Fringe theatre reviews: Noted | A Play of Two Halves | Mind the Gap | Taken | Body Parts | After Winter

Noted | Image: contributed

THEATRE

Noted ★★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 31 August

“The Back Pack’s flagship production,” trumpets the American company’s website proudly. “Over 15 years in the making.” After an hour in the Back Pack’s company you can see why it's taken them so long to come up with it, because Noted is a mini-masterpiece of movement, coordination, design and most of all pre-planning, all of which join together almost seamlessly onstage. Yet the audience can plainly see it’s hard work, which makes it all the more impressive.

The quartet of young actors (Katie Kohler, Lauren McFall, Pete Betcher and Alec Silver) appear onstage with paper backpacks, actually pads of paper which they rip sheet after sheet from to tell amusing non-verbal stories with. They position themselves in just the right order onstage to make sense of these tales, becoming a herd of buffalo or a flock of Angry Birds-style creatures, just a taster for the ever-more-elaborate situations which follow.

A table with a drawn paper representation of a dinner set has layers and layers removed, to mimic first a family dinner and then reveal ever more and more intricate patterns as the paper is pulled away in strips. With a camera shot viewed from above seen on a hanging screen (although a slight syncing error in the performance I saw seemed to reveal this as a prerecord, not that it has much impact on the coordination required), the quartet roll around on their backs and sides on trolleys, innovatively recreating a skydive or an athletics race.

With a lively soundtrack including Mika, LCD Soundsystem and the Avalanches, Noted is like a living animated cartoon with plenty of dance and physical comedy; the two are most perfectly married during a sequence to Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody, during which one actor ‘murders’ another with a paper knife and continues to roll them around the stage to cover up the crime. A truly unique, family-friendly production, they’re right to be proud of it. David Pollock

THEATRE

A Play of Two Halves ★★★

Tynecastle Stadium (Venue 547) until 31 August

For several years, producers Paul Beeson and Bruce Strachan’s Two Halves Productions have staged Fringe plays at Heart of Midlothian FC’s Tynecastle Stadium, using the club’s rich history to create popular theatre for a wider audience. If the pair were stuck for ideas this year, the club delivered in a big way last season, with an historic challenge for the Scottish Premiership title which was only derailed by Celtic in the season’s closing minutes.

The season is recreated here with sensitivity and humour, in a double bill of Fringe-length linked place staged in Tynecastle’s 1874 Bar, recreated as a fictional version of fans’ local the Tynecastle Arms. The first, Beeson’s Moved, is frankly fantastic, performed solo by its writer as roofer Mal, a pub regular with a fast wit (even in ad lib when an audience member’s phone goes off, for example), whose hopes of life with a new partner and reconciliation with his son tumble as his depression returns, in line with the season playing out as it did.

Strachan’s Season in Bloom, meanwhile, feels a little more formulaic and overlong, with Ria McLeod and Jenna Stones playing a procession of fictional women connected to season ‘25/26’s title charge, including a visiting reporter, the Arms’ barmaid, a football blogger and an under-fire board member. Yet the performances throughout (especially Beeson’s) are strong and the tone is, as always, perfectly-placed between accessible and affecting. David Pollock

Enjoying The Scotsman's coverage of the Edinburgh festivals? For just £2 a month you can get unlimited access to scotsman.com plus 2-for-1 Fringe tickets. For details visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions

THEATRE

Mind the Gap ★★★

Braw Venues @ Hill Street (Venue 41) until 30 August

A series of vignetted, imagined conversations between very different individuals on London Underground’s Piccadilly Line, young company the Snap Collective’s Mind the Gap is light-hearted and easy-going, but writer/director Steph Wells digs to just the right level of intimacy as might reasonably be achieved on a daily commute to reveal a bunch of disparate, likeable humans in search of connection.

There’s young musician Alex (Lewis Hoogstad), an eager activist who goes on marches for Palestinian, who’s on his way for a job at the BBC (imagine “the status... the aura” he coos, not quite as alternative as he might wish to think). He meets middle-aged professional Pauline (Hazel Wilson), who had youthful ambitions to be an artist, and their respective optimism and worldly maturity rub off on one another.

Then there’s teenage Lizzie (Rebecca Malone), leaving pleading, ingratiating messages for her clearly not as interested boyfriend, who’s told by punkish, pissed-up older woman Jas (Ellie Nicholson) to forget about him. Jamie (Asami Fujii), a studious kid who likes astrophysics, not poetry, talks to Callum (Giorgio Manzi), an elderly Scottish man who speaks wistfully of his Highland memories. Together with some gorgeous singing and acoustic guitar from Mez Boyd as the platform busker, it’s all a slight but very engaging, personable, well-performed slice of urban life. David Pollock

THEATRE

Taken ★★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 93) until 29 August

The forced adoption of the children in post-war England – which also took place across the rest of the UK and Ireland and continues to be a war crime carried out by Russia in Ukraine today – is the focus of this impassioned and insightful new political play, earnestly performed by a young company.

Structured around a series of short scenes, taking place in England between the Adoption Act of 1949 and 1976, it moves from the parliamentary discussions of the time to their consequences: what was known as ‘mother and baby homes’, where unmarried and socially stigmatised mothers were shockingly guilt tripped into giving up their babies by state and religious institutions.

A stark shift of tone, to scenes depicting today in the UK, following the government’s apology for this shocking injustice, enables the company to contrast the congratulations, rather than condemnation, that might typically meet a single woman stating that she is pregnant today, at least in the West.

It’s an all too brief and underdeveloped show that could push its proposition further and consolidate its themes into a fully developed drama, but nevertheless a much-need starting point and introduction to what would now been seen as a criminal act of discrimination, with effects that are still being felt, that needs to be more widely discussed. Sally Stott

THEATRE

Body Parts ★★

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 29 August

Body Parts opens strongly, weaving grief, faith, and body image around a mother and her two daughters, with facial-mapping projection ageing a face on the back curtain in real time – a striking early image. There are tender moments throughout, particularly a closing scene with dance that radiates delight and joy. But the show struggles to sustain its promise: an early motif of characters scrutinising their own bodies between scenes never returns, and other narrative threads are left similarly underdeveloped. This is compounded by an ending that arrives abruptly and confusingly, undermining a production capable of precision and depth. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

After Winter ★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 29 August

Staged like a pop-up storybook, After Winter interweaves two women’s stories – one trapped in domestic life, one caged by corporate ambition – as each negotiates what self-determination costs in contemporary China. The parallel structure takes time to come together as it distinguishes between settling and settling down, family and career, guilt and independence. Vocal performances are inconsistent, but strong harmonies work to carry much of the emotional core. The production itself is underpowered and rough around the edges – clunky scene changes, some technical hiccups with the surtitles – even when the ideas underneath remain pressing and of-the-moment. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today

Enjoying the Arts & Culture journalism on scotsman.com? Make it easier to find by selecting us as a preferred Google source

Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here