EDINBURGH 2007
As we reviewed more than 180 shows, we've put them on several pages, to save you excessive scrolling. Here's our fifth page of reviews...

Scarborough - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre - Shakespeare for Breakfast - Something Blue - Sorry, Love - Special - Victor Spinetti - The Spoils - Spread - Stenclmusic - Stonewall - Stoopud Fucken Animals - Story of a Rabbit - Subway - Talking Pants - Talking to Space Hoppers - Tell - Terrible Infants - Timeless - Jimmy Tingle - Tony! The Blair Musical - Touch - Traces - Truckstop - Truth in Translation - Unnatural Acts - Unsex Me Here - Venus as a Boy - The Voice of Things - The Voices in My Head - Waiting for Alice - The Walworth Farce - Wasted (Y)ears - What If? - Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath - Worlds End - Wunderkind - Xenu Is Loose - Yellow Moon - Andy Zaltzman

Scarborough   Assembly Rooms
Edinburgh always has a few site-specific productions, but this offering from Northern Firebrand takes the concept in a new direction. A small unused office in the Assembly building has been completely redecorated to duplicate a bedroom in a seedy bed-and-breakfast house, and there is barely space for an audience of two dozen to press themselves against the walls to watch what is going on in the room. What we see are a teenage boy and an older woman on a dirty weekend. She is, of course, a teacher, and her knowledge that what they're doing is wrong is almost palpable in the room, along with her desire and his innocent infatuation. He's naive enough to think they have a future, and is broken when she tries to explain the reality, and then his pain makes her aware of how much deeper she is emotionally involved than she realised. You can say rightly that writer Fiona Evans doesn't really have very much new to tell us, but the intimate setting and the sensitive playing of Holly Atkins and James Baxter, directed by Deborah Bruce so that every tiny nuance and gesture counts, make for an almost embarrassingly real experience.   Gerald Berkowitz

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Gilded Balloon
Some of the best ideas are usually the simplest, a fact clearly demonstrated by Kev F Sutherland's Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. They are already the stars of You Tube and, judging by the audience on the very rainy night I saw this show, seem to have a devoted fan following. Conceived as a bickering double act, the sock puppet theatre are often relentless but utterly irresistible. Their mixture of spoken and sung material touches on many different topics including most significantly the Fringe itself as well as Shakespeare and TV sitcoms. Combining schoolboy silliness, funny songs, endless play on words and a kind of puppetry slapstick, Sutherland ends up with his own brand of comedy which is also delivered with admirable verbal and manual dexterity. As a whole, the set might feel bitty at times which also lacks an overarching structure and makes the 'cast' work harder, however, Sutherland makes up for this with an excellent audience rapport even despite the physical barrier. Duska Radosavljevic

Shakespeare for Breakfast C Venue
It began almost twenty years ago, when a student company doing two other shows found themselves with a free morning slot, and this light-hearted romp, new each year, has become a Fringe staple and an ideal start to the Fringe day. A few detours aside, the general pattern has been to find some comic pretext for throwing characters from several Shakespeare plays together and letting them bounce off each other. This year the supposed cast of 'Carry On Shakespeare', flying to the film's premiere, crash on a desert island, where the survivors take on their characters' identities. While Hamlet spends his time trying to decide whether to decide anything, Macbeth sets out to kill the nearest king, who is Lear. Meanwhile, Juliet's Nurse, unhappy with her small role, auditions for the part of Lear's most loving daughter, while Cleopatra, looking for ass's milk to bathe in, runs afoul of Puck, who puts ass's ears on - well, you get the idea. It's all very silly, and presented in a mix of clever couplets, dreadful puns and vaguely familiar out-of-context quotations, and is all so good-spirited that you just go along for the ride and enjoy yourself. And they give free coffee and croissants. Gerald Berkowitz

Something Blue Underbelly
Five clowns serenade the audience and hand out notes scribbled on paper while others tickle the back of your neck with feathers. Jaunty Nina Simone and Cole Porter numbers eventually entice them onto the stage. Cut to a string of women fishing in buckets and feeding off each other's rivalry. The scene changes suddenly to a woman in a red dress at a table laid out for a romantic dinner. Barely has she finished her make-up than the big bad wolf saunters in. The love fest that follows is bizarre, to say the least. A hand puppet then pops up in surprising places over and around a curvaceous body, inventive and slightly naughty. Almost bringing the house down is the choral society of elderly ladies. Their gospel harmonies are sweet and heavenly - it's the lyrics that are down and dirty as, like Acorn Antiques meets Snoop Dogg, you realise they're actually doing foul-mouthed pop songs. Later, a disturbing scene involves Nutella, ketchup and a couple of doughnuts, while in between scenes the set lady potters on dispensing advice to anyone who'll listen - she's a cheeky buxom vamp who's already bored of husband number six and funny in a Faith Brown sort of way. Underneath the absurdist humour there is some very thoughtful stuff going on. More hit than miss, Jammy Voo clearly know their audience and the effect performance has on them. Admittedly a lot of this is (Lecoq) textbook stuff and predictable in theme (yes, there's a sentimental old person on a bench number), but somehow they rise above it all thanks to their innate grasp of comedy. Oh, and a ripping soundtrack. Nick Awde

Sorry, Love! C Venue
The Spanish title of this Irish-Spanish company's full-length dance is El Mal Amor or 'Bad Love', which conveys better the piece's difficult theme of domestic violence. As a woman lies on the ground, a female voice begins to narrate and we wonder: is this is the end of the story or the beginning, is this death or birth we're seeing? The scene changes and a baby is in fact born. Meet Isabel. Her mother's tone changes from doting to stern as her daughter transforms from rolling baby to precocious teenager. So far so normal. Isabel comes of age and gets a job in PR. She falls for Ramon, a former boxer who works in a hotel. They slow tango as their attraction grows, she shadows him at the punch bag in an eerily beautiful sequence, and the duet of their first dinner date sees them leaping over chairs and table to a energetically chugging track with congas, soaring strings and a samba bassline. They homehunt and move in together and then the trouble starts. Ramon is sleeping around and brings home his work woes with violent consequences as Isabel becomes his new punchbag. Sorry, Love! is a remarkably ambitious project that is sustained through an enviable partnership of movement, script and music. The majority of movement is classical based and the two protagonists show amazing stamina not only by dancing throughout but also sustaining a convincing depth of emotion through their acting. Underpinned by Stefan Warmuth's evocative soundtrack, Laura Macias moves with fluid grace and versatility, and Gavin De Paor supports her generously although he is visibly limited in his solo pieces. They make good use of Joe O'Byrne's sparse script but need to expand on Ramon's jealousy and the couple's financial strain. Despite the odd moment of overparody, the choreography is rock solid and serves the story, not vice-versa, which makes this equally theatre and dance ' as evidenced by an ending that is as heart-rending as it is shocking. Nick Awde

Special   Assembly Universal Arts
John Keates has written a play about S&M sex that is neither prurient nor sensationalist, but is rather a serious attempt to explain why essentially normal people would choose this byway for their sex lives. He presents an attractive and clearly loving couple, played by himself and Anna Brook, who have incorporated games of power and pain into their foreplay, not only for their mutual excitement, but as an expression of their love. She is excited by the ability to expose her darkest desires without fear of alienating him, and he is excited by her excitement and the ability to continually demonstrate his love. And, while all this may not be your idea of fun, the psychology and characterisations make sense, and the play succeeds in convincing us that, for these two, this is a healthy expression and deepener of their love. It should be said that, while the actors keep their clothes on at all times, simply stating 'Now I am naked' at relevant moments, and the S&M is all either left to the blackouts and our imaginations or obviously simulated, there still may be cringe-inducing moments for all but the most hardy or open-minded.  Gerald Berkowitz

Victor Spinetti - A Very Private Diary Revisited Pleasance
Best known (as he happily admits) as the mad scientist in the Beatles movie Help, Victor Spinetti has had a more than fifty-year career in stage and film, during which he seems to have met and made friends with everyone. He tells his stories with charm and infectious delight, almost as happy to laugh at himself as at others - though ultimately he can't help preferring the latter occasions, as when his brief experience as a teen-idol-by-proxy, thanks to the Beatle films, let him one-up a fellow actor who had been patronising him. He also enjoys the story of the time old buddies Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor helped him rain on Peter Sellers' parade. On the other hand, he is glad to confide that he only got the Beatle roles because George Harrison's mother fancied him and to recreate the experience of being stoned in Marrakech with John and Yoko. Of course there are other names dropped during the hour, from Sean Connery (They both got their start in South Pacific, and he has a great theory about how Connery became Bond) through Princess Margaret (who rang him up after a performance to ask him to repeat an off-colour joke she wanted to tell her sister). Spinetti has been doing this informal reminiscence show on and off for years, and there is no reason why he shouldn't continue with it forever - anyone who has such great stories and who tells them so well will always be welcome. Gerald Berkowitz

The Spoils C Venue
That men and women experience war differently is a truism, but the thrust of this new play by Steven Dykes and Paul Englishby is that our assumptions about those differences are almost certainly wrong. A member of a conquering army interrogates four women who were mere secretaries in various ministries of the losing government. The man is enamoured of a piece of the defeated country's classical music, and hopes this will create a bond with the women. But it is soon apparent that he has sentimentalised the music, which has no special meaning for them, as much as he has the women, the war, and just about everything else he addresses. They, in contrast, are practical, matter-of-fact and generally disdainful of all men whose romantic visions disrupted and destroyed their neat and smoothly-running bureaucracies. Far from representing the softer sex, the women's clear vision and impatience with male sentimentality exposes it for the destructive fantasy it is. Though the script requires Clark Devlin's interrogator to go on too long and too frequently in his romantic analysis of the music, the short sharp shocks of his encounters with Laura Churchill, Rebecca Pollock, Polly Henson and Marina Burton carry the play's chilling and corrective vision. Gerald Berkowitz

Spread Zoo Southside
You may have already seen a few shows dealing with the media pressures on women's body image, and even one or two offering a satirical take on gossip magazines and cookery shows. But you probably haven't seen anything as brave and bold as this all-female show in which one of the central sketches has the protagonist shaking her flab in front of an invisible mirror, wearing only her underwear and a pig snout, and singing the theme from Love Story. This is a comedy show so it will actually be funny at the time as you'll quickly get used to Hourglass's smooth but deeply ironic sense of humour. In fact you'll probably love them so much that you won't even wince once as they smear themselves with treacle and chocolate powder, gyrating suggestively and singing Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me into a rolling pin. The show is all about food and therefore a mouth-watering display is only to be expected, but this particular offering will certainly leave a bittersweet aftertaste in your mouth. Duska Radosavljevic

Stenclmusic C soco
From the 19th century to World War II, Jewish immigrants played a key role in developing the garment industry in London's East End despite appalling poverty and prejudice. Whitechapel was very much the hub of it all and, in celebration, Neyire Ashworth becomes an entertaining cast of residents while also playing a range of clarinets in Stephen Watts' play. . The evocative tunes she plays represent each character too, and at one point she even measures up a customer whose awkward shape is likened to the curves of her bass clarinet. Meanwhile an onstage screen mixes mouthwatering images of bagels with archive photos of tailors, machinists and their families. Voices appear too: memories of cooking for the Sabbath, the boys going to religious cheder school, workers sacked for taking Jewish holidays, Avrom Stencl's Yiddish poems of life in the East End. There are thoughtful contrasts: the traditional Hannukah spinning top song with a girl wondering about Christianity's Santa Claus, images of today's Bengali sweet shops with the rye bread bakers of yesteryore. Kids' scraps turn to gangs fights which turn to the pitched battle of Cable Street against the British fascists. Evacuation - and, unstated here, economic improvement - helps the move to places like Stamford Hill, leaving us with Stencl's lament that Whitechapel is forgotten though only 'a shilling's drive away'. Aside from the intriguing blend of performance and media, Stenclmusic is an unusual look at the process of loss of identity long before assimilation starts its work. At the moment, the show is probably best appreciated if you already have some knowledge of this small part of London and of the history of East End Jews. With a more formal backing and more work on the script, this has the potential to become an excellent piece of educational theatre for a far wider audience. Nick Awde

Stonewall Pleasance
On June 28, 1969 a New York City gay bar underwent one of its regularly scheduled, almost ritualistic police raids, but for some reason on that night the queens fought back, beginning a week of riots and demonstrations that are celebrated as the beginning of America's gay pride movement.  Rikki Beadle-Blair's play. an adaptation of his screenplay of a decade ago, celebrates the myth of Stonewall in a way that is true in spirit if fictional in plot, and that provides one of the most thoroughly entertaining dirty pleasures of the festival. Set in a magical version of history in which the city is made of tinsel and the entire cast is covered head to toe in glitter, the play follows newcomer to New York Matty Dean, who falls for La Mirada, one of the drag queens who frequent the Stonewall. More political than most, Matty is at first drawn to the cautious Mattechine Society's way of working within the system until he sees how ineffectual and compromising they are, returning to the Stonewall world just as a cop picks exactly the wrong moment to hassle one of the queens. With the romance of Matty and La Mirada at its centre, the play thus gets the chance to look at a cross-section of the 1969 gay world, from the most flamboyant of queens to the tragically closeted man who can't face the fact that he loves one of them. It also celebrates the spirit of liberation by interrupting the action at regular intervals with delightfully staged lip-synced musical numbers set to the recordings of girl groups of the period. Strong performances from Alexis Gregory as La Mirada, Joel Dommett as Matty, and author-director Rikki Beadle-Blair as the gang's spiritual den mother lead a large cast and set a tone that encompasses the real personal dramas and the spirit of liberation. Stonewall has all the glamour of a drag queen's dreams and all the sleaze of a morning after.   Gerald Berkowitz

Stoopud Fucken Animals Traverse
Joel Horwood's play is, according to its press release, a combined attempt to reinvent the musical theatre form and to use the genre of the cowboy movie to mythologise the British countryside. It is, in fact, a string of soap opera clichés enlivened a bit by being set in a Suffolk backwater and punctuated by a couple of half-hearted country-and-western tunes. Two brothers trapped in the dead-end world of a dying farm community discover a Dark Secret about their birth, and if I tell you that the woman they call mother is actually gran, and that an aging country singer and a runaway London whore are in the cast of characters, you can figure out the rest. With nothing beyond those not-particularly-revelatory revelations to drive the plot, and with not much in the way of character development or evocation of the milieu along the way, the play drags its way to a conclusion that is its one original touch. Confrontations that would seem destined for violence or some tragic outcome are resolved peacefully as the characters recognise and accept each other's imperfections - which, depending on how you take it, is either a soft cop-out or a belated rebellion against the soap opera conventions that bound the play up to that point.  Gerald Berkowitz

Story of a Rabbit Pleasance
I have been asked to write this review of Hugh Hughes' new show. It is actually a new show by Shon Dale-Jones, but he seems to prefer being known as his alter ego both on and off stage at the moment. In this review I am going to tell you a little bit about the show but without giving it all away so that if you go and see it you can still enjoy it for yourself. Also I am going to try and highlight what particularly worked and what didn't work so well. Hugh Hughes may not like to read the latter, but it is all well-meaning and intended to give him some sort of feedback which he can incorporate in his future work. Feedback is a very useful thing about reviewing. Another useful thing about reviewing is that it gives a taster to those who have not seen the show, so that they can decide whether or not to go. What I have tried to do so far in this review is to give you a taster of Hugh Hughes' style of expression. If you have seen Hughes' last year's show about leaving home, Floating, you will hopefully know what I mean. In Story of a Rabbit, Hughes uses exactly the same format to explore the issues of memory, bereavement and parental death. His child-like wonder together with a mildly poetic meditation on highly abstract issues will make this show suitable, likeable and very relevant to a broad-ranging audience. If you haven't seen Hughes' work before, you will find it slightly unusual at first, but also extremely enticing, amusing and eventually quite moving too. The second time around, though, this isn't the case equally as much as the first time. This is because the novelty wears off. Initially, the style is part of the content. The second time, unless there is a clear thematic reason, it seems to become just a style, even when dealing with pain. Equally, I will probably not have a good reason to write a review like this again. Duska Radosavljevic

Subway  Traverse at the Drill Hall
Conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton and produced by Vanishing Point, this new play imagines a dystopic near future in which such Big Brother features as omnipresent CCTV cameras, identity cards and social-conditioning legislation like restrictions on smoking have moved just further enough along from where they are now to be nightmarish, and in which the poor are even more marginalised and disenfranchised. Inspired by the ramblings of a street drunk, a Hull lad decides to visit his father in Edinburgh. He finds his old neighbourhood in the throes of gentrification, his father relegated to a high-rise slum, and what political awareness and rebellious impulses there had been now reduced to impotence. In a world in which the poor and sick must buy lottery tickets whose prize is admission to the newly built hospital that displaced their homes, the only victories left are the tiniest of symbolic gestures, like lighting up a pipe in a public place. Despite attractive performances by Sandy Grierson as the boy and Rosalind Sydney as everyone else, there wouldn't be enough news or drama here to hold our interest were it not for the participation of a seven-piece band from Kosovo, who provide a continuous and always attractive soundscape ranging in styles from traditional through classical and jazz to emotive movie music.    Gerald Berkowitz

Talking Pants! Gilded Balloon
Ian Billings writes for Chuckelvision, he publishes children's poetry and is also a stand up comedian. From what I've seen, this last pursuit is largely a means of promoting the first two, his material revolving mostly around 'why it's great to be a writer' in the idiom of a schoolboy. Even though this potentially sounds vaguely educational, it is mostly a licence for Billings to indulge in a series of silly scenarios, such us turning Ba Ba Black Sheep into a subject of the Rhyme Squad investigations and setting Star Wars: The Return of the Jelly in a school canteen. Billed as being suitable for 6 to 11 year olds, Billing's show stays firmly within that category, leaving adults predominantly unamused. And even though the children do chuckle and fill all the deliberate pauses with approving noises, it very much seems that the person who is having the most fun here is Billings himself. Duska Radosavljevic

Talking to Space Hoppers   C Soco
The spirit of Willy Russell's Shirley Valentine hovers over this new play written by Angela Truby and Joanna Swain, and performed by Swain. Like Shirley, their discontented north-of-England housewife likes to think of herself by her maiden name, as a symbol of the lively and happy girl she once was. Shirley talked to the wall, Bev talks to a favourite toy from her childhood; Shirley went to Greece, Bev takes a night class in stand-up comedy; Shirley had a fling with a Greek man, Bev with a younger classmate. And the moral of both stories is that, when the conventional world they've been trying to live within stifles them, they're better off breaking free. Which is not to say that Bev's story is not enjoyable to watch, due largely to Joanna Swain's warm and lively performance, or that it has nothing new to tell us. Where Shirley Valentine ended her play wanting to share some of her new happiness with her husband, Bev is surprised and ultimately delighted to discover that she feels no obligation to hers at all. We also get to see Bev trying out her stand-up act a couple of times, with routines finding comic twists to the events in her life, which may remind you of that Sally Field - Tom Hanks movie, but that's just one more footnote to this play whose appeal lies not in originality but in presentation.    Gerald Berkowitz

Tell Underbelly
Despite an illustrious start to his theatre career as an assistant director in the West End, Tim Digby-Bell's playwriting and directorial debut with his newly-founded company seems to be more of a testament to a love of radio. Even the shipping forecast, that sure sign of radio worship, gets an honourable cameo in this deeply nostalgic love story. Essentially, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this - and in fact a shipping forecast itself might even make an excellent subject for a play. The main problem of this piece in its current state is that it seems to misunderstand the function of storytelling and mise-en-scene in theatre. Even though aspects of its stage imagery are rather charming and Holden-White is capable of some fine characterisation, the relentless scenic illustrating of what is being said is eventually tedious and quite pointless. The story being related, with great technical skill, is therefore never fully rendered either verbally or visually as it, most importantly, fails to secure the audience's imaginative involvement in either. Duska Radosavljevic

The Terrible Infants Pleasance
Song, rhyme, puppets and slapstick make for a great romp via Les Enfants Terribles' tall tales about terrible children. Little Tilly deservedly heads the list - she feels compelled to tell fib after fib until she ends up growing a terrible tail of her own. There's the achingly sad story of Thingummyboy whose silent protest means that nobody notices him, even his parents. And then there's Little Linena, covered in patches and the original material girl, whose youthful vanity falls foul of the 'avid followers of fashion'. The cast wear their ragamuffin garb with pride and jump into their characters with glee - there's a continuous stream of new scenes with each costume change. What happens in between the terrible tales is just as captivating as the travelling band of players joke, jibe and gyrate with each other. Witty and hummable, the songs are written and played by Tom Gisby and Neil Townsend on a Heath Robinson-like array of instruments. Meanwhile the puppets are similarly diverse: a huge pink baby's head, shadow puppets, a hand-held marionette. Sam Wyer's set is another star of the show: an appealing clutter that includes side-show on wheels, the band section and inventive props plucked from the unlikeliest of locations, including a seriously giant pink umbrella. There is a refreshingly modern twist to all of this that does not detract from its gothic morality, so taking the spirit of Struwwelpeter, Edward Gorey and Roald Dahl screeching and laughing into the 21st century. Nick Awde

Timeless Dancebase
In the world of dance, age is a key concept in itself. Until not so long ago, dancers would have been forced to retire in their 30s. It is therefore hard not to watch a piece with the 79 year old Diana Payne-Myers in it without admiring her graceful gait and straight spine while thinking of all her contemporaries' arthritic limbs and hip replacement therapies. In Mathew Hawkins's piece entitled Muscular Memory Lane, we are asked to appreciate the duet in much more objective terms - and Payne-Myers is such a seasoned professional that her performance is entirely timeless too. On the other end of the scale are the choreographer Beth Cassani and her 14 and 12 year old sons Jacob and Tom. Although not old enough yet to be seen as true professionals, the simply adorable brothers gradually defy all such preconceptions, showing that their free-form imagination and refreshing innocence are also matched by a highly disciplined approach to their art. The triptych, also featuring a boyishly tender male duet from Canada therefore makes for highly entertaining, moving and thought-provoking viewing - regardless of the age of the viewer. Duska Radosavljevic

Jimmy Tingle's American Dream Assembly
Hailing from Boston, Jimmy Tingle came over to do his first one-man show in 1990 and left with a Perrier nomination.Via a fruitful pair of years as an ironic commentator on the primetime TV show 60 Minutes, he ended up running his own 200-seat theatre in his home town, and he's still performing. This trip he's here to present his version of the American Dream in a single hour - a daunting task, but one he performs with relish.The result is a series of wry insights from an expert commmentator illuminating not so much the United States as a whole but the mindset of ordinary Americans. Subjects range from how to be a cafeteria Catholic to sodomy and the law, while a salvo against slavery leads to ruminations on torture the Guantanamo way - Tingle finds a light twist of humour in the most weighty of topics. Disappointingly, for someone with his finger on so many pulses, he hasn't bothered to filter his material for the UK. There's a good reason why questioning the audience over public financing of political campaigns meets with baffled silence. Not quite a tumbleweed moment, but almost. He needs to cross the cultural divide although of course we wouldn't want him to stoop to toe-crawlingly faux British or (shudder) Scottish routines. There is, however, a resounding click of recognition when he mentions Iraq - it's as fascinating as it is funny to hear the American version of events compared to our own (they started it, after all), before launching into a ripping prose poem about body counts. Nick Awde

Tony! The Blair Musical C Venue
Tony Blair can retire secure in the knowledge that there are two musicals in town celebrating his rise and fall at Westminster. This one promises 'ten years of Labour rule in just one hour'. Tony has a vision (Lady Di with angel wings) that he's going to be a star. Like Evita Peron, he meets various people along the way who help him to the top, only to neglect, betray or fall out with them. Aside from the usual Downing Street crew, George W Bush makes a couple of appearances as do Jeremy Paxman and that sexed-up dossier. As Blair, James Duckworth looks and sounds the part down to the smallest tic and proves this is no surface impression by creating an unexpectedly sympathetic figure on all counts. Strong-voiced Ellie Cox avoids any unnecessary caricature of the already uncaricaturable Cherie and so convinces as the discarded wife with touching ballads such as 'Haven't We Done Well' In strong support, although perhaps less so in voice, are Jethro Compton as Tony's new love Peter Mandelson, Ed Duncan Smith as Alastair Campbell - cue their celeb duet 'I Want You to be a Man of the People' - Mike Slater as Gordon Brown and Alex Stevens as John Prescott, who all acquit themselves well. Despite the four-piece band, the arrangements are low key, which is probably a good thing since any more would detract from the songs, which are more lyric-based (by Chris Bush) than thumping melodies (by Ian McCluskey). The highlight has to be the barber shop quartet of forgotten Tory party leaders, and it's amazing how many words rhyme with 'Blair'. Despite its relative complexity, as with its model Evita - hardly the most perfect of works - the show over-concentrates on the central character of Tony and reduces the interesting personalities in his life to near cyphers solely to provide colour and contrast. While that makes for some great torch songs, it robs the show of the chance of a resounding climax as well as any real connection with the hurly-burly world of politics. Nick Awde

Touch Pleasance
A lonely and repressed man impulsively and almost accidentally saves the life of a suicidal girl and then can't get rid of her or her sudden burst of optimism and life-affirmation, which confuses him and threatens his closed but safe existence. Given that premise, you can probably predict the rest of Bill Dare's play, and indeed much of what follows the set-up is strictly by-the-numbers plotting and characterisation. Still, there are a few surprises and original twists on the formula, sufficient to hold your interest and your empathy with the two nicely drawn and attractively played characters. The man is characterised by compulsive orderliness and a neurotic aversion to being touched, and his isolation is nicely represented by the high-power telescope through which he watches the comfortably distant heavens and sometimes his neighbours, and through which he has seen the woman from afar before, and created a whole imagined personality for her in his mind, which is now measured against the reality. She, in turn, seems an odd mix of depression and near-manic optimism, with hints in her demands for organic food and fair trade tea of some order and compulsion issues parallel to his. And while we discover that she may not have been quite as suicidal or in need of saving as she seemed at the time, she does have secret sorrows that underlie her determined cheeriness and make her vulnerable. And so, if the end of their dance of tentative reaching out and frightened withdrawal is inevitable, we are drawn in to the hope that the force of her personality will break through his repression, as his neediness enables her to risk loving him. Performers Lucinda Millward and Rupert Holliday Evans contribute to the play's effect through their natural warmth, hers underlying a veneer of confidence that hints at insensitivity and pushiness in her character, his peeping irrepressibly through the man's self-protective shell.   Gerald Berkowitz

Traces Assembly Rooms
This show has the kind of word of mouth that fills the Assembly's biggest space at tea time. You can see why, as it would be a real crowd pleaser even if the four hunky guys and cute babe did nothing more than stand around for an hour. However, that is not their bag. The Canadian quintet Les 7 Doigts de la Main are talented and brave acrobats and clowns, with good gymnastic skills and a great act. Unusually, the team build on their own characters through the set, which helps the audience to identify with them. They seem determined to outdo each other from an opening dance sequence onwards. The energy levels are amazing, as they go through their paces together and individually, building to a climax with piled rings through which they jump and roll, that brings the house down. Everyone will have their highlights in this breathless show but the use of upright bars on which every team member seemingly defies gravity again and again should live in the memory for a long time. Philip Fisher

Truckstop Zoo
This Dutch play by Lot Vekemans, skilfully translated by Rina Vergano, tells a sweet and ultimately dark little story with great sensitivity and beauty, and this production directed by Christopher Rolls does it full justice. A woman runs a modest little highway restaurant with her daughter, who is what a doctor might call high-functioning autistic - that is, within very structured limits, she is able and proud to do a limited repertoire of assigned chores. But two things simultaneously threaten this little world - a competitor up the road has remodelled and is stealing all the business, and the daughter has fallen in love with a local lad. The boy is clearly something of a loser, but he dreams of owning his own truck, and the daughter is caught up in the fantasy. And so a clash of complicated desires is set up. Does the boy love the girl or the dream she helps him have? Does mother want to protect her or hold on to funds that are in the daughter's name and that she wants for the business? The answer to both questions is yes to both halves, and one of the things that makes Vekemans' play so rich is that there are no good guys and bad guys. It also provides three rich acting roles that the cast make much of, Janet Bamford as the complex and conflicted mother, Adam Best as the innocent and attractive loser, and Eugenia Caruso as the daughter limited in mind but not in heart. Gerald Berkowitz

Truth in Translation Assembly Rooms
Contrary to the Fringe mode, this is the kind of piece for which you ought to set aside a whole day to really appreciate it. Focusing on the stories of the South African interpreters from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996, Michael Lessac's production combines documentary and music theatre to explore the themes of responsibility, healing and emotional (non)-involvement in the stories of torture. Asked to switch off our phones and remain uninvolved, we are then exposed to a complicated mixture of layered conversations, heart-rending songs and film footage projected on a screen made of anonymous shirts. Pieces of horrifying stories are interspersed with moments of light relief as we also witness the dreams, desires and pains of the individual interpreters who gradually morph from invisible mediators into three-dimensional characters. It is however a person on the margins of that world who will win your heart however hard you try to resist it - for Nobhule, the comforter, played by the wonderful Thembi Mtshali-Jones, will do it in the universal language of song. Duska Radosavljevic

Unnatural Acts   Gilded Balloon
[DISCLAIMER: This play was co-written by my colleague and fellow TheatreguideLondon reviewer Nick Awde . Read what follows in that context.]
Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde, who wrote the 2005 Edinburgh hit Pete And Dud - Come Again, follow it up with a genre-buster - a romantic comedy without the romance. Unnatural Acts may sometimes have the feel of a pilot for a TV sitcom, but it provides a nice twist on the rom com genre and more than its share of laughs.  Jessica Martin plays a woman whose biological alarm clock is ringing loudly, but the only man in sight is her gay flatmate, played by comic Jason Wood. Turkey basters are out of the question, so the unthinkable must be faced to conquer the inconceivable. It's a naturally comic situation, and the playwrights have provided not only lots of opportunity for both parties to vacillate in their commitment to this plan, but also lots of clever lines and sight gags. There are also some quieter moments and opportunities for the two actors to deepen the characters beyond sitcom shallowness - she has just been dumped rather unhappily and he is mourning for a relationship that died some time ago.  I saw the show very early in the run, when the performers hadn't quite found all the laughs, and one sensed good lines being swallowed when a little punching would have made then score. But that's the sort of thing audiences will teach them, and I'm sure the show can only get funnier as the run goes on.   Gerald Berkowitz

Unsex Me Here Pleasance
Skye Loneragan's solo performance piece begins with Cinderella missing her deadline because she can't run in high heels. It goes on to include Lady Macbeth constantly interrupted by her children as she nags her husband, a female lawyer hobbled by a tight skirt, Snow White, Pippi Longstocking, Bo Peep, Old Mother Hubbard and Edith Piaf. At one point the lawyer lectures on the history of shoes and the cultural fascination with the raised calf, at another there is a trial, apparently brought by Prince Charming, though who is suing whom for what is never clear. One guesses that there is a point to all this, possibly a feminist criticism of subjugation to a hobbling shoe style, but with difficulty keeping the simple story clear, Loneragan is unable to connect the various strands or make them resonate to any larger meaning. Nor is the piece effective as a showcase for her talent as a performer, as all her characters tend to look, act and sound very similar, she has trouble with her props, and the one clear moment in the hour comes at the end, when she steps forward to tell an uncertain audience that it is over. Gerald Berkowitz

Venus As A Boy Traverse
Luke Sutherland's novel traces the journey of a simple Scottish lad from his Orkney childhood to a career (if that's the word for it) as a London rent boy, the story carried by the balance between its frequently violent and ugly surface and the narrator's conviction that he is such an inspired lover that everyone who tastes of his wares has a transcendent and life-changing experience. Veteran actor Tam Dean Burn has adapted the novel into a solo show, with the novelist (an accomplished musician) providing an original and evocative backing soundscape.  Burn is an actor of considerable skill and personal charm, but he is not a young boy and he cannot create the theatrical illusion of being one. And so we are always aware that we are watching an older actor narrating the story of a younger character, which is not the same thing as living it through the character. Clearly a labour of love on Dean's part, this remains more an actor's exercise and an external tale-telling than a successful dramatisation of the book.  Gerald Berkowitz

The Voice of Things - Toilet Paper Underbelly
Object manipulation seems to have really taken off at this year's festival - you can easily see mundane items attempting poignant characterisations even in some of the most mainstream work. In their exploratory piece, Jiwon Yang and Chiara De Palo go that one step further and devote their entire show to an exclusive theatrical beatification of toilet paper. Although at times this has the air of an academic experiment combining a cartoonish script of giggles and monosyllabic exclamations with some choreographed movement and Chiara De Palo's very beautiful Italian singing, it is eventually quite engaging and inspiring too. Its stated aim might have been to imbue the least poetic everyday object with a meditative kind of poetry typical of Francis Ponge, but this piece definitely transcends its origins and becomes about a lot of other universal everyday things. Duska Radosavljevic

The Voices In My Head Have Formed A Choir And Somebody's Singing Flat! Gilded Balloon
American actor-singer Don Stitt is one of those journeyman performers lucky enough to have worked pretty steadily for several decades, even without ever becoming a star. The story of his life and career is therefore unusual and uplifting on the one hand, and not especially colourful or exciting on the other, and while he seems a pleasant enough chap, he doesn't have the force of personality to hold the stage on his own. Stitt's story takes us from his early days in San Francisco fringe theatre to featured roles in Broadway and road company musicals, and while he drops a few names along the way - he once beat out Robin Williams for a role - it seems at first odd that most of the characters he describes and portrays are even less well-known than he. His purpose becomes clear only near the end of the show in a way that does darken and deepen the hour, giving it resonances it didn't have as mere autobiography, as we learn that almost everyone we've met had the same tragic fate and thus understand why they are still in his head. Gerald Berkowitz

Waiting for Alice Assembly
If you've wondered whatever happened to Tweedledum and Tweedledee, look no further. What begins as a comic riff on Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass soon becomes something a little darker by blending Lewis Carroll with Samuel Beckett, thanks to Phill Jupitus and Andre Vincent. Dum is cool and sorted, Dee is the jittery one, the worrier, but ultimately both are hornets' nests of neuroses and, via their constant tiffs, we learn that not only are they two literary characters in search of a protagonist (read: Godot) but also a reader. Stuck in a thespian time loop, the brothers are in perpetual rehearsal for the moment when Alice turns up, for feedback they have instant reviews constantly to hand critiquing their roles. Sibling rivalry is always simmering beneath the surface and insults are gloriously traded. Whether or not to use silly voices while narrating The Walrus and the Carpenter causes one explosion, a ukulele ditty causes another. Style, sight gags and visual wordplay abound as the dumpy duo delve into their past, present and future and square up to 68 years of slights and gripes. Beckett, naturally, would approve of the pervading music hall style. Things start slowly but it's the getting there that's the fun. As writers, Jupitus and Vincent have focused on the conundrums so beloved of Carroll and Beckett, both mischievous masters of the philosophical absurd. As performers, they masterfully match up to each other as the agoraphobic autistics who somehow manage to preserve some shred of dignity. On the night Jupitus was Dum and Vincent Dee (they swap roles each show thanks to a neat Escher-like twist), and although they have the advantage of physical presence - well-fed boys, neither has to exactly pad up for the part - luckily for us they also relish the wordplay and interchange of these terrible twins. Nick Awde

The Walworth Farce Traverse
Sometimes a play will be structured in two modes or two levels of reality, complementing or bouncing off each other, but the key to making such a construct work is getting the balance just right. Enda Walsh's new play combines the comic and the serious, the make-believe and the real. But it gets the balance wrong, and the wrong parts dominate, to the detriment of the play as a whole. We begin with what seems a grotesque, Ortonesque family, which we gradually realise is a slightly less grotesque family acting out an Ortonesque script of their own devising, their clumsiness at it being part of the joke. Eventually we will figure out that father is indoctrinating his adult sons in a mythical version of the family history that brought them from Ireland to the London flat in which they have been hiding out for years. And with the cracking of that myth and the dangerous involvement of an outsider, we discover how mentally and emotionally crippling this whole process has been. And perhaps you can begin to see the problem. The play is not about the Ortonesque farce, but about the darker reality, and yet at least three-quarters of the text is devoted to the playing-out-the-myth scenes. As a result, what should be the centre of the play - the real characters and the cost to them of sustaining the myth - is given short shrift, while the play-acting scenes, funny as they may be, are eventually rejected by the play as not where we should be looking.  Gerald Berkowitz

Wasted (Y)ears Pleasance Dome
In his mid-30s Tim Barlow decided to become an actor, undeterred by the facts that he had no training, had spent most of his adult life in the army, was four years away from a pension, had a wife and children to support, and was deaf. This is his story. Now 70-ish, Barlow tells his tale with humour and charm, explaining how he joined the army because heroism seemed a good career choice, how testing a new rifle destroyed his hearing and how, after several foreign postings, he found himself  behind a desk in London, the logic of Military Intelligence placing a deaf man in a listening post. In London his love of theatre was reawakened, and Barlow takes us through the turmoil of deciding whether to give up one of the most secure careers in the world ('unless you're killed, of course') for one of the least. And by that time we have gotten to know and enjoy the company of this man of indefatigable energy, optimism and good cheer. Barlow's show finishes just as he gets his first acting job, leaving us wondering about his experiences as a deaf actor. But, as he tells us at the end of his hour, that is another story.  Gerald Berkowitz

What If?   Pleasance
Tale On Fire, a young company dedicated to visually inventive theatre, turn their attention to MyFace and other online communities in this group-created piece that may not have much new to say, but that finds some inventive ways of saying it. A rather ordinary guy of limited social skills finds it easier to chat with people online than to say hello to the girl he admires from afar. An ambitious journalist latches on to this sad sack and, under the guise of befriending him, pumps him for material that he then uses in a completely undisguised and unflattering portrait in his article, destroying whatever minimal confidence and minimal social standing the poor guy may have had. There isn't a whole lot that's new there, and the story is told in rather simplistic black-and-white terms - it might have made for more complex drama if the victim hadn't been quite such a loser, or if the reporter found himself falling under the online spell. What does catch the eye and the mind is the way the story is told visually. Newspapers in which our hero is interested only in the personal ads are represented by blank sheets of paper, for example, while his empty life is reflected in an all-beige set, and the excitement of online contact is depicted by different coloured ribbons springing out of each character's laptop to connect with the others.  Gerald Berkowitz

Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath   Baby Belly
The too-oft-told tale of Sylvia Plath, the poet unfortunately married to another poet and so beaten down by his egotism, abuse and infidelities, along with the burdens of wife-and-motherhood, that her talent suffered and she killed herself, is startlingly refreshed and made more real in this play by Edward Anthony, through a curious sort of deconstruction. Onstage we see a fictional version of Plath, named Esther, in the last hallucinating seconds of her suicide, when the oven into which she has stuck her head starts talking to her, and memories are projected on a large video screen above. Elisabeth Gray plays Esther, also providing the voices of the oven and of her offstage children, and her conversations with them, along with the flashbacks we see on the screen, tell a story much like Plath's with one key difference. Although we are told repeatedly that Esther and her philandering husband are both poets, something in the presentation makes us not believe it for a minute. And stripped of that one element, the Plath myth suddenly becomes both more mundane and more universal. Seen simply as the sad little story of a woman who found no nourishment in her marriage or her life, Esther's suicide doesn't have to be heroic in stature or mythic in meanings. And the thought that maybe that's all there really was to Plath's story is intriguing. Elisabeth Gray holds the stage and holds everything together with an intense performance that is neither overpowered nor upstaged by either the talking oven or the video sequences.   Gerald Berkowitz

Worlds End   Pleasance Dome
There isn't an apostrophe missing in that title; Paul Sellar's play is a reminder that people's whole worlds can end when what they were built on is taken away. In this case it is love, and the cautionary tale of Ben, who foolishly threw away the one thing he would miss most when it was gone. Ben is very much a son of Jimmy Porter, and the shadow of John Osborne hangs heavy over this play as failed writer Ben first vents his spleen and then pours out his raw pain in a string of eloquent arias, as he watches his former girlfriend move her things out of his flat. Like Jimmy Porter, Ben talks at people, not to them, seeking to overpower them with his raw emotion, which we gradually understand is directed at his own failures even more than at those who have failed him. And like Jimmy, he really needs those he pushes away, particularly Kat, who tried so hard to love him until his inability to give anything back forced her to go. It is a tribute to director Paul Robinson and the actors that, despite Ben dominating the text and Merryn Owen giving as raw and powerful a performance as you are likely to see in Edinburgh, this one character is not allowed to run away with the play. Fiona Button as Kat, Monica Bertei as her supportive friend briefly tempted by Ben's need and energy (another echo of Look Back In Anger) and Jamie Belman as Kat's new boyfriend all hold their own onstage, keeping the drama balanced and everybody's story of interest.   Gerald Berkowitz

Wunderkind Underbelly
Blood and glitter on the wall. In a nutshell, that's what filmmaking is all about in Darren Thornton's fiercely cutting new satire. Owen McDonnell gives an adrenaline-rich solo performance as Sean Quinn, an Irish film director on the brink of international fame. Through a rather clever use of DVD commentary-style vox pops and Quinn's own football commentary-style accounts of his pursuit of success and injuries to his ego, we are confronted with a vivid depiction of the lures and trappings of the silver screen. It is mildly intriguing watching Quinn attempt to locate himself somewhere on the self-defined scale between a wunderkind and a spiritually bankrupt failure as he whizzes through London's media parties and night clubs, in an anticipation of his big walk down the red carpet on Leicester Square. However, one can't help wondering what the relevance of this is to the rest of us who would much rather just sit down with a packet of popcorn in blissful ignorance of what goes on behind the scenes. Duska Radosavljevic

Xenu is Loose! C Venue
An attempt at a science fiction comic rock opera in the general mode of the Rocky Horror Show is hampered by a weak and confused book and further crippled by inadequate direction and performances. Xenu is an intergalactic tyrant imprisoned 75 million years ago for, among other crimes, implanting in humans all the religions, myths and errors that would hobble the race forever. Now he's out and ready to cause more trouble, and all the forces of Scientology seem unable to stop him. Why Scientology? No particular reason, except that the authors of the play (Tom Richards, Stewart Pringle and Henry Richards) either strongly approve or strongly disapprove of the movement - it is not at all clear which. At any rate, a group of young Scientologists fight the alien unsuccessfully, despite bringing in Tom Cruise in one of the few witty moments in the script - another is having Xenu eventually defeated by a coalition of Health and Safety Inspectors and Traffic Wardens. Most of the performers are young, and one half-hopes that Collapsible Theatre is a disguised school production, since that would explain the general amateurishness. Very few in the cast can make themselves heard over a single keyboard, even with mikes, and they tend to stand or move about the stage aimlessly. On the other hand, Xenu's costume and makeup are moderately clever, in an early-Doctor-Who sort of way. Gerald Berkowitz

Yellow Moon Traverse Theatre
David Greig's play, commissioned for performances to young Scottish audiences, places a familiar plot in a very specific context that redefines and renews it. A teenage boy and girl tentatively connect, and when an almost accidental killing puts him on the run, she goes along. What keeps this from being just another Bonnie-and-Clyde rerun is the fact that neither is really criminal. Both are simply lost and unhappy adolescents, and the sad fact is that this adventure is the most real and alive thing they've experienced. Still, they are products of their time and place, and the source of much of the play's emotional power comes from the recognition of how often they come close to something resembling modest, ordinary happiness, only to miss it as some invisible wall of class, self-perception or imagination keeps them from seeing and grabbing it. This is a small and subtle insight, and in performance one is too much aware of how little actually happens, and how clichéd much of that is. This sense of dramatic thinness is compounded by a presentational mode that devotes perhaps 80% of the text to description and narration, the cast of four taking turns telling us what the characters are thinking, feeling and doing as they act the moments out. Gerald Berkowitz

Andy Zaltzman, 32, Administers His Emergency Dose of Afternoon Utopia, Steps Back, and Waits to See What Happens The Stand
Effortlessly blurring the dividing line between comedy and politics (i.e. fact and fiction), Andy Zaltzman races through, oh, about a million different topics in the single hour he has allotted by the Stand. Within two seconds of starting he has already asked what sort of world he's bringing his new baby into and described the flea circus he intends to bring on before launching into a description of how Alastair Campbell's grandfather invented PR after the sinking of the Titanic. He finally flips open his laptop and starts filling in a Q&A for the audience - this is part of his survey on how people see their ideal Utopia. It's a great form of audience interaction and an effective method of dealing with potential hecklers since whatever anyone says Zaltzman simply keys it into his computer. In between, he proves the existence of democracy by raising cheers for Blair's departure and dead silence for Brown's ascension or reading out a surreal fable about his spoilt ballot paper. His riff on Iraq is overlengthy although insightful, while the Jackanory-style tale of how he set out to defeat Chinese industry is more baffling than witty. But I probably need to remind myself here that this is dense stuff. Not only a supreme political commentator, Zaltzman also has a great line in comic self-analysis, wordplay and sporting metaphors. He is generous to his audience too - we got a four-star rating, although sadly we never discovered our perfect Utopia. Nick Awde

(Some of these reviews appeared first in The Stage.)

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Reviews - Edinburgh Festival - 2007