Fringe follies
Renata Rubnikowicz finds the highs and lows during a frenetic week in Edinburgh Ar audience in search of a show mills around on the corner of Victoria Street. A red car pulls up and four or five red-nosed chefs leap out and run, too fast to count, down into the vaults of an old building. The audience scurries after. A magical evening ensues as Grid Iron, the company that devised this Gargantua, feeds them on fruit, music and recipes, unfolding the story of some wage-slaves' weekend of excess. A couple of hours later everyone emerges, with watermelon juice dribbling down their chins, sated with the spirit of the Fringe.
Since this year's Fringe started a full week earlier than the main Festival, the opening days were curiously dislocated. One show which didn't arrive until the end of the first week was the eagerly awaited Love Upon the Throne (Assembly) featur- ing that stalwart of coarse acting Desmond Olivier Dingle (Patrick Barlow) and his new sidekick with a dodgy toupee Ray- mond Box (John Ramm). With the aid of just a few royal icons — such as a queenly handbag — they tell the story of Charles and Diana from first meeting to divorce, on occasion achieving a sad dignity that coun- terpoints the irreverent silliness of the rest. The ghost of Diana also hovers at the heart of David Benson's Nothing But Pleasure (Assembly). Perhaps in an attempt to show he can do more than Kenneth Williams, he's included cabaret songs and lightning impressions — mainly of dead, camp come- dians. But it's his shockingly funny musings on the day of the funeral and their serious undercurrents questioning the future of the monarchy that make the show stand out from the more juvenile Fringe offerings.
From far away, across the Indian Ocean, Theatre Talipot's The Water Carriers (Con- tinental Shifts at St Bride's) from Reunion uses a mixture of dance, mime, singing and drumming to reveal 'the dreams of drought-stricken minds'. We are in a dried- up river valley, the monkeys are parched, women sing sweetly at a wedding, men die in the quest for water — the four-man cast vividly presents each in turn with the aid of just a few sticks of bamboo. This was an exceptional show which richly deserved its standing ovation.
Usually when there's a question of thirst on the Fringe, the answer is beer, and where there's beer there are stand-ups and sometimes even punch-ups — but quite a few acts have now become fairly civilised. With Urban Trauma (Assembly), Alan Davies, television star and mortgage advis- er, proved he is almost universally loved. In an all-new show he gave us a choice of jokes about poo, cats or ladies' underwear, then generously delivered all three. A naughty but nice boy. Mum would like him, too. Matt King is so sensitive he finished his set with a sobering poem against vivi- section, but his animal jokes in Beastly (Gilded Balloon) had the audience laugh- ing from the start until that point. Time to put away the Eddie Izzard videos now though, Matt.
Ben Moor's My Last Week with Modolia (Pleasance) caused me to write cruel words in my notebook: 'wacky', 'zany' and, worst of all, 'whimsical'. It is humour someone must appreciate, like a particularly knotty piece of macrame. But in Camping on the Moon (Pleasance) Jason Byrne insists that everyone gets involved: he's a wild Irish lad with the attention-span of a hyperactive three-year-old. A young woman tried to leave, he chased her (twice). Others will- ingly joined in the act, shaking helplessly with laughter. The entire audience tried to become Superman. He littered the stage with rubber hands, washing powder and dismembered dolls and left us with ribs aching. What was it about? Were there any punchlines? Who knows? Who cares with someone this naturally funny?
Horses for Courses by Peepolykus (Plea- sance) comes from a different place to a similarly hilarious conclusion. Claiming to be 'A Russian gala evening of Siberian entertainment', the trio take the standard stuff of comedy — waiter jokes, phrase- book jokes, potato juggling, Russian clowns — twist it till it begs for mercy, add some dismembered Chekhov and beat the lot into a deliriously inane pulp. Did I forget `Smacking or non smacking?' to mention the bear? Cal McCrystal, their director, has this year lent his services in trained daftness to the Cambridge Foot- lights' Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Pleasance) and it shows, although they stick to a less freewheeling sketch format. In a talented troupe, Matthew Green with his gangly limbs and comedy ears was for me the star — Rowan Atkinson watch out.
In her spunky comedy Perfect Days (Tra- verse), Liz Lochhead has written a peach of a part for Siobhan Redmond, luminous as a fashionable hairdresser pushing 40 with no man and no baby. John Kazek makes the gay would-be baby's father both funny and human while transcending some of the play's grinding gear-changes between raw emotion and Glaswegian wisecracking. Toughies might risk Jenny Eclair is Mrs Nosey Parker (Pleasance). Using exuberant- ly filthy and inventive language, Eclair and her co-writer Julie Balloo create an unfor- gettable slut and, against all odds, win sym- pathy for her gutter life.
Martin Millar and Doon MacKichan have played fast and loose with Jane Austen, but it scarcely matters when they can make Emma as fresh as this. Retold at warp speed by Jane's four nieces, Highbury rap girls in strappy shifts, clamdiggers and trainers who squeal excitedly at Frank Churchill's arrival as if he were Boyzone, this is an Emma for the E-mail age. For concentrated sheer enjoyment turn to Lowri Mae, heroine of The Jolly Folly of Polly the Scottish Trolley Dolly (Harry Younger Hall). At £1 a ticket, this jet-pro- pelled 14-minute musical, written by Lesley Ross and James Williams, is great value and should make all their careers.
From Festival veteran Guy Masterston comes A Soldier's Song, adapted from the book by Ken Lukowiak (Assembly), giving us a private's eye view of the Falklands war with immediacy, pain and humour. Remembering 'the shells, the bodies, the chocolate oatmeal' he takes us back to Goose Green and its aftermath, the Falk- lands branch of the Connie Francis Appre- ciation Society. By contrast, the Jeremy Weller-directed Grassmarket Project's Sol- diers (Traverse), though also based on per- sonal testimony, is performed by real soldiers as well as actors. If the speeches are sometimes flat, the horrors they relay from Northern Ireland and Bosnia are equally detailed and chilling. Those despairing of the possibilities for peace could soothe themselves at the Demarco Foundation production of The Search for Europa (New Parliament House), an opera created by delegates of the European Youth Parliament. Given that this group of 16- to 20-year-olds met for the first time as they arrived at Edinburgh airport and with- in five days had devised and mounted this original work, the results were harmonious and cheering.
But the Fringe is so rarely about high culture. Far down Dalkeith Road I found hypnotist Hugh Lennon and his Hypno-Dog. A young crowd howled with joy as their friends, under the influence of Oscar, a ten-year-old black labrador-retriever cross, danced like the Spice Girls and conversed in Martian. In the interests of research my companion submitted to his gaze. I can report he remembers nothing of claiming to be Lord Lucan or wriggling and yodelling under the impression he was Elvis Presley. Initially, I was both sceptical and wary of this kind of act, but in the end Oscar's charm and friendliness won me over (I was careful not to stare too deeply into his eyes, however).
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