Scottish Sperm by Jacqueline McLaren

Scottish Sperm by Jacqueline McLaren (Tillicoutry Media)

A young man walks up to a beautiful woman in a bar and says "I want to talk to you, but I don't know what to say". "Is that because I'm so Pre-tay?", is her ice cold putdown. And so begins the romance of Robert (Dylan Lamb) and Emma (Samantha Steinmetz).

It transpires that Robert doesn't know what to say because he is a "blocked" writer. He's also not particularly adapt at monogamy and once he's wooed the all too beautiful Sarah, and indeed moved in with her, he sets about sleeping with Amy (unseen character) who lives in the flat opposite. Robert's character is all about minimal effort. He even sleeps with Amy's flat mate, Sarah (Megan Channel) for no other reason than he can, even though Sarah is the close, perhaps only friend of Emma.

The audience of course has more than an inkling that this will all come to pass. The opening of the play is a chance meeting of Emma and Sarah at an airport sometime after Robert's indiscretions are discovered and he is cut lose by all involved. In truth there is nothing radically wrong with opening a play this way, but in this specific play it does feel as though much of the mystery and fun of discovering the characters and learning about their motives has been removed; replaced instead with an animated version of join the dots.

This technical annoyance aside the dialogue for this play is exceptionally strong, as is the highly focused and almost bondage tight direction (Grant Kretchik) who rises to the challenge of the venues minute playing area. Changing props and moving locations has been thought about almost to point of OCD, although the trade off is a slight mechanical feel to actors actions, as though they are trapped on an unstoppable conveyor belt. The trade off is a minor irk though, performers and production crew deserving a medal for squeezing every last inch of acting space from this meagre staging area.

Oh and the title? Pure product placement. The actors are American, it's set in America and while one of the unseen characters is revealed to be Scottish he could just as well have been Irish, Welsh or Chinese for all the relevance it brought to the play. But for a play presented in Edinburgh it writes its own headlines! Still at least the audience did find out that while Scottish Sperm is supposed to be the strongest, according to Sarah, it still tasted the same!

Four stars for this play, mainly earned by the well thought out direction and Samantha Steinmetz portrayal of the icey, but incredibly vulnerable Emma. See this play and fall in love with her character forever.

EDIT - Corrected character names and cast list.

Flesh Eating Tiger

Flesh Eating Tiger - Amy Tofte

Flesh Eating Tiger is, at it's core, a love story. Specifically the end of the story. It examines, through free flowing improvisation and a very tightly written script, how each and every relationship has the capacity to implode with the same easy fashion with which it was formed.

But Tiger is more than this. It plays on a stark set, full of torn paper, ladders and other ordinary everyday props that take on new meanings during the journey of this story. And this simple complexity spills over into the production as it emerges that the players themselves are aware of being in the play. Indeed the playwright herself forms a third wheel in this performance, a non-speaking part (for the most), she sits god-like to one side of the stage. Less the omnipotent puppeteer though, as at times she appears to be in fear of her own creations and their unpredictable actions.

Nested loops of plays within plays form and resolve, punched along by a pattern of dialogue that speaks directly to anyone who has suffered the pangs of inadequacy after the break down of a long term relationship.

Sean Breen and Gabriela Trigo-McIntyre, playing multiple parts, attack this script and the improvised passages with a relaxed enthusiasm that has at it's core the beauty of the script to thank. The play feels raw and hungry as though it exists to feed off audience emotion. It gives the impression that each and every performance is a unique event; which is great to see. It is after all the true essence of live theatre.

On the negative side it feels about 8-10 minutes too long, but that could be due to the "cool down" ending, needed to ground the audience back to reality. It's almost as though Amy Tofte feels the need to physically disengage the play from the real world. It's an unsettling process, but experimentation on form and theme is what the Fringe should be about and the playwright must be congratulated for taking the risk.

I'd rate this play as four and half stars. If you enjoy the thrill of watching a play where each performance is a unique event, where the characters appear as real people that you WILL recognise, then this is the play for you. Go and see it at the incredibly cool venue 13. See it as many times as you can.

Bite sized breakfast - 360 Vision

Bite-sized breakfast - 360 vision

Bite-sized productions are an entirely civilised affair despite the relatively early 10:30 am start time. A fresh cup of coffee and a pastry are provided at the entrance and apon taking their seats the audience are tempted further with fresh strawberries; flirtishly presented on a silver tray.

There are three "menu" selections to these performances, which conisit of four short plays each. If you like the four you've just seen, you can come back on the two following mornings and see a selection of different ones.

The menu I saw was number 3; a selection of comedy, poignant story telling and some emotional hi-jinks.

Bad Bride - Bridgette Burton

This told the comic tale of a bride (Lisa Beresford) who, in order to stay focused, has taken one red bull too many and totally lost the plot. The play is purely for laughs and warms up the audience with the groom's deadpan performance (Sean Williams) perfectly matchingthe brides cloud-9 condition.

Thin Air - Thomas Coach

Next was a touching tale of a hire wire perfomer (Alice Robinsion) attempting to get back on the wire after witnessing the death of her husband. He "went down" (circus vernacular for falling) two days earlier and she has yet to regain her nerve. The performance, from the edge of the audience and balanced atop some steps, is a monologue. It's touching and sentimental, but the writer doesn't focus enough for a short piece, pulling in to many elements that allow the early morning audiences attention to wane. There was also a curious costume decision; lose jumper and skirt instead of the glittering spandex associated with high wire work. The direction also felt a little vague, with the actress failing to give the impression of poise and balance required by these fearless performers.

Thespian - Chris White

This is an actors dream play. Take two men from Brooklands, put them on a bus and get them to run through various films they've seen in preparation for one man to attend an auction and escape his job as a builder. It's a great showcase for both Sean Williams and Andy Hutchison, but the play feels just that; a showcase. Entertaining though it is, there was little depth to this piece, save for a truly touching rendition of Anne Frank.

The Bar - C J Johnson

A choco-holic (Alice) and her personal trainer (A very fit & trim Lisa) battle to the death over a bar of fruit and nut that the addict lusts after and the fitness evangelist despises. And that's the plot! But it's freaking hilarious. Simple slapstick that's effortlessly performed by both women. The costumes (or lack therein) are kind on the eye too!

Perfect Stillness - Jane Miller

A husband (Andy) sits and writes a eulogy for his wife (Lisa) who lies in a coffin beside him. Except she won't stay dead and keeps interrupting his musings to put the record straight about their first meeting, their true origin of his wedding vows and just how much she really hated those little tea pots he kept buying her. This simple story, about grief and coming to terms with loss, caused as many laughs as it did leaking eyes. It had that rare perfection of a short piece, containing a beginning middle and end, while retaining an emotional balance that refused to tip into plain sentimentality.

Something for every one then. Inevitably of course some pieces will work more for you than others, but in a smorgasbord choice such as this it's likely you will find more to like than dislike.

I'd like to give this production a full five stars, but the costume error in Thin Air and occasional unfocused direction brings it down to a unshamful four stars out of five.

This is the second bite-size I've seen at the Fringe, my hope is to see them many, many more. Producers of short plays (that still tell a complete story) appear to be rare animals in this day and age. Supporting those who make the effort is all to important for the future of emerging writers and actors. Go see it and start your day in style with a coffee and a flirty strawberry.

Broken Wing by Leila Ghaznavi - CalArts festival theatre

Broken Wing by Leila Ghaznavi - CalArts festival theatre

Broken Wing is a love tragedy set in Iran. A young brash American photographer (Matthew Goodrich), is stomping across the world when he gets a job documenting the Damascus Rose Harvest; the miracle of the desert. His host is an iranian man (Armando McClain) whose much younger wife (Kaitlin Cornuelle) is very beautiful, and curious... And so are the cards dealt. It's only a matter of time before temptation leads to tragedy.

The play is set on a typically minimalist Fringe-stage, however the set and costume designer (Kit Stolen) has risen to the challenge to create a simplistically captivating backdrop using nothing more than wall tapestries. These are arranged in a fashion to separate the stage and indeed the time and place where each scene occurs. Lighting (Zach Moore) and sound (Martin Gimenez) also pays a key point in the play and are executed with tight precision by the Venue 13 production crew. The opening scene for example, with the all too beautiful Kaitlin Cornuelle dancing us into the story, is a triumph of the visual performance arts.

That said, however good the technicals are, this play belongs to the expertly crafted story and the almost flawless performances of the actors. Everyone is all to convincing making the horror of the ending, an ending we approach in carefully woven stages, all the more bleakly emotional.

Okay, okay, sometimes the cast fluff a line or a technical problem causes a hiccup, but with a story like this, and acting that engages the audience from the very first moment, it's a cheap price to play.

I'd give this one four and half stars out of five. If you only get to see one daytime show at the fringe, this is the one to choose.

Timothy by Michael Milne and David K. Barnes - Blackwatch Road Studios

Timothy by Michael Milne and David K. Barnes - Blackwatch Road Studios

Timothy is billed as a who-dunit in reverse. In fact it's more of a who will do it to who (whom?) first and who (whom?) is really wanting to do anything to anyone in the first place(s?). Annette (Olivia Holland-Rose ) you see is living in fear that her husband, Timothy from the plays title (Tom Shah), will kill her. In the hope of finding a solution she invites down to her cellar (don't ask) the almost sensible Yvonne (Alexandra Wetherell) and the scattly loveable Susan (Sarah McGuiness) to find a solution to this worrying dilemma. If indeed the dilemma exists anywhere other than in her head.

It's a play about confusion. A comedy of errors where errors turn out to be truths that later turn out to be something else. Still with me? It's that sort of play. Take your ear of the dialogue for a moment too long and you'll be left seriously out of touch.

Fortunately the dialogue is competent and engaging, and for the most part realised by actors who commit to their character with a gusto that leaves the audience largely untouched by the scripts somewhat pedantic enthusiasm for repeating itself.

Some of the cast are obviously more gusto'd than others, but that is in part down to the character they are playing and the rather wooly, and often unfocused direction.

To tell you more would spoil then ending, sufficed to say it's a play that made me laugh at ten in the mooring and nearly made me jump out of my skin. In addition it plays at the bedlam theatre, which is one of the more spacious stages I've seen so far.

Four stars for this play, bumped up from three and half stars by Sarah McGuiness's performance of Susan, an adorably dizzy blonde who steals the show almost from her opening line. Sarah is also staring at the Bedlam in Hit Comet.

Bash by Neil LaBute

Bash - written by Neil LaBute (Adika Productions)

Bash is a showcase for the two starring actors (ironically not named in any of the shows publicity). It's important to remember that when you sit down and listen to the three monologues, modern day story telling that takes the audience deep under the skin of the character.

Bash is about showing us how good the student actors we are seeing can be. And yes they are very good, but the price to pay for this is a writing style that doesn't always hit it's mark.

To explain what the three monologues are about would be to give away the plot lines, but broadly speaking we have a young and up coming business exec explaining why the death of a child can be seen as an excepitable loss, a couple enjoying a manhattan party until events turn darker, and a women recounting her life as an abused school child.

Dark stuff. Played with brilliant poise and pathos by the two wonderful actors who show clear understanding of the characters they play. In amongst all this is some grim humour, but we are laughing with the characters not at them, so darkness is relieved; albeit in a stark bleak fashion.

It's the writing that fails on many occasions to fully engage with the audience even though the actors are fully committed. The first monologue has a confessional conceit for it's theme which feels too far fetched while the two handed monologue (yes I know) is really just a one hander with the female roll less than convincingly tacked on the side. Truly the best of the bunch is the third monologue, looking as it does with some cruel and exposing insight into abuse and love of the abuser from the point of the abused girl.

Tough going, but worth it to see performances such as these. However the writing itself does need to be tightened if the show is to be anything over than a showcase for the two lead performers. Sadly some of this showcase is defused by the omission of the actors names from the program. Doh!

Three and half stars. Well worth seeing but perhaps not if you are feeling a little blue.

Edit - I have tracked down the female actors name : Alice Bonifacio. I'll re-edit when I can find the male actors name.

Edit 2 - I've been supplied with the male actors name: Solomon Mousley :)

First review - Satellites - Awful Pie Theatre

Satellites - Awful Pie Theatre

Satellites is an apt title for Awful Pie's adaptation of D.H.Lawrence's Women in Love, the characters orbiting each other in that way only English manors can allow.

Performed at the Spaces on the Mile, this whistle stop tour of the book (which may leave some lawrence fans with literary whip-lash) is played on a typically minimalist Fringe set, that is to say, black back drops and stark props. The money saved on this appears to have been plunged back into the costumes (Bess Roche), which by an large are of a quality you'd expect to see in a BBC production.

The actings pretty good too! Which of course helps.

First of all the good: Satellites sticks pretty faithfully to the original text with most of the key scenes in place: the opening discussion of Ursula (Ella Thackray) and Gudrun (Lauren Hyett) on the fate of love and marriage; the initial church wedding the sisters dian to observe; the sisters dancing in front of cows (yes she does sing it's a long way to Tiparery); the wrestling scene (no they are not nude) and the drowning in the lake are faithfully remastered for the stage.

Then the bad: some of the adaptation requires a little screwing around with the chronology of the book. The discussion between Rupert Birkin (Frankie Parham) & Gerald Crich (Tim kiely) on bludbruderschaft (appearing around two thirds into the book) turns up on the back of a remark by Gerald that his account with the Pussum "remains open" (which appears fairly early in the book). And there are over examples that may cause faithful fans of the book to gnash their literary gums.

However it's the omissions, presumably necessary to keep the show under half a day, which may irk the literary gums more. Gerald's sister, miss Winifred, has been erased completely from this adaptation, along with the entire art room attic story line, which in turn means we see a lot less of Gudrun, tragic considering the abilities of the actress playing her. Very little of Hermione's relationship with Birkin is explored and Gerald Crich's character is mostly left to guess work, with his work to modernise the mine and subjugate the spirit of the miners finding it's way to the adaptation scrap heap. Most madding of all is the omission of Rupert's painful proposal to Ursula; a decision that Awful Pie should perhaps revisit.

But adaptation is a question of compromise and when adapting a weighty tome such as Women in Love, something has to go and whatever gets kicked in to touch will piss someone off. Still with acting of this level, and it is rather excellent, combined with direction (Phill Bartlett) that borders on laser precision, deciding whether or not to see this show is a no-brainer.

Yes the casting is not always ideal, with Fiona Guest playing six different parts including the rather pivotal Hermione, but thats fringe theatre and isn't something to worry over. Speaking of which Robert Snellgrove also puts in a solid effort with all of his five parts, although at least one, Mr Crinch popping on stage for a quick death rattle before popping off (in a clog type fashion), seemed somewhat superfluous. His German accent also needs some work!

I'd give this Four out of Five stars. Down one because of some slightly dodgy German accents towards the end and because i really wanted to see that proposal scene.

Edinburgh Fringe 2011

Seems like only last month I was saying goodbye to the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe and yet here I am, sitting on a Lothian bus travelling towards my first show. Food would have been nice but rime is as ever against me.

The crowds here are incredible. Every street is crowded, every area spilling over with people. The Royal mile is, as expected, the centre of chaos.

First show kicks off in twenty minutes. All I have to do is find it.

Reviews of the shows I will see to follow.....