Fresh from the Fringe

Renato Rubnikowicz looks at the best and most innovative acts In a city bursting this month with 1,350 shows in the Fringe alone, performers are becoming ever more inventive at finding venues. With its exceptionally good match of play to place, Douglas Maxwell's Decky Does a Bronco (George V Park), directed by Ben Harrison for Grid Iron, slid us back to the summer of 1983 as four nine-year- olds jockey for status in the playground. As the story reached a tense pause, the audi- ence sat gripped in silence around the swing — then a real moppet cycled past, the rattle of her stabilisers on the concrete somehow adding to the horror of the fic- tional tragedy.

On its purple double-decker Bus with the Bard (from outside Pleasance Over the Road), English Shakespeare Company pre- sented Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Mac- beth in one 30-minute trip round Edinburgh. I liked Hamlet as a mad cow (`moo-dur, moo-dur') and luckily Alan the `We must change our attitude towards swotty oiks.' driver did not have to make any emergency stops when Macbeth came charging down the aisle with sword unsheathed.

At 29B Walker Street, an enterprising local woman staged Naked for Dinner? We, the participants, were blindfolded on enter- ing her Edinburgh basement and so met and ate in the dark, forced to use our sens- es differently to assess the people, the place — and where the wine glass was.

Another oddity is Cardoso's Flea Circus (Little Top in East Princes Street Gar- dens), in which 'Professor' Maria Cardoso's real acrobatic insects perform sword fights, races and a ballet complete with fleas in tutus, their virtuosity magnified on video screens flanking the stage. We managed not to collect any unwanted souvenirs after the performance.

Ever since Archaos and its chainsaw- wielding punks took Edinburgh by the ears, human circus has had a hard act to follow here. With Zinzin, the latest French troupe, Les Treteaux du Coeur Volant, has devised a more gentle affair. Dispensing with a big top, they park their truck, complete with high wire and trapeze, in the outdoor amphitheatre in front of Dynamic Earth, and against a backdrop of Arthur's Seat and the cranes constructing Scotland's new parliament building, ignite the drizzling atmosphere with fiery tricks.

By turning Club Pleasance into a Studio 54-style disco named Oberon's, The Donkey Show turns up the heat with a scorching Midsummer Night's Dream. This is an extravagantly transgendered production, a riot of a show in which the fairies are go-go dancers, the star-crossed lovers sweep drinks from tables before leaping on to them to sing and the audience get to join the party. The scanty costumes are gorgeous and the 1970s hits move the plot along well — just don't expect any Shakespearean verse from the rollerblading Puck.

One of the strengths of the Fringe is to tell us stories we know well in ways that make us see them afresh. Achilles (Plea- sance), written by Elizabeth Cook, is an exceptionally beautiful flow of words which the actor Colin Mace weaves into a seduc- tive tale. A (false) fire alarm caused the auditorium to be evacuated into the pour- ing rain three-quarters of the way through his performance, yet almost all the audi- ence returned later, drenched, yet keen to soak up every last drop of the legend.

Given Steven Berkoff's high regard for his own talents, it is perhaps no surprise that the theology of his lengthy Messiah (Assembly) is so radical. Yet this is a piece of real power and beauty, with many fresh insights as well as the precise physicality we expect of his actors.

Also at the Assembly is No. 2, written by a 23-year-old New Zealander, Toa Fraser, and brilliantly acted by 20-year-old Madeleine Sami, who has the confidence to pace each character as she tells the story of a Fijian woman deciding which of her grand- children is to succeed her as head of the family. It's a tour de force by playwright and actress — these are two to watch in future.

At the Traverse is Abi Morgan's Splen- dour, a tight four-hander set in a nameless contemporary civil war, played out in over- lapping and repeating scenes that gradually reveal a complex of relationships between a grumpy photographer, a kleptomaniac interpreter, a general's deserted wife and her best friend. The assured production, directed by Vicky Featherstone for Paines Plough, builds to a compelling conclusion.

Written and superbly acted by South African Thembi Mtshali, A .Woman in Waiting (Assembly) takes as its simple axiom 'There is nothing as rich as where you come from', and triumphantly proves it in a funny and moving way. This is the kind of one-woman show that makes the vagaries of the Fringe worthwhile.

In another foreign missive, Further than the Furthest Thing (Traverse), Zinnie Harris has created an imaginary account of the secrets and lives of the isolated inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha before and after the island's volcano erupted in 1961, with Paola Dionisotti particularly compelling as the vul- nerable matriarch at the centre of the story. Lucky Glaswegians can see this production at the Tron in September; Londoners should rush to catch it at the Cottesloe in October.

Every year there are ructions about bad taste and filth on the Fringe and this year is no exception. There is no disputing the artistic merit of Iain Heggie's free adapta- tion of Gogol's Diary of a Madman, The King of Scotland (Assembly), Whether describing his boss at the Department of Social Inclusion as having a 'face on her like soiled toilet paper' or following the talking dogs of Glasgow, Brian Pettifer never sends a leer awry as the scabrous good-for-nothing Tommy.

In more traditional vein, Wrecked (Plea- sance) is a sketch show by Fay Rusling and Oriane Messina, who write for Channel 4's Smack the Pony. It features the gaggle of props — inflatable lifeboat, severed limbs, Martin the ladyboy fish — endemic to such shows, but has a high gag count and an originality which is often lacking elsewhere. I especially enjoyed the beatnik poets of Peterborough, who meet for cappuccinos at that cathedral of cool, Asda. Spymonkey, who present Stiff (Pleasance), must have been next in the queue for severed limbs at the prop shop. Cal McCrystal directs this company of gloriously inept undertakers in a black comedy of slapstick and misunder- standing that builds to hilarious effect.

For sheer silliness it was hard to beat a late-night, one-off show at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar in which a disparate group of comics joined together as the Gonzo Dog- Do Bar Band, This impromptu tribute, which was received with rapture by a packed audience and provoked some fine sand dancing by some of their number (obviously keen students of the cinematic legacy of Wilson, Keppel and Betty), fea- tured an intro including `Tourette's Tam- bourine' (`crash, jingle . .. bastard . . .

crash, jingle') and, partying on down, `Mr Arthur Smith as . . . himself.

Another comedian who does not under- estimate his audience is Bill Bailey (Assem- bly), a surreal musician who has inherited the eyes of Marty Feldman, if not his fre- netic lunacy. Bailey is so laid-back he can barely get started, yet his meanderings about the effect of skiffle on the Suez crisis or how a Cuban dance collective might pre- sent the works of Pinter collected the most affectionate heckle I've heard on the Fringe. 'You're funny,' someone called out. No one disagreed.