Edinburgh Fringe Previews - Unity Theatre - 21,22&23/07/2016

UNITY Theatre played host to three nights of preview shows last weekend, as a line-up of performers fine-tune their acts en-route to the Edinburgh Fringe. We managed to catch a selection of the comedy on offer and here’s our pick of the bunch.

Adam Rowe calls his show Bittersweet Little Lies and it evolves from a story about the day his dad taught him it was ok to lie sometimes. Rowe can accelerate from deadpan delivery to full-scale rant in the blink of a lazy eye and uses skeletons from the family closet as the basis for much of his set. This is good solid comedy that hits its mark well and the honesty of the delivery belies the title.

Tom Little used 31 Teeth in My Mouth as a title, but he’s already thrown this out and by the time it reaches Edinburgh it will be “Chicken Supreme? No, is isn’t”(probably). Whilst there are some well-judged comic pauses in his act, Little has his audience breathless following the seemingly random trail of weird and wonderful observations he makes. There’s nothing random about it though, as much of the material relies on convoluted construction and repeated links back to earlier segments. Here’s the sort of humour that builds laughs upon laughs – fasten your seatbelt.

Brennan Reece closed the weekend with his show called Everglow, which he has recently brought back from Australia. Beware this sort of comedy, as it has a sting in its tail. There is a disarming frankness in Reece’s manner and he has a tremendous confidence, using the whole of the stage in a very physical way. What is particularly special, though, is the architecture of his material, which comes full circle in a hugely satisfying way and, startlingly, manages to bring in elements of pathos that are genuinely moving. Expect the unexpected with this one.

At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Adam Rowe plays The Caves at 17:20 from 5th August, Tom Little is at Nightcap at 13:10 from 6th August and Brennan Reece at Pleasance Courtyard at 18:00 from 3rd August.

Adam Rowe, Tom Little & Brennan Reece

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool

Queens of Syria - Liverpool Everyman - 15/07/2016

To light a candle is better than damning the darkness.

So explains one of the women during one of the interpolated video segments of this production from Developing Artists and Refuge Productions, brought to the UK on tour with the support of the Young Vic.

Queens of Syria began life as a 2013 drama therapy project in Amman for Syrian women displaced from their homeland, working toward playing out Eurpides’ Trojan Women. The parallels with the ancient drama are clear, but what we see on stage is no longer 13 women presenting a piece of classic theatre. It has become something close to documentary – a kind of community autobiography.

Verbatim theatre often takes the words of real people and places them in the mouths of actors, but there is no way to fully describe the power of hearing a group of women retelling their own experiences in this way. Theatre audiences will have become familiar with frequent references to “The Refugee Crisis” in mainstream performance in recent years, and the participants in Queens of Syria fire a broadside at this in the closing segments of the work.

“Shall we make a play about it” quotes one. “That’s a sad story, but do you have a sadder one” says another. These jibes about the (usually) well-meaning efforts of theatre and media producers, directed straight at the audience, are a reminder that what we are seeing is not staged for effect, but to help us put real faces and real lives to the reports we’ve heard in news bulletins. To humanise the inhuman experiences that people have suffered. To make us recognise that every one of them had homes, lives and families like our own that have been shattered forever.

This is not easy to watch, but if it can use the lighting of its own small candles to start illuminating the darkness of the horrors created by civil war, then maybe we can stop seeing a problem and begin looking for solutions.

Queens of Syria gave two performances as part of the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival at the Everyman on Friday and Saturday and continues touring to Leeds, Edinburgh Durham and London.

Queens of Syria - Photo (C) Vanja Karas

Review originally written for Good News Liverpool