Five for Daphne

Last year, Daphne and I were the coolest editorial team on The Fringe. We had help from Mark Harding, I guess, but The Shimmy Skinny was embodied by the pair of us, looking so similar, stomping about and arguing about the art. This year, you are in Cyprus and I miss you. But you'd get a kick from these shows.

I blew your mind by sending you to Turandot by Polish mavericks NeTTheatre. They are rocking Summerhall, but I have talked about them too much for one week: instead, let's go with one of my favourite books, now adapted for the stage. Varieties of Religious Experience might have something to do with a study that tried to categorise different mystical states, but comedian Adam Strauss has translated it into an hour that celebrates the potential of drugs.

Apparently, all the stories he tells are true, from falling in love with a PhD student to hanging out with the chemical underground. Inspired by the use of mushrooms as a treatment for OCD, Strauss wants to share his psychedelic wisdom.

The Royal Mile Tavern, 4 -25 August @ 6.10pm, Free

You remember that night we went to the overlong cabaret at the Sapphire Rooms last year, and how uncomfortable I was after the show ended? This year, there is a site-specific performance piece in the lap dancing club. It's like they copied that fictional review I wrote one time.

I had the poor lad from Cathartic Connections on the Radio Show yesterday, and gave him such a hard time about the venue, I felt guilty. But he did well: they justified the location by the content of Gob Shop, and he came across as appropriately ambivalent about the way that lap dancing has a presence in contemporary society.
Cathartic Connections are a young company, based in Glasgow and are devising their own pieces, using their skills. It happens that one of them has striptease skills, yet this insist that they are trying to break down the stereotypes. The whole sounds dark rather than decadent, and might answer some of the questions we had about the Sapphire's usual order of business.

The Sapphire Rooms, 7 -25 August

Next two from Dance Base: Curious Seed are back, this time they are The Woman Who Wants to be Funny. I've been shouting about this one ever since I saw the preview in Tramway, and now it is hooked up with A Corpo Libero - a show which, according to Lorna Irvine's Skinny review, gives new meaning to the phrase "bingo wings". It's Luke and Chris together again - they've been working together since the NTS introduced them - but they are also doing a three hour improvisation session on Tuesday. It's free and you'll get to dance along to Luke's magical musical, throw some shapes and watch me sit in the corner doing a live blog. Beat that!

Dance Base, 14 August @ 1pm

Remember the rows we had over hip-hop, and how you scored that interview with Flawless? You remember them - they were the big dance show last year. And you became their pal (and East End Cabaret... everybody loved you. I guess it made up for me being grumpy and sulky). Countryboy's Struggle is my hip hop theatre choice for you: a one man show that's all about the rap, and a tale of a boy from Cornwall trying to make it in London. That's a big like you coming from Cyprus to Glasgow, isn't it?

Anyhow, Countryboy himself tells the whole thing, through the medium of the rhyming couplet (mostly), throws a few freestyles and learns that perhaps the whole community thing isn't so great after all. Writer and performer Maxwell Golden is all over the raps, he worked with the Mighty Jonzi D and I reckon that hip hop theatre is the one thing that the UK gave back to the culture. Oh, apart from grime.

Golden has been touring the gig round the country, old church halls, regional theatres, so he's got the old story-telling skills off pat. It's not just about the rapping, there's compassion hidden behind the fronting.

He did a special video so you could see it, too. 

Pleasance Courtyard, 10-17 August @ 2.35pm 

Last choice - but there is so much you love. I am missing your company and this blog - and all the fun of the Fringe hardly makes up for it...

One more from Dance Base. Smallpetitklein did part of Within This Dust last year - the bit where Tom Pritchard fleshed out the truth behind Richard Drew's picture of the Falling Man from the Twin Towers. This version is longer, has Pritchard, a duet, and has had audiences sat in compelled, moved silence. As we so often said, dance expresses the emotions that transcend language.

Dance Base, 7 -19 August @ 6.30pm