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HIGH] _'
I SARRASINE Neil Bartlett and Nicolas Bloomfield use a short story by Balzac as the starting point tora lavish pertormance ; leaturing cross-dressing ! and lalsetto singing. Gloria
is at the loretront ot exciting new perlormance art.
Traverse Theatre (Venue
15) 226 2633.14Aug—t
Sept (not Mons). 10pm.
£6.50 (£3.50).
I STUNNING THE PUNTERS George Dillon is already earning rave reviews tor his . collection otthree { monoIOgues including a i Steven Berkott premiere. ' Energetic, punchy physical theatre.
Vital Theatre (Fringe) Marco’s Leisure Centre (Venue 98) 229 8830.11 Aug—1 Sept (not 19Aug). 6pm. £4.50 (£3.50).
I DEPHAVITY Edinburgh’s pioneering lunchtime theatre company aimsto lollow the success at last year's Red King Rising with the second play by comic script writer Grant Morrison. The dark world at occultistAleisterCrowley. Oxygen House (Fringe)The Netherbow (Venue 30) 16 Aug—1 Sept. 11 .30pm. £4.50 (£3).
“la '
I THE HOUR OFTHELYNX Sublime and gripping psychological inquisition, as Britain linally takes note oi contemporary Scandinavian drama. Unnerving.
Traverse Theatre (Venue 15) 226 2633, until 1 Sept. various times and prices.
I THE DOHM Stunning physical theatre made even sharper tor its run in the Fringe. pertormed by one at Edinburgh’s brightest young companies. Regimental lite in a juvenile detention centre.
Mandela Theatre Company (Fringe) Marco's Leisure Centre (Venue 90) 229 8830. 13-25 Aug (not19 Aug), 1.45pm. £3.50 (£2.50).
FESTIVAL ——
__t__heatre/New PLAYS
Island life
It has been suggested. in arcane literary circles. that the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson‘s great adventure story derives from the author‘s travels abroad. As is well known. however. to all graduates (among whom I must count myself) of Stevenson‘s alma mater the Edinburgh Academy. the real model for the island in question is to be found at the centre ofa pond in Queen Street Gardens. to which. as a resident of Heriot Row. Stevenson would have had ready access.
Yet such small-scale origins do not detract from the tale's stirring appeal. not merely to readers. but also to film-makers (most recently Charlton Heston‘s son Fraser. who cast his father as Long John Silver) and stage adaptors.
At what must otherwise be his quietest time ofyear. the International Festival‘s director Frank Dunlop continues the tradition. with a swashbuckling
all-starcast. Hywel Bennett — who played Puck in Dunlop‘s 1966 Midsummer Night's Dream at the Festival — will be clomping the boards with one leg on the floor and a parrot on his shoulder. while Walter Carr will be dreaming of cheese. RSC character actor Harold Innocent — who appeared in one of the many film versions — will don the tricorn hat of Squire Trelawney. and The Lisr‘s Norman Chalmers. last seen as a Bairn ofJock Tamson at the Tramway. will be leading the pirates in a merry sing-song.
The part ofJim Hawkins is divided into older narrator — played by ‘Blue‘ Peter Duncan — and younger protagonist. a role to be alternated between Iain Hathorn (a current pupil of Edinburgh Academy) and Graham Mclnnes of Holyrood High School. (Andrew Burnet)
I Treasure Island (International Festival) Assembly Hall. Tickets 225 5756. Previews 1()& 11 Aug. 7.30pm. 2.25—4.25; 13 Aug—1 Sept (not Suns). 7.30pm; also Sat and Wed matinees at 2.30pm. USU-8.50.
_ Jazz talking
Pigeon-holing can get you into trouble. Lastyear a woman went to Neil Oram's show— no doubt having read about him in The List’s iestival cabaret section — and interrupted the perlormance midway accusing the raconteur at not being sutticientlytunny. Dram, never one to accept preconceptions, accused the woman oi being dead. ‘She said. you can’t saythat,’ he recalls, ‘and then somebody else said, I think he's right. This whole controversy in the Traverse arguing over whether people were dead or not dead! Haltthe people lelt that something had been really exposed and they lelt enlivened by it, but the people who were very much caught up in the image at themselves did not.’
It's not that Dram has anything against people who are dead, rather thatpeople shouldn’ttry to disguisethe tact. ‘The theoretical level on which we are living our lives is so endemic now that what people do is try to make the theory real. You're born and your parents educate you to try and make their theories oi lite real. The idea that it might already be real, is considered eccentric. We are caught in this thing oi: I am not vibrating, but I surround mysell by what is vibrating. It I can surround mysell with enough, then it gives me the appearance at being alive.‘
As a pertormer such ideas are particularly important to Oram, but he
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his director Ken Campbell, who is also performing a monologue on the Fringe,
he is concerned with the dillerence between the lresh and the stale. 'You getso much oiwhat I call Psychological Deodorant.‘ he says. ‘People's relationships with one another are stale, but they pretend they’re not.‘ And he will light against staleness to the point at changing tack in tull tlight. ‘lnthe act ot telling a story.‘ he continues, ‘the perspective on what it’s about changes really radically. You’re telling a story where you are the victim and in the act 01 telling it, you realise that you were the assailant. So you actually start telling it Irom a dillerent perspective mid-pertarmance.’
Oram‘s monologue concerns events iollowing the staging at The Warp, the epic 24-hourscience iiction spectacular directed by Ken Campbell
’ in Liverpool ten years ago. Campbell, meanwhile,recallsthe weird insists they inlorm his whole lite. Like I background to his 1976 production The
knows whether it’s tor real or a cliché.’
l Aug). midnight, £4.50 (£3.50).
llluminatus, which was also lirst pertormed in Liverpool and which marked the protessional debut oi dwart actor David Flappaport who recently commited suicide. Compared to the scale ot their previous ventures, these one-man monologues might appear limited, but Campbell doesn'tthink so. ’lt’s the same thing,’ he says. ‘The next easiest way to do an epic is on your own. With two people it‘d be more ditlicult.’
The two shows are to be linked by what is billed as a ‘sensational promenade’ (Campbell walking up trom Theatre Workshop to Hill Street Theatre), tor those who wish to indulge in two story-telling sessions. Both men have tremendous admiration loreach other; Oram citing Campbell‘s ability to wreck an actor’s image of what he or she is going to do, and Campbell praising Oram's natural teel tor story-telling. ‘The whole at Western culture is going down a hole,’ says Oram, ‘because it’s getting scared. Politicians, everybody, they all speak trom the page. I almost put mysell in a line oljazztalking. ldon't mean it’s rhythms, I mean you‘ve got to get up there and blow and any good musician
(Mark Fisher) I Ken Campbell Does Hail Eris (Fringe) Science Fiction Theatre at Liverpool, Theatre Workshop (Venue 20) 226 5425,13 Aug—1 Sept (not Sun). 10pm. £5 (£3.50).
Neil Dram Does Comeuppance Rising (Fringe) Science Fiction Theatre at l Liverpool, Hill Street Theatre (Venue 41) 225 7294.12 Aug—1 Sept (not 20 |
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