The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return ★★★★ Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August There are many things about this new piece of social realist drama from Chalk Line Theatre and playwright and co-director Sam Edmunds which feel fresh and invigorating, the main element being that it’s a play about poverty and knife crime in a small town (Luton) which manages not to be steeped in sadness, pity or tragedy. The teenage characters in the play, both Olatunji Ayofe’s narrator/lead and his best mate Lewis (Elan Butler) lead hard and uncompromising lives, but they look for the joy and wear their environment lightly. Instead, in this late 2000s-set coming-of-age story, their main concern is how as under-agers they can get served at the local off-licence.
Lakesha (Amaia Naima Aguinaga), who Ayofe’s character fancies, is having a birthday party, and nothing will be more embarrassing than turning up with the kind of spirit old people drink, like gin or brandy, instead of a nice bottle of vodka. Sadly the helpful old bloke they entrust with the job has other ideas. The scene where the young couple flirt awkwardly but intimately is beautifully played, with real humour and tenderness.
In these aspects of the story, the play is marvellously precise and true, painting a portrait of young life where showing off your Ralph Lauren logo carries a proud cachet and a lack of positive outcomes doesn’t stop kids having ambition in life and in love. Here, a father’s stern instruction to work hard, make something of yourself and get out of here bears a pang of desperation. Danger lurks, of course.
In an environment where the EDL are beginning to organise and many fancy themselves as gangsters, the local family of young hardmen are a hazard to be negotiated, one which brings our hero to an inevitable crossroads when a knife is brandished at the party. It’s a play with hard, complicated questions at its core, but more than that it’s simply a joy to watch, with funny, fast-talking characters leaping nimbly across the set, and Aguinaga’s engaging, amusing multi-role performance an absolute stand-out. David Pollock The Disappeared ★★★ Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August This bold piece of theatre from Danish company Down the Rabbit Hole has set itself a tough challenge, by way of outlining the recent LGBTQ+ rights history of an entire continent while also delivering a bold and very physically frank queer cabaret.
Held in promenade style around Summerhall’s Dissection Room, perhaps a slot late at night rather than mid-afternoon might have guaranteed more of a party atmosphere; or possibly the nuances of the work may have been lost in that environment. Queer cabaret performer Nova Duh is our host, and we’ve already seen all of their physical body by the time they begin outlining their personal history to us; an upbringing in beautiful, scenic southern Mexico, where attitudes are hippyish but conservative and they started their first local gay club, despite the homophobia around them. Directed by Jeremy Thomas-Bøgstead, with live electronic music by Josh Herring, the play features snatches of occasionally audience-participatory testimony from Duh.
These include their own memories of being at school when the armed Zapatista uprising occurred in 1994, and culminate in a powerful catwalk parade finale in which Duh breathlessly relates stories of queer oppression in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. The historical storytelling of it all feels fragmentary and not entirely knitted together, but as a portrait of a party scene which lives on a tightrope between fear and escapism, the show is effective. David Pollock Plenty of Fish in the Sea ★★★ Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 24 August Clockfire Theatre Company make a splash with their Fringe debut as part of the House of Oz programme.
Plenty of Fish in the Sea is a playful physical theatre meditation on the art of hooking up. In this case that means a fun fishy fable of a stranger rescued from the sea by a French-speaking nun and her mute assistant Bernadette and pressed into service as a vital cog in their monomaniacal fishing rituals to appease the fish-hooked Saint Cotrillard. They may initially speak different languages but this motley crew becomes a ménage a trois when the potent soup they make with the catch of the day leads to sexual as well as spiritual ecstasy.
This handsomely appointed production is a dance of moving parts – bed becomes boat and back again, a wardrobe is a reservoir of dramatic possibilities – and is wittily and precisely executed by three Lecoq-trained actors to a jaunty naughtical soundtrack. Way more fun than a slap about the chops with a wet cod. Fiona Shepherd Antonio’s Revenge ★★★ C alto (Venue 40) until 24 August So extreme and so gruesome are the acts of violence and retribution in John Marston’s 1601 revenge tragedy that it’s been even suggested the play is a send-up of the whole Elizabethan genre: think Shakespeare’s Hamlet by way of Titus Andronicus, with quite a bit more blood.
The revenge sex, ghosts, hangings, stabbings and even cannibalism are all duly present in Edinburgh-based Half Trick theatre’s condensed version – in fact, you could even argue that boiling the original five-acter down to a mere hour focuses more keenly on the play’s bloody selling points. A 10.30pm start feels about right: Half Trick establish a woozy, nightmarish world where family members turn on each other, where the desire for power justifies almost any act.
Actor/director Courtney Bassett is strong as a swaggering Piero, the Duke whose seemingly arbitrary acts unleash the play’s cycles of vengeance, while Juliet Gentle is appropriately youthful and wide-eyed in the title role. Subtleties of plot and motivation aren’t always clear – perhaps inevitable in such a cut-back reimagining – and acting across the six-strong cast is pretty variable. But for a slightly unhinged, hallucinatory late-night gore-fest, Antonio’s Revenge undeniably ticks a few boxes.
David Kettle Beryl & Clive, Sing or Die (Their Musical) ★★ theSpaceTriplex (Venue 38) until 17 August There are a couple of fairly forgettable songs here, but you may find your patience stretched a mite thin before the first one comes along. As written by Amy Gibbons, Beryl (Gibbons) and Clive (Claudio Del Toro) are a couple of clownish idiots whose absurdist antics test the bounds of their affectionate relationship. It’s tempting to see them as children’s entertainers putting on an adult show, as aside from a mystifying gynaecological expedition this would appear to be aimed at the very young.
Gibbons rather overplays Beryl’s drawling posh tones but Del Toro does have a genuinely endearing way of milking a joke way beyond its natural lifespan — and then milking it some more. Rory Ford In Defiance Of Gravity ★★ Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August The latest show from writer Saul Boyer and his company Unleash The Llama Productions, In Defiance Of Gravity conjures up an imaginary psychic, Ezra Montefiori, and tracks his tumultuous career in the early twentieth century. He inveigles his way into the confidence of an aristocratic couple, finds himself in the middle of a magical love triangle with them, and somehow ends up plotting to assassinate Rasputin.
His cockney benefactor – and our narrator – is hot on his heels the whole way. It is enthusiastically performed by a three-strong cast, but leaden writing and a clunky staging mean that what could be a silly, schlocky caper full of illusion and intrigue actually emerges as pedestrian melodrama. Fergus Morgan.
