Reviews for three neat shows in the Fringe Fest­iv­al.

See­ing the city: a tast­ing menu by Ania and Kim Upstill, at 17 Tory street, final show­ing 19 Feb­ru­ary 2016

We are greeted at the door by Ania Upstill and invited to wash our hands. She dir­ects us on to Pip­piajna Tui who shows us to our seats and asks a few ques­tions. A third woman, Kim Upstill, moves quietly around the space check­ing tables, show­ing us the pro­gramme which is also a menu.

The five scenes have a title, a descrip­tion and a matched tast­ing plate. Deliv­er­ing the food becomes part of the per­form­ance with all three women vari­ously speak­ing, mov­ing or hand­ing around plates.  Kim has pre­cise dance move­ments which are best in scene 2 as she con­structs little food towers.  Pip­piajna is lovely dur­ing scenes 4 and 5 as she shows her dis­tress at the repeat­ing move­ment around the tables then is stopped in order to announce scene 5. Like­wise Ania is charm­ing with repet­it­ive move­ments in scene 4 then a stum­bling return to the main table in scene 5. One of the delights of this piece is that the audi­ence is free to make their own inter­pret­a­tions because it is all so open.

Kim also has an art install­a­tion at 17 Tory street which shows dur­ing the day.

 

Through rose col­oured glasses writ­ten by Court­ney Rose Brown, dir­ec­ted by Aimee Smith, on at Thistle Hall to 20 Feb­ru­ary 2016

Taylor spent a lot of time with Sam’s fam­ily when they were kids and they’ve been friends ever since. But after Taylor moved and Sam went to uni­ver­sity their friend­ship has been strained to break­ing point.  Are the pacts they made when they were young still rel­ev­ant to their lives now? Can they recon­cile with each oth­er when they’re not sure they can recon­cile to them­selves?

Writ­ten by Court­ney Rose Brown (who also plays Sam) I think this show is a lot cleverer than the descrip­tion in the Fringe pro­gramme cred­its it with. There is some hor­rific­ally funny dia­logue about how uni­ver­sity and rela­tion­ships affect indi­vidu­als. It has some smart things to say about PTSD and the dif­fi­culties of trust­ing oth­er people (and one­self) again. The chro­no­logy of the play is all mixed up and Brown and Andrew Broad­ley (who plays Taylor) have a nice dynam­ic as they show the shift­ing rela­tion­ship of the char­ac­ters.

N.B. Con­tent warn­ing for dis­cus­sion of men­tal health, sui­cide, abuse and alco­hol­ism.

 

Why do I dream? By Sab­rina D’Angelo, on at Gryphon Theatre to 20 Feb­ru­ary 2016

Sab­rina D’Angelo is “a prac­ti­tion­er of Body Poetry, an eccent­ric and fairly non-exist­ent art form that is best described as “non-verbal spoken word”, or “human-pup­petry”. It bor­rows from the great tra­di­tions of mime, inter­pret­ive dance, mask, and ham.”  From my point of view it is bizarre phys­ic­al com­edy where D’Angelo some­times becomes her own pup­pet. Weird yet a heck of a lot of fun to watch.

For most of this show she is retell­ing the story of Madame Bovary. Bal­loons, plastic bags, gloves, and oth­er props are used in inter­est­ing ways to become oth­er char­ac­ters (Or parts of oth­er char­ac­ters at least.) D’Angelo has amaz­ing con­trol over her body with the con­clu­sion of the sad tale of Madame Bovary being a par­tic­u­lar high­light for me.