Show - The Terrible Tales of the Midnight Chorus
Group - River People
Genre - Physical Theatre/Puppetry
Venue - Bedlam Theatre
Price - £8.00
Time - 16:15
It is so wonderful to see a show at the Fringe which gels perfectly together. This is a perfect example of just that. With three dedicated musicians, a guitar playing host, and four singing actresses, the stage is full of music from start to finish. The costumes - a host of carny style clothes - fit the mood perfectly, and the final cast member - a faceless puppet - is brought to life so beautifully and full of character that you almost feel he deserves a bow at the end.
Three dark and mysterious tales are told during the hour, and the seamless layering of the story on top of the music, all accompanying the action being played out on stage is beautiful through and through. Noticing faces around me, there was an obvious communal sense of joy in the audience throughout, and when our time was up, you could tell that this sold out audience was disappointed it had to end.
If anyone saw last year's L'Enfant Terrible then there are massive similarities between the two shows - almost to the extent that at the very beginning I thought I would be upset at the correlation - but with such a charming and seemingly effortless show as this, that is no problem whatsoever. A definite recommendation.
5/5
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Odyssey
Show - Odyssey
Group - Theatre Ad Infinitum
Genre - Physical Theatre
Venue - Pleasance Dome
Time - 2:50
Ticket - £7.50
Physical theatre at the Fringe can be a difficult thing to gauge before you see it. It is pretty rare that a show description will tell you too much, as by the very nature of the beast, the themes tend to be a little more abstract. This was not quite the case with Odyssey.
Put simply, the show is a storytelling of the voyage of Odysseus back to Ithaca after the Trojan war. Put more complexly, it is a one man show showcasing the incredible physical and vocal talents of one of the most talented physical actors I have seen in a long time - George Mann. From the building of a swirling mass with his hands to represent the Gods on Olympus, to the repeated actions for each character as their name is mentioned, to the musical singsong falsetto of Calypso the nymph, Mann has truly built a piece that draws you in. Every movement is perfectly measured, and is an absolute joy from beginning to end.
For storytelling physical theatre, you could not do much better than this, but equally it is not just for physical theatre buffs. Worth a look from everybody.
5/5
Group - Theatre Ad Infinitum
Genre - Physical Theatre
Venue - Pleasance Dome
Time - 2:50
Ticket - £7.50
Physical theatre at the Fringe can be a difficult thing to gauge before you see it. It is pretty rare that a show description will tell you too much, as by the very nature of the beast, the themes tend to be a little more abstract. This was not quite the case with Odyssey.
Put simply, the show is a storytelling of the voyage of Odysseus back to Ithaca after the Trojan war. Put more complexly, it is a one man show showcasing the incredible physical and vocal talents of one of the most talented physical actors I have seen in a long time - George Mann. From the building of a swirling mass with his hands to represent the Gods on Olympus, to the repeated actions for each character as their name is mentioned, to the musical singsong falsetto of Calypso the nymph, Mann has truly built a piece that draws you in. Every movement is perfectly measured, and is an absolute joy from beginning to end.
For storytelling physical theatre, you could not do much better than this, but equally it is not just for physical theatre buffs. Worth a look from everybody.
5/5
Dinosaur Planet
Show - Dinosaur Planet
Group - MJ Hibbert
Venue - GRV
Time - 12:00
Tickets - £5
Well, first show of the Fringe and where better to start than with a musical about space-dinosaurs? In honesty, probably elsewhere.
The two performers appear in front of a black cloth with dinosaur tshirts on and an assortment of props on a table. They rattle through a tale of dinosaurs from space attacking the planet, adopting personas by adding a hat or wig and singing merrily throughout. However with almost no movemnt around the stage the show is relient upon its
lyrics to draw you in, and try as they may, these two could just not make the show funny.
They try hard, but unfortunately te whole show falls pretty flat, with some songs having pretty much no relevence, and very little being very funny. With an adaptation to the lyrics to make them a little less full of difficult words, this would probably make a fair kids show, but as it is it's just a couple of unhatable blokes trying too hard.
2/5
Group - MJ Hibbert
Venue - GRV
Time - 12:00
Tickets - £5
Well, first show of the Fringe and where better to start than with a musical about space-dinosaurs? In honesty, probably elsewhere.
The two performers appear in front of a black cloth with dinosaur tshirts on and an assortment of props on a table. They rattle through a tale of dinosaurs from space attacking the planet, adopting personas by adding a hat or wig and singing merrily throughout. However with almost no movemnt around the stage the show is relient upon its
lyrics to draw you in, and try as they may, these two could just not make the show funny.
They try hard, but unfortunately te whole show falls pretty flat, with some songs having pretty much no relevence, and very little being very funny. With an adaptation to the lyrics to make them a little less full of difficult words, this would probably make a fair kids show, but as it is it's just a couple of unhatable blokes trying too hard.
2/5
Monday, 26 July 2010
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010
Following on from the international cultural phenomenon that is my Book Challenge Blog (445 hits and counting!) I have decided to set up another review blog. Alongside books, my other huge passion is theatre, and for me the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the absolute peak of the theatre year.
For three weeks each summer, theatre companies, stand-up comedians, dance troupes, orchestras, bands, mime artists, street performers, choirs, sketch groups and all manner of other oddities gather in the beautiful surroundings of Edinburgh to basically take over the place. Between two and three thousand different shows will take place in August, and give the atmosphere is something to behold.
I first went to the Fringe in 2004, performing in a production of Metamorphosis with my theatre group 3BUGS. The following year I returned as co-director of Five Kinds of Silence with the same group. Ever since then, the festival has been a permanent fixture in my calendar, and something that I rarely shut up about once I get onto the topic. I even wrote my dissertation on it.
For the past couple of years, I have written as many reviews as possible on the edfringe website, but as I have a blogger account now, I thought that I would make the most of it. I shall endeavor to review as many of the shows that I see in Edinburgh this year along with my merry band of friends. Instead of the marks out of ten scoring that I use in the aforementioned book blog, I shall try and rate them out of five stars, as is the custom in Edinburgh.
The Festival doesn't begin until August, and I shall not be going up for a few days even then, so don't expect plenty of updates here until I am Ed-bound, although I will be trying out an app on my iTouch to see if I can blog here. If I can't then all of this may be quite academic!
(The picture here is from the first page of Google Images Search for 'The Edinburgh Challenge 2010'. It appears to be Edinburgh Castle as viewed from the side of the Tardis)
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