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Fringe 2009 Reviews (22)
Nine Lives of Bua Lydia
Tiresias Productions
Underbelly
****
This is committed, ferocious and alarming. This is a production company
with a remit to provoke awareness and champion conscience. This is a
verbatim reworking of a documentary made about a Ugandan woman who was
once a child soldier. This is how art can be used to inch the global
community away from evil.
Bua Lidya's story, retold through performance and video footage, is
a pitiful odyssey. Abducted, enlisted, enslaved, raped, beaten, terrorised.
Bua Lydia needed nine lives to survive.
The piece acquires strength through omission - horrors aren't used
as bait for compassion - and validity through its use of video footage
of the original documentary.
At the end of the show audience members are asked to take part in visual
petition by adding their hand print to a growing collection. When complete,
it will be unfurled down the Royal Mile. Traces of the red paint remain
on my hand, a reminder of civilization's imperfection.
Ben Aitken
My Grandfather's Great War
Cameron Stewart/ Festival Highlights
Directed by David Benson
Gilded Balloon Teviot
*****
Having returned to the Fringe for its second year, My Grandfather's
Great War has evidently lost none of its vigour or power. The show
tells the heartwarming true story of Alexander Stewart, a WWI Captain
whose diaries exist as a bleak reminder of the sort of horrors experienced
in the trenches, recounted with passionate acclaim by his Grandson and
how the story affects him personally. As you listen to Cameron Stewart
wax vividly about the horrors and the mud, it almost becomes as if he
ceases to be the man and begins to channel the very spirit of his ancestor.
The grim stories of the hardships and sadnesses at lost friends is as
cutting as the futility and utter soul-crushing madness of the actions
forced on an entire generation, slaughtered like cattle in the name
of politics.
What sets this piece apart from many you will see at the Festival is
the very real sense that you are peering into another age but more than
that, seeing the living embodiment of what good has come from the sacrifices.
Much of this lies with the affability and almost brotherly camaraderie
that Cameron, an ever pleasing raconteur in his own right, imbues in
every moment, at once making every member of the audience feel as if
they are simply listeing to an old friend opening their heart to them.
A fitting tribute to the common soldier, in a time when it is needed
more than ever.
Graeme Strachan
Alun Cochrane is a daydreamer
(at night)
The Stand, Edinburgh
*****
From the exceptionally-narrow seats at Stand 3, the audience at the
reviewed performance saw Cochrane begin his act with five minutes of
effortless ad-libs while the technician fixed his microphone, concluding
that the technical hitch was the result of a curse put on him by fellow
Stand comic Daniel Kitson.
His laid-back style perfectly disguises the links between improvised
material and the carefully-honed and learned gags that form the meat
of the show, this time built on the idea that Alun Cochrane is, as the
title says, a daydreamer whose mind hops around from subject to subject
and can't concentrate on one thing for very long. This gives him an
excuse to find fascination in the most mundane details of everyday life
that distract him from more important things, such as looking out of
the window and why we have a septum in our nose. He apologises to any
'go-getters' in the audience who may find his ideas frustrating.
This could easily be quite dull in less skilled hands, but Cochrane's
chatty, laid-back delivery seems almost lethargic, as you would expect
from a daydreamer, but actually packs a lot of very funny, sharply-observed
material, all linked smoothly and with a great awareness of and relationship
with the audience.
Although he portrays himself as a bit of a waster, Cochrane is a craftsman
both in the writing and in the delivery of his material and is well
worth seeing live.
David Chadderton
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