Good? You’d better believe it

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) JJJJ Given this week’s events in the US, it’s perhaps not surprising that this year’s Fringe features more young black voices than ever before, looking forward in anger, and back to the civil rights and black power struggles of the 1960s and 70s with a mixture of admiration and despair.

Apphia Campbell’s is perhaps the most powerful of all these voices, making itself heard, in this new solo show, through the stories of two very different women – the 1970s black power activist Assata Shakur, still living in exile in Cuba, and, in the present day, a young, naive black student called Candice, who arrives to study music in St Louis in the autumn of 2014, just as the riots following the murder of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson are reaching their peak.

The story of Shakur’s arrest and imprisonment 40 years ago provides a powerful historical backdrop to the 21st century story of a young middle-class back girl who believes in America and its values, but is forced on to a sharp learning-curve by the systematic police and judicial abuse of black people she witnesses and experiences in Ferguson. By the end of the show, her anger is palpable, her grief at America’s failure to deliver on the promise of the Sixties deepening into a furious political resolve. And in Caitlin Skinner’s simple but perfectly-balanced production, all this is delivered not only through Campbell’s text, but through a musical score that grows ever richer and more serious.

Candice is a student of voice; and as her repertoire gradually shifts from lighthearted love songs to great anthems of protest and sorrow, it’s as if her voice is at last becoming one with those of the people who marched in the 1960s, and those who still protest today, in a song that will not end until black people all over the world can say “free at last”, and mean it. JOYCE MCMILLAN Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) JJJJ There’s more than one kind of belief involved in a magic show. There’s the belief that is suspension of disbelief: the willingness to be transported, to admit, for the sake of entertainment and enchantment, the possibility that you are witnessing something impossible even as, rationally, you know you are not.

There’s the belief that is narrative engagement: the investment you make in the tales magicians weave around the illusions they perform, whether that takes the form of a personal anecdote or an ancient legend.

And there’s the belief that is confidence in the performer: feeling secure that the person on stage knows what they’re doing and can do it well.

Ben Hart’s new show delivers handsomely on all fronts. In terms of confidence, he quickly and deftly establishes his authority through deceptively simple tricks carried off with elegance and charm. Hart’s persona is image that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever spent time reading books, watching films or, indeed, going to the theatre – and one that affable comedy double act Imogen Hayes and Signe Lury take a lot of pleasure in poking fun at.

With an array of lovingly created props and puppets, they play two male writers who want to iron out any female “muses” in classic literature who are anything other than “charmingly compliant”. First, they perform comedy pastiches of three iconic novels – Wendy Cope’s The River Girl, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Unexpected, and George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil – then they “rewrite” the endings in pieces of silly, satirical slapstick. Georgette the courgette goes to jail, a “bird” is re-caged, and a nice necklace becomes a less nice noose.

Accompanied by original music from Billy Lucas, capturing the golden age of silent comedy, the final scene in which a pile of great books by and about women are “shredded” is both poignant and funny – a reminder that while there are lots of ridiculous key to the show – playful yet edgy, sophisticated yet boyish, cheeky smirks alternating with wolfish snaps – and, when it comes to narrative, he has a powerful way with words.

His patter for individual illusions ranges from evocative family yarns to art history and quantum physics; at one point, he conspicuously withholds words. It’s all couched within an overarching sincere and passionate investment in the power of concealed knowledge.

And as a spectacle of enchantment, Belief? offers a crescendo of coups that leave you seriously stumped for a rational explanation.

Strange things are done with the backs and sides of cards, apparently shown in close-up on a live video feed. Things that shouldn’t happen do happen, in plain sight, to jewellery from the audience. There is some remarkable business involving shadows and a volunteer that would put Nosferatu to shame. Belief, unlike knowledge, is a choice. Belief? is worth choosing. BEN WALTERS female characters in fiction, women writers have created some of the best ones. SALLY STOTT Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) JJJ Like the bastard lovechild of two of her compatriots, the aggressively surrealist Sam Simmons and the dragincorporating Zoe Coombs Marr, Australian Demi Lardner’s radical new departure is Gavin, a middle-aged man bizarrely trapped inside his basement. With its hallucinatory framing, you’re never quite sure how much of Look What You Made Me Do is occurring inside this blokeish manchild’s mind.

But that’s besides the point, as a succession of ridiculous set-pieces, self-consciously groan-worthy puns, daft songs and rudimentary prop gags propel this consistently surprising and energetically febrile production. Gavin’s only link to the outside world is a phone survey he takes

0 Hart’s performance is slick and he has a way with words from a life insurance telemarketer, keeping him going but sparking additional outbursts of the cartoonishly weird.

As portrayed by the freshfaced Lardner, Gavin is incongruously gruff and cocksure, then rattled and babyish, his addled brain further incited by interjections from fellow comic Michelle Brasier, sporadically appearing in nightmarish costumes.

Supported by some engaging running jokes and mild audience interaction, this loose, disordered chaos actually strings together pretty well until the final third. With Lardner unable to ratchet the nonsense up or ease it down satisfyingly, the show just rather perfunctorily stops. JAY RICHARDSON Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) JJJ Love puppets? Less keen on kids? Try this late-night marionette melodrama when all the children have gone to bed. The Prophetic Visions of Bethany Lewis may sound like a made-for-tv movie but is a fast-moving 45 minutes of silly, satirical fun from the Avenue Q school of puppetry.

Our heroine Bethany is a furry purple puppet of indeterminate species who has celebrity thrust upon her when a bump on the head from a can of beans lands her with the gift of spookily accurate foresight. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Her nice but dim husband Gary isn’t too sure, while her plain-speaking, chain-smoking best mate Jade remains unmoved as furry celebrities, followed by those at the highest level of government – a blonde mop-top puppet (who could that be?) and a pig – beat a path to her door.

Thanks to the slick work of the three puppeteers, the action is so fast-paced as to be almost throwaway but their ability to imbue even a trio of yellow fluffy blobs with distinct personalities is what gives this show its gleeful entertainment value. Ideal for ending your Fringe day with a feelgood laugh. FIONA SHEPHERD Before discussing this lowkey piece of new writing from writer, director, producer and actor Andy Macmillen, it’s important to add some important qualifiers. The first is that Macmillen gives the impression of being a nonprofessional actor who delivers the scripts merely capably, with a soft and melodic voice, and a searching gaze. His performance’s rawness and simplicity might drag down a lesser play, but in the role of stoic, middle-aged, workingclass Scot Danny Mcclure, such low-key delivery is acceptable.

The opening is modest. Danny remembers his youth in the 1970s, his loves of Celtic FC, their star striker Kenny Dalglish and David Bowie’s Berlin era, and his trip to Argentina to follow Ally’s Army through a 1978 Scottish World Cup campaign noted for a wealth of typically Scots footballing over-optimism. Danny details each game, sings each anthem and remembers a woman named Claudia he met and fell in love with (“I called her Cloudy, because she reminded me of a nice day in Glasgow”).

So far, so run of the Fringe mill. Yet when the party’s over and Danny returns home, Macmillen’s play begins to reach much further and deeper. Danny joins the army, and in 1982 he’s back in South America, fighting to retake the Falklands from the Argentine army. Danny remembers Cloudy and happy times, and wonders where she is now.

Despite its limitations, the play reveals itself as a high quality piece of writing, a compact symphony to the working classes of Scotland and Argentina, united by football, music, war and a troubled history of division in one nation and dictatorship in the other. It skips from class politics to nationalism to a love story to a memorial for those murdered in Argentina, and the lightness and confidence of Macmillen’s authorial touch is pleasing.

At least one audience member was in tears at the end; with a professional production team behind it, this script would surely earn standing ovations on any of Scotland’s new writing stages. DAVID POLLOCK