SEARCH RESULTS

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First theSpaceUk Drawing on their own experiences of being in military families comes this inspired two-hander about the idealised American childhood, and the boys it left behind. From Edinburgh Fringe Festival darlings (consecutive 2022 and 2023 Fringe First Award winners) New Yorkers Xhloe and Natasha in association with the SpaceUK present “A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First.” In what is surely a masterclass for the ideal fringe drama this goes straight into my top ten for this year (including their beautifully absurd “What is They Ate the Baby?”- which also explores American archetypes). A bare stage save for a large truck tyre, a soundscape of birds and insects at night, a monumentally beautiful script and adorable characters instantly transport us to a world with the feel of Huckleberry Finn, but Lyndon B Johnson is president of the USA, and the Beatles are hot. Johnson, a Silver Star-decorated Commander in the Second World War, had a presidential term that both began and ended bathed in blood. The 36th President was sworn in on Air Force One in the two hours following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. During Johnson's six-year term, he saw the number of troops deployed in Vietnam blow out to over half a million. I am assuming the title refers to civil rights leader Jackie Robinson’s letter to LBJ in 1967 of an impassioned plea to end the war in Vietnam. It is an eccentric title, but it gives a profound resonance to the work as we watch Ace (Natasha Roland) and Grasshopper (Xhloe Rice) play a pair of muddy kneed 7-year-old boy scouts in gloriously decorated costumes. They recount boyish escapades, they speak in codes, they dare each other to be great, they play soldiers, they swing rope.  Sneaking out of the house one night to the station of their small town, they eagerly await the passing of a train in which rides LBJ. In the shadow of the Vietnam war, people of the USA clung to LBJ as a figure of stability and sureness an do these two boys.  Both have absent father figures and higher powers become stand-ins for authority – God is in there too, but she/he gets less of a footprint in this play except when God is mixed up with LBJ! Ace and Grasshopper are learning to be men. To make a promise, a man must both spit and shake on it, there is nothing greater a man can be than a soldier, and never (ever) hold hands with another man (unless it’s an extreme circumstance). What is the moment that a boy becomes a man? If the American idea of masculinity -one that equates violence with strength - makes casualties out of men, then in war for what are young men dying? The Beatles tunes accompanied deftly on harmonica by the performers: “Ob-La-Di. Ob-La-Da” expresses their vitality and fizz, “I want to Hold your Hand” perhaps expressing deeper (private) feelings.  The harmonica is also an eerie instrument, and the performers use it to great effect later in the piece. I guess it’s because the era they portray just wasn’t as great in hindsight. Performed in the round the effortless choreography, overall staging and physicality is elegant and assured. The playwrighting is rigorous and wastes not a moment or a word in conveying story, character and theme. In a quotation from Broadway World: “co-writers and performers Xhloe and Natasha said, "When you're raised as a girl in America, and perhaps everywhere else too, boyhood is this mythic experience tied to nationalism and nostalgia, it made us feel like we were missing out on something. We longed to be treated like a boy, to be let into this club that had been portrayed in American Pop culture since the 30s, scraping your knees, playing ball, and being a good American Boy Scout. Part of growing up for us was realizing this desire is manufactured by the same systems that benefit from the myth that America has fallen from some former time of "greatness". We want to capture the rude awakening of realizing you might not be the good guy, the devastation of losing your religion, it's something we still grapple with ."   “A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First” is a triumph. Go see it!! Kate Gaul

James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show Summerhall    James Rowland is a Fringe Festival stalwart, and his shows are what I would describe as quintessentially fringe.  I really cannot imagine them working anywhere else (but I am sure they do) and that is exactly why “James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show” is high amongst my top ten picks of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Go buy tickets NOW!!!   James has been making shows on his own (with loads of friends, directors and dramaturgs) for 8 years now, he tours the UK most of the time and hangs out with his partner and cat the rest. He tells stories. And the stories are the star of the show. These stories are genuinely shared with an audience.  We feel part of them (the opposite is when storytellers speak AT you!  Ergh!!).  There is little in the way of technical support – he works with his iPhone, a speaker, and a floor light.  He is dressed in a mostly open hospital gown and a pair of pantyhose, mis-matched socks and bright red crocks. He carries notes to which he may or may not refer. “James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show” is the final part of a trilogy. There is no single narrative – rather this show finds connections through anecdotes, observations, smaller stories, music inspired by thinking of his mortality.  A visible clock counts down behind him – a visible reminder of time’s winged chariot! But it is not a sad show or a show about grief.  Rather it takes life and love by the horns and finds the joy in existence. We journey through moments in his life: his love for football, his holiday in France, his favourite art installation where papers are flying away.   One of Rowland’s first anecdotes - and one to which we return - is the remarkable story of Dr Carl Sagan and the making of the golden record sent to outer space on Voyager I and II in 1977 and how Sagan fell in love and married his colleague Ann Druyan (and a reminder that Sagan was in fact married at the time to a previous colleague – he had a type!).  The story of the golden record is one that fires the imagination and can provide a perspective on what it is to be human. Robin Hood occupies most of the piece.  With rambunctious zest Rowland inhabits many characters as he tells of Robin Hood's life, loves and conquests. Finally, we watch Rowland shoot one golden arrow across the sky towards his final resting place.   In an interview, James Rowland described his intentions with “James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show” - “I want it to be joyful, to be totally honest I want it to be riot, I'm trying to make a show that people are delighted they came to.”   Go see “James Rowland Dies at the End of the Show” for an hour of genuine joy and to witness a master storyteller at work! Kate Gaul

A Little Inquest into What We Are All Doing Here Zoo Southside   Josie Dale-Jones sits at a small table to one side of the stage. In 2022 Dale-Jones and her company were supposed to be touring a piece made for children and their parents and guardians called “The Family Sex Show”, a theatrical attempt to reimagine how children and their carers might talk openly and without shame about sex and relationships, boundaries and consent.   A Daily Mail article and online misinformation unleashed a maelstrom. Dale-Jones was dubbed a paedophile and encouraged to kill herself; someone threatened to bomb the theatres where the show was programmed. Nobody making these threats had seen the show (the hadn’t been fully finished at the time), but theatres cancelled the tour, and the Arts Council withdrew support.  All this information is presented in a series of monologues. Dale-Jones plays a section of a horrible podcast and sits listening as swearing and insults continue. A fabulous article written by Dale-Jones for the Guardian  goes into some detail about the show, its content and intentions. I encourage you to read it as the implications of the actions around the cancellation of the show have genuine resonance.   Importantly, she notes, at the time: “A relatively small media storm closed a show no one had watched. Beyond arts and culture, what does this reveal about the health and resilience of our public conversation? How does this event speak to power in the UK? Who has it, and how will they use it? Who gets to decide what on behalf of other people? I think what has happened is far more frightening than the performance. We still hope to find a home for this show. And now I am left in the position to wonder: where do we go from here?”   “A Little Inquest into What We Are All Doing Here” is a story about resilience and survival. It’s about courage and determination. How did all this happen? How did her work become hit by the spotlight (and made explicit in the opening moments of the show)?  And importantly what is the impact of our increasing inability to agree to disagree about all sorts of things effects our interactions with each other. Dale-Jones explores whether educations is keeping children safe or adults comfortable – and at what point reasonable critique becomes hate, and verbal online abuse escalates into real-life physical violence. At the end of the piece the show has become a duologue with a man. “No-one comes out of it very well,” she says, but as the man she’s talking to replies: “Maybe that’s what makes it interesting.”    I’d describe the show as at the pointy end of the scale. Its conceptual at one point when Dale-Jones takes to the stage to do a dance routine to “That’s Entertainment” dressed in a gold lamé suit.  But then her initial entrance is rolling across the stage in what looked like a sleeping bag for which I can find no explanation. Because we are participating in the work of a seasoned theatre maker there are a couple of coups de theatres involved which certainly move it away from it being a dry talking head type experience. Which is what it may sound like.  In a nutshell – a culturally significant argument delivered with panache and intelligence by a charismatic and driven artist.      Kate Gaul

Common is as Common Does Zoo Southside   Scottish company 21Common present a “dance spectacular” mashing karaoke carnage and feats of physical endurance with kick out time at the Grand Ole Oprey (Glasgow, not Nashville). Using tropes of Western movies, it explores how poverty and violence shape a man and can destroy a family.   This is an exploration into a family circle that more often resembles a bear pit. The empty stage becomes a saloon (with country classic karaoke), speakeasy and bare-knuckle boxing ring. It’s a Wild West sitting room with those who spit and those born to fight. The Wild West as analogy for a turbulent family and domestic violence is a clever one.  The violence is expected and slightly more “palatable” when framed this way.   In their work, 21Common blend iconoclastic references, pop culture and preoccupation with risk and danger to create “spectacular” dance experiences. Its key collaborators are Artistic Directors Lucy Gaizely and Gary Gardiner, Scotland’s leading learning-disabled dancer Ian Johnston.   I didn’t find this work “spectacular” as advertised and once the show began I wondered if the work is youth theatre working with professional mentors.I don’t think I was the only audience member confused. With a post show google I discovered that indeed 21 Common are a charity based in Glasgow who are known for creating work with and for their local communities. The ensemble for this show is made up of both professional and non-professional performers from Paisley, Linwood and Johnstone. I am not sure why there's nothing on the venue posters or on the Edinburgh Fringe website to support this description.  The issue being that it takes a while to work out exactly what is going on within the group onstage. And it felt weird having the older dude leading the company without context.   The dancing is in usually unison and behind the main older dude who speaks in monologues.  With a group of 12 onstage the images can be complex and quickly created and transformed.  This is strong work. The older dude is charismatic – speaking and moving with ease. Scenes are well choreographed, accompanied by video projection and titles as we go.   But it’s a tough watch. We meet The Man, The Woman, The Rascal and The Boy. Poverty, desperation and lack of opportunity just grind people down and the cost is immense. Fortunately, a few scenes as I mentioned are accompanied by upbeat music and glorious karaoke from the wild western music canon. The use of romantic contrast here is unique and resonates well for the audience. Even when the onstage action is clearly born of a domestic dispute.   The show is well conceived, rough around the edges, and a strong testimony for working with community to find a voice. Review by Kate Gaul

The History of Paper Traverse   Dundee Rep and Traverse present this lively and lovely production of “The History of Paper” by Oliver Emanuel. It’s part drama, part musical; a play with music I suppose it could be called. It started life as a radio drama; following the Scotland-based English playwright’s early death aged 43, Gareth Williams has adapted the drama into a musical love story about a relationship that blossoms following a letter of complaint. It all starts when a jilted lover (Christopher Jordan-Marshall) and a go-ahead journalist (Emma Mullen)'s exchange a note of complaint. They meet. There’s chemistry. She's new to the area and gives him her number on a scrap of paper. He is hopelessly sentimental and keeps everything yet somehow manages to lose this vital piece of paper. A postcard, origami cranes, Chinese lanterns and confetti are retrieved from a memory box to make a paper trail marking moments in a relatable and engaging story of love and loss. The medium of paper is love’s element here. Every ticket, menu, shopping list, letter and bus ticket becomes a meaningful moment in the blossoming romance between the neighbours. Everything reminds him of her, and he wants to always be reminded of her. It's a sweet story and “ A History of Paper” begins as a rom-com. “It’s a show about all the losses we go through in life, from the minor losses, like losing your keys or a piece of paper, to the greater losses,” director Kemp says. “One of the characters is writing a book called “A History of Paper”, and on a bigger scale we’re losing paper. There might come a time in the future when paper is enormously precious.” Have a think - in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, it’s remarkable how random little pieces of paper can document a life. It is a fertile theme, one that finds space for a song about George Wylie’s full-sized paper boat that set sail on the Clyde in 1989, a symbol of old industry and new imagination. Like the pages of a book, filled with emotions, insights and ideas, paper (an now digital paper-like tablets) organises our thoughts, defines us and carries us into the future. We don’t ever learn the characters names – they are just He and She.  But these characters skilfully slip in and out of character, storyteller, dramatic dialogue and duet. First romance to heart wrenching and devastating loss – when tragedy strikes the man, he loses the capacity to speak. Musical director Gavin Whitworth provides a cheery presence and accompaniment on the piano and occasionally adds to the vocals as the drama reaches its height.  The chemistry between the actors and engagement with the audience as well as the overall likeability of the production is what gives the play such a surprising and triggering twist. When it comes, audiences cry out and tears flow – I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.  “The History of Paper” has an unexpected power with plenty of contemplate inside what at first appears as a pleasurable rom-com. Kate Gaul

Nation Roundabout   Present day anxieties surface in YESYESNO’s production of “Nation” at Edinburgh Fringe.  To borrow from a blurb “a nation, according to the political theorist and historian Benedict Arnold, is an imagined community.” This play performed ostensibly by a single actor, Sam Ward, attempts to construct a community from the audience and exposes the rot at its core.  Sam Ward is also the writer. His previous work has been impactful - “ Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist” and “we were promised honey!”.  These works and now “Nation” extol Ward’s approach to theatre. They all use direct address storytelling, often in the second person. They play with ambiguity and honesty, liveness and unpredictability, distance and disruption. They often integrate audience interaction in interesting, exciting ways, too. “Nation” explores themes of intolerance and xenophobia and how we construct our reality.  Theatre is the metaphor.  On a bare stage with minimal technical elements one actor casts the townsfolk.  Amongst the cast are a butcher, a drama teacher, a Pilates instructor, a small dog and a body lying in a pool of blood.  We are told to imagine parts of the town has he describes it.  He becomes different characters too – a postman, a politician.  He reassures us that we are “doing well”.  And so, a story unfolds of a town where a woman retires from her job, a stranger arrives on the doorstep of her party and over the course of three months things start happening in the town that make people scared, lost, angry. Things start disappearing – and not just small things but complete buildings and chunks of the town. Someone must be to blame. There is violence. There is always “the other”. The entirely white middle class looking audience (well, the day I attended) become complicit from the beginning and a startling twist in the proceedings. It would be a complete spoiler to describe what happens here. In the ongoing explosions of anti-immigration upheavals which are ever present in UK – an elsewhere in the world has their own version of this – the play feels of the moment.  And yet it was ever thus. But I never really felt the play landed as you can see the intention of it from the start and nothing is resolved, challenged or concluded. Are we as an audience imagining the same things?  We are not and this is how “Nation” illustrates the chaotic difference amongst a seeming homogenous experience. Truth as they say is stranger than fiction and any pretence “Nation” has at prescience is somewhat undermined by our current lived realities. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the constant praise for the audience in being able to us our imagination.  I just wished the central character would get on with it and not presume that we were happy “in our role”.  I wanted more critique. We know that communities are disenfranchised and that many feel inarticulate in the face of societal pressures. Many cannot speak out. However, the play is making a point about the role of imagination and reality (truth?) and how, in this way, theatre mirrors our concept of “nation”. It’s a clever premise and confidently delivered if a bit slow. Review by Kate Gaul

Fame Hungry Summerhall   “Fame Hungry” is created and presented by Louise Orwin. A quick google search tells me “Louise Orwin makes research-based performance and video projects about what it means to identify as a queer femme, in a world that prizes masculinity, straightness, whiteness. Her work is provocative, political, slippery, and guaranteed to get under your skin…. Focusing on the kind of stories that are often overlooked and under-represented, and often working with participants and documentary style elements, her work encourages spaces to grapple with ambiguity/uncertainty and unknowing, alongside a practice of deep listening: asking you to listen equally and non-hierarchically to fiction, to other people’s stories, to the stories we all tell ourselves.”   What do we know about Tik Tok?  What does it mean to be an artist living in this world? With over three billion users, TikTok overtook Google as the single most used app in the world in 2021. As a content-sharing platform, it represents the biggest potential global audience for its users, but how does it work? Why does it work?   “Fame Hungry” fuses contemporary performance art with a real time live Tik Tok experience. Artist Louise Orwin cosplays as a Tik Toker in a real-life real-time experiment search for fame and fortune. Made in collaboration with an actual Famous TikToker, The Almighty Algorithm, and TikTok-Famous Faces, “Fame Hungry” asks what the future looks like if all roads lead to TikTok?   With the help of Jaxon Valentine, a 20-year-old TikToker as a kind of mentor, Orwin explores what it takes to achieve this not-so elusive TikTok fame (pretty easy as it turns out) and how to create and tailor her content to please the idiosyncratic algorithm (without being banned by posting sexual content, for example.) Jaxon Valentine, a “modestly successful professional” TikToker with 80,000 followers. This is a technically complicated production.  What Orwin is attempting to in a live environment is achieve 10,000 followers livestreamed in front of an audience. She reached 20K fairly easy the day I see the show – kind of takes the wind out of it all. So, what is the purpose of Tick Tok – to get likes and followers? To feel appreciated and share ideas and creativity?  What to make of a woman who has built her own McDonald’s in her home or the man who spoons cinnamon into his mouth while making satisfied sounds. Why do we watch? Societal decline?  The need for connection? A laugh, or something darker? The show doesn’t have any opinion about Tik Tok.  I found the entire show banal – Tik Tok is banal. I couldn’t find anything redeeming about this silent scream of the creator out to the universe.  Democratising technology is fine but it’s boring to participate if there is nothing being said. Licking lolly pops for an hour, eating ice cream, dancing for the camera and adjusting the filter on your face is downright creepy and dystopian and I felt overwhelmed at the narcissism on display and sick at the end of this event. I guess that is something, right? More seriously, this show is playing to solid houses in a larger fringe theatre.  TikTok is revolutionizing art making online and opening a realm into the younger generation of artmakers—a realm to which older theatre makers should pay attention. Review by Kate Gaul

Cyrano Traverse   Virginia Gay’s adaptation of “Cyrano” was written in lockdown and enjoyed a limited Australian run.  As it never made it to Sydney it was a pleasure to catch this Scottish production with Gay in the central role.  In Edinburgh, the show has kicked it out of the ballpark and become a local darling scooping prizes and praise along the way. On an almost empty stage begin three unnamed actors, played by the hilarious, touching and very skilled trio of David Tarkenter, Tessa Wong and Tanvi Virmani, toss around different approaches to putting on the play. Clare Watson’s production has begun before we have even sat down. It’s all very meta theatrical. Then the lines between the play and the play within the play merge and Cyrano, played by writer Virginia Gay, enters. In this feel-good version, Gay is able to deconstruct and reconstruct the tropes of the well-worn story of the overlooked. The audience is addressed directly and always clued into the reconstruction. Ultimately the chorus add very little to the story which is essentially the love triangle between Cyrano, Roxanne and Yan where Rozanne is catfished, presented with the illusion of single man perfect in body and mind. Cyrano is looking for her happy ending in Gay’s deconstructed, gender-swapped subversion of Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, seeking to fulfil her unrequited love of the beautiful Roxane (Jessica Whitehurst), using her language to woo Roxane by proxy through the physically desirable but inarticulate Yan (Brandon Grace). The idea is that -although no one actually states it - this Cyrano is overlooked in love not just because of the famously long nose but also their sexuality. For Roxanne Cyrano is a confidante, while Yan takes Cyrano as a man. Cyrano is doubly excluded, and also doubly sensitive to Roxanne’s needs as a woman and doubly aware of the (in)effectiveness of Yan’s macho chat-up lines. Virginia Gay shines onstage – all swagger and confidence, the best at everything (as Cyrano tells us) and all of this conceals a belief that Cyrano has that no one could love them. But how wrong they are. The fun of the show is seeing how it all pans out. This is a play about words, their seductive and destructive power – but with a very light touch in this adaptation.  Gay has skill and wit by the bucket full and although the play text is rendered in a textually lighter contemporary vein we get the point. The production is conversational, chatty and therefore extremely accessible.  I was looking for more drama, but I appreciated the rom-com interpretation.  Songs replace sword fighting of the original, there are not super long speeches in the verse of the original, the tragic ending is cauterised for a saccharine girl-gets-girl triumph. It’s super cheesy. It’s presented as a production born out of a dress up box where ideas and interpretations flow freely with less mind to cohesion. If you want something closer to the original, then this 90-minute slimmed down version of a production is not for you.  But let’s face it, you can’t fault a company for wanting to (and succeeding) in creating joy. The full houses at the Traverse as part of Edinburgh Fringe agree. Review by Kate Gaul

Gwyneth Goes Skiing Pleasance Courtyard   Linus Karp and Joseph Martin – AKA Awkward productions - presents “Gwyneth Goes Skiing”.   It is a play based on the true events that occurred between award-winning actress and entrepreneur  Gwyneth Paltrow  and retired optometrist  Terry Sanderson  back in 2016: a skiing accident and subsequent court case in 2023. One party claimed, “permanent traumatic brain injury, four broken ribs [and] loss of enjoyment of life”. The other “lost half a day of skiing”.  It’s a 90-minute play with two actors, a puppet, a deadpan stage assistant, Gwyneth’s daughter (played by an actual apple) and a load of audience interaction. The audience is cast as the jury and get to decide who wins the case via a QR code at the end.  There’s a pop culture video montage that flashes all of Gwyneth’s films, locations of the action of the work and text for the onstage audience participants. It’s a comedy meets musical – less musical - and the musical part is pretty thin – roughly lip synched pre-records that don’t further the action or character.  Possibly an element that could be jettisoned from this overly long and slightly undergraduate comedy even though the soundtrack is helmed by singer-songwriter and “ Drag Race”  music guru Leland, with original numbers performed by (recorded) Darren Criss and Catherine Cohen.  A fluffy show ultimately laced with an endearing pop culture queerness. Karp’s portrayal of Paltrow is joyous and mesmerising. A natural Swedish accent renders this Hollywood star even more eccentric and peculiar.  It’s all deliberately slightly wrong with misplaced emphasis on particular words, and Paltrow-fying vocabulary e.g. Gwynocent. It’s funny and I was entranced by this confident, elegant and very funny central performance. The text is all gossip and verbatim at the centre of the trial “She really did ask that” is a constant refrain to the audience. And of course, then there is her product lifestyle line GOOP – it’s all just so mad! But you know what they say about truth and fiction!   Martin has the harder task to play old white dude Sanderson.  He’s not inherently funny except he is drunk on the fame by association. He also manipulates a puppet as his lawyer. There is a delightful carboard deer and fluffy hand puppets to represent the natural animals of Deer Valley where the accident took place. These elements render the piece with a ”mum-look-at-me” vibe   In a nutshell: Karp is flawless as a comedian in this camp dissection of celebrity nonsense.  With another period in the rehearsal studio and a hefty trim this could be gold. Review by Kate Gaul

Psychobitch Summerhall  Wild Rice (Singapore) production of “Psychobitch” is written by Amanda Chong and directed by Pam Oei. This is a dramatic monologue centring on hotshot broadcast journalist Anya Samuel. Brilliantly played by Sindhura Kalidas, Anya is introduced to us with an odd premise – she’s been accused by her fiancé, tech bro Galven Low, of being too emotional and unstable, and must explain and defend four incidents where she’s cried in public. The news reporter side of Anya wants to make this the best demonstration of all time, but in her gut, something feels off. And yes, so do we!  Over powerpoint slides and scenic reconstruction, the action follows Anya’s recounting her history with Galven, from their first date over drinks where she plays it coy, before following the rapid development past the honeymoon phase, moving in with each other and of course, becoming a future married couple. Anya comes from a Singapore Tamil Christian family. Galven is Chinese. Anya’s family wants to support her personal choices against growing community disapproval. With the presence of Galven’s ex Cheryl, and his obvious problem with alcohol, the pressures begin to mount despite Anya’s best efforts.  We begin to understand that Anya is in an ugly coercive relationship and its hideous to watch this capable, classy woman be worn down by it. It's lonely being brilliant and Anya’s world begins to crumble. Sindhura Kalidas is at home with both comedy and more serious drama.  The diverse Edinburgh Fringe audience laughed at descriptions of her character Googling to check if she has a brain tumor after an ongoing headache, the whispering words to a phone to influence the algorithm, drunk and asking a shocked Galven to write an ode to her uterus, or intense social media stalking of his ex.  Hilarious and recognisable. Likewise, the array of characters she presents on stage are memorable: Galvin who speaks like a corporate how-to guide, a grandmother worried about her becoming a heathen, a racist property agent all spring to life both physically and vocally. Playwright Amanda Chong has not only created a terrific vehicle for a gifted actor but explored the complexities beyond being a working woman in Singapore. Conservatism, racism, religious faith, gender power dynamics are all tightly woven into what turns out to be a complex story of toxicity, identity and agency. There is a parallelled story of Anya’s mother’s abandonment of her family and Anya’s own decision to leave Galvin without a word at play’s end. Although thankfully fast paced and extremely confident as a production, At 80 minutes the play feels just a little too long.  By the time we get to Anya’s acceptance of her Tamil roots and her re-found connection with her family it does feel like we are in another play. But it is an ambitious tonal journey that the playwright is taking us on and with an actor as fabulous as Sindhura Kalidas, “Psychobitch” is worth your time.   Kate Gaul

Hyper Summerhall   “Hyper” (a play) by Ois O'Donoghue and Jaxbanded Theatre, begins with a prologue direct to the audience. The actors establish who the play is for (not us) and who we probably are (cis, straight). It is clear who this prologue is meant to address (despite its insistence that the show is, 100%, not for us). The “us” of the prologue are the hostile and ignorant who provide questions and challenges fielded by trans people on a day-to-day basis. This is a play with music about a pair of bandmates and best mates Saorise and Conall. When Saoirse comes out and begins transitioning, the band must grapple with her changing body, voice and life. O’Donoghue sits behind a translucent curtain with 2 musicians while the audience sit in traverse with two actors.   O'Donoghue says: "I suppose for me,  “Hyper” is fundamentally about the really complicated relationship trans people often have with our own voices. I think we're in a time where we're being made incredibly visible, and as a result being pressured to speak a lot and speak out a lot, which is an important thing. And I think it's interesting how that meets up with a lot of us, like, physically, fundamentally not loving the sound of our own voices, and how that can kind of mesh with that." Much of  “Hyper” f ocuses literally on the trans voice. Singing and music are interpolated into the acted scenes. O’Donoghue uses a vocoder as an instrument to express themselves. Vocoder and autotune have often come under fire for being 'dishonest', or for being a cheat code for vocalists of less than satisfactory quality. In hyperpop, voice editing is just another digital instrument.  “For trans people, the voice can be a serious site of gender dysphoria. Some of us go through voice training and medical intervention to make sounds that are affirming to us. In cisnormative culture, the “trans voice” is a site of gendered discongruity.” The intimate space of the Former Women’s Locker Room (seating around 25 for “Hyper”) has an intense energy across 60 minutes.  We are incorporated into the performance and asked to read/yell transphobic slurs in a bathroom scene.  It makes it’s point. The two actors are committed and engaging. The role of Saoirse is shared between O’Donoghue and cis actor Fiona Larmon. O’Donoghue says that the casting was born out of a desire to shield the trans body from the (re-)enactment of violence against it. "There are elements of the story where I was like, 'I would like to discuss some of the darker things that happen as a result of the voice,' but also, I don't want to enact them upon my own body, but also and upon trans bodies, because I don't like that that's how we exist in media culture… If I can put a cis body here, we can point out how both absurd it is that this happens, but we can point out that, like, 'This is the only way I see you.' I think it's more evident, then," she says. Larmon’s presence in O’Donoghue’s place for those darker moments highlights the absurdity of transphobia; it forces us as the audience to confront what it is that we see as different between trans and cis women. In all its punk/look-at-me energy “Hyper” is challenging theatre but its challenges reverberate long after we have left that space and returned to our world. I’d say it is for us. Review by Kate Gaul

Suitcase Show Summerhall   Trick of the Light company (NZ) has appeared at Sydney Festival with the acclaimed “The Bookbinder” which I missed so I was excited to catch this new work “Suitcase Show” at Ed Fringe. This is billed as an inventive and eclectic production comprising a boxset of short stories, each one told out of a suitcase.   For the last decade the company has toured their work around the world, from Aotearoa / New Zealand to Australia, Canada, UK, USA, South Africa, and China. “The show draws on the strange experience of travel, and the stories and surprises that might be found inside a suitcase,” says writer / performer Ralph McCubbin Howell. This includes the contents of their own bags – “I got some raised eyebrows when I put a cast of my dad’s severed head through an airport security scanner.”   The show itself has been built to travel, and this inspires some surprising staging. “Freighting forms the onstage design,” says director / designer Hannah Smith. “so, lights and sound as well as stories emerge from the cases on stage.” A preshow challenge had audiences seeing how some of the show was set up – a rare glimpse behind the scenes was exciting and humanises the technical wizardry and what can be a mysterious theatrical process. The conceit is that a traveller is stopped at airport security and asked to open all his suitcases.  The interplay between the 2 actors is superbly droll and the character of the security guard is one we could have heard more from.  She also doubles as the technician on the show, placed on stage to one side. There are a lot of suitcases and so the story begins.   In “Suitcase Show” we literally have everything from acting, lo-fi shadow play to wireless projection, from dancing disembodied hands to narratives that crackle from a 70s stereo suitcase. Emerging from the suitcases, we have an entire village, gradually illuminating in the winter sun. We have a tiny train track, complete, of course, with train, encircling a mountain as a bear looms large in the forest. Technically it is a superb ballet of miniatures, equipment and imagination.   Tiny in scale, the show touches on many larger themes - climate change, love and death, travel, and secrets that we carry with us. An overthrown autocrat finds themselves on the run from their own shadow, an astronaut turns their telescope back on earth and back in time.   I enjoyed the puppetry and animation.  I appreciated the way that the human dimension danced with the inanimate to create joy.  But the story telling didn’t pay off for me and “The Suitcase Story” doesn’t emerge as a satisfying whole.   Review by Kate Gaul