TheatreEddys
Goes to the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival:
Mini-Reviews
of 42 Shows Seen
The following are
brief takes on the shows we saw, arranged by how we rated them. We start with what my hubby and I selected
this year as “Best of TheatreEddys’ 2019 Fringe” and then cover the remaining
shows, many of whom still rated a top award of “5 E’s.”
TheatreEddys’ Best Five of the Fringe for 2019
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
Bobby and Amy
Emily Jenkins, Playwright
Emma Blackman Productions
Pleasance Courtyard
 | ||
| Will Howard & Kimberly Jarvis |
Two thirteen-year-olds – both outcasts bullied by classmates (known to
them as “the goats”) – find each other in the loft of a barn and in finding
each other, discover over time that each is in fact not weird but very special. A calf’s miraculous birth changes their lives
as does a regional attack of foot-and-mouth disease on all cattle. Besides playing Amy and Bobby respectively,
Kimberly Jarvis and Will Howard become in instantaneous transformations
numerous other characters from the kids’ cruel bullies to their both caring and
callous parents to the town’s quirkiest and noblest inhabitants. Personalities, voices, stances, and moods
shift in a split second time and again. Bobby and Amy is a tour de force
performance for each actor and an unforgettable hour that packs in its sixty
minutes a story that will live on in the audience’s memories well past their
2019 Fringe experiences.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Cam Harle
Burgerz
Travis Alabanza, Writer and Performer
Hackney Showroom, Producer
Traverse Theatre Company
 |
| Travis Alabanza |
Travis is obsessed with burgers,
determined in the pristine kitchen before us to create the perfect specimen –
one as prescribed in the over-sized, orange cookbook from which Tom reads (a
cis, white man Travis selects from the audience as his on-stage assistant and
confidant). Travis is also obsessive
about finding exactly the right box to hold his soon-to-be-created burger,
quizzing Tom along the way if he has ever felt boxed in, when was the last time
he cried, and just how nervous is he at this very moment and why.
As meat is ground and onions
sliced, Travis – now in a dress and high heels to complement his ruby red lips
and brightly bowed hair – open up step-by-step to Tom about his life as a
transgender and how it is living as a plural person whose gender is always
‘both’ and never ‘either/or.’ While
humor and laughs intersperse their conversation, Travis’ story is in the end
not at all funny but in fact, horrific in what he has had to endure and still
endures today on a daily basis. As
shocking as his stories are where verbal and physical abuses in public are time
and again ignored by passers-by, we all begin to understand the real tragedy is
that Travis as an actor must continue to bring his story to audiences like us
because the general public does not yet realize the boxes that we place others
like Travis on a daily basis and in doing so, ignore their humanity.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Holly Revell
The HandleBards: Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare, Playwright
The HandleBards, Producer
Assembly George Square Gardens
Traveling already nearly 1400
miles this year on bicycle to perform in towns across the U.K., four guys
arrive at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe hauling their props and costumes behind
them to perform William Shakespeare’s Much
Ado About Nothing. Their
imaginative, zany, and absolutely hysterical rendering celebrates the Bard’s
work by their rendering his words in gloriously raucous iambic-pentameter
style. At the same time, the quartet
offers their own ad libs here and there that always seem in full keeping with
this comedy about love sought; love not wanted; and love found, lost, and found
again.
Interchanging roles in
split-second alacrity by using a thousand (or so it seems) clever ways to draw
laughs while still telling the story in methods so clear even a first-timer
never gets lost, these four master actors, acrobats, and clowns make so much
out of nothing that something magical and memorable happens every minute along
the way.
(By the way, there is a female
foursome HandleBards troupe who are making their rounds this summer through the
U.K. countryside with their version of The
Tempest. They too were at the Fringe
but unfortunately had left before we arrived.)
Rating: 5 E
In Loyal Company
David William Bryan, Writer, Performer & Producer
Pleasance Dome
 |
| David William Bryan |
Master storyteller David William
Bryan brings to gripping reality the true life, World War II story of his
great-uncle, Arthur Robinson, an English teenager who too soon became in the
early ‘40s a hero, a prisoner, and a victim of that great war. As seventeen-year-old Arthur, the
writer/actor becomes his uncle as young Arthur tells us about his life in 1941
Livermore, introducing us to all his large and loving family, to his best mate,
and to the girl he loves but cannot gain enough courage to tell her so. But as the Nazis rain their bombs night after
night over Livermore claiming the life of his best pal, Arthur gains the
courage to enlist in to His Majesty’s armed forces; and we follow him around
the world to fight the Japanese in hot, disease-filled jungles.
The writer/performer brings a
stunning ability to describe in full vividness scenes of family gatherings,
partings, and post-war reunions; of horrific nights in underground bomb
shelters; of a ship’s sinking as it is blasted from planes above; and of
grueling, horrendous years in a prisoner-of-war camp. Accompanied by impressive, imaginative sound
and lighting design, Mr. Bryan brings a physicality to his performance that is
breath-taking as he is tossed on the open sea, as he falls on the war field, as
he treads barely alive through jungles, and as he suffers from acquired
TB. Even more memorable, are the
characters he brings to full life – his parents, his best buddy on the battlefield,
his vicious captors. In the end, David
William Bryan tells just one of a million likened stories from those war years
but one that is singularly a lasting, loving tribute to his great-uncle.
Rating: 5 E
Unfortunate: The Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch
Tim Gilvin (Music); Robyn Grant and Daniel Foxx (Book and
Lyrics)
Fat Rascal Theater, Producer
Underbelly Bristol Square
 |
| Robyn Grant & Cast Members |
Watch out, Disney! Ursula is back, and she is ready to reveal
just how sexist, racist, and homophobic your view of the underwater kingdom of
your Little Mermaid actually is. Unfortunate:
The Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch is Robyn Grant and Daniel Foxx’s
laugh-a-minute retake of Ariel’s wish to have legs and to love a prince on
land. Robyn Grant plays the
larger-than-life Ursula with her mighty tentacles swinging furiously and
proudly, bringing an even mightier voice to the music composed by Tim
Gilvin. Disney concepts of what is
beautiful and what is not as well as who is good and who is not are ripped
apart by this exceptional cast of five, most of them playing both primary and
secondary parts. Puppets by Abby Clarke
play a big part in the fun with the entire production being first-rate in every
conceivable respect.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Matt Carey
Other
Outstanding “5 E” Productions Attended and Reviewed
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
 |
| Apphia Campbell |
Black Is the Color of My Voice
Apphia Campbell, Writer and Performer
James Seabright and Play the Spotlight, Producers
Gilded Balloon Teviot
No less than electrifying is the
performance of the show’s creator, Apphia Campbell, as she holds court as Nina
Simone in Black Is the Color of My Voice. Every moment of revealed memories are
performed with stunning intensity as her Nina shuts herself for three days in a
room to seek forgiveness of a dead father she abandoned in his final days on
earth. Sprinkling her arresting story
with a rich array of the songs that defined Ms. Simone’s life – gospel, blues,
jazz, nightclub hits – Apphia Campbell’s voice and persona as the famed singer
grabs and grips the listeners who sit in stunned awe and admiration.
Rating: 5 E
BUZZ
Johan Harsted (Book); Antoon Offeciers & Karen Willems
(Music); Ann-Julie Vervaeke (Film)
KOPERGIETERY, KBbe, Arsenaal/Lazarus, Richard Jordan
Productions. Theatre Royal Plymouth, Big In Begium, Producers
Summerhill
 |
| Charlotte Vandermeersch |
Mattias is OK being Number Two,
being always in the background, and being seen as unremarkable and easily
forgettable by others. As he tells us,
he really only wants to be in the audience of life and never on the stage. After all, his life-long hero is Buzz Aldrin,
the second man on the moon who never is quoted and who hardly anyone now
remembers.
Mattias, happy as a gardener,
suddenly finds himself washed up on the beach of the Faroe Islands, distraught
after losing girlfriend of twelve years who got tired of his lack of
ambition. Settling into a new job in a
factory making souvenir sheep as part of his rehabilitation at a half-way house
for psychiatric patients, Mattias must decide whether to get out of bed and
move on with life or just give up for good.
Charlotte Vandermeersch is
movingly superb in a gender-bending performance as Mattias, supported all along
the way by multi-instrumentalist Karen Williams and by a creative absorbing
background video by film-maker Ann-Julie Vervaeke. The total result is an engagingly beautiful,
thought-provoking story that leaves the audience both drained and inspired
emotionally.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Phile Deprez
DARK PLAY, or stories for boys
Carlos Murillo, Playwright
NEONBOX Theatre Company, Producer
The Space on the Mile
Nick is a fourteen-year-old living
life as an outsider, even in his own house where his room and his computer are
his entire world. On the worldwide net,
he begins to play DARK PLAY, creating other persona who quickly become very
real to unsuspecting men on the other side of the chats – people like
Adam. Nick sees in Adam’s online profile
six words that are an invitation to being with will be a game like neither has
ever played before: “I want to fall in
love.” The game they begin – with Adam’s
having no idea this is a game and not reality – brings consequences that will
prove darker than even Nick could ever imagine as exchanges occur with
increased frequency and intensity between Adam and a girl Nick has created and
becomes online. Emotions rise and stakes skyrocket.
An important 2007 play based on
its original novel, DARK PLAY, or stories
for boys raises issues about online prowling and alternative personality
creations that every teen and parent needs to understand. This cast of five is frightfully real and
believable, with especially the role of Nick a boy who could easily be the teen
son of any audience parent watching.
Rating: 5 E
Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster
Conrad Murray & David Cumming, Co-Directors
Battersea Arts Centre and BAC Beatbox Academy, Creators,
Performers, and Producers
Traverse Theatre Company
 |
| Cast Members |
Mary Shelley’s century-old
classic, Frankenstein, resurrects to
become a modern-age, extremely relevant story as the BAX Beatbox Academy tackles
themes of today’s teenager’s urban isolation, rampant stereotyping, and
social-media infatuation while also retelling Shelley’s story of a genius whose
powers of creation go berserk. With all
the sound effects, music, and instrumentals performed live and only via the
incredibly mind-blowing beatboxing of the six, young musicians/actors, members
of the Academy perform the work they helped create.
Sounds of nature and city swirl
and then explode into the heavy booms and beats of a story about a monster’s
conception, creation, life, and ultimate destruction. Voices that sound forth in countless manners
also sing softly in beautiful harmonies.
Bodies used as instruments also move in choreography that itself relates
the story with vivid fervor. The
mash-up, spontaneous quality of the show conceals what must be thousands of
well-planned, much-rehearsed bits and pieces that together produce a modern
symphony that must be seen and heard to be believed.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Lara Cappelli
Henry Box Brown
Mehr Mansuri, Book and Music; Ben Harney, Director
CTC New York Ensemble
Gilded Balloon Patter House
 |
| The Cast of Henry Box Brown |
A sixteen-member, New York cast
brings the gospel-and-R&B-infused Henry
Box Brown to the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe after an award-winning premiere run
in the Big Apple. While only an hour in
length, the musical is epic in nature as the inspiring, true-life tale of Henry
Box Brown unfolds, starting when the boy was born into 1830s slavery in
Virginia and ending with a miraculous escape to freedom in Philadelphia as a
man is shipped as boxed cargo in the early 1850s.
The strong will, resolve, faith,
and love teeming among the Virginia slaves contrasts with the overall hateful,
heartless owners who control their lives.
However, even among a majority of perpetrators of a nation’s greatest
historical evil emerges a few who stand up to help save lives and win freedom
for their fellow human beings. But it is
Henry’s bravery and his later memoir that will inspire future generations, even
until this day; and it is his determined courage that is the center of this
magnificent musical. Told by a cast with
voices that rise individually heavenward and collectively shake that very
foundation of the small arena, Henry Box
Brown is a new musical crying out to be expanded into a fuller version for
stages all across the globe.
Rating: 5 E
How Not to Drown
Nicola McCartney and Dritan Kastrati, Writers
Thick Skin Productions, Producer
Traverse Theatre Company
 |
| The Cast |
A father worried his
eleven-year-old son will never survive the family’s war-ravaged,
gun-and-gang-filled homeland sends the boy on a harrowing refugee journey to join
the boy’s older brother in England. The
young asylum-seeker’s incredible story bursts to life on a slanted, wooden, and
rotating stage as five actors each assume in random succession the role of the
boy. That boy, Dritan Kastrati – now a
grown man – is one of the five and our overall narrator.
As directed and choreographed by
Neil Bettles (and co-choreographed by Jonnie Riordan) and with the aid of two,
metal fences, scenes play out from a boy’s summer swimming hole to his crowded
nightmare in dark lorries and drenching, retching boats. But after finally landing safely in England,
Dritan’s journey only becomes more difficult as he live through years of social
workers, foster parents, and bullies galore.
Those harsh mileposts in his incredible journey help him decide in the
end what and where home for him ultimately must be.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic
Islander: A New Musical
Finn Anderson (Music & Lyrics); Stewart Melton (Book)
Helen Milne, Producer
Helen Milne, Producer
Roundabout @ Summerhill
 |
| Kirsty Findley & Bethany Tennick |
A young girl gazes at the
shoreline into a sea that she hopes holds her dream for a future somewhere
other than her small, lonely island.
What she finds is an unexpected visitor like none she has ever met, and
immediately her life clearly is never to be the same. Two actors – Bethany Tennick and Kirsty
Findlay – weave an epic story using original music that has deep roots in
Scottish folk, employing onstage technology to live-record and layer their
voices and to create incredibly effective sound effects. Each brings a voice lyrical, pitch-perfect,
and amazingly versatile in range and style.
Their story mixes reality and myth so masterfully and beautifully that
we as audience never fail to believe each fantastical moment. In every respect, Islander: A New Musical deserves to have legs beyond the 2019
Fringe and to float its magical music and story around the globe.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Jazzy Earl
LIMBO: City of Dreams
Finn Anderson, Writer
Royal Conservatorie of Scotland and American Theatre
Project, Producers
Gilded Balloon Patter House
 |
| Cast Members |
Enter a world in the future where
everyone, young and old, is taught not to have a creative thought, not to write
an original song or poem, and not ever to ask ‘why’ or ‘what if.’ One girl defies the system, a girl born to
lead a group of underground dreamers to restore hope and wonder into a dulled
world. Thrilling music, a beautiful and
inspiring story, and an accomplished cast of young actors leave lasting
impressions; but it is especially the powerhouse of an actress, Kate Lynch, who
particularly shines as Imogen, a force who changes the unchangeable world
around her.
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit:
Musical of Musicals
Eric Rockwell (Music); Joanne Bogart (Lyrics); Eric Rockwell
and Joanne Bogart (Book)
Musicality of Chicago, Producer
Paradise in the Vault
Rating: 5 E
Puppet King Richard II
William Shakespeare
Pocket Epics, Producer
PQA Venues@ Riddles Court
 |
| Gregory Grudgeon |
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Kaja Curtis
Photo Credit: Kaja Curtis
Until the Flood
Dael Orlandersmith, Creator and
Performer
Arcola Theatre Production Company
Traverse Theatre Company
 |
| Dael Orlandersmith |
Rating: 5 E
Photo Credit: Alex Brenn
Photo Credit: Alex Brenn
Vulvarine: A New Musical
Robyn Grant (Book); Robyn Grant
& Daniel Foxx (Lyrics); James Ringer-Beck (Music)
Fat Rascal Theatre
Gilded Balloon Patter House
 |
| The Cast |
Songs with lyrics
clever and cute but brutal and biting when needed help tell the story of a
young woman that the world largely overlooks, Bryony Buckle. Wonderfully portrayed by Allie Munro, Bryony
through an evil doctor and the fate of lightning transforms into superhero
Vulvarine and into a destiny to save womanhood from its planned extinction
under the plan of evil-eyed, evil-minded Mansplainer (devilishly and
deliciously played by the show’s co-creator, Robyn Grant). As in Unfortunate,
the entire cast is contagiously wonderful in song, comic action, and
physical acrobatics. While the set and
staging appear at first minimal and simplistic, surprises abound to make the
small-looking show a big-stage winner.
Rating: 5 E
Really Great
Productions Attended & Rated “4.5 E”
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
American Idiot
Green Day, Music & Lyrics
Edinburgh Little Theatre, Producer
Hill Street Theatre
Three teen boys set out to rebel
against American norms, employing the music of punk rock band Green Day to tell
their separate yet intertwined stories of pushing boundaries to often dangerous
limits. Journeys sung are conveyed also
with incredible physicality. Voices
blast with mind-blowing power and whisper with emotional resonance. A Greek-like chorus – all draped in black
from head to toe – performs musically and with choreography in ways both rich
and raw in meaning. Set in a small
venue, this American Idiot takes on
new meaning for a show that usually plays on the big stages of New York,
London, and beyond.
Rating: 4.5 E
Drowsy Chaperone
Bob Martin & Don McKellar (Book); Lisa Lambert &
Greg Morrison (Music & Lyrics)
Kingdom Theatre Company, Producer
Greenside @ Nicolson Square
Fife, Scotland’s Kingdom Theatre
Company returns to the 2019 Edinburg Fringe with a cast of twenty-one and a
full band to present a rousing, joyful, big-smile-producing tribute to the
early days of the Great American Musical.
Drowsy Chaperone, which
debuted on Broadway in 2006 to win five Tonys, takes place in the apartment of
a middle-aged man whose best friends are his vintage records of old
musicals.
Providing us informed history,
juicy gossip, and wry commentary, The Man in the Chair (played delightfully by
Derek Ward) puts on a recording of a fictional, 1928 musical hit, Drowsy Chaperone, which then comes to
full life all around him. The story is
corny and predictable, but the songs – whose styles range from the 1920s to the
1940s – are hummable, toe-tapping, and usually hilarious.
Hats off to a cast members
complete with the required quirky, stock characters as they sing with zeal and
dance with all the kicks, swings, and taps one would expect from that era. The evening is nothing short of a
spirit-soaring success and a genuine tribute to musicals and musical lovers in
general.
Rating: 4.5 E
Heroin(e) for Breakfast
Philip Stokes, Writer & Director
King Brilliant Theatre & Richard Jordan Productions,
Producers
Pleasance Dome
Three flat-mates share an
apartment where Tommy is in cocky control, so sure of his rebellious
superiority at the age of thirty-five but acting as if he is barely
twenty-one. Living with him are his
eighteen-year-old girlfriend and college student, Edie – blonde and cute in a
too-sweet and innocent way – and Chloe, a somewhat sullen but equally beautiful
twenty-something who currently earns her rent money through trading her body at
night.
Tension is high between Edie and
Chloe, and the air is thick in the apartment as intentional insults fly about
amidst the ongoing bragging and egging on by Tommy. Into the scene dramatically enters a visitor,
one highly anticipated with both excitement and some dread. Her daily visits become increasingly
nightmares that none of the three is able to escape.
This revival of Philip Stokes’
2005 Fringe winner is even more gripping, hard-hitting, and heart-pounding in
2019 with its messages about the lures, imprisonment, and ultimate destruction
of drug addictions. A cast of five could
hardly be better under the no-holes-barred direction of the writer
himself. The visitor and her aftermath
leave scenes seared into our memories of just what disastrous effects drug
addictions – like the current ones ravaging all over the world – inevitably
have.
Rating: 4.5 E
I Wish My Life Were a Musical
Alexander S. Bermange (Music, Lyrics, Director, Pianist,
Producer)
Underbelly Bristo Square
What does it mean
to wait three hours in a long queue for a first audition for a musical? How does one feel as an actor when audience
members arrive late and noisily? What is
it like to be an understudy (again), to forget your words mid-song (again), or
to end your night with a body racking in pain from head to toe (again)? These and many other aspects of being an
actor in musicals are revealed through punchy and clever lyrics, laugh-out-loud
humor, and tunes that sound nothing short of Broadway in a new, award-winning
musical from London, I Wish My Life Were
a Musical.
A cast of four
one-by-one rings forth in fine voice and with humorous mannerism, pulling back
the stage’s curtain to provide us the real scoop about life on the musical
stage, from the perspectives of novices and acclaimed stars alike. For any lover of musical theatre, this is a
must-see show and one that hopefully has a long life on stages far and wide.
Rating: 4.5 E
The Letter
Paolo Nani & Nullo Facshini, Creators
Paolo Nani Teater
Pleasance Dome
To add to his 1500+ performances
in at least 35 countries since the show’s 1992 premiere, world-renowned and
much-awarded clown Paolo Nani brings The
Letter to the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe.
In one hour, fifteen similar scenes are repeated, only each is
hilariously enacted via a different theme.
With only a pen and a sheet of paper, a bottle of red wine, and a letter
to be written and mailed to a woman he no longer loves, Paolo Nani over and
again sends his audience into howls of laughter as he follows an unseen stage
manager’s billboard instructions – commands like “lazy,” “drunk,” “horror,” and
“no arms.” Few recognizable sounds ever leave
his mouth; but even so, the master performer finds myriads of other ways to use
his entire being to thrill and delight kids to adults alike.
Rating: 4.5 E
Sinatra Raw
Richard Shelton, Creator & Performer
James Seabright, Producer
Gilded Balloon at the Museum
Blink your eyes,
and you will swear ol’ Blue Eyes himself stands and sings before us. Richard Shelton has won accord and acclaim
from like of royalty, Sir Elton John, and West End audiences as one of the
world’s best-ever Frank Sinatra interpreters.
In his Sinatra Raw, his Frank
is giving his farewell performance at the Purple Room of Frank’s beloved Palm
Springs. With the help of a bottle of
Jack Daniels, Frank shares a lifetime of stories, gossip, and untold secrets
while also crooning in true Sinatra fashion of voice and gestures the great
man’s greatest hits. As audience, we
leave with no doubt that we have been in the presence of the real thing and
true legend – both Frank and Richard.
Rating: 4.5 E
Wonderful Productions
Attended & Rated “4 E”
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
Beat
Cédric Chapuis, Creator
SIT Productions, Ki M’aime Suive and Scénes Plurielles,
Producers
Pleasance Dome
A thirteen-year-old, autistic boy
who has trouble relating to peers, parents, or the pressures of school finds
his solace in the sounds his mother makes in cutting up a salad, especially
when combined with a pounding noise he hears coming from outside her
kitchen. Those beat fill him with a
drive to create his own world of drumming in any way he can – on the top of his
desk, on his mother’s up-turned laundry cans, on his own knees and chest. His dream, a set of drums, is a dream his dad
has no desire to fulfill. But Alfie is
persistent; he receives an old set; and we watch him become a master musician
with a zeal for life where his set of drums is the only friend he really needs
or wants.
However, the world around him
somehow does not always hear the music in the way he hears it; and the score he
plays takes on a dangerous air he does not mean to compose. Beat
is not only storytelling at its best, it is also an education about drumming
and a live concert by a superior young musician, also sensitive and delightful
actor, Daniel Bellus.
Rating: 4 E
Blighty, Broadway & Beyond!
The Private Lives of Noel Coward & Gertrude Lawrence
Gin Palace Productions
Greenside at Infirmary Street
From somewhere in Purgatory, best
friends and sometimes fellow actors, Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, meet in
the hereafter for an hour of memories told through anecdotes and songs the two each
made famous. Alasdair Carson-Sheard and
Samantha Nixon bring all the wit, English mannerisms, and signature talents of
the two icons of English and American theatre.
Their laugh-out-loud give-and-take leaves the audience as putty in their
hands; but it is actually the audience that in the end controls the eternal
fates of these two once we have learned all about their loves, their laughs,
and their lives.
Rating: 4 E
Cathy: A Retelling of Wuthering Heights
Michael Bascom (Music & Lyrics); Michael Bascom (Book,
adapted from Emily Brontë)
Brickhouse Theatre Company
The Space on the Mile
The complexities and many twists
and turns of the classic novel Wuthering
Heights is captured in a mere one hour, fifteen minutes in a beguiling,
period-sounding musical and by a cast of five excellent actors, all dressed in
white. With only three wooden box seats
as props and accompanied by one outstanding keyboardist (creator Michael
Bascom), the story of Heathcliff unfolds before us, but this time as told with
a focus more on his would-be love, Cathy.
The tragic tale of two lovers who
cannot find a way in this mortal world to be a wedded couple is told at a pace
never rushed and with enough detail for a first timer to comprehend fully Emily
Brontë’s original tale. As Cathy, Emma
Torrens particularly shines with an angelic voice whose lyrical tones are
haunting in the increasing sadness of her plight in life. As Heathcliff, Samuel Terry is dramatically
compelling in all aspects except in his singing voice, which does not meet the
same high level of quality of his fellow actors. However, the overall result of the new
musical is commendable and enjoyable.
Rating: 4 E
Einstein
Pip Ulton, Creator and Performer
Pleasance Courtyard
Returning for his twenty-sixth
Fringe season, Pip Ulton premieres his latest one-man show where a legend comes
to full life for an intimate, get-to-know sharing of his life, his loves, his
beliefs, and of course – in Albert Einstein’s case – his world-changing
theories. Pip Ulton’s Albert is easily
approachable, thoroughly charming, and singularly unique. Eyes twinkle as he explains the essence of
his complicated premises in words we all can understand. We laugh; we imagine (with eyes closed as
instructed); and we learn that even a genius – maybe the greatest genius ever –
is just a man, a person, like all the rest of us.
Rating: 4 E
Fragility of Man
David William Bryan, Creator and Performer
Pleasance Courtyard
Sweat-producing for both actor and
audience, David William Bryan’s Fragility
of Man is a harrowing narrative of one man’s life of battles against
increasingly insurmountable odds that never seem to tip in his favor. Inherited rage tendencies coupled with a fist
that is full of its own lethal power sends a boy in 1981 to Prime Minister
Thatcher’s brand of reformation – an experiment that more often than not
produced exiting young men bound for self-destruction. In this case, the downward plunge comes via
ecstasy-inflamed, all-night raves and too-easy cash earned through selling the
pills to others.
David William Bryan’s exacting,
alliterative-packed delivery of this man’s story is matched by a physicality of
performance that screams with incredible intensity. A journey that finally begins to steer toward
some hope fueled by the inspiration of an unexpected son named Michael suddenly
becomes once again upended when the past of this man’s twelve-year-old self
emerges like an unwelcomed ghost.
This is a story difficult to watch
about a subject far from enjoyable.
However, it is impossible not to be in awe of this incredible actor and
storyteller – the same man who also writes and stars in an entirely different
kind of story at the 2019 Fringe, In
Loyal Company.
Rating: 4 E
The Ladies
Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club
Greenside at Infirmary Street
Harry and Ella are taking a break
during their special date night out for Ella to hit the loo while Harry waits
outside. As he fumbles around reading
band notices on the women’s room outside wall, former classmates from the local
school where he graduated wander by, with reunions both joyful and awkward but
all with an authenticity of what it is like to be twenty-something and all
quick to bring rounds of laughter from the audience.
Tension rises as the minutes pass
and Ella does not reappear, especially true when her former best friend but now
persona non grata goes inside and also does not soon reappear. What Harry has not been able to see is
replayed for us as audience as the wall turns, bathroom stalls appear, and the
hidden ladies room is now open for our full view. The conversations that ensue are a slice of
today’s LGBTQ life where being cis, lesbian, queer, or whatever is seen by
today’s twenty-somethings as quite normal.
This in turn allows all those awkward, fun, silly, and overly dramatic
conversations once only relegated in plays and films to heterosexuals to now be
owned by all – no matter the sexual preference or gender designation.
Excellent casting choices, insightful directing and masterful directing make this new work by this Cambridge group of students worthwhile and memorable.
Excellent casting choices, insightful directing and masterful directing make this new work by this Cambridge group of students worthwhile and memorable.
Rating: 4 E
Notre Dame de Paris
NDP Circus, based on the novel by Victor Hugo
Paul Liengaard, Director and Producer
St. Patrick’s Church
Performed outside with period-appropriate staging, lighting
by torch and candles, and music medieval in source and adaptation, NDP Circus
performs a two-hour, thirty-minute version of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (better known to
English-speaking audiences as The
Hunchback of Notre Dame). The multi-tiered
stage of wood and metal rises to remind us of the famed Paris cathedral as ten
performers utilize their circus, dance, and vocal skills to tell the story that
is also conveyed in both English and French.
From fire-breathing to bareback horse riding to aeronautic
swinging, the classic story takes on a dynamic, exciting air. At times the story does seem to lose its way,
and some sequences of horses going round and round the outdoor arena or of a
dance that goes a few steps too long do mire down the proceedings a bit. However, the entire evening is so out of the
ordinary and so fascinating with his creative modes of storytelling that it is
easy not to sweat a few details and just to enjoy the gestalt.
Rating: 4 E
Piramania! The Swashbuckling Pirate
Musical
David Massingham & Tim Frost (Book, Music & Lyrics)
Sloshed Theatre, Producer
Underbelly Bristo Square
Ahoy, ye Maties! Grab your life preservers, and hang on for a
journey on the stormy seas that proves to be laugh-out-loud fun from beginning
to end. That is true even if in between
there is deceit and betrayal of best friends, a murder and threats of more, and
love that smacks of incest. Piramania!
The Swashbuckling Pirate Musical is a rip-roaring, good time,
populated with musical numbers that bring chuckles and cause toes to tap.
A cast of ten rings forth
collectively and individually in brilliant voice, with most playing instruments
that range from flute, piccolo, and whistle to accordion, sax, and
percussion. Bawdy and brassy, sexy and
sassy, silly and surprising, Piramania! is
the adult version of a Saturday morning cartoon show about pirates and their
hunt for the illusive, hidden treasure.
Rating: 4 E
The Pirates of Penzance
Gilbert & Sullivan
The University of St. Andrew’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society
Paradise in Augustines
With voices that overall soar and
with comic antics galore, this university based troupe (from The University of
St. Andrew’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society) sings and dances through an
uplifting, gratifying The Pirates of
Penzance. From the opening to the
close, the group sparkles in its rendition of this Gilbert and Sullivan
classic, devoid of much scenic help but replete with smashing, often humorous
costuming.
Individual cast members overall
sing with full lust and zeal, with only the casting of lead Frederick (the
indentured pirate hoping to be released from his obligation on his 21st
birthday) being a somewhat weak link. An
alto of soft voice is cast where a stronger voiced tenor is really needed. But the evening absolutely is nothing less
than thrilling when the full cast sings in rousing harmony, filling the arena
with rapid, crystal-clear lyrics with not a word of this hilarious parody of
operas lost along the way.
Rating: 4 E
Good, Solid
Productions Attended & Rated “3 E” or “3.5 E”
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
Before the Wall
Chris Ruffle, Writer
The Rimbaud and Verlaine
Foundation, Producers
Gilded Balloon at the Museum
A cast of four
plays multiple roles to deliver an historical drama when the might of the
British military finds itself in 1860 somehow outside the walls of Beijing and
its Forbidden City of the Great Emperor.
Confusion seems to reign on both sides of the wall as to how and why the
British are there and what to do to get them out of there. Hot heads rise above more tempered views in
both camps, with the results having disastrous results for (of course) the
invaded Chinese. The four, talented
actors play both sides of the racial and nationalistic boundaries, with my
having frankly some discomfort in watching Caucasian actors taking on their
interpretations of Chinese mannerisms and persona.
Rating: 3.5 E
Ben Hur
Adapted by Patrick Barlow from the 1959
MGM movie and from the Lew Wallace 1880 novel
Trinity Youth Theatre, Producers
and Performers
Greenside @ Infirmary Street
The compressed,
crazy style he popularized in adapting The
39 Steps to the stage where four actors play 100+ parts is once again
brought to bear in condensing one of the best-selling novels of the 19th
and 20th centuries – Ben Hur –
into a stage show where the epic, nine-hundred-plus-page book is told by a
handful of actors in about 100 minutes.
Kent’s Trinity Youth Theatre brings a cast of eleven enthusiastic teens
to the 2019 Fringe, drawing lots of laughs as they spill forth the puns,
alliterations, and nonsensical lines of the playwright’s script. Along the way, they utilize hand puppets,
cardboard boxes, and much imagination to re-create Roman characters, sea battles,
and the famed chariot race. Not everything
works for this aspiring thespians, but the outing has many moments silly and
satisfying.
Rating: 3 E
Freddie: One Night with Freddie
Outbreak Productions, Producers
The Old Dr. Bells Baths
Performed by
U.K.’s Number One Queen tribute band, Majesty, Queen’s early days of “Bohemian
Rhapsody” to their sell-out shows at Wembley Stadium are performed in a two-hour
concert. The evening’s tour of most of
the band’s greatest hits is complete with multiple costume changes by the man
himself, including the obligatory showing of much skin. While there is good music, we missed hearing
any narrative about the actual history of the band or of the songs performed.
Rating: 3 E
How to Use a Washing Machine
Georgie Botham (Book & Lyrics);
Joe Davies (Music)
SLAM Theatre
ZOO Southside
Cass and James
arrive home late enough to miss one last Christmas dinner with their parents
before they pack up their childhood memories as their folks sell the house
where the siblings grew up together. As
each goes through boxes of toys, pictures, old art projects, and school
momentos, emotions build over dreams once held and not met. Tensions rise and boil over as sibling
rivalries rooted long ago raise their ugly heads. Clashes center on what it means to grow up
and who has and has not crossed over the boundary from childhood to
adulthood).
A string quartet
plays a background score to highlight the emotional rollercoaster playing out
between the siblings and to accompany songs that describe – sometimes
satisfactorily, sometimes not – the inner struggles, hopes, and fears of each
sibling. Voices of the two principals
are adequate but not always stellar. While there is much to draw and retain our
interest during the one hour, the end result is that the story is left much
where it began, with family and personal laundry still waiting to be laundered.
Rating: 3.5 E
A Man’s A Man: The Lives of
Robert Burns, A Musical
Martin Franssen (Music) & Rod
Grant (Book)
Stephen Wright, Producer
Poetry by Robert Burns
The life of
Scotland’s most lauded and loved poet, Robert Burns, passes before us from
beginning to end in a new musical, A
Man’s A Man. The title seems to ask
us to forgive the immortal poet for all his mortal shortcomings. After all, Robert Burns was a notorious
womanizer who had twelve children by four women, leaving most of this
off-springs with little-to-no support.
Yet here is also a man who inspired a nation through his written words
in verse – words that decried the hypocrisy of the Church and the tyranny of a
government that did not acknowledge the need for freedom by the Scottish
people.
That poetry
becomes the lyrics for many of the songs whose original musical scores by
Martin Franssen have Scottish folk rings to them. While a cast of five sing with powerful
voices all, unfortunately the lyrics are largely muddled and lost, probably due
to some combination of sound system and actors’ taking on older dialects. However, the three acts overall do succeed in
telling the sweeping life story of this man’s life in an impressive manner,
even if we hare left with some questions about his integrity.
Rating: 3.5 E
Since U Been Gone
Terry Lamb, Creator and Performer
The Queer House and HighTable,
Producers
Assembly Roxy
A powerful
autobiography account by the writer/performer unfolds as a boy becomes a man
while losing in the course his only two friends – one to a horrific accident
and one to a suicide. Along the way,
Terry Lamb does somehow find his authentic self as a queer, gender-bending
person. His story is powerfully played
and emotionally performed with humor mixed in between tearful tragedies. Sometimes the performance goes too over the
top to be totally effective, especially in terms of the background original
music by Nicol Parkinson.
Rating: 3 E
The Few Shows
We Could/Should Have Skipped
(Listed in Alphabetical Order)
The Cabinet of Madame Fanny Du
Thé
Kate Stokes & Tom Manson (Book,
Lyrics & Music)
Riddlestick Theatre, Producer
Pleasance Courtyard
If there were
ever a show that seemed conceived and written by a group of friends – probably
university aged – after a night of too-much partying, this is the one. Sketches that tell the past, time-travel
adventures of one, so-called Madame Fanny
Du Thé are overall silly but not funny; sung but not all that well; and
choreographed but mostly with movements like wildly swinging arms, over-done
turns, and childlike romps. This was one
hour that seemed to last an eternity.
Rating: 1 E
Confirmation
Xnthony, Creator, Performer &
Producer
Pleasance Dome
Coming out is
never easy, especially if a young man is from the only country in Ireland to
vote against same-sex marriage in the nation’s 2015 referendum. Xnthony relates what it was like to grow up
in the uber-conservative town that he now harbors a love/hate relationship,
focusing for some peculiar reason particularly on his memories as a
twelve-year-old going through Catholic confirmation.
Employing
original songs along the way that do little to strengthen his narrative, the
writer/performer neither has the voice to sell them nor the choreography to
enhance them. In the end, this story is
just not compelling enough to recall it much beyond existing the hour.
Rating: 1.5 E
La Sonnambula
Vinvenzo Bellini
Aria Alba Opera for All, Producer
and Performers
Stockbridge Church
Aria Alba Opera
for All takes Bellini’s La Sonnambula and
plops it into the 1950s Scottish Highlands, employing to the already
sentimental, pastoral story a huge dose of tongue-in-cheek and local, small
town flavor. While the choice of
treatment is mildly entertaining and while the community-based chorus does an
acceptable, even at times admirable job singing Bellini’s score, the principals
vary from somewhat good to absolutely horrible.
The lead soprano,
Fiona Breingan, actually sings lyrically and on pitch and key the part of Amina
– something other principals find problems in doing so, at least
consistently. Another lead woman
shrieks, almost screams her highest notes while a baritone lead searches
sometimes without luck to find his correct notes. But it is the lead tenor in the part of Il
Conte who is so bad that the only comparison I can make is the sound of
fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
Needless to say
at the interval, a sizable portion of the already small audience rushed to the
exit. In my opinion, it is unacceptable
for a company to stage such a show for the Edinburgh Fringe with some of the
cast members that were on stage. It is
an insult to everyone, particularly the ones on stage who were in fact doing a
decent job.
Rating: 1 E
Rich Kids: A History of Shopping
Malls in Tehran
Javaad Alipoor, Writer with Kirsty
Housley as Co-Creator
Javaad Alipoor and HOME, Producers
Traverse Theatre Company
Instructed
in the waiting queue to download Instagram and to follow “shoppingmallstehran”
on our phones, audience members arrived at Rich
Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran with phones gleaming and ready
at any moment’s instruction to turn volumes to the maximum and to follow a live
stream. But as it turns out, this
theatrical device is not really needed since all pictures on our phones are
also projected on the wall before us.
Plus every time we are instructed to go live stream, the noise is so
loud that the actual monologue of the actor before us cannot be heard.
If that is
not presumptive enough, the content that the two performers relate about the
wealthy kids of current Tehran elite (who once were a part of the Islamic
Revolution) is actually not all that interesting nor enlightening. The facts they rattle off about how our
IPhones and left-over chicken bones will be around for several more millennia
are actually overall well-known by most well-read, modern audiences. What is missing from the show is ‘so what’
and ‘now what.’
Overall, Rich Kids has difficulty retaining
coherence and providing nearly as serious or meaningful of a message as the two
performers who are extremely serious and intense in its delivery.
Rating: 2 E
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