Edinburgh Fringe reviews: Santi & Naz | Persephone | Chicken | Apple of My Eye | Jingle Street
Santi & Naz, Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) ***
Until 28 August
Growing up in the same village in pre-partition India, Santi and Naz are inseparable, despite Santi being Sikh and Naz being Muslim. Just as their bond begins to take on a romantic dimension, however, political and religious tensions infiltrate their closeness. Santi becomes infatuated with a hardline Hindu nationalist, and Naz’s father – concerned about the rising anti-Muslim sentiment in their village – arranges her marriage to another man.
Deftly portrayed by Rose-Marie Christian and Karendip Phull, Santi and Naz’s greatest strength lies in how the show honours the bright intensity of young friendship and first love. The pull that Santi and Naz exert on one another feels gravitational in force; though they follow different religions and have different interests, it’s clear that their understanding of themselves is based, above all, on each other. Playacting as Gandhi and Jinnah near their favourite spot by the lake, even the turbulent political situation around them is filtered through their connection.
Unfortunately, the strength of the show’s central premise is undermined by a rushed, slightly garbled conclusion that doesn’t do either of the girls justice. What Santi and Naz does convince us of, however, is that though the politics of great men may be what history remembers, it is love that shapes a life indelibly. Deborah Chu
Persephone, Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236) ***
Until 19 August
Written and performed by Isabelle Woolley, Persephone takes inspiration from the myth of the same name. This myth merges with the story of Violet – a young, modern-day woman in the throes of pregnancy.
The script is evocative, voluptuous in imagery and detail – Violet’s father sits on a swing set “like a pendulum keeping time” and flowers in summer are “heavy with seduction” – so that Woolley’s use of language mimics the first signs of pregnancy, particularly, a hyper-sensitive sense of smell.
The piece demands more grit to ground it, however. It’s poetical bias makes it difficult to disentangle the ancient and the contemporary, and while ‘grittiness’ is technically present in the narrative, it doesn’t operate at the level of the sentence – even the most distressing scenes are realised lyrically, and moments like these might benefit from a more economical approach.
In what is perhaps the most striking scene, Violet gorges on a glut of oranges. Juice runs down her arms, onto her dress, onto the baby bump beneath. It seems that the pith of the play is contained in this one moment – if the myth proposes that a woman’s role in the world is to nurture, and nothing else, then Woolley undoes that idea. Josephine Balfour-Oatts
Chicken, Summerhall (Venue 26) ***
until 27 August
An intimate hour with the most famous cock in Hollywood, Eva O’Connor’s solo Chicken show puts a feathered twist on the celebrity meet-and-greet. It’s a classic tale: Don, a country rooster, “free bird” and proud Kerryman moves to the big city to seek fame and fortune. But after securing an agent and finding a “fairy godmother” in Michael Fassbender, it’s all downhill – ketamine addiction, exploitation, betrayal – from there. O’Connor spins a wild yarn and the poultry element’s only the half of it.
Dressed in surely the best costume at the Fringe, she stalks and scratches, pecks and twitches, all with the paranoid energy of a faded star. O’Connor’s story may be absurd, but the physicality of her performance is deadly serious; with the audience surrounding her, she has nowhere to hide in the tiny, circular chicken run she’s carved for herself. The monologue begins intense and volatile, but it stays that way for an hour – so much so that the brilliant shock of the start begins to fade. We meet compelling characters along the way (the art-school girlfriend, the well-meaning mother) but Don’s will-he-won’t-he political awakening becomes a little gamey. After all, he’s just another nugget in the meat-grinder of fame. Katie Hawthorne
Apple of My Eye, Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) ***
until 19 August
Musical biographies of scientifically-inclined men seem to be the stock-in-trade of Early Mornings Productions, with their similarly-styled show on Alan Turing apparently doing well on its return. Here, it’s the turn of Apple founder Steve Jobs to be eulogised with music, as actor Stephen Smith leads us through the major events of his life as though he were a modern day Alexander Hamilton (the Broadway version, that is).
It turns out, there was a lot of drama in Jobs’ life, from his adoption early in life (“abandoned or chosen?” is a common lyrical theme), to his experimentation with LSD and Zen Buddhism in young adulthood, to his initial refusal to acknowledge a child he fathered, to his banishment from Apple – the company he helped found – when it was in difficult straits in 1985, and finally his triumphant return to what became the pre-eminent technology company in the world.
All of this is neatly and mostly chronologically summarised, but alongside the quartet of old Apple Macs in the background (the images onscreen set off by the actor’s touch), Smith’s voice is the star here, a bright, clear and optimistic tone which deserves a bigger stage. Fans of musical theatre and tech billionaires should love it. David Pollock
Jingle Street, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) ***
Until 27 August
The plotline to Chordstruck Theatre’s energetic, likeable musical is so flimsy and preposterous that it feels like it might have been scrawled on a beer mat on a particularly inebriated night out. Ad jingle guru Colin – whose reputation is for supplying dodgy oil and tobacco clients with catchy earworms to camouflage their nefarious activities – is suddenly afflicted by jingle syndrome: all he can say or sing are those intensely irritating promotional ditties. It’s a condition only soothed by being close to eco activist Jasmine – but will she forgive his unashamed greenwashing?
Paper-thin it all might be, but Jingle Street is also a huge amount of fun, bounced along by appropriately catchy tunes drummed out passionately on on-stage keyboards by Joseph Giles, and with brilliantly over-the-top, eager performances from its young cast. Tom Hayes is all oily charm as Colin, while Maddie Smith has serious vocal skills as Jasmine. Most unapologetically over-the-top, however, is Xander Pang as strutting, preening ad exec Holofernes (yes, quite), and Emily Huxter is sweet and gauche as Jasmine’s admirer Parsley. Does it offer new insights into green issues, or even attempt a new take on musical theatre? God, no – but Jingle Street is an hour of infernally catchy escapism all the same. David Kettle