Author: Brett Herriot

**** (4 stars)

“What a show!”

Oh my goodness. 

Janis Mackay, author and storyteller, joins Nada Shawa, a Palestinian poet, dancer, and wheelchair user from Gaza to present an unforgettable hour of poetry, dance and storytelling.

As we enter the theatre, the two women are dancing joyfully to lively folk songs.  The music changes to the celestial chorus in paradisum from Fauré’s Requiem: their movements become slow, gentle and meditative.

Nada’s poems are hard to hear.  Quiet laments for her homeland and the atrocities being committed there, all the more poignant because understated, underline the incomprehensibility of the senseless slaughter.  Her graceful and sensitive movements and her beautifully expressive hands weave patterns of emotion that strike to our very core.  She can say blatantly in front of the world you want to eliminate me – yet refrain from calling out for vengeance or retaliation.  How can she be so free from hatred?  How can such atrocities be allowed to continue?

Janis is a very talented storyteller: her contribution is a story she was gifted by a friend of hers, the Palestinian storyteller Sally Shalabi.  It’s a variation on one that can be found in the Arabian Nights collection, and like so many of the tales therein, contains stories within stories. 

A poor fisherman is failing to catch anything at all, and his wife and son Omar are going hungry.  Perhaps, suggests his wife, Omar should go to the shore with his father and throw out the net: he might bring luck.  Omar goes with his father, they both cast out the net, and almost instantly they catch and bring to shore an enormous fish, more beautiful and much bigger than any the fisherman has ever seen.  He will have to go and fetch a cart, it’s far too big for them to carry home by themselves.

Omar is left to watch over the fish, which is still quivering and gently panting for breath.  The boy hears a small voice calling ‘help!’ – where can it be coming from?  There’s no-one nearby.  He realises it’s the fish, who pleads to be put back in the sea, where her children are waiting for her.  He’s torn between his desire to help and his fear of his father’s reaction to the loss of the fish – but chooses to help the fish and brave his father’s anger.

Omar’s father is indeed furious, and casts his son out to wander the countryside, wondering where to go and what to do.  Omar comes across another young boy, in floods of tears because his merchant father has also cast him out for making too many mistakes in his father’s business.  Omar is overjoyed: he has found a friend – no, he’s found a brother in Noah, and the two boys set off together to see what adventures life will bring them.

The boys’ many adventures hold us enthralled.  Janis has a wonderful gift for describing the action and its surroundings with face, body, hands and voice, till it feels as though we are there, alongside the two boys and the people they meet.  Nada’s expressive dancing portrays the many emotions of the situations Omar and Noah encounter: together with Janis she dances to celebrate the satisfying conclusion to the story.

The show ends with the two women dancing separately and together to a moving rendition of Auld lang syne.  The friendship between the two is clear to see.  They reach for each other, hold and release each others’ hands.  At one point Janis does an arabesque on Nada’s chair, and the two wheel across the stage together – one person with two bodies.  

Friendships are woven across boundaries in the sharing of stories, dances and poetry.  We can mend broken nets and create something new and hopeful – if we are willing to try.

Mending Nets, Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/mending-nets

**** (4 stars)

“Outstanding”

Well, that was a trip down memory lane, alright… I’m not old enough to have seen the Bogart/Bergman film when it first came out, but for as long as I can remember it’s been a part of my life – the ultimate wartime romance ending in noble sacrifice for the good of the cause just as the two star-crossed lovers are reunited after a tragically misunderstood parting.

This is both an affectionate hommage to a classic film and a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek humorous reworking of many little moments in the original which lend themselves to other interpretations.  It’s also a splendid example of how three actors in their show can play an almost unbelievable number of parts, and in two realities – Shakespeare would have been proud of them…

Gavin Mitchell, Clare Waugh and Kevin Lennon between them do a brilliant job of playing not only all the main characters but also many bit parts, both on and off stage.  In this they are supported by a superb musician, who gets her bow but is not credited on the flyer: neither is the singer who is determined to be heard to the end of her songs despite the valiant efforts of the cast to cut her short. A pity, because they were both excellent.

Gavin Mitchell is outstanding in his rendition of Humphrey Bogart’s playing of cynical, world-weary cafe owner Rick, whose hard-bitten exterior conceals a heart of gold. Clare Waugh does a splendid job of doubling his long-lost love Ilse and the evil Major Strasse of the Gestapo.  But for me, Kevin Lennon takes the crown / wins all the laurels for his portrayals of the weak, slimy underworld crook Ugate, the charming, debonair but venal Captain Renaud and the incredibly correct, stiff-upper-lipped Vincent Laszlo, hero of the Resistance, husband of Ilse, and hope of the whole free world.

What is most admirable about this show is the skill with which the actors switch in the blink of an eye from dead straight acting, full of unspoken deep emotion and almost scarily exactly replicating the original film, to the deadpan comic interjections – the oddball film facts, the extraordinary contortions required at some points to indicate going through several rooms while manoeuvring themselves around a very small and crowded set – and the overlapping of two realities – the drama they are playing out on stage, and the interactions of the three actors playing all those parts.

We the audience are involved from the very first moments, when we are invited to join the cabaret singer in her rendition of la vie en rose.  By the time we reach the scene of the defiant singing of la Marseillaise, we are so engaged in the plot that we virtually raise the roof.

It’s amazing to me that the tension of the drama is not lost despite all the comic interventions.  We know we’re watching three actors recreate something which was in itself a creation, a pretence of real life.  The fourth wall is continuously broken.  And yet… and yet we still believe every moment of the intensely emotional exchanges, even as they are carried out with hammed up physical movements and expressions, especially from Rick, to some degree from Ilse, and virtually all the time from the many ‘lesser’ characters on stage.

Existing in two realities at the same time, we are able both to enjoy the homage to the original drama and at the same time laugh at all its absurdities, including the constant references to an injected subplot of the presence of a casting director in the house who’s looking to cast Singin’ in the Rain….

Which explains why there’s a tap dance finale to Good mornin’, good mornin’, an inflatable sofa that falls out of the wings for Rick, Ilse and Renaud to collapse onto at the end of the number, and a special round of applause for Sophie who made it happen.

No wonder the performance is greeted with a storm of applause!

Casablanca:The Gin Joint Cut, Ghillie Dhu (Venue 410) for more information go tohttps://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/casablanca-the-gin-joint-cut

**** (4 stars)

“An excellent hour”

And now for something completely different – from the northern wastes of Scotland to the heart of the fashion industry, in the company of Scottish supermodel Eunice Olumide.   She was in conversation with Gemma Metheringham, whose linked in profile describes her as  “a circular fashion business model consultant”.

Eunice is a modern polymath, the contemporary equivalent of a ‘Renaissance man’ – Gemma’s introduction listed some of her many spheres of action and interest, which they seemed virtually endless.  Not ‘just’ a supermodel but [among other things] an actress, film maker, entrepreneur and ambassador for Zero Waste Scotland who has a postgraduate degree in film studies and an OBE.  With all that, you might be forgiven for thinking she might think rather highly of herself, but she comes across as very down to earth and grounded.  She grew up in a black family in Wester Hailes and knew what it was like to be unable to afford to buy the things that you simply had to have if you were to be at all cool.  She learned from her mother how to make the garments she wanted to wear, and in doing so learned that with the clothes she made, she could create her own unique personality.

Eunice and Gemma’s conversation ranged far and wide, but certain themes kept recurring – social isolation, the waste inherent in today’s fashion industry, and the many small actions it’s possible to do, and so find some solutions.  Eunice remains impressively hopeful, despite all the challenges facing the world today: she believes that the majority of people are inherently good, and that change is possible.  One of her favourite phrases was “we can do anything we want to do”.

Some of the things they talked about:

Bonding by making things together, creating intergenerational and cross-cultural links instead of being trapped and isolated in small monothematic social bubbles.  Growing things, cooking and sharing food together increases our sense of closeness to other people.  “Exchanges of humanity make us more happy in life”.

Create your own distinctive clothing by recycling and repurposing previously worn garments. Dispose responsibly the things you no longer wear.

Show younger people that making things is cool.  Pass on your skills, or at least write them down somewhere for when others suddenly realise they have a need for them.  Encourage young people to make things, and create new from old – “they like making things, they just don’t know that they do.” Present them with alternative ways of doing things: show them the possibilities

Cheap clothing is an expensive mistake.  Save up and buy a good pair of shoes, then create a wardrobe of your own from second-hand stuff.  [my note to self – remember the Sam Vimes Boots theory of economics – that the wealthy spend a lot less money on clothes because they buy expensive, well-made things that last, instead of continually having to pay out for cheap and shoddily-made things.]

Clothing tells stories about our identity, can bring us together intergenerationally, and could invite us to involve ourselves in geopolitics.   We are all part of the fashion industry which is failing to uphold decent standards, and whose mindset is that Growth is the only thing, all-important thing.  The clothing industry is responsible for 10% of all global emissions.  At what point will They realise that this is a mistake, that making yet another billion dollars’ profit is not the most important thing in life?  We can have an effect – not buying things sends a powerful message, to which the industry will react.

Small entrepreneurships are possible – one young man reluctantly attended one of Eunice’s workshops at the Victoria & Albert museum in London [‘men don’t belong in the fashion world’] but was inspired by the session to start up his own business buying secondhand clothes and selling them on at a profit.  There’s a vast pool of secondhand clothing out there – people buy and discard so much – that you could use it in so many creative ways, and set up your own microbusiness…

Acting together can change the world.  We can all begin with tiny steps…

What other things might help?  Some intriguing suggestions included:

Better labelling of garments – for example, showing its microfibre leakage, or the toxic microplastics content, or the toxicity of the dyes used. 

What would you do if you simply were not allowed to throw anything away?

Have a small number of good quality outfits that work all year round and wash well.

The global north spends a lot of time agonising about but failing to act on sustainability and the circular economy.  Why not listen to countries in the global south which are already doing these things?

Take time to slow down, to think, to enjoy things.  “There are so many brilliant things to do all around us, to do together”…

All in all an excellent hour, full of ideas not simply to think about, but to put into action whenever, however, and wherever we can.

ScotlandsFest Why do you wear what you wear?, St Columba’s by the Castle (Venue 367) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/scotlandsfest-why-do-you-wear-what-you-wear