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Fringe 2008 Reviews (13)
Tales from an Enchanted Forest
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
****
Tales from an Enchanted Forest is a series of daily lunchtime
storytelling sessions led by either Anne Errington, Ron Fairweather
or Allison Galbraith. The reviewed performance was given by Ron Fairweather.
The audience enters to see a stage containing nothing but a very pretty
wooden chair, which is the storyteller's base for his performance. No
props, puppets, sound effects or other theatrical devices are used;
this is just storytelling in its most basic form.
Fairweather judges his spectators early on by chatting to them to see
what kinds of stories they might want to hear, and gets them to join
in with suggestions for certain elements of the story or sounds or repeated
lines. On this occasion, his stories included How the Birds Got Their
Colours, Mother Troll and the Queen's Washing and Buffalo
Head, and he finished with a song with a chorus that everyone could
join in with.
Fairweather has a good, easy, relaxed relationship with his audience
and responds to them just as much they respond to him. With nothing
but his voice and body to use, he kept his audience's attention quite
easily for an hour. Billed as suitable for children aged six years and
over, this is a simple but great lunchtime performance to take children
to.
David Chadderton
The Man Who Planted Trees
Written and performed by Richard Medrington and Rick Conte
Puppet State Theatre Company
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
*****
Puppet State Theatre Company once again brings its enchanting adaptation
of Jean Giono's The Man Who Planted Trees to the Scottish Storytelling
Centre for the Fringe.
The story itself tells of a shepherd in Provence, Elzéard Bouffier,
who spent most of his life planting acorns and other seeds to create
a forest of thousands of trees over many years where there was once
only dead scrubland. In this production, the narrator, Jean, who finds
the man and visits him several times over many years and across two
world wars, presents the story as a performance with his canine assistant,
simply known as Dog, who plays Bouffier's dog in the story.
The character of Dog, operated and voiced by the brilliant Rick Conte,
is a wonderful creation and the source of all the great comedy in the
show. Dog opens with a great gag about going to his doctor about his
eyesight that sets the tone of his contributions to the whole show.
Jean is played by Richard Medrington with a laid-back storytelling style
that draws you into his fascinating story. The banter between Jean and
Dog has a spontaneous, conversational feel even though it is obviously
carefully scripted, with perhaps a few ad-libs.
The set and puppets are superb, and have been created by Ailie Cohen
who performed her own show Jazz Mouse at the Assembly Rooms in
2004. The sensory experience is not limited to just sound and vision,
however, as the audience has lavender and forest smells wafted at it
and even gets to feel the mist and the rain.
This is just a wonderfully assembled production that is stunning to
look at and contains genuinely hilarious comedy and some really moving
moments as well. Although the production is billed as suitable for ages
seven and over, the largely-adult audience at the reviewed performance
was rocking with laughter at Dog's exploits and no doubt wiping one
or two tears away as well at other times. Dismiss this as a performance
just for children and you could miss out on one of the most inventive
and entertaining pieces of theatre on the Fringe.
David Chadderton
Newsrevue
Canal Cafe Theatre
Underbelly Cow Barn
****
Fringe fixture Newsrevue once again brings the best bits of
its satirical revue shows at the Canal Cafe Theatre in London from the
past year to the Fringe, but has now moved from the underground theatre
at C Chambers Street to Underbelly's Cow Barn on Bristo Square, otherwise
known as the Reid Concert Hall.
For the uninitiated, Newsrevue consists of sketches and songs
about current events in the news with a few voiceover one-liners to
link it all together. The songs are all well-known tunes with new lyrics,
such as the opening number Cabaret changed to be about the elections
in Zimbabwe, Elton John's Crocodile Rock adapted to be about
a certain ill-fated building society and a clever re-writing of Maria
from West Side Story to refer to the controversy over the Archbishop
of Canterbury talking about Sharia law. There are a couple of medleys,
one of Bee Gees songs about hoodies with knives and a finale about the
US elections to various Meatloaf songs.
Other targets in this year's show include Heather Mills, Richard and
Judy, Charlotte Church, Gillian McKeith, President Musharraf of Pakistan
and Robert Mugabe. As always with this type of show, some material really
works well and other parts don't quite work. Gordon Brown's Shakespearean
dream is very clever, but simply portraying George Bush as a stupid
cowboy seems like an unimaginative cliché now. However there
is plenty in the show that is very funny and quite hard-hitting, and
they step over a few boundaries that TV satires such as Have I Got
News For You and Mock The Week are probably not allowed to
cross.
As always, the four performers are superb and attack the show with
an incredible energy. This year's team consists of Helen Colby —
who has a very impressive singing voice — Katie Cotterell, Nick
Afka and Will Allen, with musical director Pete Smith once more providing
the constant soundtrack at the piano. The director is James Burton.
There are one or two technical deficiencies, such as a very muffled
backstage microphone making the offstage announcements unclear and an
entrance curtain that flashes a bright fire exit sign every time someone
enters or exits in a blackout, but this very popular Fringe regular
fits well into its new venue and has a show that is well up to its usual
standard.
David Chadderton
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