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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2004 Reviews (14)Fierce Fierce describes itself as an urban myth. Coming from Grid Iron, the company that has produced most of Douglas Maxwell's work, it will not be a surprise that this features a loser fighting his way through the Schemes of North Edinburgh. Finlay (Mark Arends) is a backward 14-year-old who struggles along calmed by Prozac. His long-suffering mother Annie, played by Cora Bissett, is not yet 30 herself but does her best by him. He lives through the pages of comic books and wants to be a comic artist himself. After meeting up with some good guys and some bad ones, he is forced to grow up in a hurry and to learn some serious lessons about life as he embarks on a career as a graffiti artist. Fierce is partly a musical and suffers from an imbalance between voices and rap/hip hop that makes many lines unintelligible. While the plot covers little new ground, the presentation can be very exciting. The choreography reaches a peak towards the end and outshines the singing, with the exception of Helen McAlpine as Edie, who has a nice voice. The real stars though are The 16K Design Works who have produced the graphics. These comprise depressing photos and zany cartoons that are projected on five screens above the stage. They form the set, along with cages and images of high rise blocks. Philip Fisher The Gospel Truth for Cats and Dogs When this show opens, Richard Medrington shares the stage with piles of stuff, Tom Adams the musician, initially playing violin, and Bella the dog who, apart from a brief wander to stretch her legs, spent the whole performance curled up asleep on stage. The show is really a parody of Christianity, translating many of its aspects to a religion for dogs. An order of service is distributed to the audience before the start, complete with a song for everyone to sing together. It begins with some observations on the differences between cats and dogs, followed by a reading from the Book of Dog. This tells a story from the Garden of Eden where Adam's dog, Spot, was told he could widdle against any tree in the garden except one, but he was tempted by the cat to disobey and both were punished. Medrington tells a number of other stories which all have a moral theme or Christian parallel, and there is even a brief magic act in the middle. Medrington is a compelling storyteller, and he uses slides, puppets and manipulated soft toys to illustrate his stories. However not all of them end happily, and some go on for quite a long time. There are some very funny parts and some that are quite moving, but overall the show is a bit patchy and some parts work much better than others. David Chadderton The Tiger Lillies - Punch and Judy Punch and Judy is billed as a new show from the composers of the award-winning Shock Headed Peter. It purports to tell the story of Punch's life, but it is really a loose framework for the Tiger Lillies' songs, a number of which were performed in their smaller-scale concert last year on the Fringe. Unfortunately the audience's mood was soured by a thirty-five minute delay in starting, made worse by the poor organisation by the venue's staff who moved the waiting audience of around two hundred from one place to another around five times before they were eventually admitted to the auditorium (their excuse was that the rain had prevented queuing outside - it seems the management had not planned for the possibility of rain in Edinburgh in August). However all seemed in good spirits by the start of the show and the audience was laughing enthusiastically from the start. The Tiger Lillies' songs often have beautiful and haunting tunes, carried by the powerful falsetto voice of Martin Jacques. However their lyrics are extremely sick, talking in great detail of death, mutilation, rape, torture and other such topics. To add to the theme and to create something more than a simple concert, the stage is turned into a giant Punch and Judy booth and various kinds of puppets, from rod puppets to glove puppets to shadow puppets to giant inflatable puppets, are used during some songs. However this is no Shock Headed Peter; the plot is flimsy and disappears completely at times and the puppet scenes often seem thrown together. The Tiger Lillies in concert are very entertaining, but perhaps a specialised or acquired taste. The parts of this performance put in to turn it from a concert into a theatre piece are rather rough and do not deserve the connection implied in the publicity with the wonderful Shock Headed Peter. David Chadderton |
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