{THEATRE} Reviews

PREVIEW FOREST FRINGE 2011 Lauren Mayberry looks ahead to the creative bonanza as it gears up for its final year in the soon-to-close Forest Café

Many Edinburgh-dwellers agree that it will be a sad day when the Forest Café finally closes its doors at the end of this summer. The rough and ready creative hub will be badly missed, but at least it’s staying open long enough for the Forest Fringe to serve up its latest selection of alternative theatre, dance and performance art. Andy Field, co-director of the Forest Fringe alongside Debbie

Pearson, explains why their ‘off the beaten track’ approach to the festivals has proved so popular since it began in 2007. ‘Every year, it has felt more like this belongs as much to the

artists as it does to Debbie and I,’ he says. ‘It’s a collective project, so rather than us programming everything, we’ve chosen a small group of artists that we really like and trust dancers, musicians, poets, live artists and we’ve allowed them to do a lot of the programming themselves.’

Andy, an advocate of unusual, interactive theatre, is pleased with the mix of artists they have been able to line up, including Forest Fringe favourites Action Hero performing Watch Me Fall, a show focusing on daredevils and an interpretive solo show from dancer Dan Canham. Meanwhile, staff at the Forest venue are currently waiting to

see if the café will be bought over after their former landlord went into administration last year. ‘The Forest Café has such a strong community of people

around it that I’m sure they will find a new space,’ says Field. ‘There’s a sense of importance of it being there as an alternative to the more aggressive, commercial venues. This is the third building The Forest have used. It’s like Doctor Who it never stops, it just changes shape. ‘As it stands, the lease runs until the 31 August, so it’s going

to be one wild summer of goodbyes.’ The Forest Fringe, Forest Café, 220 4538, 15–27 Aug, times vary, free (visit forestfringe.co.uk to reserve places).

THE ONE MAN SHOW Late-night high-tech deconstruction with Jaffa Cakes ●●●●● 101 Group hugs, cult chants and it’s all your fault ●●●●●

AFTER THE END Gripping if uneven thriller adaptation ●●●●●

L A V I T S E F

So post-modern it hurts, The One Man Show is a piece of theatre about watching a piece of theatre. It has a mysterious start, a set of emotional states, a philosophical moment where we cough and eat sweets, a cheesy musical interlude and a point when we clap. It even has an interval in which actor Nigel Barrett hands out Jaffa Cakes and Babybels. Created by Barrett and Louise Mari of cult London company Shunt, and playing to an appreciative late- night audience, the show picks apart the conventions of actorly pretence and lays them bare in a high-tech theatrical cabaret. In Fringe terms, it is done with impressive technical flair with its multiple- screens, projections, captions, extreme lighting states and abrasive soundscapes. Barrett is a strong enough actor not to get lost amid the cacophony, holding us with his controlled, ironic performance.

It’s impressive stuff, but the emptiness at its heart means it doesn’t get beyond the navel-gazing to turn the tables on the audience in the way John Clancy’s similarly deconstructed The Event did a couple of years ago. (Mark Fisher) C Chambers Street, 0845 260 1234, until 29 Aug (not 15), midnight, £8.50–£9.50 (£7.50–£8.50).

74 THE LIST 11–18 Aug 2011

Back with three new immersive scenarios after causing a stir last year, the 101 team show just how compelling theatre can be with the most elementary of resources. No special effects, no set, scarcely anything you’d call a costume and yet the young company does a thoroughly persuasive job in commandeering your imagination. In the 11am scenario, you are co-opted into a primitive religious sect, pagan chants, ritualistic gestures and all. There is a good deal of cultish hugging and call-and-response liturgy as you await the coming of a living goddess, a figure of terror or liberation depending on the depth of your faith.

By the time the show mutates into a Beauty and the Beast-style myth, you realise you have been a participant in a morality tale with a bitter and unhappy ending. You could make a case for the show being about the perils of group thinking or the hazards of blind faith. You could make an equal case for it being a load of made-up tosh. What you can’t dispute is the utterly absorbing and intense nature of a thrilling performance. (Mark Fisher) C Soco, 0845 260 1234, until 21 Aug, times vary, £7.50–£9.50 (£6.50–£8.50).

The action of Dennis Kelly’s thriller takes place in a nuclear shelter in the aftermath of an explosion, but the play’s politics are of the personal rather than global kind. The two-hander opens immediately following the atrocity. Louise (Helen Darbyshire) is initially grateful to Mark (Tony McKeever) for having rescued her, but seems suspicious. The two colleagues have never been friends as such: Louise is popular and attractive while Mark is nice enough but a bit on the intense side. Gradually Mark’s insecurities bubble over and his

role shifts from protector to captor, rationing Louise’s food and chaining her up. While sympathetic actor McKeever struggles to make Mark sinister as well as pathetic, Darbyshire really rings the changes as Louise’s situation gets more desperate. There’s something a little lopsided in the tone of the production, however. Not enough is made of the absurdity of the situation, with the result that some of the humour in the script gets lost. The piece is frequently gripping, though, director Emma Faulkner carefully building the tension of the power game being played out in the shelter. (Allan Radcliffe) Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, until 28 Aug, 1.50pm, £9–£10 (£8–£9).