Crunch Top Five

My love of the Crunch is well documented: the Mighty Boosh based a character on me once. In fact, in that scene, when they talk about the Crunch, they meant my old Shimmy Skinny HQ in Dance Base. And now, the Crunch is back, and here are the shows full of apocalyptic goodness.

I was pretty disappointed in most of the Russian season - perhaps because I expected them all to serve up the same bleak sanctity evident in Derevo's Mefisto Waltz. However, the late night Lidia Kopina & Veronika Berashevich entry comes from the same school as Derevo, relying on only the body (and a honking saxophone battling an electronic soundscape to follow a human life from the first awkward steps to sexy times and fighting fits.

Settimana has a great deal in common with the Polish piece at Dance Base, Lost in Details, encouraging a direct, visceral response to a series of choreographed sketches. Yet it has a stronger narrative - birth starts it all, death ends it, and the various stages of life are expressed with clarity. Jerky, uncomfortable movements gradually give way to  more fluid passages, and dance, always at its most accessible when used to articulate the internal state, triumphs. The combination of raw music, provocative content (the war sequence looks like fun) and a demanding movement vocabulary, shaved of tricks and posturing, are perfect for a late night slot before sliding into troubled slumbers.

Assembly Roxy, 6 -27 August


Meanwhile, a last chance to see over at the French Institute. Sometimes cool is over-rated, but other times different versions of cool team up and have a three way. Rock is based on an oral history of punk, Please Kill Me, and has cool characters like Iggy Pop and Patti Smith wandering through the narrative, alongside abusive asses like Sid Vicious and Jim Morrison: it was made in France, so the performers - voice and cello - have that Gallic nonchalance that is the hallmark of Noveau Vague hip. Then it was originally made for Avignon  Festival, lending it an avant-garde chic.

It might come on as frosty as Lou Reed in 1973, all shrugs and dismissive style, but Rock is a dishevelled tribute to those who gave their lives in the name of art rock. Vincent Courtois reinvents the cello, playing up its melancholic tone before launching into brutal rock outs, while Pierre Baux regales with tales of too many drugs, too much ambition and, in some cases, too little smarts.
Courtois is transported by his own noise, leaving Baux to delve into the undergrowth, discovering the truth about Jim Morrison, Howling like Ginsberg and translating a Velvet Underground number into a French, existential monologue on the nature of youthful passion. Intimate, intense: it has a holiday home in the Crunch.

French Institute, 3 -18 August

We are Chechens comes from the Polish invasion party that has taken up residence at Summerhall: a slice of verbatim theatre from the edge of human experience, the war between Russia and Chechnya. Director Marcin Brzozowski has previously shown an interest in those places where the so-called West and Islam are in conflict. Like Rock, it goes to oral histories and focuses on individuals caught in circumstances beyond their control.

This  time, the spectre is not drug use but civil conflict. Using testimony from both sides, it avoids drawing a broad political conclusion but emphasises the human cost. This is pretty common as a theatrical trope, but the approach of the cast - students from the Lodz film school, which seems to be the cradle for Poland's next generation of provocative artists - translate the horror into immediate and recognisable stories.

Summerhall, 6 -13 August

Even kids need the Crunch, and who better to introduce it than Jeff Achtem? I caught Swamp Juice down at Latitude and despite my fear of "all ages" shows, the 3D finale had me screaming in fear when the big claw reached out to catch the bird. As reviewed in The Skinny, this is a tale of puppets and nature red in tooth and claw, as Bunk tries to collect floral and fauna, only to be defeated by the power of avian cunning.

Swamp Juice gets the balance between humour and horror: Bunk is a slightly frightening character, like Ken Campbell impersonating that bloke what got stung to death. His  mania for collecting - mirrored by Achtem's mania for building odd little puppets, probably in his decrepit shed - makes him the terror of snails and birds. Yet justice is finally served, in a gentle, funny way.

Underbelly, 14 - 27 August 

Any artist from Glasgow knows about the Crunch, and none more than Rob Drummond. If the boy isn't Wrestling - the show were he got it on in the squared circle with one of my ex-Latin pupils who is now a Scottish wrestling superstar - he's trying to shoot himself. Bullet Catch is at the Traverse, and has Drummond recreating the titular magic trick.

Drummond is one of Scotland's brave young stars, adapting his role as author to the demands of his restless intelligence and desire to crack open new theatrical territory. By using performance itself as the foundation of the production, he exposes the mundane need for companionship and community, reflects on death and the way that the glorious surface of life can hide misery and doubt.

Traverse, 3 -26 August




All well and good, but here is the real Crunch. Today, I make six hours of radio. Hear the results here.

Russian Hunger

My enthusiasm for Russian theatre has been nurtured through the Fringe - although it has a reputation for being weighty and long, the short-form of the Fringe format encourages the more lively and experimental productions to roll up and keep it under two hours. But there seems to be a seriousness in Russian performance - even when it is comic, it is intense and betrays a faith in the theatre as the place where ideas are discussed. And relevance is never a problem: while Artem Kretov was inspired by Knut Hamsun novel, his Hunger strikes at modern day despair.

This version of Hunger transplants the action to a a talented but impoverished artist lost in a modern greedy metropolis: adding traits reminiscent of Dostoevsky`s Raskolnikov, Kretov's artist struggles to retain sanity and integrity in the environment where people only crave quick money and useful connections. Noting that the majority of people leave their chosen profession before the age of thirty, Kretov's Hunger is a plea for relentless determination, as well as a tribute to the spirit of the original novel.

"My friend director Andrey Vasiliev offer me to set up Hunger by Knut Hamsun, I agreed immediately," he remembers. "For me being an actor, always very challenging and intriguing to have a role of a person being on the edge. The story of such a character is modern and eternal in the same time. It depicts the great tragedy of the human spirit."

Kretov's description of the start of the project manages to capture everything I love about Russian theatre in a single paragraph. He acknowledges that Russian performance can be isolated from the general trends of theatre.

"Russian theatre, as well as the stage acting itself are not to say unique, but they stay aside from all other theaters," he agrees, "First of all due to schooling and traditions. Stanislavsky methods are not at all old and dusty, but are vibrant and actively used nowadays." Despite his willingness to go it alone, and resist the lure of mainstream theatre, he is serious about the importance of experience and discipline. "It is mutually important to have done the job of the director as well the acting part. A person who can apply Stanislavsky methods has a great advantage. Up till now the Russian directors have great success on the international projects, master classes et cetera."

Kretov goes on to identify those distinctive qualities that make Russian theatre stand out. "Action and multi-dimension, self awareness on the stage, motion  from the inside concept to the external, from the idea to the format - that is the most attractive in the Russian theatre." he continues. "Theater is first of all a metaphor. And there is no art with no metaphor. There is nothing more exiting and beautiful than to experience one’s life within just a half an hour. The stage gives an amazing, pure opportunity just to be and live and exist."

Studio in St Augustine’s Church, Edinburgh

August 14, 16, 18-19, 21,23,25,27

19:10(length 1hr 15mins)