EDINBURGH HIGHLIGHTS
What Girls Are Made Of (Traverse Theatre)
GIRL Power is the order of the day in Edinburgh this year, and the Traverse Theatre’s contribution to the cause, What Girls Are Made Of, is a sweetly sentimental tale of rock ’n’ roll redemption.
Written and performed by Cora Bissett (right), it tells how, as a teenager in the early Nineties, she went from small town Fife to touring with heavyweights Radiohead and Blur.
Living the dream didn’t last long. She got torpedoed by a bad review in the NME, and then discovered she was being ripped off by her manager. Her record company cut her loose, and her life went into free fall.
What makes Bissett’s story engaging is her disarming openness. Youthful errors, professional humiliation, guilt at letting down her parents. We can all relate to that. ★★★★✩
The Fishermen (Assembly George Square)
A MAGICAL story, based on Chigozie Obioma’s novel, about two brothers in Nigeria who are reunited after years apart. One escaped to Canada. The other stayed home, working as a fisherman.
A snaking line of scaffolding poles set in sandbags serves as walls and fences around Lagos, as well as reeds on the river where the boys fish.
Gbolahan Obisesan’s adaptation draws us into the hopes and fears of the brothers, played by Michael Ajao and Valentine Olukoga. Slickly choreographed movement turns them into a flipping fish landed on the riverbank, or a desperate chicken evading slaughter in the dusty earth. It’s a world that’s as moving as it is spellbinding. ★★★★✩
Trump Lear (Bunker One, Pleasance Courtyard)
A SURREAL, grotesque send-up of The Donald by brilliant American impersonator David Carl (right). Carl’s shtick is that he’s been kidnapped by the President and made to perform his spoof of Trump playing Shakespeare’s King Lear... under pain of death by drone strike. In addition to Trump, he also does impersonations of George W. Bush as the play’s evil bastard Edmund, Ronald Reagan as loyal servant Kent and George Bush Senior as Gloucester. The Trump sons run out as Beavis and Butthead.
‘Sad’, but funny. ★★★★✩
Brexit (Pleasance Beyond, Pleasance Courtyard)
AT LAST, a satire that pinpoints the deadlock of mutual loathing that is modern British politics. Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s Westminster comedy is set in 2020, with an embattled new Tory PM (played by The Archers’ Timothy Bentinck) still seeking a deal with the EU. A hilariously pessimistic vision of a UK where everyone is set to lose. ★★★★✩