Fun on the Fringe
Renata Rubnikowicz is outraged, astonished and exhilarated in Edinburgh From George Street to Cowgate, the word on the Edinburgh Fringe is: stand-up is dead, long live slapstick – only now we call it physical theatre. Less noted is the absence of the once ubiquitous tabloid- headline show title – 'An Alien Stole My Skateboard', 'Lady Macbeth Firmed My Buttocks' – for which demise, much thanks.
Sometimes, though, I have to agree with Sean Foley and Hamish McColl of the The Right Size (Assembly Rooms) who scream to each other during the manic, brilliant Do You Come Here Often? 'I can't believe you're still using that material!'. They are sharp and funny. From the situation of two men stuck for years in a toilet they spin inventive, character-driven comedy with added pratfalls that is anything but lavato- rial.
Trying for a similar audience, Peep- olykus, at the Pleasance with I Am A Coffee, fall a little short of last year's sub- limely funny Let My Donkey Go, but I am sure the show will grow in pace during the run. It could hardly become more surreal. Already the fake fish routine is fab and I loved the grave perambulations of their fluffy penguin. Edinburgh toy shops must be well used by now to raiding parties of performers auditioning the stuffed toys for star potential.
Another kind of plaything is tested at the same venue by a company called Jade. Grace is a woman on the verge of 30 trying out toyboys as husband material. A clever set full of doors opens and closes on her hopes and dreams faster than a Feydeau farce, as the cast of three slams from one gag to the next. The hairy-trousered satyrs were especially astonishing, although a dripping Darcy caused hearts to flutter in a certain section of the audience.
More problems of modern womanhood are wittily addressed at the Gilded Balloon by an Australian a cappella quartet called Crying In Public Places, who twanged all the emotions of a capacity audience in Jump! Though their dancing is an effective back-up to their strong harmonies, I could not quite see why one of them had to hang upside down from a rope during one num- ber.
Perhaps it is because circus skills seem to be mandatory on the Fringe this year. Acrobat at the Assembly Rooms set the standard to aim for with heart-stopping antics on trapeze and high wire. This post- punk Australian group also sweep up all the prizes for bare-faced cheek as they cavort and twist, variously dressed, undressed and cross-dressed, in a range of rubber bondage gear and grubby under- wear. The live band thrashes, naked bot- toms fly past and tongues are definitely in the other cheek in this unexpectedly exhila- rating show.
Infinitely more refined is the balletic Stung at St Bride's in which the trio Momentary Fusion take the inventive movement of the best kind of contempo- rary dance aloft on rope and trapeze. Once again we were open-mouthed with surprise but there is no outrage here, just beauty and perfect, calm control. Yet, for the best theatre-circus combination you have to make the trip out to Leigh Links where the French troupe Cirque Baroque present Candides. Even if you are ignorant of the travails of the clown and his consort you will be mesmerised by this striking show. A high spot among the jaw-dropping feats was the general leading his troops in a complex fusillade of juggling clubs, the effect of the terror of war heightened by a percussive live band.
More clowns, the Russians Derevo this time, can be found late-night at the Plea- sance in Red Zone. Director Anton Adassinsky shares an ancestry with last year's smash hit Slava Polunin in that both were once in the justly renowned St Peters- burg troupe Licedei. But there the similari- ties end. The programme promises: Anticlowns on stage! No story!' That is exactly what you get. It is mesmerising, slow and poetic but refreshing after a day of in-your-face Fringery.
Energy is what the Fringe feeds off and Disco Pigs at the ever-reliable Traverse provides it with imagination and verve. Seventeen-year-olds, Bonnie and Clyde from Cork city, played with passion by Cil- lian Murphy and Eileen Walsh, are so close they have developed a private language. This makes some of the dialogue hard to grasp yet the message of their violent lives, meaningless except for their feeling for each other, stays in the memory long after the elaborate wordplay is forgotten. 111. At the same theatre, Starving Artists' Earthquake Weather, by Godfrey Hamilton, pins the flaws of three dotty Angelenos to the California fault-line, as their wisecrack- ing reveals their emotional depths, while over at the Assembly, Steve Martin's play Wasp looks over the white picket fence at some more Americans and exposes in car- toon-style the dissonance buzzing within the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family dream.
From the other side of the political divide, Communicado's The Suicide (writ- ten by Nikolai Erdman in 1928 but banned in the Soviet Union and not performed for 50 years), at the Traverse, also exposes rifts, this time between ideology and reality in post-revolutionary Russia. From the postman who douses his lust by 'taking a Marxist view' of desirable women, to the unemployed central character who would die for a liver sausage or a tuba, the excel- lent cast romp to ever-increasing heights of absurdity.
Suicide is also under discussion in the revival of Jeremy Weller's Mad at the Famous Grouse House. Using real women's experience of mental illness, its graphic recreations of abuse, violence and breakdown go straight to the heart. Yes, we laughed quite a lot, but some of the audi- ence were still weeping as we left the venue. This is the most explosive, moving and thought-provoking ticket the Fringe has to offer.
By contrast, Swan Song, a new one- woman play by Jonathan 'Beautiful Thing' Harvey at the Pleasance, is pure entertain- ment, and Rebecca Front gives a faultless rendition of the sad South London teacher who twists every cliché to comic effect. Where does the division lie between this kind of character monologue, which admit- tedly has a few set changes and costumes, and the kind of work many stand-ups are now pursuing? Owen O'Neill's stunning Off My Face at the Assembly crosses this boundary and many others. In this raw per- sonal history of alcoholism, he plays several characters, with lighting and voice-overs to add to the mood. The humour is black and brilliant.
At the Gilded Balloon, two stand-up comics draw on their past in more tradi- tional ways, yet still manage to be original. Hang Le is a Vietnamese now living in Australia who relishes the most politically incorrect dog-eating boat person jokes, while Smiley moves from his Troubled Northern Irish boyhood to E-taking Lon- don club life with panache.
And my tip for Spectator readers? Kit and the Widow are trying out material for their next West End show at the Café Royal. The venue is glitzy by Fringe stan- dards, the songs are satirical (one is dedi- cated to 'the artiSte formerly known as Princess') and topical (only in their show did I hear mention of Mandelson), yet the whole is as frothily, crunchily joyful as a walnut whip.
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