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Fringe 2005 Reviews (44)
The Edinburgh Love Tour
By Richard Hurst and Chas. Early
Festival Highlights
Departs from Pleasance Courtyard
***
The Edinburgh Love Tour takes audiences on a brisk walk around
the city centre, beginning outside the Pleasance Courtyard and ending
up just behind the Gilded Balloon in George Square. Over seventy-five
minutes, audience members are guided by a married couple; they start
out in love but we soon learn about the marital difficulties underlying
their fragile relationship, while at the same time getting a story or
two about the history of romance in Scotland's capital city.
Combining theatre with history in a way rarely seen on the city's many
tours (though the Literary Pub tour comes close), The Edinburgh Love
Tour does an excellent job of involving the audience in events.
There are a few surprises along the way, and soon one begins to wonder
just how many of the audience members might actually be in cahoots with
the guides.
An outdoor show, rainy days are accompanied by Pleasance-provided umbrellas,
so don't let the weather keep you away. Although the acting is from
time to time a bit over-earnest, The Edinburgh Love Tour is a
nice alternative to sitting in a darkened theatre, and provides some
much-needed variation to this year's festival.
Rachel Lynn Brody
National Hero
By Terry Mackay
Pleasance Dome
****
National Hero is one of Edinburgh's big hitters. It is sold
on the back of the appearances of two much-loved stars, Timothy West
and Nicola McAuliffe. This is grossly unfair to the the other cast members,
Carolyn Backhouse and Tom Cotcher, both of whom are excellent.
West's Gregor, is a taciturn man who has completed a career as a bomb
disposal expert and now has a job as a Government adviser. Much to the
displeasure of his wife Ann, played by Miss McAuliffe, he still hankers
after action and a Sherlock Holmes-like final showdown with his dastardly
rival of twenty years.
The first act introduces TV journalist Alastair, who has come to make
a programme about Gregor, and his attractive wife, Mima. The meeting
between Gregor and Mima is a classic, as they freeze and recollect.
This is much to the credit of director, Guy Retallack.
While Mima was a student in Belfast, she had an affair with a bomb
disposal officer and twenty years later still loves him more than her
drink-loving husband. The domestic comedy of two unhappy couples contains
many hidden subtleties as alliances form and dissolve.
After Gregor gets his explosive showdown, he incredibly manages to
share his hospital bed with the Africa-bound Mima and as time moves
on, there is a set-piece when he must make the same choice as twenty
years before.
Gregor though, is a man who is more comfortable with bombs and wily
rivals than love. This makes life impossible for the wife with whom
almost the only thing that he shares is mutual distaste. It also indirectly
makes the other couple unhappy as Mima wrestles with her love for the
wrong man.
Timothy West makes a good, bluff "hero", offset by Nicola
McAuliffe's cheery, bustling wife concealing hurt just below the surface.
Carolyn Backhouse is a revelation as socially-aware aristocrat Mima
and Tom Cotcher funny as the drunken Scottish media man.
National Hero is an entertaining look at love, terrorism and
the media. It could do with more work to reach a final state but will
tour during September and may well have the West End as a final destination.
Philip Fisher
Beastly Beauties
A devised work created and directed by Carran Waterfield
Written in collaboration with Kindle Theatre
Underbelly
**
It began well enough: a meeting of a tree lovers society where we,
the audience, are new members. We sit (most of us: some had to sit in
ordinary theatre seating) in a circle and, in turn, the members introduce
themselves and their favourite trees. There are clearly tensions between
the members (indeed the focus of everyone of them is on themselves and
their obsession) and at first it seems as though what we are watching
is a dramatic examination of the sort of person who gets involved in
this kind of obsessive society.
As the show progresses there is music, dance and an increasingly frenetic,
almost hysteric physicality.
It's a mistake to try to impose a verbal meaning on physical theatre
- that's why it's physical: words can't convey the same meaning - but
it does demand some kind of internal logic of its own (even if it isn't
verbal logic), or at least a cohesiveness which I didn't find here.
I found myself admiring the energy and commitment of the performers
rather than being carried along by the piece itself.
Peter Lathan
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