Festival Theatre SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE Interactive iPod noir where not everything is black and white
Why watch a Fringe show when, for a small fee, you can star in one? Direct from a sell-out run in New York, Suspicious Package is an ‘interactive iPod noir’ which invites you to do just that. ‘I wanted to do a show where each person that turns up could be a star in the show,’ says writer and director Gyda Arber, adding, ‘there are no small parts, everyone gets to shine.’ Limited to an audience of six, each
audience-cum-cast member is given a character, a prop and an iPod complete with their character’s lines, directions and internal monologue. The six then set off, i-Pods in hand, to play the showgirl, her doctor, the heiress, the producer, the detective, and the plucky girl reporter. At various points in the piece, which
was co-written by Arber and her mother, Wendy Coyle, the six cast members will meet up to enact scenes before they all come together for the final climactic scene.
‘It’s really fun to watch,’ says Arber. ‘Usually in the first scene everyone is awkward and by the end they’re all really into it and delivering their lines with great verve and panache.’ (Claire Prentice) ■ C too, St Columba’s by the Castle, 0845 260 1234, 5–30 Aug (not 17), performed hourly noon–7pm, £8.50–£10.50 (£7.50–£9.50).
WOLF Richly atmospheric exploration of human-wolf relations
Inspired by current proposals to reintroduce wolves into the Scottish highlands (the last wolf north of the border was killed back in 1769), the debut production by director Kath Burlinson’s Authentic Artistic Collective (drawing performers from Cirque du Soleil, Kneehigh and the David Glass Ensemble) explores the ecology and 72 THE LIST 5–12 Aug 2010
mythology of the creatures that inspire both fear and fascination. Less an issue-driven piece than a meditation on the relationship between wolf and human, the show, written by the National Theatre of Scotland’s Iain Finlay Macleod (St Kilda – the Opera), combines physical storytelling, song and interactive elements aimed at creating a richly atmospheric experience. ‘Our enduring fascination with
wolves is because of our proximity to them and the way we can recognise similarities in the way they organise themselves socially and the fact that we share the same food source,’ says Macleod. ‘I think it’s that proximity that has resulted in us creating fairy tales in which the wolf symbolises various aspects of ourselves that we like or dislike. We attempt to explore some of that in Wolf.’ (Miles Fielder) ■ Just the Tonic at the Caves, 556 5375, 7–29 Aug (not 17), 12.15pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7.50–£8.50). Previews 5 & 6 Aug, £5.
POIGNANT Bold retelling of three Argentinean tales with no actors or stage
As if getting into bed in the dark with strangers wasn’t intimate enough, Micaela Tettamanti’s 45-minute show Poignant features one of the smallest audiences on the Fringe (only four are admitted at any one time) and has no actors or stage to speak of.
From a bedroom you’re led to a park bench near to where a football match is taking place, and from the bench to a circus stall. A set of headphones and an MP3 player are provided to help
you navigate the three settings. Numerous small groups will experience the show on a 15-minute rotation throughout the day, as Argentinean director Tattamanti retells, through projection and sound, three Argentinean tales: Julio Cortázar’s House Taken Over, Eduardo Sacheri’s Overhead Kick and Elsa Bornemann’s An Elephant Takes Up a Lot of Space. ‘It started as an idea for an arts installation and just grew,’ says Tettamanti. ‘I wanted to create a journey filled with horror, drama and comedy, where your own feelings and those around you become the main characters. Each room creates a very different experience, I hope people will enter and enjoy it.’ (Anna Millar) ■ The Melting Pot, 226 0000, 6–28 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), times vary, £5. HOT MESS Experimental look at contemporary relationships from hot young playwright
BELT UP Acclaimed audience-centric company returns to the Fringe with nine shows
Remember that unruly rabble that spent last August squatting in C Soco? The ones that kept partying and fighting the nights away with hordes of strangers? Well, they’re back, and this time they’re really making themselves at home.
The rabble in question could only be Belt Up, whose jam-packed
programmes of audience-centric work at the last two Fringes converted critics and the public alike.
The company’s MO is to take over some remote corner of C Venues to serve as the setting for all their shows; this year, a section of C Soco becomes The House Above, a kitsch and cosy domicile complete with garden. It’s in the company’s interests to make the place feel like home. With an incredible nine shows on the bill, plus their usual array of secret late-night events, they’ll be near-permanent residents there.
‘We have a knack for casting people with superhuman strength and infinite energy,’ shrugs James Wilkes, one of Belt Up’s founding writer- director-performers, as if such übermensch are ten a penny on CastingCallPro. ‘And nothing’s more energising than a good audience.’ The audience is the backbone of every Belt Up show. Every day in The
House Above, audiences will become figments of a narcissistic artist’s imagination (in Wilkes’ brand new Atrium), mourners at princess Antigone’s wake (in Alexander Wright’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone), houseguests of the Samsa family (in an updated version of Metamorphosis, the production that launched the company at the NSDF in 2008) – and in Dominic J Allen’s Lorca Is Dead, the entire audience, as a collective, will become the Surrealist poet Federico Garcia Lorca. If that sounds exhausting, take heart: Wilkes is prepared to reveal the true source of Belt Up’s superhuman endurance. He admits: ‘A lot of us consume a lot of Berocca . . .’ (Matt Boothman) ■ C Soco, 0845 260 1234, until 30 Aug, times and dates of individual shows vary, £8.50–£11.50 (£8.50–£9.50).
Despite feeling increasing pressure to give in and follow every other hot young thing to London, playwright Ella Hickson doesn’t want to leave Edinburgh behind. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Hickson wrote and directed her breakthrough Fringe play Eight in association with the university’s Bedlam Theatre in 2008. It went on to earn positive reviews and win awards and brought Hickson the opportunity to create a similarly well- received follow up last year in Precious Little Talent.
‘It’s certainly not conventional,’ says the 25-year-old Hickson of her third Fringe outing, Hot Mess, a site- specific, nightclub-set four-hander. ‘It’s a slightly mythical story of a pair of twins, one of whom is born with a heart and one of whom is born without, and follows an evening where they’re both out in a nightclub. It looks at our contemporary reasoning that forever doesn’t exist in relationships, and asks what happens to people in their 20s who come to believe that love has a use-by date.’ Expect a typically humorous tale from Hickson, augmented by her experimentation with the in-the-round setting and a live DJ set. (David Pollock) ■ Hawke + Hunter, 226 0000, 8–30 Aug (not 28), 6pm, £9 (£7.50). Previews 6 & 7 Aug, £8 (6.50).
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