Fringe theatre reviews: Parasocial Activity | We Will Hear The Angels | Temi Wilkey: Lover Girl + more

Contributed

THEATRE

Parasocial Activity ★★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 31 August

Jenny Maguire seems harmless enough. She stands before us in her somewhat infantilizing pink Hello Kitty pyjama top, the kind of fluffy fangirl you might step over in the queue at a booking signing or cosplay convention. She is the creation of Greenock actress Briony Martha who has worked with writer/director Megan Brewer to mount her debut solo show. The skill of their stealthy script is in provoking pity before twisting the knife.

Parasocial Activity starts as a vanilla (latte) stand-up routine about a chance meeting with actor James McAvoy in a Glasgow coffee shop. Jenny remembers every banal detail of the encounter, almost irritatingly so. Do we really need to know what she ate or how she smelled? Save that for social media. Don’t worry, she does.

Martha utilizes mic stands to manifest Jenny’s gently supportive mum and brother Craig (the favourite child, she seems pretty sure). This is a brief trip home from her lonely London life as an unemployed actress where she was one work pal with whom she shares a “trauma bond” and an ex-boyfriend who treats her with cruel indifference. But now she has been seen, and by a handsome Hollywood star at that. As Lana Del Rey would put it, hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like her to have.

But she’s definitely not like the desperate Patty, self-styled Alpha fan who jealously, incredulously monitors this arriviste interloper’s interactions with her exclusive dreamboat. Slowly, innocuously the breadcrumbs are dropped. If it seems too good to be true…

The clue is in the title yet Martha’s wide-eyed portrayal of an ordinary lass in a fairytale whirlwind is so convincing that the slowburn spriral into something much more troubling still comes with a slap of a revelation while the mental health maelstrom of the closing moments of the show unleash a performance to behold and no tidy answers in a world with all the digital tools to wreak real life damage. Fiona Shepherd

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THEATRE

We Will Hear The Angels ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 30 August

Magnetic North’s exploration of the power of the sad song keeps us waiting for that hurts-so-good catharsis through a halting first half of fussy bustle, ponderous movement and fey philosophising. Five lonely characters fret and pine - marooned at their work stations, Apphia Campbell’s Bea stumbles across her husband’s affair, Van (played by the company’s Artistic Director Nicholas Bone) pines for his brother’s partner, while Ian (cellist Greg Sinclair) develops a fascination with his neighbour that borders on stalking.

There’s Bach on the soundtrack and musician Daniel Padden chiming in periodically with a low-key mantra before the sound of five voices in self-soothing canon hints at the wasted potential in this disjointed set-up. The latter half of the show starts to make an emotional connection through the eloquence of other artist’s lyrics. Mia Scott as the unrequited Sonia delivers a bittersweet rendition of Patsy Cline’s aching Why Can’t He Be You. Campbell sings Etta James’ I Would Rather Go Blind with subtle vocal riffs and minimal accompaniment then leads the closing cover of Brian Eno and John Cale’s Spinning Away. When all five performers harmonise in the final moments of the show, those angels make a frustratingly belated healing impact. Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

Temi Wilkey: Lover Girl ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

Look out, lesbians – and everyone else, Temi is looking for love and, as she’s quick to repeatedly state, she’s attracted to all genders. It starts off like stand-up: unabashed, no-filter narration on being a bisexual black woman, loving oneself, which she repeatedly says she does, and the challenge of trying to find someone who can match her own enthusiasm for this. Audience participation is mandatory, so join in!

After a critique of all things binary, it quickly becomes clear that she isn’t averse to these when it leads to a good joke, which sometimes it does. Just when the semi-ironic navel gazing threatens to become too much, a shift of perspective makes it anatomically impossible: that’s because we’re now on a journey into her “infinite pussy”.

This new location, framed by red curtains, is a bit like a jazz club, in which she sings songs, introduces her ancestors and something that might be the start of a good anecdote about a toxic ex. By time she’s practicing self-care through washing her hair – that she was previously afraid to get wet due to it taking its natural shape – the play’s turned into something more honest than the sometimes brave but often self-consciously explicit narration of the start and hints at something deeper. Sally Stott

THEATRE

A Little Green Leaf ★★★

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 22 August

There’s a deceptively unassuming quality to the early stages of this original one-act play by Kimberly Denness-Thomas that’s inspired by the true-life story of Odette Hallowes (Kathleen O’Reilly) who operated as a secret agent for the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. It reflects the pleasantly open and optimistic nature of Odette, a French woman earmarked for espionage through circumstance and assigned to a department charged by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”.

Director Barbara Poggemiller simply establishes the day-to-day nature of a seemingly ordinary woman entrusted with an extraordinary job and initially this remarkably unfussy and well-paced Canadian production can appear curiously undramatic - and even, on occasion, risks dullness. However, this is actually revealed as a clever strategy, as it establishes a sense of the everyday before Odette is captured and consigned to the concentration camps where her faith in “the potential nobility of the human spirit” faces the ultimate test.

Dennes-Thomas carefully suggests the horrors without ever coming close to overstatement but the subtle ratcheting of effects are well-made. It can be very hard to portray an essentially good person without resorting to hagiography and O’Reilly’s nicely understated performance never risks beatifying her character and is quietly inspiring. Rory Ford

THEATRE

DeepFake ★★★

Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

Welcome back from your break, but there’s an urgent issue to address at cutting-edge AI company Mirrorminds, and you’re just the person to advise on it - though you may find your opinions and arguments somewhat subverted in US tech/theatre company 404 Theater’s clever but essentially one-trick, 15-minute solo show. The pressure is on to absorb evidence, weigh up options and come to your considered decision - about what, however, it would be churlish to divulge.

Part conversation, part urgently flashing red alert, DeepFake is a rare example of a show that dares to carry out the very activity it’s warning about, and the effects - while admirably clever, and astonishingly swift to emerge - are genuinely alarming. That shock factor forms a large part of DeepFake’s impact, but whether this is more a demonstration of the capabilities of new technology than a fully fledged piece of theatre is another question entirely. With a little more time, or a slightly larger cast of characters, a more nuanced and multi-level picture might emerge, and a lot depends - inevitably - on the audience member’s own input. As it stands, however, there’s no denying the power of DeepFake’s revelations, nor the urgency it highlights of addressing a fast-evolving technology. David Kettle

THEATRE

A Foot is Not an Appropriate Prize for the Tombola ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August

An interactive murder mystery, A Foot is Not an Appropriate Prize for the Tombola makes a virtue of its absurdity. A severed foot turns up among the prizes at a village fete: there is hair on the ankle, the cut worryingly clean. The village policeman is at a loss to identify the victim or perpetrator, and Lydia, despite her curiosity, is warned not to go snooping.

Storyteller Daniel McVey, in drag as Lydia, casts the audience as villagers, witnesses and suspects, folding us into a tale involving a disembodied voice, a giant eye and the scientist who created it. The tombola itself, that most parochial of economies, hints at its own darkness – the word “tomb” sits within it – and becomes the show’s engine, as cosy crime’s small-stakes charm curdles into a story about submission and obedience.

The devices are simple but well-timed, from a singalong reprised to “ad breaks” that puncture the action, though the same beats of crowd-work recur more than strictly necessary, and the cosmic-horror turn, when it comes, could arrive sooner. Still, it’s a peculiar, cheerfully macabre hour, and one that will not disappoint fans of cosy crime willing to play along. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

How to Believe in Anything ★★

Laughing Horse @ The Raging Bull (Venue 332) until 18 August

How to Believe in Anything tackles childhood sexual abuse deftly and tenderly, filtered through a fourteen-year-old who copes by believing in aliens – including an eerie “Samantha,” possibly her long-vanished mother in disguise. The performer mesmerises, conjuring startling, sometimes florid images: her father’s face reflects the TV’s light like an astronaut’s visor; trees line up like people before a firing squad. A radio onstage, which underscores the action, is swallowed by venue chatter – no fault of the performer. She sets her home alight with her father inside, but the show ends soon after, leaving the act’s horror and gravity underexplored. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

Fragments of Self ★★

Mint Studio at Greenside @ George Street (venue 236) until 15 August

Through a series of monologues and scenes, three women try to piece together the different versions of themselves that they present to the world. Fragments of Self interrogates the muddled intersection between performance and authenticity, asking “am I still me if I do what you tell me to?”

The show has some profound points to make about the particular pressure women face to make themselves smaller and more agreeable. Some of writer Lyndsey Lomax’s messaging is a little cliched, though; one scene tediously deploys a broken picture frame as a visual metaphor for stale idea that just because something has changed, doesn’t mean it is broken. But the show’s earnestness is refreshing, and there is definitely a catharsis to watching an identity crisis play out before your eyes. Lilia Foster

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