FESTIVAL REVIEW

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OPENING "()l'RS Mon - Sat 1 lam - 12.30am

JAZZ & FOLK MUSIC Afternoons and Evenings

'I‘APAS & BAR MEALS Served every afternoon

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3/4 Shore. Leith. Tel: 031 553 5080

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Smart and Phillida Bannister.

Cabaret, Song, Jazz,

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Boys (20).

Late Bar Mon-Sat.

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 1987 Music all day!

Chamber Music Monday to Saturday at 11am including Sir Yehudi Menuhin, the Melos Quartet playing Beethoven and Evelyn Glennie playing percussion. ' Contemporary Music Weekend 22-24 August.

Live Music—free—in the Restaurant Monday to Saturday 3-5pm including Swing 87, Dick Lee, William Alexander, Alpin

Folk and Rock every incorporating Round Midnight Festival Iazz featuring Cil Scott Heron (Q), Lionel Hampton (10), Louisiana Red (14), Art Blakey (15, 10), Steve Williamson (17, 18), El Sonido de Londres (10), Charlie Haden (20) and (Ian (Zarbarek (21, 22)

Brian Bannatyne Scott ('1 1), Courtney Pine (12), Ted Hawkins (13), Boys of the Lough (21, 22), Pasadena Roof Orchestra (24, 25, 20), Dick Caughan (22), Blues & Trouble (28), Bhundhu

Exhibition of Photographs ’Other' Art Forms, Sculpture, Classical Music, Theatre & Jazz by Sean Hudson.

Restaurant open 1 hour before every performance.

Box Office Open Mon-Sat lOam-lOpm (outside Festival

10am-5pm). Enquiries and Credit Card Bookings: 031-068 2010.

CLERK STREET EDINBURGH EH8 QUG.

evening

FESTIVAL THEATRE

ouuo THE FRINGE

between characters is used to match the emotional distance between them and a violin scrapes insistently at moments at tension. The cast give low-key. sympathetic pertormances and this is a sadly angry portrayal ol the gradual disintegration at a man's dignity and the destruction at his lamily. (Sarah Hemming)

o Apartlrom George. National Theatre Studio. Traverse Theatre (venue 20) 226 2633. Until 29 Aug. times vary.

ALL DRESSED UP

Degraded and despairing. two inmates at a top security prison hatch a dream ol liberation: a television show guaranteed a prime time slot. On it they will airtheir complaints aboutthe awlul living conditions; complaints normally censored under the Ollicial Secrets Act.

Bizarrer caked in greasepaint. they duly enact with two lemale prisonerstheirgrotesquely tunny parody ol the legal system. lrom conviction to rehabilitation. Butthe play‘s linal picture is one at realistic disillusionment— an agonised yeamlng lor that simple symbol at lreedom. a busticket.

ll there is a flaw in Nasser Memarzia‘s script. it is its treatment at the inhumanity ol prison lite as alait accompli. An illustration ol the daily loss otdignity would have added an interesting dimension.

Still. he directs the convincing cast otthis hard-hitting play with humour and compassion. (Andrew Bumet).

o All Dressed Up. Yorkshire Theatre Company. Festival Club, 9 Chambers Street. (Venue 36). 2201112. Until 29 Aug. 8.45pm. £2.50 (£1.75).

THE RAIN

Madness itsell, THE RAIN is that uncomlortable mixture olthe sinister andthe absurd.

The audience. surely unlikelyto lill evena quarter olthe vast area allocated tor them. wait apprehensivelytor something to happen alter the lights go out. Something does. Alew creaks. alew bangs. then an arm and a leg. and Ken Davidson, a gauntwhite ligure in a clown's rutlle leaping onto a box in the middle olthe stage.

Therealter lollows litteen minutes at disturbing, sometimes repetitious and olten ludicrous quick scenes showing one man’s obsession with rain. Undoubtedly some at it must be intentially lunny: ‘l

don't want to drown, not in

this place.‘ But the parts which had the audience littering: “It the rain stops. will I?’ were also the most pathetic. Much asthis madman hates the rain, it is the only constant, unchanging lactor in his lite Edinburgh street pertormers must oltenleel the same way. .. (Stephanie Billen)

o The Rain, Ken Davidson. The Edge, Drummond St. 557 5229. Week2, 10.15 pm. Week 3. 10.45 pm. 50p

(3011)

A COLD DAY IN HELL

This is a dispiriting and compelling piece oi theatre. Charlie. unemployed no-hoper. is videotaping himsell. making an explanation to his children. grown up and taraway. lor his imminent and bloody suicide. And it gets worse: he has lirstto disconnect their mother. hospitalized and comatose altera carcrash. from her tits support system.

A portrayal ol loneliness. breakdown and despair, Jan Duackenbush's play is a tour-de-torce. lull ol compassion yet brutally unoptimistic. Don Cosgrove as Charlie turns ina remarkable perlormance, immeasurably sympathetic to his trapped character. Sometimes the American Way ol Lile can be a shoddy and sleazy charade. and A CDLD DAY IN HELL otters nothing remotely positive or hopelul to those wholall short ol its expectations. (Robin Muir)

0 A Cold Day In Hell. All Rare Seeds Co. The Royal Scots Club, 30 Abercromby Place (venue 57) 557 5091. Until 29 Aug, 4pm. £3.

THE MEMORANDUM

Written in Czechoslovakia in 1965. Vaclav Havel's MEMORANDUM combines concern aboutthe mechanisation at man with the style and humour ol Reginald Perrin.

The play is set in an anonymous organisation which is eniorcing ‘Ptydepe'. a new bureaucratic language which is mathematically synthesised. rigidly logical and purged ol emotion.

The plot concerns Joseph Cross. the archetypal managing director and his attempts to get a Ptydepe memo translated.

Catherine Wigglesworth's production has a lurious Dario Fo-like pace. She extracts all the humour lrom the otlice that islorever out to lunch or stabbing each other in the back. Derek Howard (Gross) is excellent. but histalent and discipline is matched

by seven strong company. Michael Taylor's inventive set completes this highly prolessional production. (Patricia Miller)

0 The Memorandum. Zone Theatre Company. Calton Studios. Calton Road. (venue 71 ). 556 7066. Until 29 Aug. (not Suns). 5.45pm. £3.50 (£2.50).

COMPANY

'A voice comes to me in the dark.’ intones Julian Curry. This Beckettian phrase is the key to that rare object. a Samuel Beckett British premiere. COMPANY is in tact a 1980 novel olmore than usual density. in which the narrator/writer re-invents his own history through lragments 01 memory dictated by the dark voice. That said. Katharine Worth‘s adaptation makes the very best at a deep archaeology into lamiliar Beckettian themes: the status at the sell and olthe universe. She is well-served by Tim Piggott-Smith's direction and by Curry's pertormance: this production is rarely short ol translixing. (Alex Renton)

0 Company. Flynn Productions. Richard Demarco's Gallery. 17-21 Blacklriars Street. 23-26 Aug 113m; 27—29 Aug

I 10pm. 23(22).

PUNCH!

Punch! is violent, loud. confrontational. sinister. and good. This three-strong group lrom New York set a pace which is exhausting enough simplyto witness in theirversion olthe traditional Punch and Judy story in which Punch beats seven people to death in hall an hour. Set intoday's urban environment. the human puppets explore racism. sexual violence. domestic violence- ‘l'll teach you to throw my baby out at the window’. . .and other contemporary illnesses ol society against a backdrop olsuperb design. (Hattie Evans) 0 Punch!. Shaliko Co. Assembly Rooms. 54 George Street (venue 3) 226 2427/8. Until 29 Aug. Noon.

NO!

A Danish comedy ol manners, written in 1856 and. suspiciously. receiving its British premiere only now. is an uncomlortable prospect. but set to music and updated by hall a century. it’s enough to make your eyes water. But somehow this llutty. winsome. entirely pointless little piece works - within its own terms. The enlorced separation at lovers. ineligible suitors. intransigenttathers. mistaken identity— the plot

22 The List 31 Aug— 3 Sept