One man to rule them all
thespace on Niddry St (Venue 9) JJJ Inspired by Bram Stoker’s short story set against the backdrop of the dispossessed of 1850s Paris, this colourful adaptation actually improves on the source material.
A young British man, forbidden to see his fiancée for a year, travels Europe hoping to see her likeness again in art so he can paint it. This quest leads him to a shantytown on the outskirts of Paris where he encounters a motley bunch of old soldiers and revolutionaries.
This fluid and colourful adaptation is far more concerned with evoking the period than providing chills and is all the more interesting for it. The large, impressively costumed, ensemble continually move from scene to scene, evoking both cafe society and the squalor of the shantytowns at its outskirts.
While Stoker’s – somewhat dry – original tale was primarily a creeper with a subtext about urban planning, Simon Coxall’s production forgoes genre trappings for a psychological study about the effects of war and deprivation. At 90 minutes this stretches the slight original story to nearbreaking point but it remains a handsomely mounted, entertaining production that holds your attention throughout. RORY FORD Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) JJJJ Andy Cannon is a man with storytelling in his blood; a performer who can take the trickiest, most complicated of narratives and deliver it to a young audience as if it were a simple nursery rhyme. But even he has excelled himself with Is This a Dagger? – an hour-long fast-track through Shakespeare’s ‘‘Scottish play”.
Suitably dressed in a kilt, he arrives on stage and issues a gentle caution. Are we all aware he’s about to tell a gruesome and bloody tale? “Yes!” the audience replies, with some degree of glee, and so he begins.
At first it seems like an impossible task – introducing a young audience to copious characters with bizarre royal titles like “Thane”, and imparting an intricate storyline filled with prophetic witches, heirs living in exile and ghostly apparitions. But in actuality, it’s all so easy to follow. Any concepts which come close to complexity are simplified through both self-obsession and, while it changes his comedy, he is still a great guy with whom to spend an hour. Even a cuddly topic like Cbeebies still gets a decently inappropriate slant and certainly I will be tuning in to The Furchester Hotel to see what he is on about. Happy Birthday Show, Mr Herring. So glad you have found happiness and sorry about your penis. KATE COPSTICK words and actions. Cannon takes nothing for granted, everything is explained and yet, inexplicably, it never feels patronising – even for the grown-ups.
The barest of props are put to clever use: a yellow duster and rubber gloves signify Lady Macbeth, desperately trying to clean up the mess. A simple tartan scarf is worn three different ways to indicate Macduff, Banquo and Macbeth himself. Three pairs of plastic sunglasses are used to identify the witches, complete with falsetto voices. And slowly but surely Cannon works his way through the entire play, depicting most of its key characters, and a good time is had by all, with adults and children laughing happily at the same jokes.
Perhaps most interestingly, Cannon disabuses us of the notion that Shakespeare based his play on real events, closing the show with the fascinating real tale of the 11th century King of Scotland. KELLY APTER the site of a tragedy which occurred on this very date!
This is essentially an attempt to create the equivalent of a found-footage movie on stage and it shares some of that sub-genre’s flaws. Most of the cast have clearly been chosen for their musical ability rather than acting skills so dialogue can be indistinct – and the tragic back-story is rather thrown away.
The protracted, intentionally confusing climax takes place in near-darkness and the lurching change of tone for the coda is misjudged. Even so, no matter how familiar you are with the tricks and tropes of horror, this does spring a few genuine surprises and the technical aspects are excellent – it’s hard to dislike and easy to recommend. RORY FORD To everyone else they may look like the ideal match, with the pet names, shared political opinions and approaching wood anniversary. They are, as they put it, like “chalk and chalk”, just two more white middle-class Londoners.
Performer-devisers Nic Mcquillan and Flora Marston’s sharp and cynical script starts extremely promisingly with a cascade of turbulent dialogue, which offers an uncompromisingly bleak but sharp and funny view of a relationship gone wrong. Their inability to communicate is juxtaposed with the increasing environmental chaos outside, hinting at the fact that we create the kind of world we want to live in.
However, quite what’s worth saving about the couple’s relationship, which becomes increasingly dysfunctional, is unclear – and the story runs out of places to go as a result. Mcquillan and Marston are both polished performers, and physical theatre sequences between scenes build an enjoyable sense of theatricality.
The writing has a lot of promise, but would benefit from characters that are able to develop beyond being just another young man and woman who have fallen out of love – as delicious as some of their vitriolic one-liners are. SALLY STOTT Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) J Patrick Turpin seems like a nice young man. I have tried very hard but that is the only positive thing I can think of to say. Oh, he has a cute bottom. He shows it to us at the end of a show in the Delhi Belly which made actual Delhi Belly seem like a fun alternative.
Patrick labours under the misapprehension that dildos are intrinsically hilarious. The best thing in the show is the dick-pic he shows us on his phone. The star is for it. KATE COPSTICK A measure of James Adomian’s entertaining company is that despite barely tweaking his US material, with routines about such niche figures to British ears as fellow comic Andy Kindler and wrestler-turned-conspiracy theorist Jesse Ventura, you engage with him regardless.
A gifted character actor and impressionist, in addition to Ventura he also dusts off his turns as Bernie Saunders and Paul Giamatti in a freewheeling, slightly overlong hour of unrelated but smoothly delivered material. Mixing the observational and the personal, several of the setups, such as Hollywood bad guys having English accents aren’t overburdened with originality.
Against that, the precision behind his observation of, say, Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen lifts more workaday routines. He also vividly brings to life such anecdotes as being the sole bus passenger when a driver throws road safety to the wind, and of being an American abroad, uniting Scandinavians in disdain for his country.
As a gay man, he has great fun with the daft homosexual euphemisms he suggests proliferate in Humphrey Bogart movies. And there’s a winning depiction of his selfregarding president, revelling in his own fatty flesh. JAY RICHARDSON It’s hard to imagine a more obvious scenario for this new musical. Liz has worked at her local pub for 15 years and when it’s planned to be sold to a property developer she organises a campaign to save it with the aid of the regulars.
While it’s confidently sung – and the live music is solid – it’s hesitantly acted. Songs involving all the performers work best, as when asked to fade into the background the cast default to furiously nodding at each other’s silent conversations. It’s the sort of local you might try for a swift half but you’d never return. RORY FORD