Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Divine Invention | An Adequate Abridgement of Boarding School Life as a Homo | Honnef's Lost Words | Beach Babe | Checking In

Two very different forms of gay memoir offer refreshing takes on love.

Daniel Goldman in Divine Invention at Summerhall.

THEATRE

Divine Invention ****

Summerhall, Red Lecture Theatre until 11 August

Performed by director Daniel Goldman, and written by award-winning playwright Sergio Blanco, Divine Invention examines the topic of love by way of the physical body, neurobiology, literary, cultural and philosophical theory, and life-writing. At once a performance lecture and an auto-fictional gay memoir, complex ideas are relayed using uncomplicated means. Told entirely from behind a desk, 30 chapters and an epilogue are mapped out over a 65-minute spell, then navigated in numerical order. This is done with self-awareness, enabling a wry exchange of trust.

The script, which is laid in front of Goldman like a butterfly caught on the wing, is referred to throughout. A host of unassuming objects - a Francis Bacon print, a lone rib bone, a notebook of ideas - allows Goldman to travel between a range of topics, places and times, and the audience is brought into step alongside him. We go to storm-strewn landscapes particular to great works of love literature, despair at the gluttony of our species for pillaging the Earth of its worldly possessions, and discuss love as an event of mortal danger, as primitive, as a new path.

From the carnality of ‘entering into’ fiction via comic books as a young boy, to his first sexual encounters, to his passion for world travel, Blanco’s body is our ever-present archive. The play’s intellectual rigour can be relentless, however, so that any departure from a place of deepest erudition becomes impossible to ignore, and Blanco is guilty of the odd romantic notion. His position on Shakespeare’s Juliet (through whom he concludes that the relationship between love and language is dichotomous) is interesting, but particularly unconvincing in its present context - not least as it undermines the very question that beats at the heart of this piece: “Is it possible to say anything new about love?”

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

An Adequate Abridgement of Boarding School Life as a Homo ****

Just the Tonic at The Caves (Venue 88) until 11 August

It’s a tired old trope, admittedly: gay boys at boarding school; clandestine fumbles against a backdrop of high privilege; a generally wistful sense of repression and shame. Which makes writer/actor Ned Blackburn’s whipcrack two-hander all the more refreshing – and provocative. Johnny is 18, in his last year at a boys-only educational institution that dates back to the dark ages (and in many ways is still there), but he’s in no denial about the pleasure he gets from seeing the rugby lads in their CKs. In fact, he and strapping jock Harry have an active sex life – even if they don’t exactly shout about it. Until our hero begins to wonder, that is, what’s really going on between them.

An Adequate Abridgement is no tear-jerking gay tragedy, nor a brave tale of coming-out struggles. Instead, it’s something far richer and more complex: a story of identity and individuality, of demanding respect and acknowledgement even if they come at a cost.

Most importantly, though, it’s also a lot of fun. Blackburn’s script crackles with wit and sly references (even if when delivering it, he sometimes fights for attention with the loud beats coming from the venue underneath), and he navigates what feels like quite a plummet from initial frippery to closing darkness and insight expertly. He’s a winning lead, too, with a nice line in Britney dance moves and a touching vulnerability undercutting his cutting one-liners. Will Walford role-swaps very strongly as a strutting Harry, a monstrous headmaster and others – and although there’s something cartoonish to some of the play’s characterisation, that feels of a piece with Johnny’s larger-than-life imagination.

In terms of its wit, its insights, its pacing and its persuasive story arc, An Adequate Abridgement is a thoroughly assured piece of work. More than that, though, it’s a warm but playful celebration of difference and acceptance, and a reminder that what we want and what we need might not be quite the same thing.

David Kettle

THEATRE

Honnef’s Lost Words ***

Assembly George Square (Venue 8) until 15 August

Dutch theatre maker Tim Honnef has developed a reputation on the Fringe for storytelling theatre of Borgesian complexity, and this show - if even some of it is true - might be his most autobiographical to date. Beginning with a post-apocalyptic vision of a man typing, alone, on the 17th floor of an abandoned building, the story switches to (possibly) Honnef himself, writing down his memories after an illness which threatened to rob him of his past.

Full of stories within stories, boxes within boxes (literal boxes, too, in this case), this play is Honnef’s “ode to words, stories, fantasy and absurdity” which hasn’t been written - or has it? Confused? You might be, but it’s hard not to be won over by his playfulness and dry humour.

The show does lack theatricality: he sits at a table reading out his script because of the aforementioned memory problem, and powers through it at speed. Possibilities for pop-up buildings inside books and a radio soundtrack are hinted at but not fully realised. But it’s nevertheless a hymn of praise to books, words and stories and how they make us who we are, and there’s little to fault about that.

Susan Mansfield

THEATRE

Beach Babe **

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 10 August

An absurdist — largely — two-hander set on a pretty desolate beach in Rhyl in Wales, this new play by Elizabeth Goodall is still a work in progress. Even at just over half an hour the oblique situation and dialogue does stretch patience but it’s made at least palatable by a couple of decent performances from Julia Tidmas Goodall as the heavily pregnant “woman” and Nicholas Holloway as her partner. Thankfully, there is actually a point to this production from Chester University’s Starving Creatives company — think Samuel Beckett meets The Twilight Zone — but this still feels undercooked. Its emotional core may well be genuine but it takes too long to make its presence felt.

Rory Ford

THEATRE

Checking In **

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 10 August

George Mitchell (Tom Showell) is an Ed-Sheeran-style singer-songwriter who is on deadline to finish his difficult second album, when he’s visited by a physical embodiment of Death (May Daley). She’s just stopped by as a fan on the way to a nearby victim, but sadly Death is informed by greater powers mid-visit that now she’s contacted George his time is up. Any points Dougal Thomson’s script is making about what we leave behind after we die are buried beneath the twee supernatural scenario and bantering dialogue which drains all urgency from George’s impending doom, but Daley in particular is a lively and energising performer, and both actors’ closing duet is touching and well-delivered.

David Pollock