The Beast's Pen

In the not too distant future, a Tory Prime Minister resigns and the leading candidate to replace him is a former Mayor of London, now returned to Parliament, who happens to be a bumbling, accident prone buffoon. A highly unlikely premise maybe, but it is the starting point for this play by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky. The only other candidate in the leadership race is a very green junior minister (Laurence Dobiesz), who has been put there by Max Newman (the former Mayor) himself, because he is certain of beating him, but a disaffected Whip (Joanna Bending) sets out to thwart the plans by raking up an old scandal. The play begins as a very promising satirical comedy, but dries up very disappointingly to become no more than a routine drama of political intrigue. The chief problem is that Alan Cox plays Newman so that he looks and sounds like every politician who has ever been cloned from Tony Blair, without a hint of the outrageous character described in the script, a man who believes that public opinion will forgive him for any gaffe or indiscretion. Accepting that an outright impersonation of the politician that we all know this is meant to represent may have been impossible for legal reasons, just a little touch of comedy, even the occasional pratfall, could have helped to lighten proceedings. As it is, the only message in this rather humourless play is that all politicians are scheming sleaze bags. Well, who would have known?

Performance date: 12 August 2014

At last, thanks to the Royal Conservatory of Scotland, the UK gets the chance to see a fully staged version of an Andrew Lippa musical. This show ran for just under two years on Broadway in 2010/11 and it is sad that it has not crossed the Atlantic sooner. It gets a rather lavish (for the Fringe) production, with a perfect Gothic set and a large company. At first it seems that the dark and weird humour of Marshall Brickman’s book (adapted from Charles Addams’ strip cartoons) will not gel with Lippa’s uplifting, traditional Broadway style score, but everything comes together well as the show progresses, with plenty of good jokes and excellent songs. The very slight plot involves the Addams daughter, Wednesday, becoming engaged to marry a “normal” guy. Martin Murphy looks a very young Gomez, but he is splendid, milking the laughs, singing and even dancing a mean Tango with Morticia (Kristel Harder at this performance). All the other performers excel in a production which has a polished, professional feel throughout. This show is good, undemanding fun and, as for Andrew Lippa, more please!

Performance date: 12 August 2014

My perfect day? Well, maybe two-thirds of it. The pie is tasty (don’t ask what is in it) and the pint is refreshing, but, after that it is time to look at the Trades Descriptions Act. The “entertainment” consists of a lady named Joyce Falconer flagrantly flaunting her Scottishness to a degree that might embarrass even Alex Salmond. She treats us to a few Scottish songs, accompanying herself on piano accordion, interminable extracts from Robert Burns and a version of her nation’s history that could have been written by Mel Gibson. It is utterly ghastly and it all leaves a Sassenach such as me praying even more that the Scots vote “Yes” on 18 September; sadly, the presence of possible voters in the audience could have lessened the chances of that happening. Next year, I will happily settle for a salad (hoping that Scotland will have finally discovered them by then) and a mineral water, if the organisers can put on a real play. In the meantime, it is half a star each for the pie and the pint, with a big fat zero for the rest.

Performance date: 11 August 2014

Originally staged at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth, Small War is written and performed by the Belgian theatre maker Valentijn Dhaenens. The play is developed from testaments given by participants in wars, ranging from Atilla the Hun to a soldier in the recent Afghanistan conflict and it adopts an unflinching approach to describing the human costs. Dhaenens appears live on stage as a female nurse tending to casualties of war. Behind him, we see him again on a screen as a limbless torso; he cannot speak, but we hear his thoughts and, then, rising from the bed, on another screen, we see and hear from four life size images of the same soldier, able bodied. It is a technically impressive feat to have Dhaenens interacting with up to five different images of himself. However, as might be expected from its sources, the language of the play is prosaic, with none of the poetry of, say, Brooke or Owen and monotone delivery backed by droning and repetitive music does not help to bring it to life. Even the technical virtuosity of the staging seems to add to the overall coldness of the piece. Perhaps the familiar message that war is ugly and brutal cannot be repeated too often, but, personally, I found this production too relentlessly depressing to be able to connect with it fully.

Performance date: 10 August 2014

Luke Kempner has been taking this one man show around the country for some time now, including a run at the Trafalgar Studios in London, but it does not seem to be running out of steam. He is an impressionist who can amaze with his dexterity in switching quickly between characters. Fairly obviously, the centrepiece of this show is impersonations of the entire cast of Downton Abbey. His Maggie Smith and Jim Carter are fairly precise, some of the others less so, but, if you have never seen Downton, you will find little point in it. The “plot” involves the impending wedding between the Dowager Duchess and Tom Daley (a cruel impression) and it manages to incorporate spoofs of several other popular television shows. An hour of harmless fun.

Performance date: 10 August 2014

David Mamet’s probing examination of attitudes to race in modern America is here given an exemplary production by a South African company. The setting is the offices of a leading law firm which is being hired to defend a rich white man (Michael Gritten) who is accused of raping a black woman. Two partners, one black and one white (Peter Butler and Andre Jacobs) and their associate, a young black woman (Nondumiso Tembe), proceed to argue the issues of race which surround the case between themselves and with the accused. They play Devil’s Advocate to each other, ask questions to which it seems there are only wrong answers and conclude that a fair trial and a correct verdict will be impossible to achieve. The four performers get the staccato delivery of Mamet’s short, sharp lines just right and the arguments presented are fascinating, albeit sometimes confusing and maybe contradictory. However, the problem with this, as with some other Mamet plays, is that the characters are no more than mouthpieces for the writer’s thoughts and it is impossible to connect with them emotionally. The result is something more like an engrossing lecture than a drama.

Performance date: 10 August 2014

James Cooney races around the stage, marked out as a square school playground, as if a wild animal caged inside it. He gives a high energy performance as a 15 year old boy in late 1980s Liverpool, hero worshipping John Barnes and longing to grow a moustache. He rants at his authoritarian father, a single parent, and mouths adolescent obscenities, boastfully recounting mischievous escapades and petty lawbreaking as he and a friend try to raise the cash to pay for tickets to a football match. Written by Luke Barnes, the first half of this monologue is moderately amusing, if over familiar and seemingly lacking in purpose. It holds the interest only because of Cooney’s performance, but then it is revealed that the football match is to be played in Sheffield and the tone changes instantly. All the lack of respect for authority and disregard for others shown by the teenager are now put into perspective and seen in a new light. The play does not examine causes of or attribute blame for the events that followed, it simply describes them and tries to evaluate the cost in terms of young lives permanently scarred or extinguished. A poignant hour.

Performance date: 10 August 2014

Monologues featuring well-known showbiz personalities are standard fare for the Edinburgh fringe and this one is par for the course. Set in a Sydney hotel room, it shows the tragic clown swigging neat vodka direct from the bottle and recounting anecdotes from his life during that last half hour (more 50 minutes) of his life. Hancock had enjoyed enormous success on radio and television in the 1950s and 60s, even breaking into films, but a series of disastrous career moves had put his career on the skids and brought to the fore all his underlying insecurities. Written by Heathcote Williams and performed by Pip Utton, the play brings to mind Hancock’s own groundbreaking television monologue, being peppered with the same Galton & Simpson style humour, but it tells us little that is not already known from other written and dramatised works.

Performance date: 10 August 2014

Beginning with a post-show discussion of a production which the audience has not seen, this play by Bush Moukarzel and the Irish company, Dead Centre, takes us on a journey from absurdist comedy to surrealist tragedy. The central theme is lip reading, but the play extends this to become an exploration of all communications between human beings, demonstrating how we understand or, more often, misunderstand each other. An unconventional structure leaves us never knowing what to expect next and creates an unsettling effect which helps to keep us gripped, at least until an overlong final filmed section which appears to owe a great deal to Samuel Beckett’s Not I. Well acted and imaginatively staged, the production gives plenty of food for thought.

Performance date: 10 August 2014