Skip to main content

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Reviews 3 - Expensive Shit- Traverse Theatre, Four stars / In Fidelity - Traverse Theatre, Four stars / High Heels in Low Places - Traverse Theatre, Four stars

In Expensive Shit, a Nigerian toilet attendant called Tolu ekes out a living on tips from dressed up women on the pull in a Glasgow nightclub. Once upon a time Tolu had dreams of being a dancer in revolutionary musician Fela Kuti's band in his Lagos-based Shrine club. In different ways, both establishments turn women into objects, especially when it is revealed that the Glasgow club toilets is fitted with a two-way mirror so men can observe the women from a room on the other side of the wall.

Inspired by a real-life instance in Glasgow, Adura Onashile's play, presented by Scottish Theatre producers in association with the Traverse, flits between the Glasgow club and the Shrine. This charts Tolu's thwarted ambitions to her near invisibility before rediscovering something within herself.

Sabina Cameron invests Tolu with a proud defiance in Onashile's own production, in which three other actresses flit between locations on what in one way or another might just be the time of the women's lives. When they rise up, it may be for one night only, but its reclaiming of power is a fleeting moment of emancipation for all.

Runs to August 28

Love is in the air in In Fidelity, Rob Drummond's latest auto-biographical dissection of human behaviour. After becoming a wrestler and a magician, here Drummond uses the tropes of increasingly grotesque TV dating shows to get to the heart of a matter that affects us all. As a gift to his real life wife on their fifteenth anniversary, Drummond co-opts members of the audience to run through the pros and cons of the dating game.

Drummond makes for a charming host, who rolls with any awkwardness between participants like a pro. It is the scripted segments that really open things up in Steven Atkinson's production, where personal ethics regarding any temptation to stray veers more towards Oprah territory than Blind Date. What makes this streets ahead of many of the straight-up confessional shows doing the rounds is Drummond's artfulness and innate understanding of theatre's contrary relationship with truth and lies. Throw sex and death into the mix and its a winner, and if the show's final moment doesn't leave you with a lump in your throat, then you're probably a lost cause to love anyway.

Runs to August 28

In High Heels in Low Places, self-styled queen of Ireland Panti Bliss comes clean on how a solitary remark on a TV chat show created the sort of media storm that is becoming increasingly rabid these days. As a sparkling and potty-mouthed Panti makes plain, however, beyond the initial furore, s/he transcended the manufactured outrage to become a national treasure.

Over the next motor-mouthed seventy minutes, Panti rewinds on a no-holds-barred life as a drag queen in a scurrilous and hilarious fashion. Beyond the gossip, such a display undercuts itself with a searing and fearlessly unsentimental honesty that turns the entire performance into an act of defiance that gives homophobes the serious finger.

While seeing a show like this in such a formal theatrical environment at 10.30 in the morning for the first date of the Traverse's revolving programme was initially disarming, it nevertheless gets back to drag culture's politically driven roots as Panti lays bare her small town roots before coming out fighting as a liberating force for good. And yes, the finale features a magnificent display of lip-synching that makes for the ultimate gay club experience, whatever time of day it might be.

Runs to August 14th

The Herald, August 16th 2016

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL