Fringe theatre reviews: Our Other Organ | Annie Wobbler (Revisited) | The Wedding Date | Fractured + more

Our Other Organ | Jakob Tekiela

Our Other Organ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

This extraordinary show from Israel-born, Denmark-based Jewish artist Boaz Barkan and his company NoLands – at the festival as part of the always interesting Danish showcase of work – presents an anatomical dissection of how the body carries trauma, of antisemitism and its impact, and of the how the scars of the Holocaust have manifested in the modern world. It is short – only 30 minutes or so – but addresses enormous themes in gripping and grisly style.

The show begins simply. Barkan enters and stars chatting to the audience. Recently, he says, he has become interested in the human body – from the ancient theories of Hippocrates to the globetrotting phenomenon of Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds – and he has come up with a theory. Buried within our torsos, lurking next to the liver, we have another organ. This organ, he hypothesises, works like a sponge. It soaks up hate and, when saturated, squeezes it out again.

Next, he introduces a helper – circus artist Joel Degerfeldt – to demonstrate his ideas. Degerfeldt lies on an operating table. Barkan covers his face. Then he starts to prod and poke him, to smell and taste him, to flex his joints and manhandle his muscles, illustrating how the trauma absorbed by his imaginary organ bleeds into the rest of the body, inspiring procreative urges in the groin, flavouring fingers with bitterness, driving legs to migrate, and hardening hearts. As he does so, Barkan alludes to his family history, antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the genocidal crimes of the Israeli state, making profound – to some, provocative – connections.

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There is no guts or gore in Barkan’s demonstration, but there is something viscerally compelling about this show – in the way it slyly shifts from casual chat into deep political and philosophical ideas, in the way Barkan macabrely manipulates Degerfeldt’s prone body, and in the way the allegorical identity of that body evolves.

The fact that it is being stage in Summerhall’s Anatomy Lecture Theatre feels deeply resonant, too. Decades ago, animals’ entrails were examined in this auditorium. Barkan conducts a dark, strange and superb dissection of a different kind. Fergus Morgan

Annie Wobbler (Revisited) ★ ★ ★ ★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 31 August

Arnold Wesker wrote Annie Wobbler, a one-woman play featuring three women of different ages, in 1981 for the actor Nichola McAuliffe, then in her mid twenties. Now 70, she revives it for the Fringe, adding contemporary cultural references and reversing Wesker’s original order, perhaps to test her mettle, perhaps to see how the play sits in what is notionally a very different world.

As a reflection on women trying to make space for themseves, it has dated barely at all. Anna, a recent graduate with a first-class degree from a “black brick” university, gets ready for a date with an upper-class boy, reflecting that “men don’t like women cleverer than them” but considering doing “some intimidating” of her own.

Annabella Wharton, a successful mid-brow novelist, is coquettish and tricksy when young, feisty and formidable when older, though it masks an inner wistfulness. Annie Wobbler, an elderly homeless woman from London’s East End, inspired by Wesker’s parents’ cleaner, is the most tender and nuanced of the three, proudly retaining her employment references though she no longer works and cannot read or write.

McAuliffe is wonderful, adeptly negotiating the play’s tight turns and sudden shifts. When she first performed it, she was close to Anna’s age, now she’s closer to Annie Wobbler’s, but she plays the full range apparently effortlessly. It’s a welcome chance to see an Olivier Award-winning actress operating at the height of her powers on the Fringe.

As for the contemporary references – smart phones, emojis, Nigel Farage, getting likes on social media – I’m not convinced they’re really necessary. They get laughs, but at times they feel a bit contrived. There are very few of them in the Annie Wobbler section, and it is as powerful, timeless and affecting as it ever was. Susan Mansfield

The Wedding Date ★ ★ ★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

This two-hander drops its audience into the London wedding of Iris and Selena’s university friend. The pair move between the ceremony, dancefloor and bathroom as their friendship unravels. Small details, from selfies to fragments of conversation with other guests, give the production a convincing sense of reality.

The chemistry between actors Sera Mustafa and Orla Tagg is a major strength, and their ease makes the growing tension compelling. Misunderstandings accumulate: a dormant attraction is reignited when one pursues a man who is sleeping with the other. Information passes between them with the rhythm of a tennis match. Loyalties shift – everyone appears to be hiding something, and each revelation creates another complication.

The realism is less consistent during offstage interactions, which feel flatter than the central relationship. A more stylised approach could bring greater energy to these moments. The ending is tense but arrives abruptly; allowing more time for the fallout to unfold could give the final moments more weight.

The play finds bite in the complications of friendship, sex and desire. Its strongest moments come from watching two people who know each other intimately struggle to navigate what they want – and what they are prepared to hide to get it. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Fractured ★ ★

Underbelly (Venue 61) until 30 August

Writer/actor Shona Graham gives a quality performance as Eva, a young woman who’s been in a car accident and whose mind keeps flitting between timeframes and locations as a result. At one point she’s being cross-examined in court, at another she’s having a testy discussion with her mum (both played by Samantha Kalnins-Wright), or else she’s talking to her semi-estranged brother Rob (Andrew Atha) or her new partner Paul (Misha Salinas).

It’s one of those plays where mental illness is invoked more as a device to make the plot work rather than a subject to be discussed on its own terms, which is an over-familiar trope to say the least. David Pollock

READ MORE: Artificially yours: four Fringe theatre shows asking what AI means for being human

CAKE: A Crime of Love ★ ★

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

Too many hands — and too many ingredients — conspire to make this “reverse murder mystery” devised by the cast a bit of a dog’s breakfast. It begins very promisingly with Mathilda Butler’s nightmarishly high-maintenance party host Eloise greeting the audience as they arrive then works backwards to establish who was murdered and why. Initially, it’s an interesting mixture of tones, but the cast craft it so that each member has their own comedic moment as well as a big dramatic scene. It all gets seriously undercooked by the time you get to the middle and the point of the dance number set to Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” is anyone’s guess, frankly. Rory Ford

Brew Hill ★ ★

theSpace @ Symposium Hall (Venue 43) until 22 August; theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 29 August

Killian King’s wilfully odd domestic comedy drama is a self-conscious affair that frustratingly refuses to gel. Nat (TrixieSmith) and Gordon (Jem Hunter) are flatmates. Nat is a recovering alcoholic who has a parasocial relationship with the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel while Gordon has a similar fixation on a brand of German yogurt and dreams of visiting Berlin but never leaves the couch. Nat wants to start a brewery — for no convincing reason — referencing the painter’s name and Bruegel (Hugh Linklater) appears occasionally in curious sections that add little context. It’s probably unsurprising that this fails to add up, but it’s frustrating because Smith and the charmingly catty Hunter are good and manage to find some passably funny moments in a play that appears captivated by its own idiosyncrasies. Rory Ford

Laughing Matters ★ ★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

This show is a competent stand-up routine wrapped in a less assured drama. Alec Watson plays comedian Chris, the compere at a pub comedy night who has stressed and finessed his warm-up act to his satisfaction. But when he is blindsided by a personal tragedy he is forced to reassess how his life informs his comedy and vice versa, finding at first that he has no reserves to draw on and later that he has too much in his heart to deliver the goods. Laughter in this case is not the best medicine but for now it is the only tool he has to express his grief. Fiona Shepherd

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