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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2009 Reviews (67)Beast An artist and a whore. They meet by chance, each becoming besotted with the other in a fashion they are not expecting and are unprepared to experience. He is older and cynical, captivated by the contradictions of her youth and grave pragmatism; she is young but no less weary of the world and finds herself swept up in a whirlwind of the directions he turns her heart towards. She chooses to stay with him and a beautiful bond of flesh and feeling grows between the two. Slowly the nature of the agreement begins to change as forces outside and within escalate matters into darker territories. Portrayed in a variety of media and style, Beast manages to take the sharpest pieces of each, blending and honing them to a pointed and cutting edge that slices straight to the heart's deepest wells. The actors are as perfect in the roles as could be imagined, Grahame Edwards is resplendently elegant as Egon, proper but with a shabby carelessness that belies his artistic temperament. Aine O'Sullivan's Valie is a starkly contrasting figure, lithe yet forceful, with even her doughy Irish lilt clashing with his clipped eloquence, the antithesis to his world. Theatrical verse can be a difficult creature to tame; when cleverly implemented it can elevate a story beyond the confines of the petty normality and everyday affability. Using a clever mixture of prose and verse, Elena Bolster's provocative and moving script creates a twisting, lusty and breathless journey through the very heart of love, hate and need. Amongst a host of productions this year, Beast stands clear yards ahead of the throng, a moving and beautifully haunting piece of theatre that will break even the hardest of hearts. Graeme Strachan The Princess' Blankets Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, in a busy Festival for her with appearances at the Book Festival and Zoo Southside in addition to this show as well as a show of her poems, The World's Wife, that she doesn't appear in at Assembly Rooms, brings her own children's picture book The Princess' Blankets to the stage. Aided by actor and musician John Sampson and her fourteen-year-old daughter Ella Duffy, the poet reads her quite old-fashioned style of fairy tale about a princess who always felt cold, her beautiful words illustrated on a screen behind her with Catherine Hyde's pictures from the published book. To turn this very short love story into a more substantial show, she stops every so often for some banter with the other two, leading into other poems on a variety of subjects or bits of music played by Sampson on an astonishing array of wind instruments before going back to the main story. The conversational links between the three are a little contrived and obviously scripted, but they do the job adequately of linking between the main story and other material. There is a good rapport between Duffy (senior) and Sampson that keeps this unusual little cabaret moving swiftly along, and Sampson in particular has a jovial and lively persona that works well for a younger audience, although most of the audience members at the reviewed performance were considerably older than the eight years minimum on the posters. While it may not be the slickest show in its construction, it is an entertaining hour and a bit of some beautiful poetry in the ideal setting of the Scottish Storytelling Centre's lovely theatre. David Chadderton Luck
Gambling is not an addiction. It is in our DNA. One has only to recall the dilemma of Eve and the apple. “Can I out-run this T Rex or should I hide?”
Most of the world's population has not been in a casino but everyone plays the game. From the innocent home game of poker or bridge to the ferociously serious domino games that line the streets of the Lower East Side of New York during the summer; thwack!
So, it may not be the exhilaration of the game but rather the desire to have what we don't and someone else does that holds our fascination. And the insight on “Luck” is what Megan Riordan offers us. With the use of gambling instruments such as dice and roulette wheel and an overhead projection of topics, we are gambling on what tidbit of the game she will disclose to us.
She not only talks about the rules and risks of the game but of an inside look at how the professionals do it. These are delivered through rapid-fire, three minute slices of the inside picture.
Very informative and interesting. But because of the randomness of the delivery, it not only feels raw but also very cluttered and messy. Catherine Lamm |
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