Coffee-Table Notes

While Theatre Uncut occupied a 10am slot each Monday morning of the Fringe, the other six days of the week were equally occupied with immediacy. Taking place at what in Edinburgh terms is a bleary-eyed 9am, this series of compendium of brand new works by largely established writers allows them to run away with their imaginations in a series of script in hand presentations, with half coming under the directorship of Traverse artistic director Orla O'Loughlin, and half with playwright David Greig. The first week opened with Most Favoured, a look by David Ireland at how the second coming might work out if it involved a KFC obsessed angel and a far from virgin Mary in a cheap hotel room where a one night stand suddenly becomes bigger than both of them. With Gabriel Quigley's desperate singleton a priceless foil to Jordan McCurrach's junk-food obsessed angel, Ireland has penned a scurrilously sacrilegious bite-size sketch that one could imagine being developed f

The Russians, it has often been noted, approach Chekhov in a vastly different manner than how English theatre-makers do. Where a home-grown production of The Cherry Orchard might be full of laughs, a British take on Chekhov is likely to make heavy classicist weather of the playwright's pre-absurdist ennui. Whether the same reverence applies to Russian directors when taking on Shakespeare's canon remains to be seen as Russian wunderkind Dmitry Krymov arrives at the Edinburgh International Festival this week with his version of ultimate seasonal rom-com, A Midsummer Night's Dream. In an EIF theatre season that is awash with reinvented classics, Krymov's Dream has been brought to Edinburgh via the Moscow-based Chekhov International Theatre Festival and Krymov's own Laboratory School of Art Theatre Production. The production was commissioned, however, by the Royal Shakespeare Company, who have just previewed it over nine days as part of the 2012 World Sha

The Shit – Summerhall 4 stars A naked woman squats astride a platform holding in to a microphone and precious little else in Cristian Ceresoli's solo play, performed in an unflinching, no-holds-barred howl of rage by Silvia Gallerano. Whether live art prop or practical aids to counteract the room’s boomy acoustics isn’t clear, but it certainly helps Gallerano spew out Ceresoli's litany of self-loathing to pin you to your seat. As Gallerano's mouth moves in rapid-fire shapes akin to some blood and lipstick smeared form of origami, nothing is hidden, not the narrator's bulimia, nor her messed-up relationships with her father, nor her chase after fame. Subtitled The Disgust Decalogue Number 1, this is a relentlessly confrontational piece of work that tumbles from Gallerano's gut as if ripping the skin from her very being. By turns shrill, even as she laughs at herself, Gallerano delivers an exhausting but utterly compelling verbal symphony that never flin

In the Bois de Vincennes, an old munitions factory on the outskirts of Paris, the day is just beginning for Theatre du Soleil, the radical theatre company founded on radical ideals of collectivism in 1964. The company are preparing to bring their epic production of Les Naufrages du Fol Espoir (Aurores), or The Castaways of the Fol Espoir (Sunrises) in English, to Edinburgh in an all too rare appearance on British soil. The production, loosely adapted from a posthumously published novel by Jules Verne, tells the story of a 1914 voyage of the Fol Espoir to Cape Horn, where the ship's passengers want to set up an idealistic community while the rest of the world drives relentlessly to what became the First World War. Meanwhile, a film crew attempt to tell this tale of doomed utopianism by using restaurant staff as actors. On one level, the tale reflects the existence, philosophy, working methods and ideals of Theatre du Soleil itself. When they were founded, the Cold Wa

The Hub 4 stars When writer and director of this Chilean double bill Guillermo Calderon introduces his work at the front of the Hub’s intimate purpose-built stage, it sums up his entire aesthetic, if not the anger that follows in his dialogue. Because at no point is anything hidden by the three women who appear in both works that dissect Chile’s post-Pinochet legacy, linked by a song as they move the set around in-between the two. Villa finds the three gathered around a table holding a miniature of Villa Grimaldi, the former dictator’s notorious torture house. The trio have been co-opted to decide what should happen to the site in a democratic Chile. Should Grimaldi be flattened and the land re-developed? Or should it be converted into a museum as a reminder of the atrocities carried out there? An initial vote is split three ways, with one ballot paper spoilt. The fierce debate that ensues reveals far more than just the fact that they’re all called Alejandra. As the

Stellar Quines are full of surprises. The female-focused theatre company who have slowly but surely become a fantastical force in Scottish theatre may appear to be shrinking if the size of their new show is anything to go by, but in actual fact, the company's artistic imagination is more expansive than ever. The last two Stellar Quines productions, Age of Arousal and ANA, were big, main-stage affairs that looked at sex and sensuality through a woman's eyes via a form of magical-realism that defined both plays' Quebecois roots. The company's new show, The List, which has an Edinburgh Festival Fringe run at Summerhall before going out on a brief Scottish tour, is also written by a Quebecois playwright. In sharp contrast to the other plays, however, Jennifer Tremblay's piece is an intimate work written for one actor, who must look the audience full in the face as she confesses her role in a neighbour's death. Where ANA took five years to reach the st

Monkey Bars – Traverse – 4 stars With the pan-generational mix of teenage angst and impending death onstage at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Chris Goode's new verbatim piece taken from conversations initiated by Karl James looks to an even younger generation for guidance. Goode's own co-production with the Unicorn Theatre then has adult actors suited and booted in grown-up office and dinner-party wear. The juxtaposition between half-formed voices possibly learned from parents by rote and a presentation and delivery that givers the performers the air of politicians or bureaucrats is a fascinating one. Talk of favourite sweets and playtime is subsequently given the weight by Goode's six performers of life-changing events that they actually do when you're eight years old. This avoids any Kids Say the Funniest Things style cutesiness, and is more akin to the very first series of Michael Apted's seminal and ongoing TV documentary, Seven Up. T