Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Kafka's Ape | We Used to be Girl Scouts | How Dead Am I? + more

Kafka’s Ape ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

What a striking and memorable piece of work Kafka’s Ape is. The original source of the play is Franz Kafka’s 1917 short story A Report to an Academy, in which an ape which has been captured, civilised and taught to talk gives an oral academic report on the story of his snatching and fast-paced evolution.

Numerous interpretations can be and have been applied to the story, from a commentary on evolution or consciousness to an allusion to the integration of the Jewish diaspora into European life in the early 20th century.

Yet in South African playwright Phala O. Phala’s adaptation, as performed to perfection by actor Tony Bonani Moyimbo, the fact of Moyimbo’s Blackness elevates the layers of meaning to a whole new level, bringing in allusions to colonialism, racism and slavery.

Below a banner which reads ‘Species of the World Conference: What is the Identity of an Evolving Man?’, the ape, Red Peter, describes his capture from his homeland and his transportation to the city by people who mock and tease him. Once he reaches ‘civilisation’, he realises assimilation is the only protection from a zoo.

First staged in South Africa in 2015, Kafka’s Ape has won awards around the world, and it’s extremely pleasing that the Noma Yini company has finally brought it to Edinburgh. Moyimbo’s performance, in particular, is a masterpiece of physical theatre, as Peter shambles around with a heavy-knuckled simian gait, swinging himself up to the lectern every time he returns to it and trying to force his eloquent vocabulary past an ape-like grunt.

At one point he leaps and hangs by his hands and ankles from the backdrop; at another, he picks imagined fleas from the scalps of those in the front row and eats them.

“To survive I had to stop being an ape,” he murmurs tragically. “I can no longer remember the feeling of being an ape.” He doesn’t seek freedom, he tells us, but a way out, and these are not the same thing.

David Pollock

We Used to be Girl Scouts ★★★★

theSpace on the Mile (venue 39) until 24 August

“Being a girl isn’t all bad, but when it’s bad it’s terrible,” reflects Drew (Trystan Youngjohn) at one point as she considers her future.

Things certainly do seem pretty terrible for the three American teenage girls in this fresh and funny new play by Edinburgh-based American writer Emery Schaffer. However, their challenges are faced with a blast of winning, positive energy.

Drew has recently lost her virginity and thinks she’s pregnant. Sasha (Samuela Noumtchuet) loves her best friend (who just happens to be Drew) and is trying to pluck up the courage to tell her and come out — as “a BIG lesbian!” Meanwhile, Mary (Hannah-Mae Engstrom) has a really terrible home life — she has the bruises to prove it — and she’s contemplating running away from her abusive father. Unsure of their next step, the three girls head off to the woods to consider their options.

Schaffer is dealing with serious themes here and clearly recognises that there’s no emotions so big as the ones you encounter in adolescence but she also acknowledges the boundless optimism and sense of fun that’s part and parcel of the experience.

This is brought to the fore by an absolute crackerjack trio of performances from the cast. All three actors are American and currently based in Edinburgh and there’s a real sense of authenticity and camaraderie here that proves infectious.

There’s a real confidence and sense of visual invention to this production directed by Kate Stamoulis too. The set dressing smoothly transforms from three pregnancy test sticks to public toilet stalls to a verdant forest.

Like a teenager, it’s never content to sit too long yet doesn’t give any of its characters short shrift. It’s a positive, funny piece and a dynamite showcase for its exceptionally talented cast.

Rory Ford

How Dead Am I? ★★★

C ARTS I C venues I C aurora (venue 6) until 25 August

There’s a nice mix of accents that speaks to the diversity among this group of International performers in this devised piece.

There’s also been no end of original Fringe plays where people end up in the antechamber of the afterlife over the past few years — and perhaps with good reason. However, most of them don’t do much with the premise — this is different.

It’s a bit like a queer Heaven Can Wait performed with the frantic desperate energy of Gaspar Noe’s Climax, as the performers arrive bloody and bedraggled in limbo, confused and waiting to be processed to their ultimate destination.

The performers work very well together as they piece together their relationship to each other. What really sets this apart, however, are the burst of physical theatre as they carouse, meet, break-up and dance wildly recreating a sort of hellish disco in a very small space. This would play better in a club setting but the technical specs are way beyond what you might reasonably expect from the space available with a pounding original soundtrack.

Although this initially appears to be a lark, considerably enlivened by personable performers, this does have a serious point and leaves you eager to see where they’ll go next.

Rory Ford

Summer of Harold ★★★

Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322) until 26 August   

Part of the House of Oz roster of Australian shows at Assembly, Summer Of Harold is a trio of new playlets by writer Hilary Bell, which are respectively charming, comically caustic and touching.

Summer Of Harold itself is a fond reminiscence by Janet (Lucia Mastrantone) of the summer she and Kiwi housemate Alison spent as housekeepers for playwright Harold Pinter and his wife Antonia Fraser in their Holland Park home. It’s a slight but sweet piece contrasting the backpacker experience with the Pinter’s privileged but rather eccentric lifestyle, with nothing much at stake beyond some broken beloved crockery.

Her tale is packed up neatly along with the boxes Janet is filling as she prepares to make her own house move years later.  

In Enfant Terrible, ceramicist Gareth (Berynn Schwerdt) seethes with an Iago-like resentment and jealousy at the success of his journeyman contemporary and plots a disruption at an awards dinner in his honour. A piece of mouldy yet precious cheese is emblematic of all that Gareth covets and Schwerdt has fun stewing in his own juices.   

Both actors come together for Lookout, a valedictory meeting between Rae and Jonathan at their favourite rural viewpoint. The latter needs to move on from paralysing grief and low self-worth, the former won’t let him and what emerges is a poignant if predictable mini-study of the things that stop us letting go, for good or ill.   

Fiona Shepherd

Malion  ★★

TheSpace@Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) Until 24 August

This ambitious play by young company Tired Horses combines a “feminist” reworking of Ovid’s Pygmalion story with a vision of toxic masculinity.

Sculptor Malion (Joseph Meardon, also the writer) has made a statue of the most beautiful woman in the world, but his laddish friends soon make her the object of their crudest fantasies. Aphrodite grants Malion’s prayer and brings Galatea (Kit Laveri) to life, but will he treat her any differently?

While the cast of four work hard in Mikael Phillips’ production, the men conform to the worst of male stereotypes, and the woman is powerless to do anything about it.

Susan Mansfield

Rat King Gospel ★★

theSpace on the Mile (venue 39) until 24 August

Overhearing hearing other people’s conversations can be interesting occasionally but if you were sitting too close to the characters in this new play by Donna Soto-Morettini you’d be tempted to move to another table.

Three childhood friends catch-up at a book signing for Rachel, who has become a popular children’s author with ideas that the other two may have helped contribute to.

This isn’t even as interesting as it sounds as it’s largely confined to three actors swapping flatly staged, colourless chat and childhood reminiscences in the pub afterwards. A darker secret does eventually emerge but too late to arouse much interest.

Rory Ford