Edinburgh Fringe reviews: Kanpur: 1857 | Monstering the Rocketman | Pub Grub | Dropped | Some Masterchef Sh*t | Becoming Maverick
Joyce McMillan hails Kanpur: 1857 as one of the most important political dramas at this year’s festival, leading our latest roundup of Fringe theatre
THEATRE
Kanpur: 1857 ★★★★☆
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 24 August
Monstering the Rocketman ★★★★☆
Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 24 August
NORTH INDIA, 1857; and in the aftermath of the rebellion against British rule that imperial history calls the Indian Mutiny, a man stands strapped to the mouth of a cannon, awaiting the horrible and mutilating death prescribed by the British as punishment for rebels and their allies.
The British officer in charge of the public execution sees himself as a civilised man, though, perhaps willing to free his prisoner, if he will give up information about rebel leaders; and so he probes and interrogates, demanding that the prisoner both inform and entertain, in the face of death.
This is the situation around which Scottish-Indian writer Niall Moorjani builds the powerful new one-hour play Kanpur: 1857, winner of this year’s Pleasance Theatre Charlie Hartill Award. With a little light-touch historical information projected behind the action, and powerful live accompaniment from brilliant Scottish tabla musician Sodhi, the show emerges as a fascinating hour of reflection on the psychology of colonialism, and the related politics of gender.
The prisoner, it emerges, is a peaceful storyteller who resists being defined as a “man”, and is deeply in love with a famous hijra or non-binary courtier turned rebel leader; and the storyteller questions not only the rigid sexual intolerance increasingly imposed by the British in India, but also the mentality of empire which responds to one angry and horribly violent act of rebellion, costing the lives of dozens of British women and children, with a vast war of retribution, killing hundreds of thousands.
Moorjani’s play is beautifully written, full of a lyrical sense of the beauty of India and its culture, and of those moments when Indian and British cultures can share their poetry and music; both Moorjani, as the prisoner, and co-director Jonathan Oldfield, as the all-too-charming officer, deliver richly complicated performances. And when, in the end, the prisoner asks “How many Indian lives can one British life be worth?”, the question echoes down the ages to the present tragedy in Gaza; in what seems like one of the most important political dramas on this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and one with strong and challenging Scottish resonances.
Growing homophobia and sexual intolerance is also the theme of Henry Naylor’s latest play Monstering the Rocketman, a brilliantly entertaining and rivetingly well-told monologue about The Sun newspaper of the early 1980s, and its vicious campaign of vilification against gay rock star Elton John, whom it accused – on very slender evidence – of a series of hideously exploitative relationships with young boys.
Against a projected backdrop of shrieking 1980s headlines, Naylor tells the story of Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie’s campaign in tremendous style, focusing on the figure of a naive but ambitious young reporter recently recruited by The Sun, but never hesitating to sketch the monstrous characters who dominated 1980s newsrooms in the vivid detail that also pervades the whole narrative, brilliantly evoking the atmosphere of that era in London and the UK.
It’s an ugly story, but one that, exhilaratingly, ends on a far more hopeful note than many at the time expected. It stands as both a vital historical record and a warning, as new waves of intolerance begin to target groups even more vulnerable than gay men were, back in those days of Section 28, and the early years of the Aids epidemic.
JOYCE MCMILLAN
THEATRE
Luke Wright: Pub Grub
Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 12 August
★★★☆☆
Performance poet Luke Wright loves words, every bit of them: the letters they start with, the vowels in the middle, the taste of them on your tongue. Despite its title, his latest show (in his 27th year as a writer/performer) is not specifically about food, though Jay Rayner does take a knock in his opening paean to pub grub, which celebrates the comfort of beige nosh.
Words are all the sweeter to Wright, as he bounces back from six months of writer’s block last year. Pub Grub – dig that assonance – is brought to you by the letters “D”, “O” and “A” with separate odes restricted to one vowel. These are more than literary exercises, they are proper witty snapshots. Turns out there is a whole world of obscenities unlocked by the letter “O”.
Family is a recurring theme – mum, childhood friends and his son are all in his thoughts. Some of his connecting material doesn’t quite land, even as a thread to keep picking. Wright’s favourite pub joke is just OK but, retold throughout the show in different styles, it becomes another linguistic comfort blanket and certainly makes a jolly good punk sonnet to end on.
FIONA SHEPHERD
THEATRE
Dropped
Easter Road Stadium (Venue 518) until 10 August
★★★☆☆
There’s a bruising authenticity to this monologue from debut writer-actor Alfie Cain that sets it apart from other plays dealing with the beautiful game. Cain was a trainee at Chelsea’s football academy until he was unceremoniously dropped by the age of 18. Alfie took the opportunity to retrain as an actor but the rejection he suffered clearly still stings and while autobiographical to an extent this play presents a fictionalised account that documents the pressures faced by young players.
Although informed by a love of the game — at least initially — this quickly becomes a cautionary tale. Academy players have a one in thousands chance of going on to enjoy a professional career. Cain’s young footballer ploughs on against the odds, desperate for affirmation from his father and success in the face of verbal and physical abuse — both on and off the pitch. It offers some insight into how toxic masculinity takes root and looks at the fallout of filling young boys with unrealistic dreams. While necessarily bleak, Cain’s powerful performance holds your attention and it’s to Hibs' credit that they would host such an unflinching look at the challenges facing young players — for whom it should be required viewing.
RORY FORD
Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here.
THEATRE
Some Masterchef Sh*t
Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 9 August
★★★☆☆
Proving the well-known truism that any sensational news story can provide inspiration for a show in Edinburgh, here's a comedy with echoes of that unforgettably gruesome true tale from 2003 about strangers meeting on the internet and one allowing the other to kill and eat him. It’s an even more shocking backdrop than the current scandal surrounding the TV show in the title, to which it bears no connection.
Playwright Luke High's script plays it cagey at first, laying out his pair of characters’ first coffee shop meeting through an internet advertisement, as though this were a story of two men looking for love or at least a quick hook-up. Married vascular surgeon Adam is professional and uptight, while Luke, a waiter at a well-known Italian restaurant chain, is an easy-going waster.
The dance around what they’re planning to get up to – and Adam has a very particular cut of meat in mind – is delivered in a skilful and just about believable way, with the characters’ nerves and heightened self-awareness coming together in some rich dark comedy, which is well sold by the actors.
There’s a stated homoerotic edge which takes the play into queer comedy territory, although once it delves deeper into the pair’s very different but somehow compatible motivations it becomes inevitably more serious and over-described, and a bit less fun.
DAVID POLLOCK
THEATRE
Becoming Maverick
theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 9 August
★★★☆☆
In Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, the housekeeper Mrs Danvers is a formidable enemy for Maximillian de Winter’s new wife. This one-woman play, written and performed by Heather Alexander, purports to tell Mrs Danvers’ story: a orphan abandoned in a trunk on the quay at Southampton, raised in a cruel orphanage where she learns that she must “do what she must” to survive.
It’s a colourful story vividly told, even if the language is sometimes over-elaborate. It says much about Alexander’s delivery that the rhyming structure is not more intrusive. When a tragedy in the orphanage causes her to run away, she musters all her wits to land on her feet and talk her way into a job as tutor and companion to the precocious young Rebecca.
Together, as partners in crime, they plan seductions for Rebecca’s lovers and execute revenge on her abusive father. But, as twist follows twist, it turns out that Alexander has a bigger point to make about childhood trauma. The daring final surprise, which forces the audience to re-evaluate everything we’ve heard so far, will be a step too far for some.
SUSAN MANSFIELD
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.