Austentatious
Underbelly George Square
*** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
A Fringe perennial, this improvisation on
themes from Jane Austen is a proven crowd-pleaser. Though by its very
nature an improv show is likely to be uneven, the company know their raw
material and have played around with it long enough to be able to
deliver. Things begin in the ticket queue, as audience members are asked
to suggest titles for lost Jane Austen novels, and one is drawn out of a
hat to be the basis for today's hour. I forget the exact title on this
occasion, but it wound up having something to do with a dealer in
addictive buns, his virtuous daughter forced into the bun trade, and a
benevolent noblewoman willing to save her from that fate worse than
death. It didn't have a whole lot to do with Jane Austen, but a bunch of
attractive performers in Regency costume entertainingly improvised their
way into corners and then generally found their way out again. I suspect
that there was a certain amount of recycling of old gags and
characterisations, but the jokes are good, and the company's rapport
with the audience is strong enough that the stumbles and
what-do-I-say-now moments are as much fun as the bits of inspired
invention. You don't really have to know your pride from your prejudice
to enjoy this light and delightful show.
Gerald
Berkowitz
Big Bite-Size
Lunch Hour Pleasance
Dome ****
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
It has been ten years since this company first assembled a program of
very short plays and brought them to Edinburgh as the Big Bite-Size
Breakfast, and to celebrate the anniversary they have added this
lunchtime show of Greatest Hits, five complete and self-contained little
plays out of their repertoire. Inevitably, some of them have the feel of
slightly extended revue sketches, like Philip Linsdell's 'Quiet Table
For Four', in which a nervous couple on a blind date are tormented by
another pair of actors playing the inner voices out to destroy their
confidence. 'Big Fish, Little Fish' by Joel Jones does actually go on a
little too long, stretching its single joke of a film noir private eye
parody too thin; and probably the weakest of the pieces, Lucy Kaufman's
'Vintage', about a couple who choose to live as if it was 1942, doesn't
have much of a joke to begin with. But Joel Jones's 'Answer Man', about
a woman encountering the fount of all knowledge and wisdom and not
really knowing what to ask, is clever, funny and thought-provoking; and
C J Johnson's 'Boris The Rottweiler' achieves surprising depth and
emotional resonance as a dog reasons out his behaviour, good and bad, in
terms of a very human-sounding sense of honour.
Gerald
Berkowitz
Bright Colours Only Assembly
Rooms ***** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
Pauline Goldsmith's meditation on
death, dying and bereavement looks at it all with a tenderly amused
eye, domesticating the subject without disrespecting it, and
paradoxically creating one of the happiest and most emotionally
satisfying hours on the fringe. Goldsmith begins in the persona of a
frighteningly perky undertaker, welcoming us into her parlour and
proudly displaying the tacky but oh-so-tasteful-looking accoutrements
on offer, such as the gold-effect plastic handles which, she warns us,
should not actually be used to lift the coffin. She follows with a
realistic and benevolent mix of warts-and-all memories of the departed
- a spinster aunt, a grumpy grandmother - and the incongruous
behaviour of the living - watching television at a wake, or babbling
hysterically. Projections of computer-generated animations,
particularly effective in their simplicity, accompany key sequences.
Goldsmith's performance in this self-written and self-directed piece
is beautifully controlled, moving seamlessly from one persona to
another and from the gently comic to the touchingly evocative, such as
the catalogue of a child's first experiences of death or the
departed's realisation of the life not yet lived. And the piece ends
with a fourth-wall-breaking coup de theatre that is as unexpectedly
moving as it is audacious. Gerald Berkowitz
Cathy
Pleasance
Dome
***
Half a century ago, Cathy Come Home was a seminal TV programme,
highlighting the plight of the homeless. Cathy was written 25 years
later to update the sad story and this version by Ali Taylor brings it
forward to today. Cathy Owen plays the central figure, a 43-year-old
single mother trying to make ends meet by doing three cleaning jobs. As
the play opens, her daughter Danielle, played by Hayley Wareham, is a
few months from her GCSEs and expecting top marks. However, the landlord
comes calling demanding rental arrears, and issues an eviction notice.
The spiral downwards is fast, starting with council officers who offer
short term accommodation in Luton, hours and pounds from home in East
London. More permanent housing is mooted, but in Gateshead, with the
threat of attentions from social services if it is rejected. Cathy
becomes increasingly desperate, begging sofas and floors in a
depressingly hopeless situation. Cardboard Citizens commissioned the
play to highlight the plights of those whose lives mirror Cathy's. Their
methodology is highly effective and one can only hope that the
authorities eventually make adequate provision so that these tales
become history. Don’t hold your breath.
Philip
Fisher
Every Brilliant Thing Summerhall
***** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
When his mother suffers from depression a small boy tries to cheer her
up with a list of reasons to be happy – popcorn, balloons, the colour
yellow and the like. It tragically doesn't help mother, but as the boy
grows up he occasionally adds to the list – ice cream, kung fu movies,
pretty girls – until it numbers in the thousands, and it does help him
through his own bouts with depression. Performer Jonny Donahoe tells
this story written by Duncan Macmillan with infectious enthusiasm, and
since his narration involves citing a lot of entries from his list,
the theatre fills with images of happiness. In fact, Donahoe begins
the show by handing printed slips of paper out to many in the
audience, so that when he calls out various numbers voices from all
over the house ring out with brilliant things. Donahoe also casts
audience members in small roles, including his father, a school
counsellor and the girl of his dreams, encourages them to ad lib
little scenes with him and then smoothly incorporates their
contributions into his script. People have been known to come out of
this show floating on little pink clouds of joy, but even if it
doesn't affect you quite that strongly, you can enjoy watching a
master performer take hold of an audience, lift them up and not let
them down. Gerald
Berkowitz
The Fall Summerhall
*****
The very best theatre can change the way that those who see it think
about life or even change their lives. On that measure, The Fall is the
very best theatre, with the added bonus that it will certainly make a
difference to the seven young performers, each barely out of South
African university and led from the front by curators Ameera Conrad and
Thando Mangcu. The stories that they tell, credited to the Company and
Kgomotso Khunoane, are their own and they are as politically significant
as those of activists on the front line in America and France in 1968.
Their initial goal can sound like a hollow piece of symbolism. Why
should it matter whether a century-old statue of Cecil John Rhodes
remains in place? Once you hear these articulate youngsters arguing
about its relevance to them and the decolonialisation movement you have
your answer. Their passion is overwhelming, sometimes leading them close
to fisticuffs. Arguments develop over how strong the protest should be
and then over male patriarchy versus feminism. Later on, a separate
debate develops over fees and outsourcing. This gets very close to home,
both because several of those present cannot really afford the fees and
will have debts for decades, while a boycott of exams will only
exacerbate this problem, keeping those affected at the University of
Cape Town for a further year. Worse, if the medics do not graduate,
lives of poor Black people will be lost due to lack of treatment. Told
by way of debates, arguments, testimonies and through song and dance,
this magical evening is absolutely unforgettable. One hopes that a
producer will pick it up for a much wider tour, encompassing London and
the major American cities so that this uplifting story can be spread as
widely as possible.
Philip Fisher
The
Flying Lovers of Vitebsk
Traverse
****
Daniel Jamieson's The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk has been around
for some time but makes a welcome landing at the Traverse for a couple
of weeks. Its subjects are artist Marc Chagall and his wife Bella,
respectively brought to energetic life by Marc Antolin and Audrey
Brisson. The story starts in 1914, when a young artist begins to woo
the daughter of a wealthy jeweller in the Russian Pale. They fall in
love quickly when she becomes his model but life is rarely smooth for
Jews as a World War and Revolution created unrest. Marriage follows
and then travel, as they move to Petersburg and Moscow before fleeing
their home country and dotting around ever after. As depicted by
Antolin, Chagall is a good-natured man who becomes so obsessed with
his work that everything else is forgotten. That is bad news for his
educated and highly intelligent wife, an aspiring writer and then a
mother, who sacrifices her potential career to support the man whom
she loves. Director Emma Rice’s style with Kneehigh works well in
bringing to life the man who invented Expressionism, mixing music
played by the duo of Ian Ross and James Gow with physical theatre,
song, dance and low tech special effects. The main strength of the
piece is the way in which the total theatre techniques are blended
with the story to the benefit of each, and it will undoubtedly be a
popular hit. Philip Fisher
Dean
Friedman
Sweet Grassmarket
**** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
The New York
singer-songwriter who gave us silky hits like Lucky Stars and Ariel in
the otherwise mad, bad 70s and championed today by our very own Gaby
Roslin and Jonathan Ross, Dean Friedman has never really gone away -
he's just been busy producing a string of albums over the years of
precision-crafted songs in his own inimitable style. His first chart
smashes aside, every song in this Edinburgh show is a classic in its
own right - intimate, epic, satirical or just plain loving, there's a
song for everyone. He'll have you wiping away tears of laughter to the
cheerful insanity of Sado-Masochism, touch you with a ballad about a
loved one's death, and arouse delicious disgust with his homage to
self-pleasurement, Nookie In The Mail. Shopping Bag Ladies covers more
sober territory - a winsome observation of life on the streets - as
does McDonald's Girl, in the sense that this love letter to the burger
girl behind the counter got Dean banned by the BBC (putting him up
there with the Sex Pistols!). Dean refuses to be classified (he also
does a kid's show at the same venue) but under the deceptively catchy
melodies lies one of the industry's most underrated lyricists. If only
for the audience duet on Lucky Stars, you won't see a better show. Nick
Awde.
Gratiano Assembly
Hall
**
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
A reminder: in The Merchant Of Venice Gratiano is the hero's friend
who accompanies him on his courting trip and winds up marrying
Portia's maid. Writer-performer Ross Ericson transports the story into
the Twentieth Century, with all Shakespeare's Christian characters
first Mussolini Blackshirts and then Mafia thugs. Ericson's Gratiano
retells the story with a combination of a minor character's envy of
the star and a low-level hoodlum's resentment at never having risen in
the criminal hierarchy. It's a clever conceit but ultimately an empty
one. The Shakespearean connection tells us very little about either
the Fascists or the Mafia, and the twentieth-century setting tells us
very little about Shakespeare – the one small exception being the
suggestion of what would probably have happened to Shylock under the
Fascists. The fictional premise for this retelling is that Bassanio
the modern criminal has been killed and Gratiano is going through the
list of people, from Antonio through Portia and even himself, who
might have had motives, but that new plot line really goes nowhere. On
a bare stage, with only a plain chair to occasionally sit on, Ericson
uses his imposing physical presence and persuasive acting talent to
create the modern characterization and keep the story alive, but the
essential thinness of the concept ultimately limits him. Gerald
Berkowitz
How To Be A Kid
Summerhall
****
This is far too good a play to be hidden in the children’s programme.
Sarah McDonald-Hughes has penned a tale that is filled with pathos, as
Katie Elin-Salt’s Molly (12) and Hasan Dixon playing little brother Joe
(6) try to negotiate their Mum’s breakdown following the passing of
their Nan. The plot contains numerous twists and turns. Molly spends
five weeks and a day (she counts) in a care facility, at least making a
new friend, while Joe is neglected by his Dad, losing out to a
newly-born sibling. A journey with veteran Vera via McDonald's adds
thrills and spills before a scary moment when the family’s future
becomes worryingly uncertain. The actors playing the leading roles get
superb support from Sally Messham, who is Mum, Nan, a social worker and
best friend, effortlessly transforming among each of these roles.
Depression and fostering can be a difficult subject for youngsters to
take on board but is handled in a suitably sensitive fashion. Helpfully,
the actors engage with their audience throughout, while director James
Grieve uses his skills to perfection in a gripping and unforgettably
moving 50 minutes that would make a perfect start to any Edinburgh day.
Philip Fisher
The Last
Queen Of Scotland Underbelly
****
Any show that has the support of Dundee Rep and the National Theatre
of Scotland is a likely winner, while producers Stellar Quines also
have a noble Edinburgh Fringe pedigree. Like Giles Foden’s novel The
Last King of Scotland, this play takes an oblique look at General Idi
Amin Dada. For no obvious reason, the tyrannical leader of Uganda in
the 1970s was obsessed by Scotland, with a fondness for its history
and kilts. The Last Queen of Scotland is effectively an hour-long
monologue, although Patricia Panther provides an atmospheric
soundscape, partly using her own haunting voice for effect. Rehanna
MacDonald plays a young woman living in Dundee but hailing from the
Indian community in Uganda, whence her family was summarily ejected
with nothing except seven pounds. After one fight too many in her home
town and obsessed by the former President, our heroine begins a
picaresque journey in an attempt to exorcise her demons and those of
the family. The journey takes in Kent, Leicester, Kampala and her home
town Jinja up country in Uganda, maintaining a breakneck pace, which
can be tricky for those who are unfamiliar with the Dundonian accent
and lingo, sometimes as impenetrable as Irvine Welsh in his pomp. Even
if the odd word slips by, this is still an epic performance from
Rehanna MacDonald under Jemima Levick's direction in a stirring play
about dictatorship and roots. Philip
Fisher
Lemons Lemons
Lemons Lemons Lemons Summerhall
**** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
Sam Steiner's two-hander, performed here by Beth Holmes and Euan Kitson,
takes a fresh look at the potentially over-familiar subject of
communication and makes it fresh and real. A young couple go through the
predictable communication problems, discovering that words mean
different things to each of them or that one is more inclined to talk
through things than the other. And then Steiner throws a spanner in the
works by imagining the government imposing a new anti-chatter law
limiting everyone to 140 words a day. (Why, and how it could be
enforced, is never explained, but even in the privacy of their bedroom
the characters shut up when they hit their limit.) What this does to the
couple is raise the stakes, making them even more aware of the need to
be open and communicate with each other, and after some mild comedy of
trying to come up with quota-saving codes, they settle down to thinking
really seriously about what they want to say and how important it is to
say it, before opening their mouths. Under Ed Madden's direction, it is
all done with the light touch of romantic comedy, but is likely to leave
the thoroughly entertained audience walking away with some serious
thoughts.
Gerald Berkowitz
Manwatching
Summerhall *
The performance of this Royal Court transfer may be the best ever
advert for the acting profession.There is currently a vogue for
casting random wanderers to make one-off appearances in shows for
which they are untested and unrehearsed. Presumably the intention is
to create novelty and freshness. If it goes as badly wrong as this,
the result is so embarrassing that punters would have every right to
ask for their money back. Edward Aczel is apparently a stand-up
comedian, who has been described as an anti-comedian. Given the chance
to recite the words of an anonymous woman unburdening herself about
sex, he was frequently inaudible, toneless throughout and almost
ground to a standstill before eventually finishing 15 minutes beyond
the allotted time.One is left to wonder whether this was a
manifestation of his anarchic comedy. If not, it was merely a
nightmare for all concerned, including the man who admitted before
starting that he was a bad reader. The audible bits covered such
topics as self-help, choice of lover, mental versus physical
attraction and affairs with men that the author found repulsive. In
order to find out whether the text was any good, visitors would have
been obliged to purchase and read the script. This gives the
impression of a verbatim recording that contains a mixture of
frankness and some wit, making a gender-equalising bid to prove that
women think about and enjoy sex just as much as many men, even if they
are reluctant to put their names to the resulting text. Philip
Fisher
Mr
Laurel And Mr Hardy
Greenside at Nicholson
Square
*** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
Despite its title, Mr Laurel And Mr Hardy is less about Stan and Ollie
than about their fans, and serves as a reminder of an earlier time when
some stars weren't just admired and appreciated but warmly loved. In the
1950s, their Hollywood careers over, Laurel and Hardy toured British
music halls with an act built on familiar bits of business from their
films, and found a fan base more loyal and ardent than in America.
Bearing only the vaguest of physical resemblances to Laurel and Hardy,
David Leeson and Colin Alexander don't make any real attempt at
impersonation beyond a bit of tie-fluttering and head scratching and a
half-hearted go at the Blue Ridge Mountains dance. Instead, Leeson and
Alexander play two Manchester fans who worked in the theatre and had the
opportunity not only to watch their idols onstage but to socialize with
them, and the thrust of their reminiscences is the sheer pleasure of the
stars' company. In the process they offer brief biographies of the two
individually and as a team, amounting to little more than dates and
names, and we might wish for more in the way of fact and anecdote. But
in Leeson and Alexander's obvious affection for their subject, and the
love they ascribe to the characters they play, Mr Laurel And Mr Hardy
evokes the warmth between artists and audiences that a world of constant
tweets and viral gossip has lost.
Gerald
Berkowitz
Nina Traverse
Theatre
*** (reviewed in London)
Nina Simone (1933-2003) was a black American blues and jazz singer and
civil rights activist. Josette Bushell-Mingo is a black actress born
in London, who considers Simone her artistic and political
inspiration. Nina begins as a celebration of Simone, evoking the
excitement of a 1969 open air concert in Harlem. But then it abruptly
changes tack, as Bushell-Mingo drops Simone to present herself as
nearly incoherent with rage at unceasing racism today, reaching a
climax as she imagines herself murdering every white person in the
present audience. Only after having burned through that does she
return to Simone, whose music is now a calming and pacifying influence
on her. Of course the murderous rage is an act, based though it may
very well be on actual feelings, and one problem with the show is that
it's not a very convincing one. As a performer, Bushell-Mingo is too
controlled and too limited in range to generate any sense of real
danger. We're told she's angry, but not really shown it. But that is
in keeping with the mode of the whole script (devised by Bushell-Mingo
and director Dritero Kasapi). We are told Nina Simone was an important
force in the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s but given no
evidence. We are told she was an inspiration to the young
Bushell-Mingo, but not shown how. This show doesn't have a great deal
to say, but it just says it all rather than dramatising it. Meanwhile,
Bushell-Mingo sings eight or nine songs as Simone, ranging from
Simone's own composition Mississippi Goddam through covers of I Loves
You Porgy, Feeling Good, I Got Life and Little Girl Blue. She sings
attractively, but not particularly in Simone's style, tending more
toward belting than the original's more laid-back and understated
style, and with no hint of the jazz singer's toying with rhythms or
lyrics. So what we get is one performer simply telling us that another
performer influenced her, and singing some songs associated with
Simone but not in real imitation of her style. That probably isn't
what you came in expecting, and it probably won't be fully satisfying.
Gerald Berkowitz
Pip Utton: Churchill Pleasance
****
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
Pip Utton's career as a portrayer of real people in self-written
monologues began almost 20 years ago with a show about Hitler, so it
is perhaps about time for him to get around to Churchill, but the wait
has certainly been worth it, because this hour is one of Utton's
finest. He begins with the fantasy that the statues in Parliament
Square come alive for an hour every time Big Ben strikes thirteen
('Lincoln always goes to the theatre – he forgets he won't see the
second act.') Utton's Churchill steps down from his plinth to his old
offices, pours himself a generous whiskey, and chats amiably with us,
not just about historical events, but about his marriage, his cigars
and his envy of Nelson for having a bigger column to stand on. Some
familiar anecdotes and quotations appear, though Utton tends to steer
away from them to more personal insights, like Churchill's egotistical
but usually correct assertion that he was almost always right when he
and the government of the moment disagreed, and his explanation that
his marriage survived despite their having very different interests
because they shared one overriding interest – him. Utton doesn't push
the impersonation into parody as too many Churchill imitators do –
he's padded himself up a little and lowered the natural timbre of his
voice, and that's really enough. And as an added attraction to this
evocative and entertaining portrayal, there's a lot more humour than
some might expect, with Utton's Churchill telling more jokes and
getting more laughs than many stand-up comics.
Gerald Berkowitz
A Play, A Pie
and A Pint: Conflict In Court LeMonde
Hotel
***
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
This venerable lunchtime Fringe institution does indeed include food
and drink in the ticket price, along with a setting in a somewhat
posher hotel space than the usual Fringe venue. This year's play is a
timely courtroom drama, with a Tory MP suing a tabloid newspaper for
libel over a story accusing him of spending a night with a rent boy.
With volunteers from the audience in the jury box, barristers for both
sides question the politician and the editor, followed by questioning
from the jury, which requires some ad libbing in character from the
witnesses. Then the jury is polled, and on this particular day they
went with the MP. To keep things lively there's a certain amount of
courtroom humour between the lawyers and judge, and inevitably there's
a surprise witness and a last minute after-the-verdict confession.
Characterisations throughout are deliberately just this side of
cartoonish, to keep the energy level up and the tone light, and a
large audience, of a significantly higher median age than is typical
of the Fringe, have an enjoyable break in the middle of their day.
Gerald Berkowitz
Playing Maggie
Pleasance
*****
(reviewed at a previous Festival)
Fringe veteran and master of the
self-written character monologue, Pip Utton lifts the genre onto a new
plane with his embodiment of Margaret Thatcher by flying without a net
or, in this case, a script. After a conventional opening during which
Utton plays a fictional actor preparing for and beginning a performance
as Thatcher, he stops and announces that he would rather take questions
from the audience, and proceeds to ad lib the rest of the hour, in all
cases answering as Thatcher in convincing guesses at what she would have
said. Granted that some likely questions could be anticipated and
prepared for in advance, Utton has clearly done a massive amount of
research on the lady's words and thoughts and organised it in his mind
so that the appropriate thing to say about the Falklands, the poll tax,
the miners, David Cameron or whatever surprise question comes up is
quickly accessible. So thoroughly has Utton absorbed the politician's
way of thinking that even when he deflects a question into one he'd
rather answer, or when you can sense him vamping for a few seconds until
his brain retrieves the proper file, it is exactly the way the Iron Lady
would have done it. A remarkable piece of research and memory combines
with Utton's signature talent for becoming his character even when, as
here, he does not physically resemble her, to create an evocative,
provocative and altogether fascinating hour.
Gerald
Berkowitz
Translunar Paradise Pleasance
Dome ***** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
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
Two Man Show
Summerhall
***** (reviewed at a previous Festival)
One of the most exciting, inventive and beautiful shows on the Fringe,
RashDash's exploration of gender and power is the very model of
chance-taking theatre that pays off. Performer-writers Helen Goalen
and Abbi Greenland, supported musically by Becky Wilkie, use drama,
comedy, mime, music and dance as they take turns playing women, men,
one of each, and women-stronger-than-men as a way of asserting that
femaleness need not be imitation maleness to be powerful. At one point
they employ distorting microphones that give them little-girl voices,
at another they break the frame to remind themselves which gender
they're being just then. Several sequences of self-choreographed dance
are beautiful in themselves and effective expressions of bonding and
power – all the more so since the two dancers are stripped to the
waist for most of them and totally nude for others, and the effect is
more evocative of ancient Greek athletes than of eroticism. An
extended and passionate speech asserting female power impresses both
as an irrefutable argument and as a demonstration of the performer's
remarkable ability to sustain the unwavering intensity. This is
'Theatre of Cruelty' of the highest order, using every tool, both
violent and seductive, in the artists' toolbox to break through or
bypass any audience resistance with overwhelming effect. Gerald
Berkowitz
William Shakespeare's Long
Lost First Play (Abridged) Gilded
Balloon
**** (reviewed
at a previous Festival)
The Reduced Shakespeare Company, the guys (or at least two of them, plus
a newby) who started it all in 1981 by putting parodies of all the plays
into The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged have found an
excellent excuse for a second bite of the apple. The fledgeling
playwright, they posit, poured all his imagination into one enormous and
until now lost first play, in which all his characters co-exist and from
which he later extracted bits and pieces to become plays of their own.
The premise has Puck and Ariel as rival sprites one-upping each other in
magical mischief by bringing characters we know from different plays
together. And that is the excuse for letting Lady Macbeth nag Hamlet
into making his mind up about something, Falstaff offer his kingdom for
a whore, and a stage-struck Richard determine to be a vaudevillian. The
comic juxtapositions, gags and shameless puns come by so quickly that
you barely have time to groan at the last one, and every once in a while
something actually makes you pause and think, like letting Macbeth's
witches double as Lear's daughters or setting up pairings to prove that
The Lion King is not the only Disney film based on Shakespeare. This
kind of Shakespearean mash-up may no longer be unique to the RSC but
there's no denying that they do it best.
Gerald Berkowitz
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Reviews - Edinburgh Festival 2017