Daughters of Lot, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012

Answers by:
Alexis Roblan
Playwright/Producer - 
Synaptic Nerve Coordinator - Brain Melt Consortium

I was very enthusiastic about the burlesque revival about three years ago - right up until I saw the Wau Wau Sisters at the Fringe. Not only were they brilliant, they seemed to remind me that most burlesque had degenerated into ironic striptease and lacked the energy or verve that it was supposed to embody. In your press release, you explicitly mention feminism and have an interesting angle on gender politics. But can burlesque be rescued from the sort of shows it has become - tassels and male stand up comedians re-enforcing stereotypes?

One of the initial inspirations for Daughters of Lot was an interview I saw with Robyn Antin, founder of the Pussycat Dolls, in which she claimed that they were a feminist group. It was the sort of statement that made me, a young woman in my 20s who’d always considered myself a “feminist,” ask: “What does that word mean to someone like that? What does it mean to any of us at this point?”

Certain forms of burlesque can empower, and certain forms can do the exact opposite – and yet western culture has somehow begun to accept the word “burlesque” as a synonym for funsexual empowerment, as something which can do no wrong (unless you’re a prude). I set out to write a direct critique of the type of Girl Power “feminism” that continues to measure women by the exact standards our mothers and grandmothers fought against, and call it empowerment because “we’re doing it to ourselves.” 

Daughters takes the form of a burlesque show both because of what burlesque really can offer (fantastic theatricality, engagement with the audience, humor, and yes, titillation), and as a means of criticizing the cultural messages that young women receive about their own power and sexuality when “burlesque” groups like the Pussycat Dolls become our symbols of female empowerment. My ideal theatre is one that mixes raw emotion and socio-political anger with a healthy dose of humor and spectacle, and I think the best burlesque performance really has the potential to embody that. And theatre could do well with an infusion of that “energy and verve” that great burlesque brings with it.

While I acknowledge that sexuality can be an interesting tactic on stage, it seems to be used to titillate rather than provoke. is it possible to avoid this?

If you’re able to catch Daughters of Lot, I think you’ll have your answer. There’s no question that we use sexuality to titillate, but that wouldn’t be worthwhile if it weren’t provocative as well. I think my director, Rachel Kerry, is really talented at finding that balance. 

As a writer, I’m incredibly interested in sex and sexuality. It’s such a fantastic window into the psychology of both individuals and societies – and even the suggestion of different kinds of sex can draw almost immediate physiological responses, both positive and negative. I think you avoid using sex as a merely “titillating” tool when you make the sexual situations provocative – something that’s not that difficult if it’s what you’re actually interested in.

Now the Bible - - I am interested in how theology seems to be reduced to a branch of theatre studies these days... where does the name come from and how do we get to Bible burlesque?

Old Testament stories are bizarre and wonderful, and I personally think they deserve more play in secular society. As a storyteller and lapsed Catholic, I find myself going back to them a lot for inspiration. Daughters of Lot starts off with a burlesque retelling of the Sodom and Gomorrah story—not too much of a stretch since even those of us who know nothing about the Bible probably know that this story involves lots of sin and, well, sodomy. But it also seemed to me like a really appropriate starting place for a conversation about female sexual agency. In the story, Lot is the only righteous man in Sodom, and he has two virgin daughters. 

The daughters don’t have names, their father offers them to be raped by strangers at one point in order to protect his house guests, and by the end of the story, they end up getting their dad drunk and basically raping him in order to repopulate the earth. It’s interesting how the Bible seems to insinuate that incest was the correct course of action in this case, but simultaneously absolves Lot, the righteous Man, from any responsibility for it—just in case we still find it icky. I wanted to track the psychology of Lot’s daughters in that story, and I also wanted to ask: if this were a modern story, would it play out in the same way? Would the motivations be the same? So the play follows Lot’s daughters as they learn about modern men and women from the burlesque dancers, resulting in something that I think is really entertaining, funny, and sexy, but also disturbing, provocative, and possibly tragic.

Five Stars, Four Stars, Three Stars, Two Stars, One Star, Lift Off

Over on Facebook, there is a group dedicated to reconsidering the role of star ratings on reviews. It was born during the Fringe, and features one of the most well-mannered discussions that I have ever read on the internet: professional critics, performers and interested parties presenting their opinions in a courteous and rational way: insight and intelligence grace the posts, and while consensus is absent, mutual respect ad attention is prominent.

Aside from remarking that this might demonstrate the possibility that internet chat need not descend into flame wars - if any group are unlikely to agree on fundamentals, it is critics - I am heartened by the public debate on the role of the review. However, I am not putting my comments on there, because I think that star ratings are a distraction from the more important questions surrounding the profession.

Besides, I don't want to look like an idiot, and most of the posters are far more informed than I am.

The main problems surrounding star ratings is that they are not consistent (five stars from one magazine is not the same as from another) and their use as publicity tools by the companies. Neither of these problems are easy to solve, but for the former, the same problem would apply whatever changes were made: the words "good" and "bad" mean different things, depending on who says them, and the essential subjectivity of any rating system can never be resolved. As for the latter, the problem can only be solved by the companies themselves: the requests for critics to just stop using stars, or the Fringe to monitor their use only defer responsibility.


In any case, there have been anecdotal signs that star ratings don't influence audiences too much any more.

What does emerge from the discussion is an anxiety about the role of the critic, and what reviews "ought" to do. There's the old favourites - less opinion, more description - a few appeals for longer, more detailed reviews, a decrying of those magazines that only turn up at the Fringe and their inexperienced writers. I am sure someone will make the appeal for "a single paper of record" fairly soon.

Now that on-line reviewing has become acceptable, any attempt to determine one single definition of criticism is probably impossible: every critic has their own approach, and this diversity is to be welcomed. In the past, I have been disrespectful of younger critics, students up for the Fringe. I now accept that their voices are not only valid, they are likely to speak to readers who are likely to be bored by my mixture of pretension, crude humour and insistence on seriousness. I have often been irritated by reviews, only to realise they were speaking to a different audience, and that I was being an old fart.

The review - which I expand to include any critical writing - does not have any duty to the company. It  is not there to encourage or discourage audiences, or provide cheap dramaturgy. These things may be by-products of the process. The review isn't even necessarily there to continue the conversation begun by the art work, although I write as if it is. The purpose of a review, or preview, or feature, or editorial, is to be an entertaining and informative piece of writing.

The mixture of "entertainment" and "information" will vary depending on the projected readership.

Taking advantage of the difficulties involved in defining art, I am going to say that criticism is an art form: it's like poetry, only has a distinctive set of conventions. In the same way that it is pretty insulting to expect artists to conform their work according to the use it has to other artists, the idea that criticism has any other function than expressing itself is unacceptable. There is no question that criticism engages in a dialogue with the work that it explores, and the audience, and the broader community: that does not prevent it from being art.

I'll leave it there, hoping that readers will be interested enough to deconstruct or argue against my conclusions.

Cabaret Time!

When George Bernard Shaw pronounced that "to kindle art to the whitest heat, there must always be some fanaticism behind it," he had been watching musical hall sketches. This makes me feel better about the post that I shall eventually write that claims Dusty Limits is more important than Shakespeare, and connects me to a tradition of theatre critics - GBS would later become an issue-obsessed playwright but started as a critic - who are fascinated by cabaret's potential.

Despite getting its own section in the Fringe programme only two years ago, cabaret is a well established rival to theatre and comedy in the battle for star ratings during the August bun fight. I am not convinced that the variety bills that are often the foundation of any consideration of cabaret have advanced much since 2010, when Vive Le Cabaret set up in the palatial Ghillie Dhu and celebrated its new found popularity and roots in the vintage fashion scene: it's too easy to see the same acts turning up at different nights, or comedians dominating the bill with extracts from their solo shows.

What the cabaret section has done is demonstrate that acts can stretch their material over an hour, giving room to their persona's development and forging an identity as coherent as any stand ups or, in the best cases, focussing their sketches and songs into a potent theatrical experience. Dusty Limits remains far ahead here, but Jonny Woo, best known for getting more facial expression out of a gorilla mask than most actors get out of their face, and Bourgeois and Maurice prove that the five minute slot is not necessarily the optimum for a cabaret routine.

Bourgeois and Maurice don't make it easy for the critic attempting to analyse them within a socio-political frame-work: calling the show Sugartits and explicitly stating in a recent interview that their songs weren't very political, they try to pretend that their intentions are more towards the party than the party line. Fortunately, Sugartits belies their modesty. While they might lack the concentration of Dusty Limits, they have a sardonic take on both Europe's financial woes and the British desire not to get involved and their smack down of Facebook ("makes me feel shit, sometimes") is nicely posed on the precipice between virtual confidence and the grim meat-hook realities of existence.

Bourgeois' effete, prancing personality revels in ignorance - he tries to understand cabaret by watching some film whose name he forgets, and concludes it is about funny haircuts, an American and Nazis - skewering the lazy acceptance of pre-consumed opinion and London's provincialism with glee. A supposedly improvised number satirises the ubiquity of high street chainstores, and mocks a Britain that is slowly losing regional identity: his banter with Maurice takes swipes at observational comedy and elegantly undercuts cabaret's own obsession with glamour.

The elephant in the room with cabaret is always Weimar. Thanks to its association with anti-Nazi politics in the 1930s, Weimar Cabaret is pretty much the gold standard of the form. Never mind that GBS was elated by catching Yvette Guibert, who sung songs that would not be out of place in the repertoire of cheeky Des O'Connor (the one who wrote Cheap Shite White Wine, not the perma-tanned TV host); mentioning Weimar brings out the serious.

And so Sugartits can take its place in that heritage. It shares the ambiguous sexuality, the disrespect for authority, the barbed comments from a character who goes on to undermine their own authority. The slippery nature of cabaret, in which everything is offered to burlesque parody and the fool speaks truth and idiocy in equal measure, lends it a carnivalesque splendour which might explain why the grander variety shows, like La Clique Royale incorporate circus inspired acrobatics.

There is also an indigenous British tradition of cabaret. This ended up in the variety show, which paraded its rotting corpse on British television until the 1990s. Its bad name comes from the preponderance of shit British comics who milked it and its inevitable association with light entertainment. Stripped of politics and counter-cultural energy, it descended into a vapid endorsement of establishment values and the threatening sexuality was soft-soaped into cheap showgirl vacuity.

It's odd to see East End Cabaret draw on this more mainstream tradition. Despite having a hermaphrodite on the piano, their charming and witty set is relatively mainstream, so long as songs about sex with corpses or sexual jealousy are taken as humour rather than barbed comments on human relationships. After last year, when their Free Fringe show was being touted by the Total Theatre Awards as a display of bravura, their talent appears to be directed towards easier targets.

The chemistry between Bernadette Byrne and Victor Victoria is evident and their appropriation of popular music, culture and song is sharp: Victor Victoria has a knack for comic parodies of almost familiar tunes and Byrne is a voracious sexual predator. But for a duo who once tried to seduce audiences into bed with the red, the political punch is missing. Victor Victoria is cast more as the cute side-kick, even when stalking Byrne or dismissing a rival's attractiveness.

Notoriously Kinky is a strong show, but panders too much to the audience: it is rarely bracing and even the climax, a medley of the songs they did not have time to include, is more about the wit and skill than the cutting comment. Of course, this assessment is based on insisting that cabaret must have a deeper purpose, the critic's vanity.

Meet the Vile Top Five

Finally, I am going to leave my cell and see some shows. In half an hour, I shall be out, and you might be able to catch me in person at some of the following shows. For the price of a coffee, I shall pick a show that you are guaranteed to enjoy - if not, you can write a comment at the bottom of this blog. For a meal, I'll timetable the rest of the festival for you. 

So - look out for the beard, the melancholic smile and the lively laughter of a man who has been cooped up in a recording studio for the best part of two weeks...

Before he finishes, I want to see Dusty Limits. He is hosting the Bongo Club, and his show Post-Mortem ends tomorrow. It's free, he's one of the true neo-cabaret greats, and his show is at the Counting House Ballroom. Rather than sing his praises  - I have to be out in ten minutes and thinking this stuff up is hard work - I'll let him do it for himself.

"The show incorporates a songs from each of Dusty's previous solo shows, plus some brand new offerings, strung together by implausible reminiscences and barbed observations. No gimmicks, no tricks. Just a body, a voice, and a slightly-addled mind."

Counting House, until 19 August

After that, it's Dance Base for Wendy Houston. I am going for the solo shows today... here's a legend of the Performance Art scene (a tag I am sure does not justice to her range) in a rare Fringe appearance. Again, it finishes tomorrow, and has a good crack against ageism. It is boosted by Donald Hutera, one of my favourite writers on dance and the whole awkward squad of artists I so adore.

Dance Base, until 19 August

Jonny Woo claims that partying with him can seriously improve your social life. I have a story about a Fringe a  few years ago that has nothing to do with Woo but involves an angry bar owner, a male burlesque act and a late night chase that explains why I am up for Wonder Woo-Man. He has apparently shaved his beard since the show started, and now looks more like Mary Portas (I mistook him for her when he arrived for a radio interview, even though I don't know who she is). 

Woo's way with drag has much in common with comedy and the edgier work I love: cabaret may be the bucket for work that fits neither theatre not dance nor music nor stand up, but it has given a space for the maverick Tranny Superstar to reach out his love to the Fringe.

Assembly, 1 -26 August

I accept that The Shit needs to be thrown: it's Italian, it is angry, it is late night at Summerhall. A monologue that is howled and screamed, it rejects musicality for sheer expression of rage, a bellow of disgust at the devouring of the body by forces human and beyond. How can I miss it?

Summerhall, 7 -26 August

And my last choice - my chance meeting with a reader of this blog, who feels sufficiently inspired by my words to offer me a drink. I'll stick to the coffee, but will reveal some of the backstage anecdotes that even Criticulous won't share...

Top Five for 85a

For eleven months of the year, I broadcast and write from Glasgow. This has caused me to be a terrible West Coast chauvinist, loudly proclaiming that the heart of Scotland's creative culture is on the left hand side of the map.

One group that have enabled my opinion are 85a - they might have roots in the visual arts, but water them with enthusiasms for live music, esoteric cinema and immersive performance. Their event at the Glasgow Film Festival converted The Glue Factory into an inverted multiplex, scattering the films of Svankmejer between installations, performances and shoved inside industrial sized boilers. They followed this up with Chernozem, their expressionist movie that included live action episodes, monstrous machines and a handy reminder of the link between industrialisation and totalitarianism.

Apparently, members of the Collective are coming to the Fringe tomorrow. I don't want them to be swept away by the horror of Edinburgh's mass appeal, so I am picking out anything that looks like it will chime with their aesthetic.

Chernozem made it clear that the Collective are tough enough to handle David Harrower's Blackbird, which looks unflinchingly at the issue of child abuse. By shifting sympathy between the characters, and refusing to follow an easy, judgemental line - although this is no apologist's piece - Harrower builds the intimate two hander to a moment of incredible intensity in the last few moments.

Originally, it was staged at the International Festival: now it is coming to the Fringe in a site specific production. Admittedly, it's in some offices, which is where the play is set, and I doubt they'll be going as far as 85a do. It's Harrower's characterisation of the couple that chills, and whether it is acceptable to describe this as a sort of love story opens up an entire can of critical worms about how theatre represents and persuades.

Edinburgh Training and Conference Centre, 17- 24 August


I'll get round to going on and on about I am Son  in a full post later, but I'd be remiss not to shout it out for 85a. They are three angry Italians, who take their cues from disillusion and distraction. Extracts from a poem that castigates the failures of the 1968 revolution soundtrack a vicious series of vignettes that lampoon fashion, nationalism, romance and alienation: high energy action from start to finish, it allies dance discipline, live art irreverence and a tiny taste of clowning (red noses are present, sardonic and tragic). Proving that dance can not only be political, it can be more precise than a script, I am Son is a refreshing burst of rage, controlled yet potent, when entertainment is being touted as the arts' answer to the idiocy of Our Friends in Westminster.

Dance Base, 16 - 25 August

Given how 85a feel about Eastern Europe - there is a strong Soviet Realism to much of their iconography - I'm calling up Future Tales (Sierakowski). It's rough and ready punk theatre, laughing at the vanity of a particular Polish leftist to make broad points about the failure of the Marxist cohorts to engage with society in a meaningful way. The music is loud, the performances direct, the bit about WWIII is funny and intense, and komuna//warszawa used to be anarchists. They decided that this wasn't working, so evolved into the closest thing Poland has to 85a.

Where 85a build huge sculptures, komuna are more likely to have suggestive mouse suits, but both gangs have a loud of the DIY, the punk, and the found space as a venue. Their dialectic against dialectic is superb, cabaret in style, their attitude harsh and their humour dark. Wait for the three way between the future Marxist dictator, the Christian and the Muslim churches. Apparently, it's all about the size...

Summerhall, 15- 26 August

I usually try to push my luck in the Top Fives, and roam around the venues, catching as much as I can... I am keen to mention  Zoo venues, because they have physical theatre and held a line against the encroachment of comedy... and Greenside is worth a visit both for its commitment to dance and the rather lovely gardens. But frankly, if I don't suggest the Polish work (any of it at Summerhall) and the Russians, I am not reflecting what I know about 85a.

Mr Carmen by Akhe: don't be fooled by the rash of stars it has been getting. This is not a strong theatrical production. Michael Cox from Across the Arts endearingly compared it to a live action Tom and Jerry cartoon: it stars the two Akhe guys as classic Russian style clowns (that is, like they have come out of a production of Waiting for Godot) arguing about who's the best out of the famous romantic opera. 85a would be interested in the way that these "theatre engineers" foreground the act of building a set and their ingenuity in staging: the runway that they set up around them is charming and funny, and their antics behind it can raise a wry smile.

For sheer action, I would still go for Mefisto Waltz, same venue, same austere Russian atmosphere but with the bonuses of a fairly coherent narrative and emotive choreography, but Akhe is a curiosity. It might even guide your future approaches to installation based theatre.

Assembly Roxy, 3 -27 August

 Finally, it would be wrong of me not to mention Planet Lem. Of course, if you don't like the idea of a roller-skating robot, an astronaut arguing with the author, who has ended up a bit like God, only on a video screen, a rebellion against luxury and a warning against the dangers of relying on technology, I am sure there is some comedy around the corner.

This is in the Quad, so it is a massive spectacle. It is based on the writings of a great science fiction author from behind the Iron Curtain - apparently, he heard rumours about American sci-fi and wrote his own, without having actually read any. That he came up with Solaris might be astonishing given the circumstances, or the result of not having wasted time reading the pap that makes up much of the genre (like any genre, kit  has its share of cliché and dilettantes).

Planet Lem feels like a brief episode in a larger story, imaging a future universe, inhabited by millions of species across thousands of world, policed by travellers who bring their ideas to civilisations not yet ready to accept them.There is a cool spaceship bit, too.

Quad, 18- 26 August

MEITHEALand Worst Case Scenario

The double album is a notoriously hard beast to appreciate: with four sides of vinyl to cover, it is difficult for any artist to maintain any initial vitality and the irony of an art form that begun in the sprightly single (three minutes of buoyant youthful energy) stretching over a length more suited to the weighty themes of opera is often enough for the critic to reject the project out of hand.

The dance double bill battles with the opposite problem. Choreography evolved, in both western and eastern traditions, into a long form: the use of specific gestural languages to fill in plot (a feature of both Bharatanatyam and ballet), the set formats of pas de deux or solo, the emphasis on large companies and spectacular costume all evolved in the context of an art form that would fill an evening. Yet the pairing of max.IMEALLdance and Taciturn Dance Company suggests that the shorter the piece, the sweeter the impact.


Billed together under Dance Base's overall theme of a journey around the world, this is not an attempt to contrast Scottish (Max.IMEALLdance) and English (Taciturn) approaches. Rather, they are connected by the youth of dancers and choreographers, the quirky use of music - ranging from Alvo Noto to Henry Mancini, this is a fine example of post-modern eclecticism, where high and low art, the populist and the experimental rub shoulders and find community - and a dedication to staking out the edges of dance and adapting the past's techniques to contemporary dynamism.

Perhaps Max.IMEALLdance's MEITHEAL could be read as a comment on the mechanisation of the dance process. The emphasis is on precision partnering, patterns revealed through the group's collective movement and the sparse, yet imaginative use of lighting that draws attention to the dancers. The focus and seriousness of the company ensures that the intention to represent the way that the group functions as a unit prevents any sense of the individual dominating the whole: the choreography responds more to the discipline of the corps than the spectacular show of the soloist.

Worst Case Scenario, however, emphasises the individuality of the three Taciturn members. They trawl through a series of disasters, explaining, in dance, how to best survive them. It's witty, playful, each episode a  brief burlesque of the logical advice given to those caught without a parachute or about to punched in the guts. The three women come across as likeable characters - when they work together, perhaps to attempt a saving hold, they never meld into a unit, like Max.imeall, but seem to resist the lure of merging by emphasising their individual physicality and identity.

If this double bill is more than a pleasure, or a linking between English and Scottish dance (I would call it contemporary but since Fringe 2011, the phrase has been rendered meaningless), it reveals current experiments within UK dance. Both are easy to define by critical jargon, although this would be far from a total explanation of their works and process: Max.IMEALLdance are a collective, disciplined unit emerging from the technical schools of dance discipline, while Taciturn are Dance Theatre with a dash of comedy and Live Art.

Of course, that last sentence says nothing about the actual pieces. It simply signifies that there is an interest in these works for certain audiences. Like star ratings, it flatters to deceive, an attempt by the critic to hide the fundamental problem of assessing dance (is it a totality that cannot be deconstructed into words without losing its essential meaning or the experience). For the record, both pieces give pleasure: MEITHEAL for the quality of dance, Worst Case Scenario for the personality and style.

The rock double album, however, remains a really bad idea, for the most part.

Dance Base, 16- 25 August 2012

Bad Memories Fringe Shows

 I know that critics and theatre-makers are natural enemies, but I am taking this personally. There's a bunch of shows at the Fringe that are intent on reminding me of my past, dragging up memories of terrible pain from my years as a Latin teacher. I mean, aren't drug dealers a far more fertile subject. Must we be subjected to educational trauma?

Dickson Telfer is in my bad books, and I don't care if Alan Bissett, who has written some of the best plays of the last few years, thinks he is great. Secret Weapons is about the class from hell, the one that makes the teacher throw it all away and join the critical circus. Mind you, the plot does involve the teacher getting some tricks to fight back, so maybe I'll get some vicarious satisfaction...

Gryphon Venues at Point Hotel, 22-26 August 2012

Then other memories come to mind. It's my first ever lesson and I shout. I shout a great deal. And when I am finished the class begin a slow hand clap. So along comes a company and call themselves Slow Clap, has a successful show in 2011 - The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic, a rare example of dance working alongside comedy - and returns to tell the Truth.

The Slow Clap style is as suited to the Fringe as I was not suited to the Latin classroom. Humorously blending movement and storytelling, they exaggerate the character to get at the story, racing to a conclusion at a fair clip.

Underbelly, 2 -26 August

Vulnerable (Top Five)

Today, I am feeling vulnerable. Whenever I leave the office, I am surrounded by posters that are covered in stars. They feel like bullets, forged by critics but used by companies to shoot each other in the war for resources. I don't like it, I don't like reducing a critical opinion to a quotation, let alone the blank, unblinking sequence of stars. I'm a pretentious type, and I like to think that criticism is an art defined in much the same way as poetry. When when the precious words that a critic has forged into linked chains of meaning are deconstructed down to a signifier of cultural worth, I am unhappy.

How can I respond? How about a top five for feeling vulnerable? Works for me...

"This piece combines puppetry with physical theatre, so you've got human actors playing opposite puppet creatures," says Ailin Conant about her show The Fantasist. "I guess it's like some kind of Jacques Lecoq / Jim Henson mash-up."

The Fantasist appropriately expresses the bi-polar experience by juxtaposing two styles of theatre: modestly, Conant insists that the puppetry is something new for her: " I kind of fantasize about the conversations that "real" puppet companies might have in the rehearsal room: What puppeteer costuming will serve this puppet best?  An understated cap or full Bunraku black hoods?  In our rehearsal you're much more likely to hear something like, Is this hood-thingie keeping the focus off my face, or do I just look like a wanker?"

Fortunately, this endearing self-deprecation is backed up by a ken theatricality and an emphasis on using the approaches as means to end - her description of the mash up might suggest what is going on, but it does not prepare the audience for what has been touted by a Skinny reviewer as a highlight of the festival.

Underbelly, 3- 27 August

The critical world is going mad about The Shit, a late night burst of Italian outrage and disgust. Since it has a naked women ranting and howling and screaming - the words aren't so much about their meaning but the sound they make as they scatter and shatter and settle - this is more about vulnerability being portrayed on stage. I can't help but be reminded of some of Kathleen Hanna's (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) more challenging moments, and there is a huge poster of performer Silvia Gallerano outside Summerhall that is bracing and frightening in equal manner.

Summerhall, 3 -27 August

Songs of Lear is another Summerhall special, and another entry from Poland. It's surprising to see a company associated with a visceral theatre (Song of the Goat are another one of those central European companies who give equal weight to body and word) present what appears to be a choral concert: each episode is introduced by the director - he explains that this is not a version of Shakespeare's Lear but uses the text as "a landscape" and each scene is best read as a portrait - and the company begin in their sunday best black.

Despite the formal beginning, the forces within the text (the ingratitude of the child, the emotional violence of the father, the threat of insanity and the truth spoken as folly) gradually dominate the performers: snatches of esoteric instrumentation, invocations of Coptic song, stamping feet and an incredible, unexpected drum solo interpret the familiar story and tease out the despair and struggle that is lost in versions that rely on text and old school tricks like mere acting. 

By avoiding too much plot, the characters become the focus. Cordelia's lament gives depth to a character that Shakespeare couldn't be bothered to flesh out (she's a dull paragon of honesty in the original; here, she is the victim of her father's immaturity with a series of disappointments reaching back into childhood): Gloucester is less the doddering idiot than a thoughtful courtier, sensing the approaching storms. Lear himself is spoilt, absurd and, ultimately tragic.

The production consciously avoids much of traditional theatricality. The lighting is simply a wash of one colour, the costumes are formal wear, the only props are instruments, the script is broken apart and appears only as fragments within songs. Yet somehow Song of the Goat achieve that beautiful connection with the audience: the standing ovation is deserved and proves that total theatre - using all the tricks - is not necessarily the only way to fulfil the potential of the stage.

Summerhall, 13 - 25 August

Perhaps my vulnerability was caused by seeing Dusty Limit's show last night. When he proudly announced that he is dead inside, my own cavernous interior echoed his words. The Girl with No Heart seems to plug into my own concerns, yet when Sparkle and Dark decorated their venue with origami cranes, the effect was more one of beauty than misery.

The Girl goes back to the nuclear assault on Hiroshima- itself a reminder of how ultimately vulnerable the entire human species is - and has a staging made entirely of paper. Despite the immensity of the subject, they tell a parable rather than a tragedy, and locate the power to build or destroy in the imagination and emotions of a young child.

The paper cranes came about because there is a Japanese legend that to fold a thousand cranes will lead to the fulfilment of a wish. Let's hope the company don't waste that wish on longing for a five star rating...

Bedlam, 3 -24 August

Five Star Shows

Once upon a time, the quest was to find that Five Star Fringe show. Yesterday, an overheard conversation:

"It's a five star show... please take a flyer."
"Everything has five stars this year. That doesn't mean anything."

Be clear: it's over. The fascination with stars is the product of a community caught in a bubble. Star ratings only have meaning to performers and critics. Audiences no longer care.

The joy of this blog is that I never worked out a way of giving star ratings. I am going to introduce "the vile rating", which will be on an arbitrary scale, or the Fibonacci Sequence. Until I do, I am going to offer opinions and creative responses. I am going to assume that readers of this blog, if they are smart enough to be interested in the work I write about (I mean, there's not much observational comedy here), are smart enough to be able to understand how a review works and go some way towards figuring out whether they's agree with me.

In the meantime, here are five shows with a tangential relationship to the word, concept or object "star".

Miriam Margoyles is a TV star, but also a brilliant actor. She stole the show at The Citizens Theatre last year in Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and her Dickens' Women has had The Skinny reaching for superlatives. Now she is getting on, she has become a National Treasure (as The Skinny's writer Lorna Irvine suggested), and that allows her to carry on how she pleases. This is a one person show, and she switches characters, rescues Dickens from my memories of A Level English and reinvigorates his image as a writer who could capture a character in a few deft strokes, even before he gave them a silly, all-so-meaningful name.

Dickens' Women can be enjoyed as either a contemplation on the great novelist and his gender politics, or a show case for one of Britain's great talents.

Pleasance Courtyard, 8 -25 August

Translunar Paradise is more about the moon than the stars, but this is its third year at the Fringe and it has been instrumental in the growth of the  Lecoq style's popularity in Edinburgh. They use masks like they were puppets and director George Mann was inspired by both his personal experiences with grief and more literary sources.

"It was reading WB Yeats’ The Tower that hardened my resolve to actually write this play," he says. "‘That being dead, we rise, dream and so create, Translunar Paradise’. Yeats’ character, an old man embittered by loss, was the man I wanted to put on stage. I wanted to take this character (and in a way, myself) on a journey that would help him to look positively at life after death." After my fascination with suicide earlier this month, it's probably a good idea for me to see this.

Pleasance Dome, 4 -27 August

George Formby was once the highest paid film star in the UK: his cheeky chappie persona took the magic of the musical hall to the magic of the movies. All players of the tiny little four string special, from Tricity Vogue to that Ukulele Orchestra which turns up on the BBC Culture Show every six months owe Formby, although they pretend not to care. Luckily, his fans have a big gathering in Blackpool every year, and that comedian who likes football did a documentary about him.

This Formby is a one man star by a former star of Matthew Bourne's very important dance company: it's no surprise that when he does a tap dance half way through (he's enacting Formby's courtship of his future wife), he's spectacular. He's got the Formby strumming syncopation off pat, too - it's surprising how jazzy the northern japester could get. There is a lovely scene where his wife teaches him how to play off the beats, and Formby's sweetness is stamped through the middle of the performance, rather like the words in... oh, sorry... a piece of Blackpool rock.

Assembly, 3- 27 August

The company are called Drawn to Stars, so they win the next place on this list. In fact, their press release turned up as I was writing this. So, good work by somebody at their office.

The release starts off badly, because it mentions star ratings, but warms me up by the end when actor Aimee Corbett admits that she is a performance artist and went to Dartington, the sadly amalgamated college which was an English nursery for all sorts of interesting characters - Scottish Live Art Super Group Fish and Game began their careers as students there.

It gets even better when they explain that Now.Here is all about the two hundred mile hobby horse ride made by Corbett and Vanessa Hammick. They picked up a bunch of stories on the way and trained them into a theatrical celebration of "boundaries and borders, long time lovers, gun owners, grannies and angry young men." 

It gets to grips with the English character - appropriately enough in this year when patriotism has made a bit of a comeback. The press release claims it is "the British character" but, frankly, they need to watch their use of that word in Scotland.

Three Sisters, 3 -26 August

My final choice has the potential to be a five star show, at least to the Vile way of thing. LAN-T003 have come from Japan, Jishin uses choreography to explore the 2011 Japanese earthquake: an ephemeral art form to examine a natural force that embodies the Buddhist idea of impermanence in a physical, immersive and immense burst? I think I'll go and see that tonight, just before I take the stage as Criticulous at Summerhall...

Zoo Southside, 3 -27 August

Enter the Woo Tang

The desire for experimentation has been a driving force behind much great art: when Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue, his need to escape the tyranny of the stereotype inspired him to stretch the traditional blues sound over different time signatures: a similar anxiety encouraged Captain Beefheart to collide free jazz and the growl of psychedelic rock. The demands of form and the needle of ambition have often combined to push music and dance into startling new territories: it is only through the absolute awareness of a heritage that innovation is genuinely possible.

The selections in Jonny Woo's latest release speak of Woo's personal engagement with the history of drag: like Miles Davis, he has wallowed in his medium's traditions and, in flashes, can embody the best of the past. When he adorns himself in feathers and speaks of his time in NYC, his face pokes out of the decadent,  divine glamour and his voice conjures the painfully bored and eroded feeling of the morning after the week before. "Petrol and gin taste the same at this time in the morning..."

Yet it is in those numbers when he applies the drag blueprint to more ambitious settings - a celebration of the kitsch TV series Wonder Woman providing a frame for a fantasy on the transvestite Olympics, or a trip down memory lane and Rochester High Street to remember his disillusioned youth - that it become clear why members of serious Russian mime acts are watching this British artist who is often compared to Kenny Everett.

The comparisons to the late, great comedy broadcaster are inappropriate: it happens that Woo is sometimes a bearded men who does drag, and Everett's legacy, which ought to be in the imaginative use of radio, has been reduced to his characters on a TV sketch show. Woo has peers - Dusty Limits, although very different in intention, shares an interest in how age changes a performer's attitude - and ancestors: he jokes about British TV poet Pam Ayres, but her cheeky poetry is reflected in his persona as well as his parody; the flamboyant drag acts of the 1970s, although their glitz makes them the commercial, neutered version to Woo's taut, savage humour.

Woo is moving drag forward, shedding the self-conscious limitations of an art that has been preoccupied with the need to amuse. Perhaps that was a necessary period for drag, the anxiety about social status reflected in acts that pandered rather than provoked. Woo is always entertaining, although his celebration of the self is rooted in an undercurrent of serious formal and emotional experimentation.

Assembly Room. 3 -27 August

Jumping Some One Else's Train...

We may have shared the darkness together, but this does mean that we are in love. It does not mean that we were made only for pleasure, nor does your voice in my ear assume intimacy. I may trust life less than theatre, but I do not ascribe equal reality to happenings in both spaces.

I am wearing your headphones and sometimes I am watching you. You reveal a memory that may or may not be true. You are busy, you are busy playing the game of boundaries. By resisting the conventional in performance, you may be challenging the perception of the form. This does not give you permission to challenge the nature of the real.

I think I understand your questions. I think that you are recollecting the nature of being incarnate. Against this, you claim that "outside, we are dying of boredom." I am not. I am dying of  fear, of hunger, of sleeplessness and the wrong chemicals entering my body. The theoretical space, virtuality, the metaphysical planes. These are not deadly. These are not real. They are fictions and while they have their own orders of coherence, but are not equal to brute physical existence.

Is it escape that you are requesting? Is it a call to arms, to the sensual touch, the remembrance of the rewards given by desire consummated?

Can I decode your meaning, or is any assumption I make privileging a particular path through your monologue. When you pull down your pants, I am not sure whether it is signifier of violence or eroticism. The single tear than runs down each cheek, painted by your mascara, could be sweat or grief. You may be prerecorded. I may be struggling with ideas of authenticity and, as you note, it is impossible to know what I am thinking as I listen to your speech.

You intrigue me. You tantalise - theatrically, I hasten to add. We sit in the dark. We listen to your voice. Your thoughts meander. It's all so dreamy. It's all so seductive and seductive to somnolence. I wonder whether you wrote these words. I wonder whether you believe your statements. I cannot assess the truth of your claims. I have no language to explicate your philosophy.

I can only reject my habitual path, the concise analysis of intent (my own faulty reading of same), followed by a few descriptive passages, the lining up of your worth against other performances of similar price, scale and intention and opportunity. You encourage the body to float free and recognise the experience that happens within. I cut the bindings of my profession and float free of the review. We may meet. Nothing ever happens twice.



Summerhall, 10 -26 August

Alienated Top Five

Ah, alienation. Once upon a time it was the Marxist explanation for why capitalism could exploit the proletariat. Now, it's a handy catch-all to describe the human condition. While I can't claim to have a complete understanding of the concept, I probably live it, so picking out five works that express the anxiety of contemporary existence ought to be a breeze.


Making the list even easier is The Stranger, an old school monologue straight from the pages of Camus' existentialist classic. Guilherme Leme is alone under the spotlight, telling the story directly and with the polished aplomb of an actor who has been a fixture on Brazilian TV throughout his career. There's no surprise twists - the hero wanders through his life, kills an Arab, gets tried, becomes a symbol of monstrosity for the local community, especially for his atheism - but Leme holds the attention and builds the sense of utter meaninglessness through his measured, nuanced delivery.


If The Stranger offers any respite from Camus' bleak vision of a reality uninhabited by the divine or even compassion, it is through Leme's style. A mixture of a bed-time story for Gaulois smoking adults and a Film Noir detective voice-over, his presence, and talent argue that meaning can exist in the sheer joy of experiencing another human revealing truths. So - perhaps the last word there goes not to alienation but art's ability to reconcile.

Summerhall, 3-25 September


A more explicitly political version of alienation is arriving at Dance Base later this week. Last time they came to the Fringe, Sanpapie got in a van, loaded it with food, and drove from Italy to Edinburgh. This time, they come fully prepared, starring an ex-footballer and ready to respond to the frustrations of living in contemporary Europe.

I am Son takes its cues from a poem that references the revolutionary generation of 1968, trying to understand what it means to be, and how our history defines our legacy. "Let's say it is a a show on the West by young Italian schizophrenics," say Marco di Stafano and Lara Guidetti (co-director and choreographer).

Seeing themselves as Western European rather than merely Italian, Sanpapie fit beautifully into the grand tradition of experimental live art and dance theatre: "the absolute masters are Pina Bausch , Marina Abramovic, Sasha Waltz, Wim Vandekeybus, Constance Macras," says Guidetti. The two art forms themselves that evolved from the twentieth century's struggle to cope with its own idiocy, shattering the traditional alienation between word and movement, idea and image to encourage an immersive, immediate engagement.

Dance Base, 16- 25 August


If setting up a bunch of shows called "the alternative Fringe" and declaring war on the big venues is any guide, Bob Slayer's pretty alienated. In person, he comes across as balanced and charismatic and his actual show sounds as if it incorporates self-deprecating wit, improvisation and a philosophical challenge to traditional concepts of stand up. Slayer would probably laugh at any pretentious attempt by me to define his work, and since one show featured his aunt wiping his bum, he'll probably be happier if I shut up.

Slayer used to be a tour manager, and his career started on stage started as the guy who would get pelted by fans of the Bloodhound Gang when they had a mid-gig fag break. His approach - half abrasive, half generous - will probably alienate some members of the audience. He's in.

The Hive, 3 -27 August


Although Marxism has managed to pretend that it is the only socialist path, there has always been a counter tradition that comes from the UK, and eschews the revolutionary for a more democratic critique of existing power structures: that what the Labour Party used to be. The world's first two handed version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists comes from a novel squarely in this strand: a team of house painters are joined by social justice enthusiast Owen, and hilarity ensues.



Hilarity in the sense of Owen's attempts to inject a social consciousness into his fellow workers, that is. Written by a bloke who has done loads of Coronation Street episodes, this version of The RTP is plugged into the warmth and wit of northern working class theatre, and comes just at that time when the Coalition Government is doing its best to - hang on, what are they up to? I mean, I see the things they do, but I can't see any logic or sense in it.

Like many of the works in this political quarter, it emphasises not the big ideas but the daily reality of working class life. While there is an argument that political theatre is best aimed at contemporary wrongs, The RTP is more than nostalgia: it is a reminder of where this nation has been, and how we got past the excesses of industrial capitalism.


Assembly George Square, 1 -27 August


Finally, I need to give some love to the Creative Martyrs. Fringe veterans, Glasgow legends, a pair of misfits who flutter between cabaret and esoteric Eastern European mime, a pleasure to watch and the inspiration for many an uncomfortable post-show conversation. This year they are going their greatest hits, which will include songs about babies being bred for the purpose of being a bank of spare parts, warnings about the secret agenda behind supermarket loyalty cards, chuckles at the end of the world and the fun parts of war that people so often forget in their rush to condemn those hard working business men in arms manufacture.

Oh, it's a comedy show. After a fashion.

Voodoo Room, 1 -27 August



But who can feel alienated in the Edinburgh sunshine? Who can feel lonely in a crowd on the Royal Mile? When every show is full, and stars are being found on every street corner? Who, I ask you, who?

It's all part of the smiling capitalists' trap, man. Say yes to alienation.

Subcity on the Fringe, part 1

A brief downtime for the Vile Blog this week - two days of the Fringe, and not a word written. Apart from my role facilitating some coverage for the Skinny, I have been locked up in a studio, at the back of the charming Summerhall venue, making radio. The usual Vile nonsense has been mixed up and made cool by the presence of my co-hosts, Greg and Niall, and we can now reveal the results of our hard work.

Episode one is now rocking the airwaves, with a storming combination of the manic, yet sweet, Bob Slayer. Tune in to hear Bob take the Fringe to task, describe intimate acts that he has performed live on stage, reminisce about his days as a tour manager for the Bloodhound Gang and champion Phil Kay, master of the apparently neurotic comedy assault.

Faced with the challenge of following Bob, we invited the Balkan Elvis and Virginia Gay to perform live. Hear the birth of rock'n'roll filtered through an Eastern European childhood (via Australia), some mild flirting with Ms Gay (who reinvents, live in the studio, Disney kitsch as a call for LBGTQ marriage), and the desperate attempts of Vile to raise a smile.

The Ruby Dolls

The Ruby Dolls are shameless magpies, taking influences from Weimar cabaret, the passion of the tango, the dry humour of Noel Coward, African folk and the frantic vitality of Jewish klezmer music.

Their Edinburgh Festival debut, Rubies in the Attic, maybe be a cabaret, but the stories are personal. The four dolls have had very different lives: Susie was in 1927’s old school And the Animals and Children Took to the Streets, Jess is one of the Old Vic’s predictions for future writing brilliance and T brings the Afrikaan rhythms.  And Jen travelled the world, doing good.

Using storytelling and song, they reveal their roots and the adventures of their ancestors, including a Russian Jewish grandfather who ended up in London, thinking it was South Africa.

“Cabaret became interesting to us because it allowed us to combine music with theatrical storytelling,” the Dolls explain. “We were inspired by the European Cabaret of the 1930s. The more we investigated, the more we realised how rebellious and political the music was. We enjoyed the intimacy of it: you could speak to an audience and bring them into the experience. Some of us were also quite taken with the red nail varnish, seamed stockings and shiny dresses!”

They continue by emphasizing that they are not just a quick vaudeville turn. “Our theatre background is extremely important. We are theatre makers and the show is composed of a combination of our theatrical influences. We are most curious about the different possibilities of storytelling and we use a combination of puppetry, comedy, physical theatre and poetry as fits the individual stories within the show. We also have an origami seagull called Reg, who squawks. Loudly."

With cabaret and vintage fashion so closely associated, the Dolls are certainly working with the grain of the genre to develop something more sophisticated. “The focus on the past was the result of our desire to create a piece of work that was simultaneously personal and universal,” they admit. “We wanted to understand the influence of our ancestors on modern identity and to inspire the audience to engage in their own stories and ask questions about their cultural inheritance. We are hoping there will be many skeletons in many closets being excavated in the wake of our month at the Festival."

“The popularity of vintage fashion has given us a great excuse to wear some fabulous costumes and scandalous red lipstick in the daytime (our mothers don't approve) however our interest in the past is about understanding where we come from, and who we will become."

“The Ruby Dolls have a breadth of international influences in their family histories that we explore during the show. Each Doll has a musical language to help express her cultural identity and this journey through the music provides much of the soul of the piece."

"We sing in multiple languages from Yiddish to Zulu, and the arrangements and some of the songs are original. Music, and our determination to use it successfully, is one of The Ruby Dolls' founding principles. That, and it's just terribly difficult to stop us singing once we've started.”  

Assembly Roxy, 2-18 August

Exterminating Angel

Is this blog reading like a nervous breakdown yet? I haven't even arrived in Edinburgh and I am already flapping like a critic who has a choice between an eight hour Shakespeare marathon or a burlesque study of "real gender politics." So I would like to reiterate that I write in persona, an exaggerated version of my true self, and all the sardonic quips hide a desperate individual who just wants to be loved.


I did spend most of today in Edinburgh, however. I am going to give a shout out to one show because they gave me flyers on The Royal Mile, but did it with a reluctance that suggested that they would rather be performing and did not want to intrude on my stroll around the city. 


And they have this splendid eulogy from Tim Crouch, who reinvented Maevolio out of Twelfth Night in such a way that I felt compassion for the old puritan bastard.

"Exterminating Angel is one of those works that I know will influence my future thought and practice. I am already stealing from it.  It is an endlessly thoughtful piece of theatre - sharply structured and also breathtakingly free. It plays effortlessly with form, slipping under an audience's skin. It is vicious and barbed in its satire, but it is also ingenuous in its formal experimentation and narrative drive. Above all, it is its own piece of work."


It's party time for a bunch of bohemian types, and how they love each other's banter. Then they find they are locked in the dining room. Horror, or hilarity, ensues: it is difficult to say, because the cast make it up afresh, every time they perform. This might make it tough to review (could be crap tonight, great tomorrow), but it does make it fascinating. It sounds like devising and directing mastermind Jack McNamara has found a way to make improvisation more than a mere excuse for crap comedians not to bother rehearsing.


Pleasance Courtyard, August 1 -27 

Venue: Gilded Balloon Teviot – Debating Hall

Dates: 1st – 26th August Dates not performing: 13th August

Weekday tickets: £11/ £10 Weekend tickets: £10 / £9

Times:  14:00 (15:00)

Box Office: 0131 622 6552 / online www.gildedballoon.co.uk

"Bound"

by Dylan Dougherty

Discover the greater freedom that exists only within bounds

Quinn is a curious young traveler.  He has come to America to reunite with his hobo father, Banjo, to ride the rails and feel the freedom of an antiquated American West.  Quinn and his father help a teenage runaway, Winifred, catch a boxcar out of Pocatello, Idaho bound for California’s sunshine...

When the boxcar door slams and locks, and a short supply of food and water threatens their lives, their grand visions of freedom are tested.  Trapped and stopped in a cold mountain pass, than can only wait and try to understand how they into their fix.  They bond, and discover the more sane and useful freedom that exists within bounds.  

Locked in the dark belly of a boxcar, bouncing down desolate train tracks in who-knows-where America, they have something. They have each other. They are bound together. The question is, can Quinn escape his freedom?

Set aboard a timeless symbol of freedom, this world premier drama tackles the modern cult of individualism and wonders what is it to be free.

The rhythm of the rails echo in live music.  “Bound” has the feel of a story told around a campfire, a magical Americana. 

Belgian director and installation artist Christoffel Hendrickx’s works include Bad End, EVAR and DeGrottenPrins.  American playwright Dylan Dougherty’s previous, The Montana Ranch, played at 59E59 in NYC and the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe to sold out audiences 

Bound brings together Hendrickx’s Antwerpian New Wave artistry and Dougherty’s unmistakably American script, based on his time riding freight trains, for a sensual, artistic and lyrical theatrical experience.  Bound is a truly international collaboration.  Noosfeer VZW is a nonprofit arts organization based in Antwerp.  

The music is arranged and performed by Dries Bongaerts, lead singer of new rising sun.  Art Direction by Maxim Meukens.

http://www.facebook.com/events/119992031476598/

http://www.noosfeer.org/bound.html 

trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hb8DCAcG-0&feature=youtu.be

“Bound” plays at 13.00 from 2-27 August (excluding 13 August)

For further information, images and interview availability, contact Elisabeth Cappon at ec@noosfeer.org, Maxim Meukens +32474 393181 (Belgian mobile, works in Scotland)

or the C press office at 0845 260 1060 or press@cvenues.com

Leo

Today, I made a tentative trip to the Fringe. Officially, I was with my students (the wonderful Tramway Young Critics, and a big respect to them for not getting lost or irritated with their errant teacher). But I nipped in to see Leo, the acrobatic "treat for all the family" and yes, it was an all ages show that had enough tricky spectacle to satisfy this Live Art fanatic.

Briefly, as I am sure that I'll be revisiting this one, Leo uses only the simplest of set ups: a man, who can climb walls, a suitcase, a hat, a surprise burst of saxophone and a video screen. The man performs a series of spectacular tricks - some of which have that gravity-defying acrobatic quality - and a video of the action is projected onto the screen, at an angle. The double of the tricks makes them even more gravity-denying and the sense of confusion gets so intense that I really did forget which way was up towards the end.

It's nicely structured - if a little long, not much - and has episodes of animation that nearly drown the man, a choreographed, intense finale and plenty of larking about all over the set. I made it one of my top five circus shows.

Thank God, I got that right.

Assembly Roxy Central, 02 – 27 August.