Laughter the best medicine
0 Jack Rooke – wit, verbal dexterity and a fierce political intelligence it as an inevitability. Rooke is not maudlin or sentimental. He’s quick to see the funny side of things and revels in the blokish, no-nonsense relationships that many men share. He won’t romanticise his friends just because they are dead. Shit happens.
What does concern him, representing the sea around the Great Barrier Reef off north-east Australia, and the bedroom of a motherless ten-year girl called Meera, whose Dad works as a police diver in the area.
On stage, meanwhile – when the screened image tells us to take the headset off – we can see Tessa Parr, as the grown-up Meera, delivering a terrific, absorbing solo performance as a woman suddenly confronted, 20 years on, with the arrest of her now-retired dad for possible involvement in the murder of a school friend of hers, who was thought to have drowned near the reef after running away and stealing a boat.
At the moment, the sheer cumbersome weight of the headset technology involved outweighs any value it might have in relation to this particularly story; the headset material is really only film, rather than a gateway to an interactive world, and could have been projected on the walls with as much vividness and less trouble. though, is the inadequate way that we as individuals and society as a whole deal with mental illness. Death may be inevitable, but suicide isn’t – and statistics point to a postcode lottery for those who get help in time and those who don’t. It’s this perspective that drives the rage underscoring There’s no doubt that headset technology may expand the possibilities of theatre in future; but this murder mystery – if it is a murder – gains little from it, and the sheer brilliance of Parr’s live performance only whets our appetite for more of that, and less of the goggles. JOYCE MCMILLAN ZOO (Venue 124) JJJ Dozens of jellies fill the stage: they’re stacked, red, yellow and green, on a hospital trolley and sit perched on plates on sticks.
They represent us, the patients, who use the NHS. At the centre of them all is a GP, who, played by writer Viv Gordon, gives a refreshingly honest account of what it is like to make life and death decisions while dealing with Happy Hour. It is a sweet and touching celebration of male camaraderie and an impassioned plea for better medical provision when men’s emotional inarticulacy hits crisis point. It’s a show that floors and fortifies you. MARK FISHER growing demand and limited resources. Based on original first-hand research by Ruth Riley and Johanna Spiers, the script is honest, insightful and revealing, charting the years doctors spend training and the risks of making decisions regarding health in very little time. “A series of oneway interactions,” is how the doctor-patient relationship is characterised – a reminder of the people behind the job who we rarely see.
Engagingly performed, with Mandy Redmond, it’s great to also find a Fringe show with a large-scale, imaginative set that fills its cavernous space (one that also deserves more audience members). The jellies-as-patients theme is sadly underdeveloped, but when we get a chance to pelt our doctor narrator with tennis balls, it’s an imaginative reminder of the pressures we place on health professionals and the way they try, in difficult circumstances, to cope with these. SALLY STOTT Laughing Horse @ The Newsroom (Venue 93) JJJ The Funniest Men in Staffordshire have done it again. From the moment we get their opening number This is the Start of our Show, their entertainment extravaganza has it all: a slew of one liners from Balaclava Man, an extraordinarily accurate Johnny Sorrow Tribute Act, punchlines galore, The Comedian Who Couldn’t be Bothered To Write Any Material (I was wondering which of them that might be), an impassioned plea from Trevor Never for winter indoor crown green bowling facilities around Huddersfield and some great musical numbers, of which Don’t Let Them Dangle Near The Mangle was my firm favourite.
Possibly the best joke of the entire Fringe is in this show but you need to hear it delivered by Balaclava Man. It is the way he tells them. Johnny Sorrow’s stand up sets need to be enjoyed by a much wider audience. I think anyone involved in comedy could learn much from them. And, generous a performer as ever, he pays tribute to the greats, especially comedy’s master craftsman Bernie Clifton.
Johnny is struggling these days, in an industry that insists he needs jokes to be a comedian. See the show. Jokes would ruin his act. KATE COPSTICK thespace on the Mile (Venue 39) JJ Exploding Whale Theatre explore alternative ideas of home and sanctuary in their Fringe debut, which follows school friends Joe, Billie and Tinhead on an odyssey to London. Joe and Billie’s mission: to see David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Tinhead’s mission: to hang out anywhere he will feel less isolated.
The teenage runaways fall in with wholesome hippies – cue drawn-out scenes of the gang in their unconvincingly portrayed squat – where they discover what price friendship versus a ticket to see the Starman. But at least the protracted proceedings are leavened by lashings of brilliant Bowie songs. FIONA SHEPHERD