People Show 121: The Detective Show   Assembly      ****
The People Show has been going for almost fifty years, each instalment a company-created exploration of the boundaries of theatre, either scripted, partly improvised or totally random. Number 121, The Detective Show, is one of their most accessible and entertaining, and an excellent introduction. At its core, it's a variant of a Fringe staple, the kind of comedy in which a small cast (here, three actors) play all the roles, their difficulty keeping up with the changes in costume and accent being part of the fun. Of course, merely telling a mock detective story – who killed the tour guide, the out-of-work actor or the obsessed MI5 man, and what does Hitler's semen have to do with it? - isn't enough for them, so they keep breaking the fourth wall to comment on the genre and the conventions they're playing around with, while also coping with some dissension in the acting ranks. So an Italian waiter with a terrible accent will have to explain why the cop he also plays isn't in this scene, the actor who gets to deliver the bridging narrative will have to defend his turf against a jealous rival, we will occasionally not be sure whether we're watching an actor, an actor playing an actor or an actor playing an actor playing a cop – and it is all very clever, very funny and even a bit instructive about the illusion-creating power of theatre.    Gerald Berkowitz

Pierrepoint   Sweet Grassmarket   ***
Peter Harrison's monologue presents Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's last professional hangman, on the occasion of his final job, the execution of Timothy Evans in 1950. He presents Pierrepoint as a consummate professional, proud of being in a long family line of executioners, and even more proud of his expertise, explaining in not-too-gory detail how he does his job efficiently and humanely. As he recalls some of the more than 400 'commissions' of his twenty-five year career, noticeably not remembering any of his 'clients' by name, we get the sense of a man who has carefully compartmentalised this piece of his life – his primary occupation was as a publican – so as not to let it affect him emotionally. His mask slips only briefly, as when he bemoans his wife's embarrassment at being the subject of gossip and gawking, until the final moments, which go too soft too quickly in giving him sudden regrets and fears. Martin Oldfield plays Pierrepoint with buttoned-down calm bordering on severity, as if disdaining anyone whose personal and professional standards are not as high as his, and Tom Blake adds to the atmosphere with the constant presence of the mostly silent Evans.    Gerald Berkowitz

Punch And Judy   Pleasance   ***
Athough already established in our isles many centuries ago, Mr Punch and his rowdy acquaintances finally came of age around the beginning of the 19th century, spawned from that unique British fashion of fusing foreign art with our own popular culture - in this particular puppet’s case, the product is ribald, violent social satire. And that’s certainly what whacks you entertainingly over the head in Tea Break Theatre’s show with a difference. The difference lies in using real-life actors in place of puppets, using a script created by Katharine Armitage from original transcripts of those historical performances. Putting a living face to the slapstick brings out Punch’s sinister side and highlights the Hogarthian world through which, like the bastard son of Bill Sykes, Del Boy and Chopper, he crashes his violent but shockingly comic way. Be they sympathetic or nightmarish, characters such as Judy, the Crocodile, the Devil, the Banker and even the Baby take on more concentrated and complex personas, the result being a provocative and often surreal romp through the hard knocks of everyday life. “That’s the way to do it!” takes on an entirely new dark meaning as Punch strolls away from yet another act of assault and battery or even murder. So not for your average audience of kids by the seaside then. Giles Roberts plays Punch, with Harrie Hayes and Ryan Wichert juggling 14 other roles between them, and the trio visibly relish hamming it up. However, given their hard work, the significant script, and Oliver Wilis’ adaptable showbooth that provides an evocative backdrop and ease of quick costume changes, things are let down by unimaginative costumes and a lack of physicality all round. Additionally, while as a writer Armitage’s vision on paper impresses, as a director she gives life to very little of its promise.   Nick Awde

Rainbow   Zoo Southside   ****
This new play by a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writer Programme shows Emily Jenkins to be a real playwright, able to create believable character and incident and perhaps only a bit short of confidence on dialogue and structure. It's built on three interlocking monologues by two men and a boy, each only peripherally aware of the others as minor figures in his story and not at all aware of their monologues. A hard man tells of being sent by his boss to collect on a debt or do harm to the debtor, and how it all went wrong in a blackly comic way, resulting in him abandoning a burned-out car in a field. Coincidentally (and yes, there are a lot of coincidences here) that field is the go-to quiet place of the debtor's high-autistic teenage son, who retreats there after one too many episodes of bullying and can't cope with its desecration. Meanwhile, the boy's teacher, not knowing any of this, has fallen into a sexual relationship with the boy's sister. Emily Jenkins skilfully weaves these stories together, with the added complication that they're out of sync, the thug's present tense being a day or two earlier than the others, and draws a picture, variously comic, tragic and touching, of three people trying to change their lives and unwittingly getting in their own and each other's way.     Gerald Berkowitz

Repertory Theatre   C ECA   *****
Every once in a while you stumble across a piece of theatre that has everyone talking for the very reason you can't talk about it because that would require a spoiler alert. Clearly, from a critic's point of view, a challenge. Let's just say that one of the recurring themes of this year's festival is deconstructing theatre, and this clever comedy sort of falls into that category although it is much, much more, being a virtuoso showcase for a play where writer, director and performers set themselves a breathtakingly high benchmark in creating a complete narrative from that very deconstruction. So, a challenge for them too. As for plot, well, an aspiring young playwright (Iftach Jeffrey Ophir) sits nervously in the office of the artistic director (Erez Drigues) of a repertory theatre. We discover he is the son of the theatre’s greatest actor, a mysteriously deceased Shakespearian. Is the playwright seeking affirmation from his father’s ghost, the artistic director demands to know. Is the play any good, the playwright retorts. They parry, counter-parry and just when you think there’s a palpable hit, things swerve left field, the action increasingly disjointed – unnervingly aphasic/apraxic – and you wonder whether to laugh or gasp in shock at the passive aggression and gaps in communication. Then the play abruptly surges into a whole different gear, the energy racks up and all you can do is sit back and enjoy the rollercoaster ride. You will appreciate by curtain call the immense technique and focus required to do this, aided by Ophir and Drigues’ seamless joint direction and Ophir’s sharp translation. It is interesting to note that playwright Eldad Cohen has previously worked in creating children’s material – his laying out a bedrock of simple motifs is key to keeping his characters convincingly rooted and so keeps things on track, meaning that actors and audience alike end up in the same mad place at the frenetic finale. Nick Awde

Rod Is God   Pleasance Dome   ***
An amiable and unpretentious comedy, Rod Is God should serve the purpose of an audition for television writing and acting gigs for all concerned. Rod's life is going nowhere when his slacker buddy comes up with the money-making plan of starting a religious cult. Soon they have enlisted an enthusiastic PR man, produced TV adverts, wangled Z-list celebrity endorsements and printed up the T-shirts. Of course Rod himself can never appear in public, to keep up the mystique, and they should plough some of the early takings into genuine good works, to prime the pump. The cult spreads and money pours in, but none of it seems to reach Rod, and where are all the sacrificial virgins? Lee Griffiths' play works as satire of religion and manufactured celebrity and as farce of little guys trying to keep up with what they've started. But the targets are easy prey and the farce never frantic enough, keeping Rod Is God from rising above the level of mild and forgettable sitcom – which is to say, proof that all involved are perfect for television.   Gerald Berkowitz

Shakespeare for Breakfast   C Venue   ****
Two decades ago an Edinburgh Fringe company with an empty morning slot put together a Shakespeare pastiche, luring audiences in with free coffee and croissants. Now a Fringe staple and new every year, the tradition of irreverent humour, general silliness, and croissants continues, with parodies of single plays generally alternating with inventive ways of throwing characters from several plays together. This year's entry, while not one of the best, still has its share of laughs as Romeo and Juliet is brought into the Facebook and Twitter era, with a Geordie Romeo and a Juliet from the world of upper class twits and fashionistas. If some of the anachronistic gags are too predictable and the pattern of beginning a Shakespearean line correctly only to lapse into current slang wears thin too quickly, other bits of invention, like the wedding ceremony made up entirely of love song samples, are clever, and generally enough of the jokes and topical references score to make the hour go by entertainingly. Appropriately enough, the lovers themselves, as played by Adam Pendrich and Kirsty Marie Ayres, are fairly colourless straight men, with much of the laughter generated by Katy Withers' chavette Benviola and Emily Jane Kerr's Ab Fab Nurse. And croissants.  Gerald Berkowitz

Shakespeare's Queens: She-Wolves and Serpents   C Venue     ****
Here is a simple but effective conceit: historic rivals Queen Elizabeth I (Kath Perry) and Mary, Queen of Scots (Rachel Ferris) vie with each other in claims to greatness and justify their cases by calling on similar queens from the plays of their contemporary William Shakespeare (Patrick Trumper). Cannily, this is no slideshow gallery since it plays up the regal bitching and the shameless way the cousins attempt to manipulate the hapless playwright into their camps. There are quite a few laughs as Perry and Ferris stomp off behind screens to appear a second later as quite a different queen, an impressive feat when you consider that they are in full period costume. We meet the likes of Goneril and Regan, Titania, Cleopatra and, worryingly for the playwright, Liz and Mary’s own family in the shape of Katherine and Anne Boleyn. Meanwhile Trumper dutifully transforms himself into male protagonists such as Lear, Hamlet, and Oberon. The actors are consistent in giving strongly defined portrayals – athough Ferris inexplicably loses projection when she steps out of her Mary persona – and as the scenes whizz by, they lose none of their power. Part of the success in Perry’s clever adaptation is to keep you guessing as to which character will pop up next thanks to Elizabeth and Mary’s relentless one-up(wo)manship – and plucked from a surprisingly long list of strong royal females. Director Roz Riley marshals it all together with a discipline that manages not to lose the element of fun, giving the actors a firm platform to bounce off and show off their Shakespearean chops. As a touring production, this has much to offer, as educational as it is entertaining – plus, of course, exquisitely played. Nick Awde

The Shit   Summerhall   ****
A naked woman sits on a platform and howls her anguish into a microphone. Her mother didn't love her, she can't get work as an actress, her thighs are too big and SHE WANTS TO BE A STAR NOW! Presenting Cristian Ceresoli's text, Silvia Gallerano certainly gives a courageous, hold-nothing-back performance, naked not only in body but in baring her character's not especially attractive soul, and even willing to make herself ugly as the woman's torment distorts her face and body. An extensive press kit argues that this is all a metaphor for Italy's national inferiority complex and a Marxist indictment of the historical forces that generated it, but you can't prove it by me. The most political the performance gets (before a curtain call in which the actress covers her nakedness with an Italian flag) is an extended section that looks beyond the character's lust for glory to condemn the cultural sexism that assumes all women to be fair game for abuse and takes it for granted that they will have to trade sexual favours for career advancement in any field. This is not a pleasant show, and therefore not for everyone. It is meant to be ugly and disturbing. But as an example of unrelenting in-your-face theatre is is unmatched.    Gerald Berkowitz

Shopping Centre   Gilded Balloon     ***
Locked in a dingy storeroom, Jim is talking to a body slumped in the corner. His apologetic tones soon turn to confiding, and we understand that this is no ordinary space. This is Jim’s sole point of reference, refuge from the unwelcome advances of his family, friends and society. And it seems to have done the trick – until today. To Jim’s comically understated chagrin, there’s a riot going in the mall 100 feet above him. Indeed, the shopping centre, his lodestone of security and source of retail therapy, is under siege – and so is his life. The mood gets ever more claustrophobic and yet - the inverted Hunchback of Notre-Dame setting aside - what becomes unsettling is Jim’s ordinariness. He’s your average bloke even when you know he gets off with his wife as David Cameron waffles on the TV, or that his dismay coems not from the rioting per se but the looting and its presumed sexual depravity – all imparted with deadpan delivery. Written and performed by Matthew Osbourn, who gave us last year’s Cul-de-Sac, this is the sort of loner monologue we have seen before, but the difference here is that normality is kept on the tightest of reins and no reality check is required. Guided by Maggie Inchley’s pinpoint direction, Osbourn avoids hammy emotional explosions and so creates a wholly convincing portrayal of this nerdy psychopath. Hard to tell whether there is a moral to all this – people rioting doesn’t necessarily make a social commentary and the very ending is a lazy political cop-out – but as a portrait of the horrors brewing in the human condition it does the trick. Nick Awde

The Silencer   Pleasance   **
Belonging to the genre of monologue in which the speaker, intending to tell one story and project one image of himself, gradually and inexorably exposes a darker truth, Rachel Neuburger's script begins with a fiftyish New Yorker speaking confidently of a successful life and a beautiful love affair, only to have layer after layer of conscious lies and self-delusions peel away the more he talks, until he is revealed to be a loser just this side (or that side) of dangerously psychotic. The intended effect should be a mix of pathos, disdain and horror, but this disappointing production delivers far too little. Clearly underrehearsed, the usually reliable David Calvito, seen a week into his run, repeatedly stumbles over his lines, losing control of the pace and rhythms of the monologue and the revelations, so that what should be a continual and snowballing process of character exposure too often plays like a random string of unrelated episodes. Blame for this uncharacteristic failure must be shared with director Michael Sexton, and while the piece may improve as the run continues, there is little excuse for it not to be in better shape from the start.    Gerald Berkowitz

Six And A Tanner   Assembly Rooms      ***
In this solo show, which a programme note tells us is based directly on events in playwright Rony Bridges' life, David Hayman plays a middle aged Glaswegian at the coffin of the physically and mentally abusive father who never loved him and who he could not love in return, and given that much information you probably couldn't write the whole play yourself, but very little in it will surprise you. The speaker's childhood was full of brutality of one sort or another, from his father's beatings to his mother's ignorant home remedies and a sadistic teacher's abuse. But there's actually a process of diminishing returns with each new remembered episode. Once we hear of the beatings, not visiting his son in hospital after an accident seems anticlimactic, and every sin of mother or teacher actually takes away from the father's unique evil. The one unexpected and complicating quality to the monologue is the sense that the adult son really would like to be able to mourn his father, and feels something lacking in himself that he cannot. David Hayman ably manoeuvres his way through the man's jumble of emotions, particularly capturing all the moments of black humour, and there is some pleasure in seeing the somewhat familiar territory revisited with such skill.    Gerald Berkowitz

A Soldier's Song   Assembly       ****
Of all the post-conflict shows knocking about in recent years, former soldier Ken Lukowiak's stage version of his book about the 1982 Falklands War is one of the most direct you'll encounter. More an ill-equipped campaign that shored up the crumbling Thatcher government, the war revived the long-dormant UK military machine, since then kept almost continuously busy in any number of US-sparked conflicts across the world. So there’s a lot more than just battlefield dispatches in Ken Lukowiak’s telling of how, as a paratrooper, he fought in the key points of action on the islands, including the Battle of Goose Green where his battalion commander won a VC but lost his life, like a lot of other comrades now buried there. Remarkably, there is neither bitterness nor claims of glory here – instead Lukowiak tells it like it is, the grim routine of preparing to go into battle, working out probabilities of who will die as the mortars start raining down, whether to take out that machine-gun post or risk staying put. Clearly there is a fine line between gallantry and insanity. Even moments such as rescue by a comically surreal Welsh sniper are tempered by the hazards of going in to clean up the enemy trenches. The loathing within the ranks at the Colonel Blimp-like commanders helicoptered in is neutralised by squaddies kicking wounded Argentinians, the act of killing dulled by rage over stolen chocolates. Unexpected songs help us understand the flood of emotions racing through a soldier’s mind, feelings that cannot switch off under fire, laced with childhood flashbacks and detacted observations on the ironies of warfare. In directing his own adaptation, Guy Masterson sets out a simple, uncluttered course for Lukowiak, an untrained performer, while successfully having him range the stage with confidence. Far more, however, could be done with the uneven soundscape which makes a clear statement but remains muddy. Nick Awde

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Soldiers' Wives   Assembly Roxy      ***
In this programme of interlocking monologues by Sarah Daniels, Catherine Shipton plays five women living on an army base in England while their husbands are on duty in Afghanistan. The major's wife is not naturally gregarious but considers it the duty of her station to watch over the others. The beautician wife serves as gossip central for the community. The wife reduced to doing the housework and laundry of the others hides her cell phone so they won't text her and discover she can't read. One husband came home seriously wounded, and his wife must face a future very different from the one they had planned. There's a brutal husband in the mix, and a closet gay husband, and a secret drinker among the women. And therein lies the weakness in Daniels' script – except for the wounded man, there is almost nothing in these characters or stories that is specific to, or enlightening about, military wives. They could be neighbours on the same civilian street or members of the same church or characters in a TV soap or any other fictional excuse for considering them together. Catherine Shipton's performance is not as precise as it needs to be, as she doesn't always distinguish clearly among the several voices or keep us clear on who's married to who.  Gerald Berkowitz

Some Small Love Story   C Venue      ***
Two love stories told by two couples in word and song, Alexander Wright’s deceptively simple musical is an emotive, magical journey where quite different narratives gradually connect – limned by the resonance that palpably ripples through the audience. Boldly using word and song, with no set and with minimal movement, perceptions of love are explored as one couple looks back in time to another generation while the other enthuses first hand about their future even though it will be cut short. Gradually they reveal how they all share an acceptance of what life throws at us yet share the belief that without love there is no hope. Contrast very much features in this engaging Hartshorn-Hook reprise of last year’s more enveloping outing. David Kristopher Brown and Veronica Hare are outgoing and super cheery as the young couple riven by her death after an accident. Serena Manteghi and James McEwan are all restraint and poigance as they document the more subtle effects of loss that death inflicts on an older couple. With melodies supplied by Gavin Whitworth, the catchy emotive songs range from tantalising snippets to full torch songs - I’ll See You Flying remains one of the most delicately powerful, if brief, closers around. The contrast of the couples is a little too marked, however, and director Noreen Kershaw struggles to ensure that the stories and characters mesh as they should – things only really come together in the tantalisingly few ensemble songs. This robs us of much focus in the final moments when, motet-like, emotions converge in a celebration of life. Still, this remains a talented cast who never once step out of character, their enviable concentration helping propel the story as they stand and speak to the audience throughout, a process vividly enlivened by Joe Griffiths’ sparse piano. Nick Awde

StatementsAfter An Arrest Under The Immorality Act   Assembly Hall   ****

No matter how powerful the original message, after 40 years a play can take on new resonances as its audience changes. This is an important challenge for Athol Fugard's deep-felt response to the Immorality Act – legislation in apartheid-era South Africa that banned sexual relations between the races. Certainly there is a cry here for homosexuals still criminalised across the world, but what remains shockingly relevant today is the depiction of the institutionalised evil that lurks in the middle classes, the good burghers who stand for law and order and who vote our governments in. And so we find ourselves in a dimly lit bedroom, occupied by two lovers in post-coital chat. Comfortable with their nudity, theirs is a familiarity that comes from those who have known each other for a long time. It is the intimacy and gentle humour of their exchanges, rather than their lack of clothing, that makes you feel you are intruding. However, since she is white and he is black, their union makes them complicit in a crime that strikes at the very heart of their nation. Though they may be equals in the confines of her bedroom where congress is consensual – be it sexual, social or intellectual – beyond it they are anything but. As he stays longer than he intends, the conversation also overstays its welcome and sparks an argument over the world outside and the unanswerable question of where to take their love. Their story is slight, the consequences are immense as it becomes only a question of time before the simple act of falling in love becomes a mantrap for them. “Nothing we can do except hurt each other!” he cries, as the air becomes electric with the danger of discovery, and the shadows playing across their bodies turn to somewhere for them to hide. In terms of technique Bo Petersen and Malefane Mosuhli appear oddly mismatched – she physical, he cerebral – and at first this distracts. But soon one’s internal vision adjusts and their focused performances complement each other as the show warms up, becoming a strength when the play itself hits different styles. Meanwhile Jeroen Kranenburg’s harsh clipped white accents cut though their secret world as he expertly runs through a gallery of “concerned” neighbours and officials. What the performers bring to the fore is Fugard's own style where the intimate language of the couple is filled with polemic and declamatory cadences, while their speeches to the audience are naturalistic and flowing – one would expect the reverse. This creates an awkwardness in the production that hinders a deeper level of physical chemistry between the lovers. Nevertheless, aided by Guy De Lancey’s design, this strong ensemble gives director Kim Kerfoot the freedom to achieve a total vision usually reserved for much larger and longer productions, and his juxtaposition of sensuality and grim reality converges the humanity and issues convincingly. Nick Awde

The Static   Underbelly   ****
A teenage boy with ADHD meets a girl with telekinetic powers and she teaches him how to channel all his nervous energy, resulting in a Carrie-style conflagration. Or maybe there are mundane and realistic explanations for everything and the kids are just too overwhelmed by what is surely a metaphor for that first frightening rush of sexual hormones. Davey Anderson's play beautifully and convincingly captures how very very confusing and frightening adolescence can be, and is also the occasion for as dynamically directed and beautifully performed an ensemble production as you are likely to see. Brian Vernel as the lad literally bounces off the walls with uncontrollable energy, while Samantha Foley gives the girl a more inward-turning intensity, and Pauline Lockhart and Nick Rhys play more and less sympathetic teachers. But all four contribute to the smooth-flowing and never-resting feeling of the production, most evocatively in a couple of sequences beautifully choreographed by director Neil Bettles – one in which the others, implicitly invisible, move objects around as the boy flexes what he thinks are his psychic powers, and another when all Hell breaks loose in the school. You can enjoy The Static as a highly skilled piece of physical theatre, as a tale of the supernatural and as a touching reminder of that dreadful rite of passage that is puberty.  Gerald Berkowitz

A Strange Wild Song   Bedlam   ****
Inspired by an actual First World War event, the Rhum and Clay company collaboratively create a fable set in the Second War, of a soldier lost in France who comes upon and befriends some children, the last survivors of their village, who make sense of their experience by creating a play army of their own. His photographs of them are found seventy years later and his story recreated for his grandson. The company take the audacious gamble of playing much of this as farce, the children first encountered as slapstick clowns and mimes, and even the modern researchers presented as bumblers. The device doesn't always work, the serious subject and the low comic presentation sometimes clashing, nor is the mime vocabulary always clear – it may take quite a while to realise that these are children. But when it does hit home, as when the soldier gradually understands that play is the children's way of coping with reality and uses it to bond with them, it is quite moving and expressive. Ultimately the production and the company are to be admired more for their ambition and invention than for their only partial accomplishment of their vision, but there is clearly a lot of talent here.     Gerald Berkowitz

Street Cries   C Venue   ****
Composer-writer Mitch Féral's song cycle salutes, with open eyes and rueful acceptance, the denizens and direness of the modern urban dystopia. Ten songs in a range of styles introduce us to the experiences of homeless teens and Chelsea girls, impoverished war veterans and princes of the city, working girls and whores. And if some of what they have to say is old news and some of the satirical barbs are aimed at easy targets, still the songs are good, their imagery sharp and evocative, and all the targets deserve what they get. Tying the songs together, at least at the start, is a narrative openly inspired by Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, as the two performers introduce us to each character as he or she sleeps, a brief dream monologue leading in each case into a self-revelatory song. The device is dropped or gets lost midway through the hour, but the lead-ins to each song remain strong and evocative, capturing each character in a few moments and making the song ring true. The composer-writer himself plays all the male (and a couple of female) characters, with Kelly Craig sharing the narrative job and playing the remaining roles. Both are strong singing actors, any sharp edges to their voices contributing to the dark characterisations and tone.   Gerald Berkowitz

Strong Arm   Underbelly   ****
This monologue written and performed by Finlay Robertson raises the question of whether a good thing can be taken too far. Being named Roland Poland and thus doomed to a childhood of bullying may have led to the boy and adult Roland becoming grossly overweight, but it takes an episode of ridicule as an adult to move him to change things. He joins a gym and is pleased in a couple of years to have lost fat and built muscle, but that pleasure becomes addictive, and soon he is measuring every gramme of protein and carbohydrate he eats, dosing on supplements and aiming for body-building competitions and the elusive high, reputedly better than sex, that only comes with total abuse of the muscles. So the fact that his body is beginning to show alarming symptoms and even the fact that Roland has found a girlfriend for the first time in his life may not be enough to break the spell. Ably directed by Kate Budgen, Robertson portrays Roland as never wavering or doubting his monomania, allowing the dark side of his adventure to come through in what the character reports without understanding the significance of what he's saying. He frequently mimes exercises with persuasive reality, and the fact that Robertson himself is of average build makes his convincing portrayal of both the unhappy fat man and the obsessive mesomorph particularly impressive.   Gerald Berkowitz

The Submarine Show   C Venue   ****
Ping. Ping! Bloop… Two performers. Wally-like in stripey tops and specs. Submariners. Except there isn’t a submarine. Not to worry. You’ll instantly believe there is one thanks to the antics of Jaron (the not so tall one) and Slater (the tall one). Armed with only movement and vocal SFX, they create a whole magical world of visual humour. Not a gesture or grimace is wasted by our gangly gormless crew as they negotiate the narrow confines of their underwater craft and encounter obstacles at every point. Acrobatics create a periscope, slapstick ensues after disaster strikes, pipes hiss steam, the craft lurches, escape hatches open and up they swim to safety on a tropical island where mosquitos buzz and birds of paradise battle over a surprised but flattered woman in the front row. Glorious mayhem indeed. All the way from California, Penney and Hollander’s response to their audience young and old is total and you leave knowing that no single show is ever the same. It is rare that one sees this form of circus-based physical comedy maintain such a connection with the audience and even rarer to see it sustain a successful through-narrative. The result is a unique showcase that works for every age anywhere in the world, and one ready for development, utilising those circus skills big time, into a longer and more epic version designed to keep the adults of the international festivals enthralled. Nick Awde

Sulle Labbra Tue Dolcissime   Zoo Southside   ***** 
The Italian title translates as ‘On Your Honey Lips’, taking inspiration for its subject from Antonio Pietrangeli's 1965 Io la conoscevo bene (I Know Her Well), a bittersweet film about a country girl who goes to the big city and fails to fit in. This inventive piece from Siena’s Francesca Selva Company documents that loneliness of being in a crowd and the grin-and-bear-it attitude society demands – while Selva’s flowing forms will either engage or infuriate thanks to their refusal to repeat a motif, no matter how catchy. Either way, this is essential viewing. Garbed in bright everyday clothes three women and two men work their way through the social interactions of day and night. The odd number becomes significant when they split into couples, working through each combination but always leaving one out, an imbalance reinforced when they fuse finally into groups without reconciling that sense of exclusion. Ballet, modern, even a flash of hiphop mesh fluidly over a series of discrete but interlinked pieces, the energy is such that every paused dancer, every unfilled space onstage breathes movement. Stand-out is the complex duet set to Antony and the Johnsons’ plaintive Thank You for Your Love, although the later metronome solo is out of context – intentional no doubt but it jars. Magically, the final piece reunites the couples of the beginning yet the dynamic now takes on a different resonance and styles flow into each other. It is a strange point to note about this sort of company, but Selva’s dancers actually act their characters throughout, particularly with their eyes, unfazed by the fact that the narrative is abstract. As a stand-alone work, Giovanni Mezzedimi’s near static video would be tedious, but projected onto the huge backdrop it majestically contrasts with the human rhythms it frames, merged with a lyrical, often strident soundtrack and the show-long falling rain/white noise ostinato. Nick Awde

The Table   Pleasance Dome   **     (reviewed at a previous Festival)
The puppetry and other visual theatre of this company is surprisingly rudimentary and unevocative, surpassed in both imagination and technique by several other generically similar Fringe groups. The bulk of the hour is devoted to a two-foot-high doll manipulated by three puppeteers, but the puppet never stands, walks or gestures in a natural way, and even worse, never takes on any personality or reality. It is voiced by one of the puppeteers, Mark Down, and what humour and identity it has comes entirely from the spoken words, so that you may end up looking at Down more than the lifeless figure during the overstretched forty-five minutes it is onstage. A second, shorter segment involves faces and forms moving about in and between three picture frames, to little effect and with some clumsiness, as when the supposedly invisible puppeteers' arms block what we are supposed to be looking at. A final segment creates a kind of living comic book, as a string of drawings are displayed in turn to tell a story; it is mildly entertaining but continued too long and stretched too thin. With no director credited, the company seems seriously in need of someone sitting out front and telling them how frequently their accomplishment does not match their ambition. Gerald Berkowitz

Tea With The Old Queen   C Aquila   ***
There is, of course a pun in the title, as this solo show written and directed by Graham Woolnough presents actor Ian Stark as a fictional version of William Tallon, aka 'Backstairs Billy', personal servant to the late Queen Mother for fifty years and (at least in this incarnation) an old queen himself. Reading from Tallon's supposed diaries, Stark takes us through a year at Clarence House and Balmoral, gleefully reporting on Cherie Blair surreptitiously tormenting the corgis, minor royals being bussed in for token luncheon with the Queen, Princess Margaret being indiscreet, and exactly why some of the camper theatrical knights never got peerages. Loyal to the last, the nearest he comes to dishing some dirt on the Queen Mum is an account of the panic that struck the household when they seemed in danger of running out of gin. The only criticism to be made of Woolnough's writing or Stark's performance is that neither is really nasty enough. Audiences come for bitchiness, and they can take far harsher stuff than is offered here, but even in this gentle form the hour delivers a guilty delight for royalty-lovers and royalty-haters alike.  Gerald Berkowitz

Tenderpits   Underbelly   ****
What with the decidedly un-fringelike pressures of big-gun venue turf wars and the rocketing price of a pint, it is refreshing to see to a show that slickly captures that original, timeless fringe spirit. But where to start? The blue sparkling buttocks perhaps, or maybe the gay “psycho-sex”, then there’s the family upsets, the washing up with Mexican illegals in New York, or the down-and-out-Wally-in-a-nappy alter-ego. A couple of stuffed toys too, who play a significant role as events spiral. These, and more, form parallel strands that Anthony Johnston weaves into the blender of his imagination, serving up a cocktail of fact and fiction, armed with a huge projected backdrop of homefilmed vids and unexpected elements of physical comedy. The journey would appear to be one of self-discovery, plus an element of daft validation linked to his childhood ambition of becoming a wizard. None of this would work… except: (a) The charm factor is set to overdrive – you probably won’t be able to bring yourself to walk out on this man even when he’s gyrating around in nothing but street-soiled incontinence pants. You (may) want to mother him instead. (b) For all the mighty polemics hurled around – immigration, discovery/loss of identity in sex, raised/dashed expectations in life, being a citizen of the town of Tenderpits, Canada – not a jot of this is forced on you. This is life, no more, and in Johnston’s case it just happens to provide a fringe fairy tale for our times instead of a lucrative socially knowing feature in the Huffington Post. (c) It’s slickly done. Onstage mayhem like this cannot be sustained for any period without descending into chaos unless steered by a technically confident practitioner who knows his audience’s limits. So, it’s loopy, it’s thoughtful, and it’s well worth the risk.  Nick Awde

Thin Ice   Pleasance   ****
In an Arctic station in 1940 three scientists, two men and a woman, research their various specialities, confounded by data or research subjects that refuse to validate their theories, tangled emotional relationships and the pressures and interference of political forces, not to mention the weather. Jonathan Young's play reminds us that nature, nations, individuals and even the supernatural rarely act as we would wish them to, and almost never in ways we can order or predict with any assurance, and in parallel raises the question of just what kinds of truth people are willing to kill or die for. A dramatic structure that moves forward and backward in time, withholding key information or encouraging misleading inferences, is generally clear and nicely reflects the theme of disorder. Directed by the playwright, Nick Underwood, Esther McAuley and Calum Witney adeptly manoeuvre the rapid changes in time and place, creating characters of depth and complexity. Thin Ice may attempt to squeeze too much into a single play, but its ambition and even incomplete success are admirable.  Gerald Berkowitz

Thinking Of You   The Phoenix   ***
Niki Orfanou's edgy scenes from the life of a dysfunctional family make an interesting piece of new writing that often catches you unaware. In avoiding the usual stereotypes of family disintegration, this four-hander looks at the long-term damage to parents and their children that arises from a simple lack of communication. Guided by director Jens Peters and armed with only the barest of staging, the cast convincingly portray each family member with grimy soap opera precision. There’s the mother (Geraldine Brennan), whose mental wandering gets her physically wandering, as if seeking comfort in visibility from her husband’s neglect. And then there’s her husband (Richard Banks), who, in ignoring his family, dashes their hopes along with their words. Attempting to stand up for himself and defend his women, the son (Theo Ancient) looks as if he has a chance of normality, although his sister (Claire Juliette) registers her opposition by simply not speaking, no matter the chatter going on inside her head – and the significance of the title becomes ever more poignant with her isolation. Orfanou’s blurring of dreamy scenarios and stark realities proves a successful combination through overlapping vignettes, past and present, the world outside and inside their heads. Although this is a cast that is unevenly balanced technically speaking, the emotional focus of all impresses, as each creates more than one heart in the mouth moment. Nick Awde

This Way Up    C Venue   ****
It’s a funny old world. The more talent we produce, the more the job opportunities vanish. Well, there’s always the call centre. Which is precisely what the protagonists discover in Antler’s devised comedy, weaving in touching love stories and some unnervingly spot-on characters. Alex (Daniela Pasquini) has just finished art school with honours and now seeks work as an artist. First she moves in with Meg (Louise Trigg), who confusingly invents different personalities when applying for similarly creative posts - and relationships. But the call centre distractingly beckons, and there romantic interests loom for our girls in the shape of laconic Mark (Nasi Voutsas) and gormless Bensy (Richard Perryman). Will plucky Alex fulfil her dream and make it in the art world? Will dizzy Meg find her real identity? Will the guys ever stop kidding around? And will they all escape the clutches of their nerdy managers Suzanne (Jessica Stone) and Wesley (Daniel Ainsworth) Observant and funny, the script bounces along, punctuated by unexpected musical interludes of catchy whimsical narratives, Jonathan Richmond-style, courtesy of Voutsas’ vocals/ukelele and Perryman’s toy organ. Threatening to upstage it all are designer Lucy Attwood’s vari-sized cardboard boxes scattered across the stage that are constantly shuffled by the cast to create an apartment, call centre, stationery cabinet, space ship or musician’s corner. Director Jasmine Woodcock-Stewart and her winning cast make this complex, superbly paced production look effortless, and the play itself is surprisingly hard-hitting under all the whimsy. Nick Awde

Mark Thomas - Bravo Figaro!    Traverse   ***
Not quite theatre and not quite stand-up comedy, and certainly not the sort of political essay-polemic his fans are accustomed to, Mark Thomas's latest show is a guardedly loving salute to his father, a crude, bigoted working-class man who developed an unlikely love of opera, even going so far as frequently joining the toffs at Covent Garden to indulge his enthusiasm. Thomas considers the ironies and contradictions inherent in this story in a monologue that is frequently very funny, as when he runs through a catalogue of 'You know you're middle class when' gags, frequently touching, as when the son who has never had much in common with his father tries to connect to him through music, and sometimes more than a bit exploitative and manipulative, as when he plays recordings of his aged and invalid father to generate an emotional response he may not fully have earned. If that last element doesn't bother you, you may enjoy being moved by the serious moments as much as being entertained by the jokes.  Gerald Berkowitz

Thread   Assembly at St. Mark's   ****
Jules Horne's drama takes us through more than sixty years of a friendship and a marriage, uncovering old secrets and new ambiguities. The play is being performed in a church hall and its opening scene is in such a room, as aged William and Izzy conduct a games night usually hosted by William's ailing wife Joan. We then move backward and forward in time, learning that Izzy and Joan were inseparable friends both before and after Joan's wedding, with that third party in the marriage causing considerable discomfort to William. The fleetingness and uncertainty of memory become significant when we discover what Joan's illness is, as we are left with something that may or may not be true about the friends' relationship back then and may or may not be true about Joan's feelings now. The cast move seamlessly between time periods and between reality and memory, with Claire Dargo (Joan) and Mary Gapinski (Izzy) capturing both the lively young women and their older selves, and Stephen Docherty particularly touching as the devoted husband losing the wife he can't be absolutely sure he ever really had.   Gerald Berkowitz

Translunar Paradise  Pleasance Dome      ****
It is hard to believe that mime can be executed much better than the efforts of Theatre Ad Infinitum in this award-winning show. For 75 minutes, Translunar Paradise creator George Mann and Deborah Pugh with an accordionist/vocalist, Kim Heron tell a simple tale in movement and dance with not a word uttered. The story of a loving couple starts at the end, when both are very old, judging by the hand-held facial masks that each wears. The sense of loss that the husband suffers at the loss of his mate is palpable. He is bereft but survives by harking back to happy memories of a long partnership, starting with their meeting, moving through the courting process to marriage, parenthood and old age. Along the way, war intervenes, crippling but not killing the man. The tale is nothing new but the physicality of the performance and haunting music lift Translunar Paradise on to a different level.   Philip Fisher

Treasure Island  C Venue     ***
Thanks to an imaginative use of tea-chests, lamps and halyards, the cast bring to life all the iconic scenes of this adventure classic - the Admiral Benbow Inn, the good ship Hispaniola, the stockade siege, Ben Gunn’s lair. Even when condensed to an hour, Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckler classic still enthrals and even offers comments on morality and the class struggle in amongst the thrills, spills and comradeships lost and won. As the story’s curious cabinboy Jim, Benjamin Darlington has the only fixed role, the rest of the five-strong cast rotating characters with gusto, rushing off into one corner to appear moments later from another in different guise. Dominic Allen is sinister but sympathetic as Long John Silver, keeping company with Max Tyler’s stubborn Captain Smollett, Patrick Fysh’s have-a-go Squire Trelawney and James Wardell’s gung-ho Dr Livesey. Despite the low budget approach, their wash of accents, props and quick change costumes propel the action with great energy, allowing director Joe Hufton to steer with ease the hard-working ensemble on their clear course through Allen’s zippy adaptation. Humour is also thrown into the mix, including self-referential jokes, making this a fun show for older children and adults of all ages. Nick Awde

The Trench  Pleasance     *****
A total theatre experience of engrossing intensity, The Trench employs acting, mime, music, puppetry, film and even flying to enrich history with the quality of myth and reinvest an old story with the power it has lost through overfamiliarity. In the First World War young men died. We have been told this and made to recognise its tragedy before. But playwright-director Oliver Lansley and Les Enfants Terribles turn the story of a trapped tunneller into the stuff of Greek or Arthurian myth by giving him an encounter with a demon who offers to save him and the beloved wife who died in childbirth if he meets three challenges. These, evocatively acted out through all the tools of performance and theatricality, raise the soldier to the status of knight errant while reminding us of the deep horrors of war through original and evocative symbolism. With Lansley in the central role and the rest of the able cast doubling as characters, chorus, mimes and puppeteers, there is something inventive and evocative happening at every moment. Some might be able to guess the direction this mystical experience is going – it is, after all, of the essence of myth that it be formally structured – but that just enhances the emotional power of this truly original and powerful theatrical event.   Gerald Berkowitz

The Two Most Perfect Things  Assembly Roxy     ***     (reviewed in London)
This very modest show – four singers and a pianist – is a salute to Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, friendly rivals in the first half of the Twentieth Century as playwrights, songwriters and performers. Between bits of biography and quotations we hear at least excerpts from more than two dozen songs by each, allowing us to enjoy and perhaps compare and judge them. If you do judge, it is likely that Coward will come out very much ahead. Novello specialised in a sort of lush romantic operetta that was very popular then but hasn't aged well, and too many of his songs sound both alike and rather generic, though his most famous song, Keep The Home Fires Burning, has undiminished power, and a couple of the others are uncharacteristic enough to be pleasant surprises. Meanwhile, Coward's songs, not all tied to shows, range from the witty (Mad Dogs and Englishmen) to the sentimental (Someday I'll Find You). Of course it's not the primary purpose of the show to judge the composers but to celebrate them, and I fear that the performances don't help a lot. The classically-trained singers have all the vices of opera singers attempting popular music – undifferentiated open vowels, excessive tremolo and general oversinging that in the Novello songs contribute to making them all sound alike and in the Coward do violence to lyrics that need crisp and clear enunciation. (On the other hand, it is a delightful relief to encounter four singers capable of making themselves heard over a single piano without microphones, far too rare an experience these days.) It's a pleasant and harmless hour or so that you can sit and let wash over you without any effort on your part, which may be all you want on a summer morning.  Gerald Berkowitz

2008 Macbeth  Royal Highland Centre     ***
In this Polish production, set in something like the Iraq war, Macbeth is an air force major who leads a commando raid on a mosque, assassinating the enemy leader at his prayers. A burqa-clad woman assures him he'll get a promotion for this, and killing his general Duncan somehow makes him king of a country that sometimes is and sometimes is not Scotland, until another branch of the military conducts a commando raid on him. Clearly Shakespeare doesn't fit too comfortably into director/adaptor Grzegorz Jarzyna's vision of the play. On a massive three-level bunker-like set Lady Macbeth's bedroom doubles as an abattoir, entertainment at the Macbeths' includes an Elvis impersonator, Macduff gets the news of his family's slaughter by Skype, Banquo's ghost walks around in the nude, the doctor is a sadistic shaven-headed woman in a ball gown, and Lady Macbeth's search for cleanliness takes her to the laundromat, where she is killed by a short circuit in one of the washers. Dialogue in Polish is translated back in surtitles, sometimes to Shakespeare's words, sometimes to such infelicities as 'Cut it out. Fate is fate', and a number of strange stagings seem based on misunderstandings of the text, as when Macbeth's 'Ne'er shake thy gory locks at me' results in a ghost with severe palsy. In the midst of this, Cezary Kosinski, his face frequently projected in large close-up, succeeds in suggesting a Macbeth haunted from the start by the sense that his enterprise is doomed, while Aleksandra Konieczna portrays a sensual and sexual Lady Macbeth.   Gerald Berkowitz

Waiting For Stanley  Assembly Roxy     *****
Deviser-performer Leela Bunce audaciously chooses to tell the serious story of the WW2 home front through unabashed and inventive clowning, and the combination proves both touching and immensely entertaining. Bunce appears in realistic 1945 garb but with a clown's red nose, and through much of what follows she is silent, depicting through mime, dance and puppetry a woman awaiting her husband's return from the war. When he isn't on the expected train she imagines (and acts out) a French seductress holding him or a battle casualty she hasn't been told of. Reassured by a letter, she uses found objects scattered about the stage to help her mime and clown through her days of domestic tasks (trying to bake with rationing limitations), comforting her puppet child in an air raid (opportunity for an audience singalong), and going to work. Each episode is simultaneously funny, sad and theatrically inventive, as when a string of paper dolls represent children being relocated to the country or a grumbling postman delivers each precious letter. A warm, moving, cheering hour, this is a theatrical experience that cleanses your soul and sends you out feeling that life is, all things considered, pretty good.    Gerald Berkowitz

The Wheelchair On My Face  Pleasance     ***
Through almost unbelievable neglect by her parents and teachers, Sonya Kelly was not diagnosed as severely nearsighted until the age of seven, when she got her first eyeglasses and her first real discovery of the world around her. With admirable charity, bemused humour and the ability to remember and recreate the feelings of a small child, Kelly tells us in her chatty monologue what life was like both before and after the great transformation. Her family thought her an especially loving child because she climbed into everyone's lap just to get a vague look at them, and her teachers thought her dim because she didn't even know there was a blackboard there, much less writing on it. Cruel children and kind adults feature in her story, which does have a satisfying ending. Though Kelly's experience was extreme it was not unique, and she ultimately may not have much that's new to tell anyone who also wore glasses as a child, though it would take a determined curmudgeon not to choke up a bit when the little girl leaves the oculist and 'It was like objects were shouting.'   Gerald Berkowitz

Wild West End  Pleasance Dome     ****
In the tradition of Forbidden Broadway or The Musical of Musicals, this is a combination salute and send-up of West End musicals, using parodies of the songs to satirise themselves. We meet a blocked songwriter who explains in LloydWebberish tones that 'Any Theme Will Do,' and then we're off (Don't ask) to Sparkleton, the land of musical characters, where we encounter a Dorothy sick of lugging that damn dog around ('I'm so over the rainbow'), a Lion King tired of being killed off in the first act and a fey Phantom who would happily trade Christine for Raoul. Soon they're all off to see the Lizard (It's that kind of show), who turns out to be – well, the only person he could be, with problems of his own. If it's not quite laugh-a-minute (It could use some more songs, the best parts), it still is fun throughout. If you love musicals, you'll delight in the clever twists on old favourites. If you hate musicals, you'll enjoy watching them get what they deserve.  Gerald Berkowitz

Winston On The Run  Pleasance      ***
Although billed as a comedy, Freddie Machin's solo show about an episode in Winston Churchill's time as a journalist in the Boer War is played and certainly received by the audience as a straight account, the only touches of humour coming in the hero's inclination to overdramatise both himself and his experience. And even those, like the jingoistic purple prose of his news reports and his overeagerness to indulge in some derring-do, play like accurate depictions of the Boys' Own Adventure spirit that characterised the era. With a shock of ginger hair that makes him look like a cross between Prince Harry and Napoleon Dynamite, Machin finds Churchill hiding out after escaping from a Boer prison and recalling what got him there – having failed in his first attempt at election and somewhat at loose ends, he wangled a newspaper assignment to cover the war and then, stuck in a backwater and eager for adventure, he urged the troops he was accompanying to push forward and got them all captured. Rescue comes, and soon he is parleying his fame toward a successful election to Parliament. As directed by John Walton, Machin captures young Winston's slightly foolish boyish enthusiasm, but if he was reaching for broader comedy than that, the audience's serious and respectful response should tell him that's not the play they're seeing.   Gerald Berkowitz

Woza Albert   Assembly Hall     *****
An iconic work in the history of South African drama, this play by Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon may have lost some of its immediacy since the end of apartheid, but it remains exciting and entertaining theatre. Two actors, Mncedisi Baldwin Shabangu and Peter Mashingo, play a dozen or more roles each in what begins as a reminder of the daily indignities and dangers black people lived with and then becomes surprisingly celebratory of their indestructible spirit. Rumour spreads through the country that Jesus is returning, and a small boy wonders if the visitor will walk him to school and a beggar hopes this means he'll get to eat like white people. When Jesus does arrive, the unemployed beg him for jobs, workers offer him a Coke and the white government takes him on the VIP tour of Sun City and a Wimpy Bar before deciding he's a threat and throwing him in prison. Much of the fun comes in the instant characterisations of the characters – a barber shooting the breeze with a customer, a tailor threading a needle with intense concentration – and the sly rebelliousness, as all the white characters are identified by clown noses. And even all these decades later it is impossible not to be moved by the final scene in which Jesus visits a cemetery and, in the title words, calls upon South Africa's black heroes and martyrs to arise.   Gerald Berkowitz

XXXO   Pleasance    ****
Take two laptops, two projectors. Add two young women. Throw in dollops of silver screen classics old and new. Mix in the infinite universe of the world's imagination we call YouTube. Sit back and digest what transpires.. Nathalie Marie Verbeke and Charlotte De Bruyne idly click on a medley of clips, lingering long enough to allow the emotions of the performances contained therein to flow out and take grip. To a soundtrack of tumbling techno chords, the duo work in parallel – yet as one in their concentration – to mimic, ape, faithfully recreate the misery, shock, disbelief and loss in the string of often conflicting videos projected above them. In unison with Braveheart, Medea and Bambi, they make themselves fall silent with sadness, cry with loss, weep with grief, go numb with sorrow. Watching the scenes from classic films modern and old, Hollywood and European, it also amazes how many catchphrases have entered our lives. This bizarre karaoke segues into equally classic clips from YouTube (kittens, a protestor’s death in Iran), snippets of plays and speeches. Funny and shocking, sometimes at the same time, the girls’ search is relentless as if trying to outdo each other – for emotional kicks or plain bedroom boredom, who knows? They capture their own created images onscreen, deleting or saving according to the intensity captured. The realisation swiftly dawns that they are browsing through emotions on their desktops as they would flip through clothes on a rack. The repetition has a hypnotic motet effect, yet jars like a hitherto undiscovered Simpsons outtake from Koyaanisqatsi, understandable given that Verbeke and De Bruyne’s devised piece springs from Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed, which made gently sophisticated confrontational theatre its forte. The debate for many others, understandably, will be whether this is an art installation or a piece of theatre. Either way, it is a well-crafted alternative take on our increasingly sanitised modern world, as visually arresting as it is thought-provoking. And funny with it too. Nick Awde