe attracts casts of all ages and
abilities; and while this large 25+ ensemble boasts of former West End Matilda actors, the young voices overall
are more like those found in a solid school production than on a major stage. Choreography of the Dorothy Coleborn School
of Dancing (Annette Hind and Heidi Postlewaithe) is often impressive for such a
young cast but not up to big-stage standards in design or execution.
Overall, for a family outing with younger kids pre-teen, The Freckles Effect bears promise of a
fun afternoon at the Fringe. For anyone
looking for a new musical that has wide appeal of age and interest, best to
keep searching the Fringe catalogue.
Rating: No Rating in
Respect to Young Cast
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #9
The Emerald Diaries
John Murray & Tony Delicata (Book); Willie Logan
(Music); John Murray (Lyrics)
Greenside Emerald Theatre
A sailor has a night’s leave in Leith and must be back on
ship by 0900. With one night to find his
online love whom he has been faithfully messaging and falling into cyberspace
love, Andrew (Juan Casado Y Barton) sets out to the Irish dancers audition
night where his skeptical date, Mary (Aileen Goldie), is waiting to lay eyes on
who her fellow dancers have already nicknamed, “Andy Pandy, the Seafaring
Dandy.” Once there, the aw-shucks style
of Andrew runs up against not only the no-nonsense but increasingly interested
Mary but also right into the ploys of dance troupe manager, Aggie Dooley
(Jacqueline Hannan), a crusty, joke-a-minute widow whose hard exterior hardly
hides her match-making heart inside.
John Murray and Tony Delicata’s The Emerald Diaries follows the no-surprises courtship of Andrew
and Mary through the expected bumps and detours of a typical musical’s,
love-seeking journey. When the
Fringe-allotted hour comes to a near end, so does the story without a
satisfying explanation of how or even if the required happy ending has in fact
occurred.
Fortunately, the oh-hum book is delightfully punctuated by
the Celtic-based music of Willie Logan and the dance of a dozen members of the
Siamsoir and Irish Dance Academy. With
their high stepping and toe stomping, these dancers ensure the evening is a
Fringe fun time for anyone wanting to experience a bit of Ireland as they visit
the theatre’s stage in Scotland.
Rating: 3 E
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