Author: Brett Herriot

***** (5 stars)

“Mesmerizing”

Oh my goodness.  I’m speechless…

And yet I have somehow to find words to describe the experience of the last hour, watching Mark Hannah’s mesmerizing performance.

I have to confess that I booked the show some time ago, and sat in the Netherbow theatre wondering what I was going to see, as I couldn’t remember anything about it.  So when Mark strolled on stage, holding his half-empty beer glass, and gave us a poem in clear classical English beginning Stony spires and scenery speak to us before launching into a monologue in broad Edinburgh accent which crackled with energy and suppressed anger, I was, shall we say, a tad confused.

By the end of the show I was in awe – I’d attended a masterclass in a very different style of storytelling from the one I’d seen an hour before, and oh heavens it was a shattering experience.  I’m very glad it was the final show of my day – anything else would have been a terrible anticlimax.

Mark pours out a constant stream of words – a positive maelstrom of emotions tumbling and surging, desperate to express the churning, incessant stream of his characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings.  What slowly emerges from this is a very clear picture of three totally different individuals.  Each has their own very distinctive voice, the richness of their language and their choice of words and expressions unique and very revealing.

Their lives are completely separate.  Allan is a delivery driver in Edinburgh, desperate to get to his young daughter’s concert in St Giles’ cathedral; Liam, a student meteorologist, has fallen in love with Edinburgh resident Chloe, whom he met on an impulse-bought holiday on a Greek island; Maureen, whose grip on the present is not very strong, just wants to get out of the place her son’s put her in and go back to her home in Leith.  Each is wrapped in their own story, but their lives cross fleetingly in the course of one day in ‘the Athens of the North’.

For those of us who live locally, there’s an added depth of richness in recognising, in knowing well, the streets, junctions, buildings and areas Allan, Liam and Maureen pass through.  The city, its history, its buildings, and its effect on visitors, are an integral part of the narrative.  Allan knows it well as he struggles to get his van to where it needs to be.  Liam sees it for the first time, but knows he will have to come back.  Maureen sees it as it is now, but also as it was fifty years ago – and possibly further back in time, too.

Mark Hannah’s writing is brilliant – rich, intense, multi-layered and immensely satisfying.  His acutely observed, utterly believable characters are brought to life through their individual use of words and phrases, while his acting uses an extraordinary, constant outpouring of energy to present them to us on stage.  We are caught up in their stories: it’s impossible not to be engaged with and moved by Allan, Liam and Maureen’s lives.  We are brought full circle as we hear once again the ode to Edinburgh, Edina, the Athens of the North.

Mark’s performance on stage is simply incredible – it’s exhausting watching him; heaven only knows how he drained he feels at the final curtain.  He’s greeted with a positive storm of applause, richly deserved. 

This is a show you must not miss!

Athens of the north, Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/athens-of-the-north

**** (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