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Fringe 2008 Reviews (60)
Funk It Up About Nothin'
By GQ and JQ
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
George Square Theatre
*****
It really takes something to get a critic fifty shows into Edinburgh
to leave a show with a smile on his/her face. That's exactly what this
rap and hip-hop version of Much Ado About Nothing achieved.
The story is pretty much all there but has been converted into something
ultra-modern by The Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
This is the company that brought us The Bomb-itty of Errors
and this one is even better, as a company of six plus DJ Sanchez race
through the story at breakneck speed. Oddly, rhyming couplets, which
served Shakespeare so well, also work perfectly as accompaniment to
loud club music.
Ericka Ratcliff and JQ playing the MC leads may not be Simon Russell
Beale and Zoë Wanamaker but they can act, sing and dance. Similarly,
Stephanie Kim and Jackson Doran are fresh-faced playing Hero and Claudio,
while Postell Pringle makes a hilariously camp Verges and GQ a totally
(their favourite word) sinister Don John.
The music is high octane and so are the performances in a production
that mixes humour with some great pathos. Unless you are really square
or hung up about traditional Shakespeare, try this cool new version
out. You too will smile.
Philip Fisher
Scottish Dance Theatre
Zoo Southside
*****
The opening to Liv Lorent’s tenderhook must be one of the
most beautiful in this year’s Fringe. Philippa White’s body
becomes slowly discernible in Jon Clark’s exquisite lighting: she
appears almost nude under the fresh glow, en pointe, twirling
poi ribbons that look like Catherine wheels in her hands.
From exquisite beginnings, the piece goes on to fulfil every ounce
of its promise. More dancers emerge one by one or two by two, sometimes
one clutching at another’s legs. In Paul Shriek’s costumes,
they look like a circus of fairies, swathes of sheer fabric with velveteen
patches in green and crimson. At one of the climaxes in this episodic
piece, the stage is filled by dancers swirling glow ribbons, and as
the lights go out they become a swarm of fireflies. But this is not
prettiness for prettiness’s sake. The fireflies become entwined,
the lights fade back on, and some of them have disintegrated to nothing,
and, in other cases, pairs of dancers have become bound at the wrists.
As the piece develops into a meditation on love, it takes in partnering
and dependency, as paired couples follow and pull each other. A gorgeous
duet between Ruth Janssen and Victoria Roberts emerges. Tumbling and
linking roll into one. The cast have such accuracy and suppleness they
seem like finely tuned instruments exploring the limits of their range.
Hofesh Shechter’s Dog takes a drier tone. A single spotlight
frames a single man as he poses like a dog for a few seconds. Shechter’s
voiceover tells us about the origins of dolphins’ self-naming.
When the full ensemble have gathered, in a motley array of grey casuals,
the same voice tells us that we are about to skip the rest of our evolution
lesson. Straight into man we go with bustling street samba, punching
arms and popping hips. The passage lays some of the motifs that resurface
later on in faint memories, soft in both music and movement and passing
as swiftly as they come. The choreography is as quick and fluid as it
is punchy, and sometimes whips by so fast it is thrilling.
Chucking endless superlatives at this team of dancers doesn’t
do them justice. Just go and see it for yourself.
Lucy Ribchester
Serendipity
Le Navet Bete
Sweet ECA
*****
"Stop laughing," demanded the man who had stepped straight
out of a Magritte painting. He was wearing a black bowler hat, a black
jacket with white shirt and black tie, and a pair of black tights. "Stop
laughing," he commanded us petulantly. "This is not a comedy!
We're in the dance and physical theatre section."
But we couldn't stop laughing, the show was too funny, and silly, and
bizarre. The audience were in fits.
Serendipity is one of those shows you don't see often on the
Edinburgh Fringe these days. It's whacky and daring and just bowls you
over with high-octane energy and pure absurdity. Imagine it like this:
Andre Breton and Vivian Stanshall have adapted Dr Strangelove as the
Christmas Panto for a troupe of mentally deranged circus performers
who have binned their medication.
The man from Magritte is a mad German scientist bent on dominating
the universe with his evil weapon (now buried in the sewers below Edinburgh).
He sits in his wheelchair singing Amore or plays a tiny piano
accompanied by a quartet of lunatic clowns on the banjo, a knobby flute-like
instrument and a tooter, leaping around manically, swinging from the
rig and (uni-)cycling around the tiny stage.
The gags and slapstick come at breakneck speed; the pacing is slick
and the timing perfect. And beyond the grotesquely raw humour, there
are moments of clever subtlety, like when our surreal villain is transformed
into a ventriloquist's dummy.
Serendipity is absolutely and deliciously bonkers. It is a perfect
antidote to the more frustrating absurdity of contemporary life. So,
if you fancy going bonkers at teatime. Get yourself down to Sweet ECA.
Jackie Fletcher
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