At last – a reason for dying

Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236) JJJJ Jen (Diana Ruppe) and Rog (Chris Stack) are in a somewhat shabby motel room, celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary. Well, not exactly “celebrating”: there are clear signs that their marriage is on the rocks, and while Jen approaches everything with a depressed, even morbid fatalism – going so far as to goad Rog into making their usual role-playing more violent and deadly – Rog is manically trying to make everything right, to give them both a fresh start. He keeps on hinting he has the surprise of a lifetime in store, if only Jen would get into the spirit.

Paper Doll spends its first half exploring the intricacies of this relationship, and doing a great job of it – indeed, the whole thing could just have focused on Jen and Rog’s dysfunctional dynamic, teasing out Rog’s clueless desperation and Jen’s dangerous sex/death fixation, and it would have been a perfectly serviceable drama about a misfit marriage in crisis.

Instead, there’s an unexpected twist midway through, which elevates the play from intriguing territory to downright compelling.

It’s a testament to Susan Eve Haar’s writing that the twist doesn’t jar against the rest of the story – in fact, the time Paper Doll invests in laying the groundwork of its leading characters and their relationship pays dividends when they are confronted with something out of the ordinary. Ruppe and Stack also deserve kudos for making Jen and Rog so relatable, or at least recognisable – the pair have clearly not been dealt the best hand in life, and in their emotional immaturity and dead-end outlook bring to mind Natural Born Killers’ Mickey and Mallory Knox (if, instead of going on a psychopathic killing spree, Mickey and Mallory had simply channelled their passions into low-level bondage and role-play in poorly decorated motel rooms). NIKI BOYLE Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre (Venue 76) JJJJ The rhetoric is all in place already for the disturbing vision of the near future conjured up in Robert Dawson Scott’s new play. We know that the population is ageing, and that old people represent a growing burden on the public purse.

And we know that we live in a time when outsourced companies hired by the state make it their business – in a blizzard of euphemistic jargon – to bully vulnerable people into losing the help that they need, in order to meet cost-cutting targets.

So when a smart representative of one of those companies turns up at the door of 77-year-old Alan Mcdonald, the “deal” he offers sounds tempting; to his daughter Karen, a cash-starved single mother, the offer of £30,000 to forego some of his pensions rights seems like a dream come true. award-winning team of director Ross Mckay and writer Suzie Miller; but it has the odd effect of leaving us not much the wiser about why it’s being told at all. On a scaffold-like wooden set by Becky Minto, solo performer Scott Gilmour takes up the role of Jamie Macgregor, a minister’s son from the North-east of Scotland who, back in the late 19th century, becomes seized by a belief in the spirit world.

He shares his enthusiasm with his older brother, who turns out to be a gifted medium; and in no time their successful seances become the toast of Edinburgh and then London, until a strange mix ofpassionate belief,nagging doubt, and fierce sibling rivalry bring them to disaster.

Now, Jamie is on trial for murder; and Scott Gilmour makes a fine job of bringing to life this strange, baffled Scottish small-town boy, using his passionate belief in the spirits to argue for his life.

The accompanying piano score, composed and played live by Jim Harbourne, is superb, sinister and dreamlike, although the story often moves at a soporific pace; and in the end, we’re left with

What the official is proposing, though, is not that Alan live on without his pension, but that he does not live on at all; and in a fine dramatic paradox, it’s the knowledge that his own daughter has even considered this scheme that begins to drive Alan, poignantly played by Stephen Clyde, towards despair.

It has to be said that the play is not well served, on its Fringe debut, by an oldfashioned, over-naturalistic production, featuring a sofa and grey hair-powder, and by shocking noise interference in its Rose Theatre venue.

The situation is so wellimagined, though, and so clearly and credibly linked to the world in which we are already living, that it sounds a warning not to be ignored, delivered through fine supporting performances from Taqi Nazeer and Selina Boyack as the officials who are “only doing their jobs”, and Karen Bartke as the daughter who betrays her dad for cash, finally robbing his life of all meaning. JOYCE MCMILLAN an impressively well-made show – created by new companies Freshly Squeezed Productions and Uncertainty Principle, with support from Aberdeen Performing Arts – that nonetheless seems more like an exercise in high-quality theatre-making than an act of communication, involving a story that needs to be told. JOYCE MCMILLAN Assembly George Square Gardens (Venue 3) JJJ Rob Broderick, as cheery improvising rapper Abandoman, is rightly celebrated on the Fringe for his lightning ability to shape a witty couplet to go with anything his audience throw at him (medication, passports and pompoms on this occasion).

Anyone hoping that The Musical in My Mind would be his long-awaited digression into jazz hands musical theatre will be disappointed. Everyone else will be too busy laughing and marvelling at his quickfire rhyming dexterity

0 Stephen Clyde as the man offered a ‘deal’ as he delivers the rap musical of his life, with salient details tbc by the game crowd.

Broderick smartly subverts hip-hop norms to chronicle the crazy lifestyle of a moderately successful rapper, including his tough background as a Scrabble addict on the leafy streets of south Dublin, the modest infractions of his wildish years on My Crew and his sexual conquest (singular) on Longterm Monogamy.

There is also advice on how to handle minor adversities on Eat Your Feelings and moody millennial love song How Can I Tell You I Love You, all dispensed with good, cosy humour amid scenes of mild peril.

Broderick has honed his skills so expertly that it’s all almost too comfortable. FIONA SHEPHERD Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) JJJ This time-travelling romantic comedy by Tom Fowler manages to cover a hell of a lot of ground (and time periods) due to its fast pace and creative lo-fi staging.

Mark and Fran (Tom Wright and Zoë Lambrakis) are having problems: Mark’s dad died and Fran slept with someone else. To rekindle their romance, Mark spends his inheritance on a time travel holiday that takes in Ancient Rome, the Titanic and Elvis’s 1973 Hawaii concert.

Staged like a radio drama, Wright and Lambrakis sit, perfectly still, at one table while, at another, Andrew Turner and Abby Cassidy provide a variety of sound effects, play all the secondary roles and provide a sense of animation. It’s an effective technique; the stillness of the unhappy couple conveys a sense of limbo while they’re whooshed through time.

This crams so much in that it feels a bit overlong even at only an hour (a couple of eras could be cut) but the timetravel element pays off with an emotional climax where Mark travels back to observe the beginnings of his relationship with Fran. It’s consistently amusing rather than very funny but there’s real heart here – and a breathless level of invention. RORY FORD When Abigoliah Schamaun reveals that she trained at a Fame-style stage school in New York, it comes as no surprise. After all, she begins her show by bounding from the gloom wearing sparkly green leggings and forcing the audience to get on their feet to clap in formation.

Immediately alarm bells start ringing. A brash American with a musical theatre fixation? This is going to be a nightmare. As it turns out, she’s actually quite charming.

Not that she’s a great comedian by any stretch of the imagination. She’s an engaging, amusing storyteller who’s led an interesting life.

Schamaun moonlights as a yoga instructor, a discipline she learned while studying at a retreat/cult run by a dubious Indian guru. Her search for enlightenment also involves alcohol and recreational drugs, which she makes no bones about. Unfortunately, her hedonistic tendencies have destroyed her singing voice. Her childhood dream of becoming Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly! are in tatters.

However, in the grand tradition of Broadway musicals, this is a show about overcoming personal setbacks and chasing your dreams. It’s never laugh-out-loud funny, but Schamaun’s energetic charisma should carry you through. I was more or less won over by the end. PAUL WHITELAW Underbelly (Venue 61) J A reasonably competent unicyclist and a not terribly good juggler, Sam Goodburn is in no sense ready to be putting on an Edinburgh show.

Hisstoryofaboywhomesses up his girlfriend’s flat is wafer thin, pointless and boring.

With such a threadbare understanding of stagecraft and a scant grasp of comedy it is impossible to work out what is intentional and what is unintentional.

It’s a shame that he didn’t find this out before committing to an hour long Fringe show. CLAIRE SMITH