Fringe theatre reviews: Toast | Democrazy | M (Woman of Fashion) | Homecoming | The New Year + more
Our latest round-up of Fringe theatre reviews includes a critique of bureaucratic human expoloitation, some unsubtle yet entertaining satire, and an attempt to fathom Melania Trump.
Toast ★★★★
Summerhall (Venue 26) until 16 August
No Fringe would be complete without a play about the difficulties of putting on a play at the Fringe. While this sparkly written comic-tragic duologue, by writer and performer Jude Green, starts off with the familiar frustrations of a call to a disembodied voice in the Job Centre, it quickly expands into a critique of a system designed to channel everyone into an outdated notion of traditional jobs with no room for individuality or creativity in defining what a job is or could be.
However, some work is more economically viable than others and, as Jude’s increasingly animated discussions with the smooth-skilled voice of state bureaucracy shift to addressing similarly styled commercial agents, casting directors and writer development teams (all played by Jack Wakely off stage), eventually there’s no one left to blame for a lack of “gainful employment” than the self, which is done with equal and, eventually, heart-wrenching gusto.
It’s a play for anyone’s who’s trapped by the choices they’ve been forced to make and dared to dream of something better. Kafkaesque and Brechtian, as the industry commentors, whose voices flow in and merge, like to say. A farce about the farce of a system in which, earning money or not, it’s impossible to truly win.
But it’s also simultaneously sad, invigorating and funny to see Jude try, as they become that cockroach, appropriate other performers lines (watch out Catherine Tate) and sell their Wicked-loving work coach the stories behind every expense in their bank account.
None of us can escape the cycle of human exploitation for money is the conclusion and – as illustrated by a punchy final exchange with the person behind the many commentating voices that smashes the final bricks of the fourth wall – least of all this show, but it does an excellent job of giving it “one last whack.” I very much hope that there will be more. Sally Stott
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Democrazy ★★★
theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 15 August
On an unnamed tropical island state, complacent European traveller Joseph (Edoardo Vanoni) is enjoying a cycling holiday when his iPhone runs out of battery in the wilderness. Looking for help, he finds a mysterious and eccentric hermit and former prison inmate named Bagus (Denis Haugh), who makes masks for actors.
Trapped here, Joseph listens to Bagus’s story – of how this island was once ruled by a beheading-happy monarch, until the people chased him off.
Instead, the King’s place was taken by the unsubtly-named Richard Tator, who won the people over with his populist rhetoric and now launches “special military operations for peace” against the country’s allies Blueland, hands control of all the major industries to his oligarch friends for a cut of the profits and jails anyone who dares criticise him – like dissident teacher Bagus, who’s now hiding out.
The satire is unsubtle, but the production, under the direction of writer Rupert Raison, strikes an entertaining and madcap note throughout with the use of Balinese masks.
Alongside Vanoni and Haugh’s expressive, physical performances, this comedic costume style gives Dick Tator’s assorted array of oafish generals and toadying, piggy Prime Ministers an amusingly grotesque dimension which punctures their might and ruthlessness. David Pollock
M (Woman of Fashion) ★★★
C aurora (Venue 6) until 30 August
The ‘M’ of this one-woman play’s title, it’s no spoiler to reveal, is Melania Trump, introduced in the opening scene as Melanija Knavs, the Yugoslavian schoolgirl who later becomes the First Lady of the United States of America, via a career as a fashion model in Paris for which she Germanifies her surname to Knauss.
Written by Eoin Carney and starring Ema Kravanja (who’s Slovenian, just as Melania became after the break-up of Yugoslavia) in the title role, the play skips forward through various key stages in Knauss/Trump’s life, notably those modelling days and each of her husband Donald’s presidencies. Both the text and Kravanja’s portrayal of Melania feel somewhat soft-soap, but then the original isn’t someone who gives much of her personality away.
Instead, both creators fill the void with an imagined Melania, a “woman of high fashion” who has a dream to be recognised and whose idea of beauty is sharp-edged, provocative and dangerous; as exemplified in one scene where she ponders her austere and roundly-mocked White House Christmas decorations.
Carney’s text quotes Winston Churchill when it refers to Melania as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, and with little to go on, he and Kravanja don’t do a bad job of trying to put a voice to the well-known face. David Pollock
Homecoming ★★
Summerhall (Venue 26) until 16 August
In her Fringe debut, Canadian actress Magalie Rouillard-Bazinet recounts a brief history of her orgasms and the people (and circumstances) involved in her arousal down the years, from early experiments to she’s-gotta-have-it relationships.
She gives a name - Antigone - and a growly voice to her hungry vagina while her suitors remain partially sketched cyphers.
Rouillard-Bazinet can certainly get worked up in performance, her delivery rising from sultry mutter to piercing shriek to an aggravating degree. She presents her choosing between a French and British boyfriend as a territorial war without laying the emotional groundwork to make us care about her sexual psychodramas. Fiona Shepherd
The New Year ★★
Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 15 August
The New Year dramatises a messaging thread between May and Perry that begins in an online role-play chatroom, in an energetic two-hander full of endearing, awkward moments that capture the messiness and tenderness of adolescence.
Drawing on Brechtian epic theatre, the actors narrate their actions aloud; an effective device. Yet as the production blurs fantasy and reality, online and offline, ambiguity is compounded rather than clarified.
As theatrical registers shift, the audience loses a stable frame of reference, and despite strong performances and well-judged lighting, the unresolved ambiguity results in an ending that seems underdeveloped rather than open. Josephine Balfour-Oatts
The (unforeseen) Annoyances of Intimacy ★★
Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 15 August
The awkward dinner party scenario is well tenderised meat for comedy. This particular serving is a shrieky tale of the actress, her boyfriend, her stage lover and their intimacy coach at loggerheads over the lasagne with a ripe side of jealousy, misunderstanding, farce and an unfortunate misunderstanding with a kitchen knife.
Valley girl Stevie is the misguided hostess who thinks the best way of placating her partner’s apprehension over her stage sex scenes is to engineer an encounter with her spivvy South African co-star, but the cast seem more enamoured of their over-the-top performances and intonation than spinning any point from a silly, innuendo-laden script. Fiona Shepherd
Pimm's Without the Cucumber ★★
The Vault at Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 15 August
Lucas Kad shows us his protagonist Jordan’s “healing era” after a breakup with his first boyfriend. A mixed-race gay man, Jordan’s journey to acceptance is punctuated by moments of community support and quippy explainers on drugs, sex and romance.
There is no doubt that Kad has star power in this solo show – he carries the hour despite a muddled narrative and distractingly low stakes. We learn little about the relationship and breakup prompting the show, making Kad’s theses about healing ring hollow.
He is watchable, but the show’s refusal to dig deeper into its own autobiographical material leaves this story difficult to connect with. Mika Morava
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