David Doyle
If you’ve ever been to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, you’ll know it’s a somewhat overwhelming experience with hundreds of shows on offer. Indeed the festival brochure extends to a little over three hundred and fifty pages and having never been to the Festival before, I was determined to pack as much in as I could over the course of my short visit. Ploughing my way through over twenty shows, I managed to experience the wonderful highlights of this year’s festival as well as the mindboggling lows of shows with incomprehensible plots, awful acting and surreal sets. In fact the Fringe wouldn’t quite be the same if you didn’t see both the best and worst of what’s on offer so here’s my picks for the best and worst of the Edinburgh Fringe 2011.
The Best
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is notoriously difficult to stage due to its ultraviolent scenes and the sheer scope of the acting skills required however this production managed to make it look easy. The all male cast exhibited staggering physicality and real emotional depth across the entire performance. The ultraviolent scenes played out through highly choreographed dance and thundering music managed to suck the sold-out theatre in almost immediately for a show that could not be forgotten. Controversial for its homoerotic overtones and gut wrenching violence, this production has received largely positive reviews and deservedly so. A lead who managed to evoke sympathy from the audience despite his deplorable acts and a supporting cast which managed to give real depth to the secondary characters moved the production to another level by combining both aesthetics and emotional intensity. Unquestionably one of the best stage productions I’ve seen in recent years, both for its originality and also for the sheer acting ability on show. Definitely one of the best things my glazzers viddied at the Fringe this year.
Belleville Rendez-Vous
Belleville Rendez-Vous was one of the shows receiving nothing but positive reviews during the festival and so hopes were high for this production and it didn’t disappoint. Entering the theatre to the sound of a band playing jazz, you were instantly transported to a Parisian neighbourhood, the show created a wonderful atmosphere throughout. Complete with magical puppetry and stunning set pieces, this show managed to tread a difficult line of being engaging for both kids and adults. A wonderfully simple storyline told for the most part without dialogue there was nothing not to like about this production which managed to capture the magic of the film of the same name.
An Instinct for Kindness
The true story of a woman’s trip to end her life in the Dignitas Clinic performed by her husband who accompanied her, An Instinct for Kindness was undoubtedly one of the most emotionally engaging pieces of the festival. With only a single wooden chair on stage, all the focus was on the words and it was truly powerful. Managing to focus primarily to the personal emotions whilst not shirking the political implications of the piece, the show managed to tread the line it needed to. Leaving large swathes of the audience in tears or in stunned silence, An Instinct for Kindness managed to achieve everything it set out to and more besides.
A Clockwork Orange
The Worst
Orpheus and Eurydice
Over the course of the festival, I managed to see some bizarre musicals including one about the meatballs in Ikea but Orpheus and Eurydice managed to be the worst that I saw. A musical take on the Greek myth of Orpheus’s trip to rescue Eurydice from the Underworld, this had genuine promise but it was nothing short of shambolic. A really poor score in which every song sounded the same was compounded by the fact that the lead was clearly miming on his obviously broken guitar. Despite the awful music throughout, it was the costuming which managed to be most offensive. The lead almost took several tumbles in her over-sized high heels while costume changes to denote different characters meant that at times it was difficult to decipher which character was on stage. The only positive aspect of the show was the beautifully crafted wire tree on stage, beyond that there was nothing.
Sweet Charity
I should really have learnt my lesson about late night musicals from Orpheus and Eurydice but I didn’t and headed along to see Sweet Charity. With copious warnings about the excessive full frontal nudity by the person selling me my ticket at the box office, a packed house and a decent score, it at least had the prospect of being entertaining. Sadly from start to finish, this was a shuddering wreck. Riddled with technical problems the like of which I’ve never seen, large sections of the show were played out in complete darkness while set changes were done with the full lights up. Technical problems aside there was little to save the show; the cast looked defeated with several of them looking like they didn’t know what they were doing and a set piece which meant that every scene, including one in a swanky apartment owned by a movie star, was flanked by a mass of grimy urinals. On top of that, the crowd which was fuelled by an evening of drinking heckled the actors from start to finish meaning that the cast were as grateful for it all to be over as the audience were.
Alice in Wonderland
The last show I managed to catch at the Fringe managed to be among the worst of all. Variations of Alice in Wonderland were in abundance at the Fringe this year but this one was far from the Carroll book on which it was allegedly based. This was a show which had a tragically low attendance meaning that there were more on stage than in the audience and those that came were soon left wishing that they hadn’t. The story deviated from the original and featured a White Rabbit who was intimately involved with Alice including a rather uncomfortable scene which involved a drugged Alice being fondled and beaten by the skateboarding White Rabbit and all at a show which had seemed to be marketed towards families. There was also a bizarre interpretative dance scene about making tea which saw the last remaining strands of coherency slip away. It was quite a way to end my trip to the Fringe, leaving me with a reminder of just how awful some performances were and also leaving me with a greater appreciation of some of the wonderful shows that I’d seen.
Alice in Wonderland
