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Evahisseurs (Invaders) – Traverse Theatre

6Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Evahisseurs (Invaders) – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Evahisseurs is a one-man show directed and performed by Olivier Rannou for Compagnie Bakelite. With tongue firmly planted in dead-pan cheek, Rannou shows that language is no barrier at all as he clowns his way wordlessly but very effectively through this short but nicely formed nostalgic, alien invasion caper. With little more than a table, and a handful of props, Rannou weaves his unlikely story, with just the hint of a glint in his mischievous eye! Featuring UFO abduction, human experimentation, dog decapitation and exploding jelly aliens, there are certainly plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Rannou’s actions are nicely backed by a prerecorded soundtrack of weird and wonderful sounds and a miniature screen with scratchy black and white ...

6Feb

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Last Rites – Festival Theatre Studio

This is a story about a man who travels back to his family home in India to conduct a funeral ritual for his late, estranged father, who was a devout Hindu. As he conducts the ritual, he relives experiences from their difficult relationship. This solo piece, performed by Ranesh Meyyapan uses movement, BSL, subtitles and projected images. There is no spoken language. Sometimes the words onscreen are replaced with emoji-like images – for example, the father is represented by a pair of glasses. This nicely reflects the visual nature of gesture-based language. The sound design, by Tayo Akinbode, was a triumph. Music alternates with sound effects. The ambiguous sound of burning flames, or running water, as Meyyapan conducts the ritual, was particularly evocative and brought home the final...

Simple Machines – Fruitmarket, Edinburgh

6Feb

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Simple Machines – Fruitmarket, Edinburgh

I am a little bit afraid of robots. I was concerned that the automatons in this production would be sinister denizens of the Uncanny Valley. However, my expectations were turned on their head. Here, choreographer Ugo Dehaes has created a cynical alter ego. At least, I hope this is an alter ego: Dehaes’s performance is very convincing. Apparently, this soft-spoken character got into the arts with the intention of getting rich. When unlimited wealth and power fail to materialise, he looks to mega-corporations for inspiration, and decides to replace his workforce – the dancers – with robots. However, plan B doesn’t work out as he expected either. The philosopher Rene Descartes regarded non-human animals as “mere machines”, a view with profound ethical consequences. But perhaps we ...

6Feb

By Eleanor HallNo Comments

London

FutureQueer – King’s Head Theatre

Alexis Gregory’s one-man show did exactly what it said on the tin: it facilitated a co-imagining of future in which queerness is ubiquitous. Gregory’s ironic repetition of right-wing frenzied slogans (‘it’s woke gone mad!’) to open the show provided us with an effective comic introduction. The rest of the piece featured an enjoyable mix of contemporary journalistic articles and queer scholarship, notably the literature of Esteban Muñoz, as well as the presentation of imagined characters from the late 21st Century. For example, Gregory interpreted the role of ‘Futura’, an A.I. drag queen, who invited us into the possibilities of ‘alternative intelligence’, all the while serving us ‘deepfake realness’ and (garnering audience laughter along the way!). We journeyed through the ‘speculative ...

6Feb

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

L’Amour Du Risque – Manipulate Festival

In this show by Compagnie Bakélite, a man (show creator Olivier Rannou) is served dinner by a collection of automatised vacuum cleaners piloted off-stage by Morien Nolot. Covered in small tables equipped with everything you need for a meal, including romantic music, tablecloths, a candle and a surplus of spoons, these vacuum actors roam around the lined stage with a mixture of robotic awkwardness and occasional personality, bumping into some objects and ignoring others in their mechanical pursuit of simple functionality. The result is a comedic and hypnotic mix of Jacques Tati and a Pixar short. We watch as these vacuum cleaners struggle with their restaurant jobs, sometimes cleverly, sometimes not, and sometimes both, under Rannou's constant but mostly non-judgemental gaze. As the cust...

6Feb

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

The House – Traverse Theatre

The House is a fantastic little puppet world centered on the Warehouse Family Funeral Home. This particular cremation business is burning the midnight oil to please a manipulative, greedy woman. It is chillingly superb. The set is clever, revealing room upon room where unspeakable deeds are carried out. On her deathbed, the undertaker, Mrs Esperanza, changes her will which does not please some. And so begins the shenanigans of hidden identities, lost souls and nonsensical goings on with open and closing doors offering just one more opportunity for farcical fun. This magnificently bizarre horror story made me smile from ear to ear. It’s surreal, funny and enticing. Sofie Krog and her talented partner, David Faraco, clearly love their jobs and, as a result, they are master crafts...

Something About George – Floral Pavilion

5Feb

By Bev ClarkNo Comments

North West

Something About George – Floral Pavilion

Taylor delivers in his own passionate style… he sings with warmth and commitment. Anything with a flavour of The Beatles will go down well on Merseyside and tonight’s full house was very appreciative of this new musical tour from Something About Productions (Bill Elms, Jon Fellowes and Gary Edward Jones). Starting their story of the ‘quiet’ Beatle from the split of the Fab Four, this five-piece band perform twenty of George’s catalogue, some more well known than others and also include a couple from the Traveling Wilburys. After the hits the audience erupted with claps and cheers, some of the lesser-known tracks fell away to polite applause. The rendition of Something was memorable, and surely is, as we are told, considered one of the greatest love songs. Leadin...

5Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Plinth – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Plinth is created and performed by Glasgow-based, Al Seed. A darkly intense, wordless portrayal of human conflict, and a timely reminder that actions speak louder than words. A show that comes with a warning, that it contains loud music/sounds, flashing lights and smoke effects, and rightly so. At times this was certainly in the ‘uncomfortable’ zone. But then again, you could argue that the depiction of war should be uncomfortable. Reminiscent of one of my favourite shows from last year, As Far As Impossible (Lyceum), which questioned why some medics continually return to conflict zones, Plinth asks some similarly unanswerable wordless questions about the inevitability of conflict and the human thirst for ascendancy. Seed’s unquestion...

5Feb

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Sus – Hope Street Theatre

Barrie Keeffe’s play Sus exploring the deep-set systemic racism within the Metropolitan Police and society at large premiered over forty years ago yet with the resignation of Commissioner Cressida Dick less than two years ago following her failure to deal with misogyny and racism in the force, this powerful play still resonates. Whilst set on the eve of Thatcher’s landslide election victory in 1979, there are obvious and relevant parallels to Brexit’s ‘taking our country back’ that are reinforced by current-day statistics that tell us that black people are still nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white contemporaries. Unemployed father of three, Delroy (Rikki Dallas), has been brought in for interrogation by two police officers, Wilby (David J Williamson) a...

5Feb

By Kira DanielsNo Comments

London

The Handmaid’s Tale – London Coliseum

How well do you remember the beginning of the end? Make sure to do your homework before attending this production of The Handmaid’s Tale where the London Coliseum transforms into the venue of a future-set historical conference where a stunning and severe white-pantsuited Professor Piexoto (Juliet Stevenson) directly addresses audience members in her introduction to the overtaped cassettes which comprise the narrative bulk of The Handmaid’s Tale. Eliciting a few laughs in her pithy introduction but primarily conveying static gravitas and the restrained sensitivity of an academic among peers, Stevenson commands the stage at the opera’s bookends. However, her forceful presence is at times an unfortunate distraction as she every so often, ever so covertly interrupts the action to change the ta...