Category: Review

Night of the Living Tories – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Joe Wells doesn't like the Tory party to the point of supporting the 19th Century Whigs. They may have introduced the Corn Laws, but they weren't Tories. And they repealed the Corn Laws later, but sadly the Tories are still with us.

You can argue with some of the material – does anyone think that the Tories in power alone wouldn't have been much worse than having them restricted by the LibDems in coalition? – but it's delivered well and with a definite bite.

Obviously, the audience for this is fairly self-selecting: people who think that the problem with David Cameron is that he's not right-wing enough are unlikely to go. If that's not you, and you can cope with the steps down to the venue, then this is first-rate political comedy.

4/5

On at 12 noon at Viva Mexico (venue 274) until the 23rd August.

Savvy Secrets of Successful Mistresses – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Lisa Faith Philips paid for some of her education via stripping. That formed the basis of a previous show, and this one is about another form of using sexuality to make a living: being a mistress.

It's set up as a parody of self-help gurus – she's 'Dr Faith' with a one true way of doing things – but it grates, especially to a non-American ear. There are also far too many thwacks of a riding crop against the pop-up display too – it just gets boring.

The original songs, by the other person on the stage, Ellen Mandel, are fine enough but suffer in comparison to the classics that are also performed.

Interestingly, the 'savvy secrets' are very similar to the basic rules for sex work: "get your hands on the dough" is "get the money first" by another name. But while 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend' is a great song, it's rubbish financial advice – the resale value of diamonds is scandalously low.

On the evening I went, I won the 'Scotland's next top mistress' award but although I left with a badge (which I have been delightedly wearing ever since) and plastic rose, I also left feeling that the show could have been a lot, lot better given the basic material there.

It's not funny enough as a parody, and it's not personal enough. Her previous show was about her, and it worked a lot better than this one.

2/5

On at 10:15pm in the Paradise at Augustines (venue 152) until the 10th.

Bad Girls: Misandry Madness Showcase – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

A variable bill of several female comics, plus one token man in at least some form of drag.

On the night I saw it, after some chat from compère Miss Androus, it was Sarah Cassidy (solo show immediately added to the 'definitely see' list), and Jane Walker (nicely self-deprecating humour) before Ian Miller in a bad wig ('women in Essex are so orange, going down on them counts as one of your five-a-day').

He was followed by So Ying Pang (at some point, she is going to stop looking so nervous when performing), and Liz Peters (solo show even more immediately added to the 'definitely see' list).

Your cast will vary, but two palpable hits meant I was happy to have gone.

3/5

On at 9pm at the George on The Bridge (venue 346) until the 23rd August.

The Horror! The Horror! The Final Curtain – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

This was an example of flyering working – one of the performers handing out the flyers convinced me to see it because of its overarching narrative. One of the quotes on the flyer calls it a 'A home-grown Little Shop of Horrors', but it's really closer to the film version of Cabaret in that what happens on the music hall stage setting reflects the characters' real lives.

To say much more would spoil it, but the songs by Jeffrey Mayhew (on stage playing the piano) are all good, and the jokes are either good or deliberately bad. What stops me rating this a bit higher is that, despite the way that it's staged, it's a bit too subtle. It would be good to see a longer version too.

3/5

On at 7:45pm at the Bedlam Theatre (venue 49) until the 24th August. (No show on the 17th.)

Andy J Wilson's Confessions Box – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

I've been playing 'anonymous confessions' at places like BiCon for over twenty years: everyone writes down something on a piece of paper, folds it up and adds to a pile of them. The pile is then mixed up, and everyone takes one and reads it. It often gets quite rude.

'Ooh, there's a show where someone reads out anonymous confessions sent in over the internet / written on the way in – what could possibly go wrong with that?'

Well, that it did is shown by how often Andy Wilson mentioned how the previous evening's performance had been much better. It may well have been: there were only about three confessions from this evening's performance, and one of those was in French. But surely there was enough material from his website? There probably was, but he wouldn't read most of it. He'd written them down, but not marked them, and couldn't find at least one he wanted to do.

Instead, we got a bit too much of his own material, some of which didn't go down too well possibly because of the other thing he kept mentioning: how much he'd had to drink that day.

The concept is great, the execution simply wasn't there this evening. Fortunately, it was free.

2/5

It's on at The George on the Bridge (venue 346) at 6:30pm, until 9th August.

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street – 2014 Edinburgh Fringe

Quite a few of the shows I would have liked to see don't open until next week, and going for unknown material by unknown companies is a risk. So I started my time at the 2014 Fringe with something where I knew the material was better than 'good': Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The company is from a school in Hawai'i, would they be ok? I am delighted to say that the answer is that they're better, they're very good. There's a cast of 27 listed in the programme, which makes it just over 33p each for a £9 ticket.

The staging is very simple, and not everyone amongst the main characters is quite as audible as the others, but that's about the main criticism I have, and because the venue's seating is on three sides, they're sometimes singing while facing away from you (I'd recommend sitting in the middle section).

The 1h45m really did not seem anything like as long. Because of the emphasis on the lyrics, Sondheim can be a hard choice, but I only noticed one small slight fluff.

Congratulations to everyone involved: this is one of the best school productions I have ever seen, and there are going to be a lot of 'professional' companies doing shows that are not nearly as good as this at the Fringe. Very definitely recommended.

4/5

It's on at theSpace on Niddry St (Venue 9) at 11:10 until the 7th August 2014. See it.

On the Playing Fields of Her Rejection

I mentioned this in the Dial L for Latchkey review as being the worst professional show I'd ever seen.

My copy of its flyer – which promised so much – has just turned up:

If you picked up that flyer, you'd go and see it, wouldn't you? Sadly for those of us who did, the flyer was about a million times better than the actual show.

It's a bit late now, but looking back with 15 years of hindsight, the similarity between 'A glorious romp with sex and gardening' and 'A gay romp with Adolf and Eva' (the subtitle of Springtime for Hitler, officially the worst play ever written – according to The Producers, anyway) should have been a big clue that it was a play that should have closed on page four.

Be grateful you never saw it… and if you did, it really was bad, wasn't it?

Macbeth – Greenwich Theatre

The production that is based on the line "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It  were done quickly"?

Shakespeare's shortest tragedy is cut still further in this adaptation: a cast of six (five men and one woman) take on (nearly) all the roles. As they don't change costume, this is sometimes a case of speed over clarity, as when the King becomes one of the witches simply by not leaving the stage between scenes. For no very obvious reason, the set of actors playing the witches even changes between their first and second appearance.

You probably do need to be familiar with the play to work out who someone is supposed to be at any point – when the actor who played Banquo a minute ago is present as one of the other nobles at the dinner attended by Banquo's ghost, for example – and it also suffers in comparison with the Shakespeare's Globe production last year. Anyone who saw that won't have forgotten the Porter opening the gate.. he's one of the things that's gone here, his performance taken away in a different way.

But it moves along quickly and if not always too well, then effectively enough. The lighting and sound design works well with the simple set (sheets supported by wooden beams, with three slits for entrances and exits), plus the violence is shown effectively without needing to resort to splatter effects.

The audience I saw it with included two school parties. One section laughed at some inappropriate moments, but the applause at the end was thunderous.

3.5/5

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Gielgud Theatre

Kneehigh, the company behind this production, go from the utterly wonderful (their adaptation of Angela Carter's seemingly unadaptable Nights at the Circus), to the popular (their adaptation of  Brief Encounter), to the brave but bad (Don John, the misguided updating and adaptation of Don Giovanni).

Fortunately, this is nearer the first. Unfortunately, it turns out to be far from another.

Umbrellas.. is, of course*, an adaptation of a French film, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Made in the 1960s, it won the Palme d'Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, and had five Academy Award nominations including Best Foreign Language Film, Best Song, Best Original Score, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Phew. It's also deemed sufficiently famous to have a recreation of the umbrella shop in Disneyland Paris' Walt Disney Studios Park – one of very few non-Disney films referenced there.

OK, first the disclaimer – I saw this before the official opening. However, they still charged to get in and, from reading other reviews, nothing significant has changed in the production. The one problem on the night I saw it was some dodgy sound engineering, particularly towards the start. As that hasn't been mentioned by anyone else, I assume it's been sorted.

It starts with Meow Meow setting the scene and giving French lessons as a Maîtresse ('teacher, not mattress!') Now, my French is very, very bad (I failed my French O-level so badly that it's not even marked as a fail on my certificate) but even I found this funny. Some reviews have reckoned she's a new character, but given that she gets to be sexual with the hero, it's clear that she's the prostitute in the original, and is indeed 'something to lie on between you and the bed'.

All wonderful so far, and then we get to one of the points where you either love it or hate it. Like the original, this is operetta: everything is sung. This is not a problem in Don Giovanni, but Mozart barely stopped writing memorable tunes from about the time he started walking until his death. Here, there's one. Now, as mentioned, it was nominated for some serious awards, but the contrast with the rest of the score is striking. Fortunately the change from an full orchestra to a dozen or so musicians is an artistic success as well as financial necessity and the arrangements work very well.

Another big change is the visual look. The original which was one of those films where people talk of the colours glowing, making what we're told is the French equivalent of Hull look beautiful. Here the set is functional and occasionally fun, but it's more or less monochrome.

Fortunately, they haven't tampered significantly with the story which remains as powerful as ever – believable endings trump happy ones – and the rest of the cast carry it off, if not with the same style as Meow Meow.

So what we're left with is an excellent book, some good performances and one tune. Wicked has run for years on this formula (and survived dodgy sound engineering to boot), but on leaving the theatre, I said that I thought it will be nominated for at least one award, but won't be running this time next year.

At that point, it was due to close in October. Sadly, that date has been moved forward to May. It was never going to be everyone's cup of tea glass of wine, but 'ouch'. Surely this has a bigger market than that?

Good shows have closed too early before, but here I think the publicity reflects the show accurately (unlike, say, that for The Drowsy Chaperone) and while they've been mixed (just see the comments to one blog that correctly points out this is a Marmite show: you'll love it or hate it), many reviews have been the sort producers happily quote in full.

Is it 'cos ils sont français?

* As they say when they've had to look it up to make sure 🙂

4/5