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Fringe 2009 Reviews (81)
Brocante Sinore: The Mechanicians
Zic Zazou
C Chambers Street
*****
Okay, what do you get.... One of the guys has just gotten the ultimate,
dream tool set and the wife says, "You and your friends, go clean
out the garage so you'll have some place to put all these things. And
don't make too much noise while you're about it!"
The end result, if they are musicians and tinkerers, is Brocante
Sonore: the Mechanician. As the title leads us to believe, Zic Zazou
is a combination of mechanics, musicians, and magicians.
They attracted my attention on the street the day before; a parade
of blue uniforms, each with their own little horn tuned to different
pitches, precisely managing a musical theme, one toot at a time. I had
to chase them down in order to find out who, what they were. Irresistible!
The stage is littered with - instruments? Instruments made out of just
about everything that you can think of; tubes and pipes, drills and
chairs, rocks and boxes, pots and pans, bits of wood and metal, balloons
and clocks and gears; even pieces of real musical instruments, whole
or refashioned. They even sing a little. Some if is not so much music
as a fascination of noise while at times quite beautiful.
Here again is an example of total theatre. Good for the heart and soul
and the whole family.
Catherine Lamm
Nick Pynn: Colours of the
Night
Inlingua
****
In a tiny converted classroom in a language school at the top of a
steep staircase on Hanover Street, multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn fills
a large part of the room with his amazing collection of stringed instruments,
some of which he has made himself.
Pynn plays a wide range of instruments including violin, viola, ukulele,
glockenspiel, typewriter and one of his own instruments made from a
coconut he has called a cocolele, which he has even electrified. He
builds up most of his pieces, each introduced by a funny story, by playing
sections into a sampler and looping them then playing other instruments
over the top. The result is an amazing sound from this accomplished
and imaginative musician who sits in the corner of the room alone creating
the sound of a whole band by himself.
Inlingua is a little hidden away despite being in the heart of Edinburgh
on Hanover Street, but it is worth seeking out and climbing the stairs
to be greeted with a glass of wine and this hidden gem of a show.
David Chadderton
The Lady Boys of Bangkok Mile
High Tour
The Lady Boys of Bangkok
Meadows Theatre Big Tops
***
It seems ridiculous to give this performance a star rating as it is
hardly on this reviewer's suggestion that you will consider buying a
ticket.
However, while all the cheeky humour, sequins, feather boas, miming
to girl group songs and dragging (pun intended) male audience members
on stage that you would expect in this show, are delivered with due
playfulness there is certainly something that continues to fascinate
audiences and keeps the Lady Boys coming back to Edinburgh. With an
audience demographic of women in the vast majority, it is interesting
why this performance of gender remains intriguing.
With the gender lines blurring with every generation (and even my mother
commenting that she 'can't tell the difference between teenage boys
and girls these days') it seems that the audiences flock to see the
Lady Boys perform this version of gender, just as young performers on
the everyday stage will try out different versions of identities in
their formative years. It is interesting to consider whether in the
future this production and gender performance will become obsolete,
as the divide of the sexes becomes little more than a performance choice
rather than a birthright.
While the troupe of sixteen performers in this production's company
retain their own individuality (with a particularly cheeky member creating
fantastic fun as Demi Moore in Ghost) others are rather more
pneumatic, perhaps using, like all actors, their character as something
of a smokescreen. Nevertheless, this is still one of the most famous
cabaret acts at the Festival and with saucy, tongue in cheek entertaining
the Lady Boys do provide a fascinating night out.
Sacha Voit
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