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Fringe 2005 Reviews (34)
Stories For the Wobbly Hearted
by Daniel Kitson
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
*****
Daniel Kitson sits in an armchair amidst 60s record players and lamps
in the middle of the stage of Traverse 1 throughout his show. Apart
from a few video links on a screen that fills the back wall, the show
consists entirely of Kitson sitting telling stories about loneliness,
love and the lonely trying to find love. This could easily be quite
dull, but Kitson has created some fascinating characters with wonderful
stories, which he brings alive with his great use of language and his
stage charisma.
We hear about the boy whose proud father buys him a guitar, which he
uses to become a busker on the tube; the woman who leaves 'clues' around
the town to try to attract a man with similar interests, and the couple
that keep going back to the night club where they met, but have not
always been truthful to one another about what they think about the
club. The stories are both touching and funny, told with an over-elaborate,
pedantic form of language that is part of Kitson's on-stage character
but is quite poetic and hypnotic to listen to.
This is an apparently simple show that weaves complex but fascinating
stories around its theme, told with tenderness and humour. Kitson's
natural, low-key delivery draws the audience into his world and keeps
them there. I, for one, could have listened to him telling these stories
all night.
David Chadderton
Best of the Fest
Assembly @ George Street, Edinburgh
(No star rating as the show changes at every performance)
Best of the Fest runs on selected evenings throughout the Fringe
Festival starting soon after midnight. Each show consists of short performances
by a number of Fringe performers, one of whom acts as the evening's
compere.
On this particular occasion, the compere was Alun Cochrane, who did
a superb job of holding the show together. He had a great relationship
with the audience, despite a few problems, and proved himself a very
competent and funny performer. First on was Will Smith, a Fringe regular,
who did a whole set about being posh, which got plenty of laughs. Next
up was Seymour Mace, who got a few laughs from his misfit character.
The excitement began when Richard Herring took the stage. His set was
rather thin on material, consisting mostly of trying to shock with sexual
obscenities and repeated lewd suggestions to female members of the audience.
An older woman who had already complained about 'blue' jokes in Will
Smith's set complained loudly, and Herring's reaction was angry and
extremely abusive towards her. Cochrane did a great job of diffusing
the atmosphere before introducing Canadian Jason-John Whitehead, who
did a good little set as a foreigner looking at the eccentricities of
the British.
The show ended with a late entry onto the bill - Ed Byrne, who has
managed to be on Best of the Fest without actually having a show on
the Fringe. Despite this, he gave a top-of-the-bill performance that
had the whole audience laughing from beginning to end, until the management
persuaded him to leave the stage.
Best of the Fest is on selected nights throughout August. Check
the blackboards at the Assembly Rooms box office for the line-up for
each one.
David Chadderton
Playing Burton
by Mark Jenkins
Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
***(*)
This production was a last-minute addition to the Fringe programme,
replacing a production that was cancelled, and so does not appear in
the Fringe brochure. This may go some way to explain why a play from
a writer who won awards and gained five-star reviews from everyone at
last year's Fringe is rather poorly attended in such a prime early-evening
spot.
Mark Jenkins wrote Rosebud, a one-man show about Orson Welles
that was a major hit in Edinburgh last year, performed by Christian
McKay. Playing Burton is an earlier biographical one-man play
about Richard Burton that has toured the world successfully for a number
of years. It covers the major incidents and achievements in Burton's
life, and is peppered with quotations from writers such as Shakespeare,
Dylan Thomas and especially from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, whose
story is used to parallel Burton's own life story in the play.
Brian Mallon certainly has a look of Burton and manages to get pretty
close with the voice too. However this production does not come across
as being as powerful as Rosebud - it is more of a cosy chat with
someone about their life than a compelling investigation into a major
figure of theatre and cinema. Mallon tells his story well enough, but
does not seem to have as strong a stage presence as McKay had with Welles.
As in Rosebud, the narrative is broken up by flashbacks in which
the actor plays other characters, but these are not as different in
tone from the main narrative as in the later play and are differentiated
by lighting but not very much in the performance.
This is an interesting and entertaining play that certainly deserves
more attention than the poor and unresponsive audience at the performance
I saw. Those who saw Rosebud last year should remember that this
is a much earlier piece by Jenkins, but is still a well-written play
about an interesting character.
David Chadderton
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