Category: Mary Woodward at the Festivals

**** (4 stars)

“Sombre”

False Tongues is particularly apposite in an era when ‘fake news’, aka lies, can spread swiftly round the world and result riots, injustice, persecution and worse, all without the slightest justification or basis in truth.  Why is it so easy to swallow such garbage just because ‘I saw it on the internet’?

In 1692 social media hadn’t been invented, but another means of spreading lies and causing untold harm to innocent people had been around for millennia – gossip.  Whispering behind your hand “I’ve heard that…”, “They say…”, “did you know…?”  All this was rife in Salem, Massachusetts, where people started making accusations of witchcraft against people, mostly but not all women.  People were arrested and imprisoned, trials were held, and executions ordered.  Much of the evidence against the accused came from reported visions – so-called ‘spectral evidence’.  In just over a year, more than 200 people were accused, 30 were found guilty; others died in the foul prison conditions without coming to trial.  Some time after this, various of the young women who’d made the accusations confessed that they’d made up the evidence ‘for a prank’.

Such accusations were not particularly unusual.  A century earlier, James VI of Scotland had written the definitive book on how to recognise and dispose of witches.  Anywhere where women were old, wrinkly, tended to mutter to themselves, kept a cat, were slightly different… other people would be quick to point a finger and make the accusation.  Neighbours would become fearful that the same thing would happen to them: easier to join in with the pointing finger, look for something odd or different, accuse before you are accused…

Not so very different from today, it seems, where people are quick to attack anyone who dares to be different, or speak out in support of marginalised people, or criticise the Establishment.  Earlier this Fringe I watched Box Tale Soup’s spine-chilling rendition of George Orwell’s 1984: today Britt FIshel & Artists presented this moving meditation on the unjust fate of so many people through the ages.

Focusing on Salem, and using footage shot in and around Salem and its graveyard, three dancers embodied both persecutors and the women they persecuted.  Moving to a compelling soundtrack, menacing figures clad in black writhed and juddered, singly and in unison, weaving around each other, feeding off each other, working themselves up into a silent frenzy.  Removing their sombre costumes they emerged clad in white, dancing their pain and suffering, their isolation and their togetherness before falling to the ground, dead.  Throughout the show accuser and accused were sometimes the same person – the one whom you trust today may tomorrow turn on you and betray you.

At the end we saw listed the names of the women and men who were executed, and those who died in prison.  Saddest of all was the infant, name and age unknown, of Sarah Goode, who’d been hanged a few weeks previously.

Will we ever learn?

False Tongues, Lime Studio at Greenside @George Street (Venue 236) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/false-tongues

**** (4 stars)

“Delightful”

Another queer love story! No-one dies at the end!  Hoorah!!

There are a lot of flowers – we are offered one as we enter the bijou theatre: I’m sorry to have to leave it behind when I exit, but sadly it would not survive a busy day in Edinburgh in August…

The beauty of flowers, the thought behind a gift of flowers, the Victorian secret language of flowers all play a part in this delightful lesbian romance: and there’s wonderful baking, too!

Ophelia and Zaria have a flower shop: they are both stressing about the fantastic opportunity they have.  A friend who is marrying an amazingly wealthy man has asked them to do her wedding bouquet.  If they can make a good impression, their fortunes could be made…but Ophelia can’t keep her mind on creating the perfect bouquet: she keeps being distracted by the thought of Dera, a local baker and newcomer to the area, whose wonderful cheesecakes and pastries are simply heavenly.

If the truth be told, though, it’s not the pastries but Dera herself who has Ophelia in a constant daydream.  It’s patently obvious how much she fancies the baker, but she’s incapable of saying anything…. Despite Zaria’s encouragement, she is silent: all she can do is make Dera a new bouquet every day and pretend that it’s one that didn’t sell the previous day.

Dera appears, bearing a box of Ophelia’s favourite raspberry cheesecake that somehow ‘didn’t get sold yesterday’ and it’s instantly clear to everyone that Dera is equally besotted with Ophelia, and just as incapable of saying so.  Will the two ever get together?  Will Zaria ever realise her secret dream of going to Paris?  Will the perfect wedding bouquet ever get made?

The awkwardness of seemingly unrequited love, the difficulty of confessing feelings when I don’t think the beloved could possibly love such an unloveable person as myself, the frustration of a friend to whom it’s perfectly obvious that there’s a strong current of feeling between the two of you: all these are perfectly portrayed in this charming comedy.  It also underlines the need for clear communication, which has been a theme in a number of shows in this year’s Fringe.

Manon Lavastre’s Ophelia shines as brightly as her strawberry-coloured hair.  Chloe Horne’s gentle, supportive, silently dreaming Zaria is the perfect bestie.  CJ Adebayo Omoaka is wonderful in her exuberant clumsiness.  The actors’ energy and enthusiasm are a joy to watch, and the songs that punctuate the action perfectly chosen.  It’s unfortunate that the sight lines in the little theatre are poor, meaning that those not on the front row miss out on much of the action: and sometimes the smallness of the room means the actors forget to project their voices and lines are not heard.  Despite this, the show is charming, a wonderfully colourful and heartwarming antidote to the gloom and doom that threaten to engulf us if we are not careful.

Blooming, Fern Studio at Greenside @George Street (Venue 236) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/blooming

**** (4 stars)

“It’s not just gay, it’s very gay!”

I spent a delightful evening in the company of Niall and Tom, master storyteller and long-suffering musician and hater of puns, who combine to present an entertaining re-visioning of the mediaeval legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The original tale is in many respects pretty gay already, but mostly covertly.  King Arthur is at Camelot, with his band of knights gathered at his round table for a feast to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  The king decrees that the feast can’t begin until someone tells a tale of their courageous exploits: but all are silent.  Maybe some marvel, then? 

A Green Knight, riding a green horse, enters and presents a challenge – take up my axe and strike a blow: then come to my chapel in a year and a day and I will return the blow.  Gawain takes up the challenge, lifts the axe, and cuts off the Green Knight’s head.  The Knight picks up his head and rides off, reminding Gawain of his promise to come to the Green Chapel in a year and a day…

Niall is a very good host, welcoming us to the Storytelling Centre’s Upper Room and assuring us that we would not be involved in any scary ‘audience participation’ – apart from that of the lovely Iain [whose agreement was gladly given] and whose noble efforts with the Green Giant’s head were warmly applauded.  The rest of us could sit quietly, fanning ourselves with the fans offered on our way in, or enthusiastically join in whenever we were invited to create a soundscape, or otherwise add detail to the story.

I knew the rough outline of the story, including the ‘temptations’ of Gawain at the castle of lord Bertilak and how he neatly sidesteps them, either because the knight is either totally virtuous or completely naive.  What I loved with this gorgeously [but gently] gay version is the way all the potential, covert, gay details were brought out of the closet and celebrated in all their glory. 

Throughout the tale, Gawain knows he is different from all the others in the laddish atmosphere of Arthur’s court, but doesn’t know why: he just keeps silent.  In the brilliantly inventive middle part of the tale [which the original author would undoubtedly have written if only he’d known it] Gawain is at an open mike poetry evening [don’t ask!] and delivers a beautifully sensitive, deeply moving poem in which he wishes he were a changeling.  This alone is worth the ticket price, but there’s so much more!

Sea horses, a glorious, golden but shy goldfish, a bog witch, a lost cup, a portable oven and a pair of garden shears all play their part in this enchanting narrative.  The language is wonderfully descriptive – I now have to go to Orkney to see the exact colour of the sea at sunset – and the invention magnificent, especially when Niall had to adapt his narrative to work with the audience-suggested name for Bertilak’s partner. 

The solution was sheer brilliance.  So was Gawain’s back story – how he arrived at court in Camelot, and [spoiler alert] the immensely satisfying revelation at the end of the narrative. 

Yet more reasons to celebrate this fabulous show which continually celebrates difference, divergence, and being oneself, no matter what that looks and feels like.

The Green Knight (but it’s gay), George Mackay Brwon Library atScottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-green-knight-but-it-s-gay

***** (5 stars)

“What a Joy!”

What an incredible way to start the day!

Ryan Wang is a young Canadian pianist who waslast year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.  Earlier this year he won the Canadian Chopin Piano Competition, and today was, at the age of eighteen, the International Festival’s youngest-ever Queens Hall recitalist.  Ryan chose to give us an all-Chopin programme which displayed both the vast breadth and depth of the composer’s skill and the incredible talent of the pianist presenting his music.

The 24 Preludes, Op 28 take us through the cycle of keys, both major and minor, starting with C major and ending with D minor.  Their immense variety of both style and mood offer the pianist a magnificent showcase for their technical ability and emotional range, from the opening rippling agitato to the closing stormy allegro appassionato. Ryan’s ability is simply breathtaking.  There aren’t enough superlatives to describe his mastery of touch, tone, dynamic contrast, and mood.  He’s brilliant in the showy bits, has power and passion when required, but is gentle, tender and delicate too.  At one point his painissimo was so quiet I thought the sound would dissolve into nothing – and then sparkling cascades of notes or passionate, resounding chords would ring through the Queens Hall.  The audience were silent in rapt admiration – until they burst into prolonged applause after the final prelude.

After the interval we heard three Mazurkas Op.59 – lively dances which started off conventionally enough but went off into brilliantly executed flights of fancy.  Chopin’s Piano sonata no 2 in B flat minor followed, with an ever-changing stream of emotions – stormy, furious, sorrowful, lyrical, solemn and tender by turn.  The Variations on ‘Là ci darem la Mano’ in B flat Op2, written when the composer was only seventeen, closed the official part of the programme.   It was a joy to hear someone only a little older playing this exuberant, extravagant, passionate show-off piece, which rightly received a standing ovation.

But it didn’t stop there.  With the energy and enthusiasm of youth, Ryan returned to give us not one, not two or three, but FOUR encores.  A joyful waltz and two other Chopin pieces I couldn’t name were all ecstatically received – surely that would be it?  But no, Ryan came out again, settled to the keyboard, and began a wondrously quiet and gentle rendition of Beethoven’s Für Elise – the perfect way to calm us and send us out into the city, I thought.  But then it evolved into the most wonderful display of jazz and boogie I think I’ve ever heard in the oh-so-respectable Queens Hall.  Here was an amazingly talented young man letting his hair down and having a ball – what a privilege it was to be a part of it. 

Then he closed the piano lid and left the platform for the final time.

What a morning!  What a talent!  What a joy!

EIF: Ryan Wang, The Queen’s Hall for more information go to: https://www.eif.co.uk/events/ryan-wang

**** (4 stars)

“Brilliantly Played”

Edinburgh.  August.  Jess and Iona’s paths keep crossing…

Originally part of the series a Play, a Pie and a Pint, Roisin Sheridan-Bryson’s play is both an extended love song to the city of Edinburgh and a long and convoluted lesbian love story, which may or may not have a happy ending, depending on whether or not you can go back in time/ rewrite endings the way you wish they could go.

Jess and Iona want to tell us their story, whichstarts when they first meet randomly at a Fringe venue.  They meet, randomly or by arrangement at bus stops, in venues, on the streets and in the closes of the city.  Their tale is also a wonderfully detailed and descriptive account of Edinburgh in August – but they so often remember things differently.  Each knows their version of any incident is the correct one, and they continually correct each other – but there are times when, oh yes, they do indeed remember things the same way.   And now it’s their last night at the Fringe: how will they have the most fun, see the best show, party till the wee small hours and then…???

Jess, according to Iona, is brilliant, mad, a pain in the arse.  She’s a live wire, impulsive, unable to sit still, mouth never silent, engaging with everyone around her, speaking/ acting well before thinking – both enormous fun to be around and a huge liability in certain situations.  She has huge impenetrable walls around herself and is terrified to let them down.

Iona could hardly be more different.  She’s a quiet, thoughtful, gentle introvert, who nevertheless will go along with anything Jess proposes even though she’d prefer the exact opposite.  She’d like to take her time to think before she does or says anything, go slowly through life.  She probably always means what she says, and never acts impulsively when she’s not with Jess.

Intersecting, interconnecting, overlapping witty, descriptive, crackling dialogue slowly reveals a story that has been going on [it seems] for several years.  It’s pretty obvious right from the start that this unlikely couple not only fancy but love the other – but Jess is incapable of revealing this even to herself, and Iona isn’t going to speak if Jess won’t. 

A very small, impressively versatile set, and some every effective lighting add enormously to this play, which crackles with life and vigour most of the time.  I could wish that the closing moments’s dialogue was more audible, especially since Iona had her back to me and I was sitting immediately in front of a [very welcome] electric fan…

Both women are brilliantly and contrastingly played – but I can’t credit either actress by name, which is an enormous pity.  The script is superb, and the acting excellent – and the audience was loudly appreciative of the [spoiler alert] kiss immediately preceding the blackout.

Lost Girls/ at Bus Stops, The Box at Assembly George Square (Venue 8) for more information go to: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/lost-girls-at-bus-stops