Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Pussy Riot: Riot Days | The Invisible Spirit | Colours Run + more

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 23 August

This production was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018, when Russia’s action in Ukraine was still viewed as a regional skirmish and protest punk group Pussy Riot could still claim relatively autonomy to make anti-Putin work without fear of much greater reprisal than harassment and possible imprisonment, both of which they endured.

Yet the story which once formed the centrepiece of Riot Days feels a long time ago now.

Based on the memoir by Pussy Riot founding member Maria Alyokhina, and performed here by Alyokhina alongside two other female members of the group in trademark fluorescent balaclavas, it was originally a chronicle of state artistic repression and its resistance.

Alyokhina infamously helped perform the ‘Punk Prayer’ on the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012, “forty seconds of crime” which saw her jailed in a Ural mountain prison for two years. Riot Days’ original account of this is still here, set to a cataclysmic live electronic soundtrack by Eric J Breitenbach of Canadian band New Age Doom.

The sound is conventional industrial punk, but the autobiographical lyrical content is unique and powerful, from the thrashy, flailing revisitation of the Prayer itself, to the doomy, funereal grind (the trio literally process through the audience) of Alyokhina’s transportation to her oppressive, snowed-in prison.

Last time we saw Alyokhina’s release and return to protest as public enemy number one at the Sochi Olympics. Now there’s so much more to say.

The material is split into separately-themed song chapters, with new ones added on gay persecution, Alexei Navalny, the war in Ukraine and the concurrent clampdown at home, and finally a very tense segment about her escape from Russia.

Masters of the slogan, at one point the group declares “freedom doesn't exist unless you fight for it every day”. Alyokhina, we are reminded, remains a wanted woman in her home country.

David Pollock

The Invisible Spirit ★★★★

Space, Niddry Street (Venue 9) until 25 August.

Colours Run ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 25 August

If plays about Scottish history feature at all on the Edinburgh Fringe, they often focus on the big, familiar figures that every visitor to the city might recognise, notably Mary Queen of Scots.

The Invisible Spirit, though, based on the book by the late, great Scottish journalist Ken Roy, is a rare exception, a searching and intelligent history of modern Scotland that covers the vital years between 1945 and 1975 - from the end of the Second World War to coming of North Sea oil - but is still full of resonances for Scotland today.

The story is told through the voices of two mighty Scottish newspapers of the time, the long gone Bulletin - about which, as Roy tells us, no mother in Scotland ever had a bad word to say - and the Daily Record, still very much with us today. There’s also a character called The Scotswoman, played with style by Elaine Stirrat, who offers a different view of what was then a heavily male dominated public world.

And between them, these three lead us through the significant and revealing high points of those years, from VE Night in George Square, Glasgow, through the launch of the Edinburgh Festival and the shocking Peter Manuel trial and hanging of the 1950s, to the establishment sex scandals of the 1960s, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of the early 1970s, the terrible Ibrox disaster of 1971, and Jimmy Reid’s mighty rectorial address at Glasgow University in 1972, three years before the first oil came ashore.

The play is sharp-eyed and unsparing about the self-protective instincts of Scotland’s small and over-comfortable establishment, and lifted at every turn by the sheer, elegant power and wit of Kenneth Roy’s descriptive writing.

And with Chris Alexander turning in an eloquent and perfectly-pitched performance as The Bulletin (the show’s narrator), and strongly supported by Fergus John McCann as The Record, The Invisible Spirit emerges as a smart and sometimes moving contribution to the recent history of a nation that too often allows others to tell its story, in a way that Kenneth Roy resisted brilliantly, throughout his writing life.

Mikey Burnett’s play Colours Run, at Summerhall, is as much an Edinburgh show as The Invisible Spirit is a Glasgow one; although it boldly suggests a very different Edinburgh from the establishment one conjured up by Ken Roy.

Pongo and Pete are brothers living together in the city, both strong Hibs fans; but Pongo, the older and dominant brother, is also a fighting football casual, and as the play begins, he arrives home on a Hibs-Hearts derby day to tell Pete that he may have killed a man in a post-match attack.

This crisis triggers a fraught conversation between the brothers in which the strange and unsettling nature of their relationship is steadily revealed, as the submissive Pete - who rarely goes out, but has a true and loving heart - tries to comfort Pongo.

Colours Run is a surreal play in many ways, the ghosts of Pinter, Genet and other mid-century modernist masters hovering over the stage as Pete dons a dress that belonged to their late mother, and the two dance awkwardly around their battered sofa; and with Ruaraidh Murray and Sean Langtree delivering two exquisitely observed performances, the play quietly forges a strong and revealing link between Scottish working-class drama, and 20th century European theatre at its strangest, and most challenging.

Joyce McMillan

Fly, You Fools! ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

Lo-fi majesty sounds like a contradiction, but theatre company Recent Cutbacks conjure exactly that off with glorious theatrical inventiveness.

The American troupe, already Fringe favourites for their Jurassic Park spoof Hold onto Your Butts, return with a DIY Lord of the Rings that out-epics Peter Jackson’s franchise at a fraction of the cost.

Armed with an onstage foley studio, shadow puppets and an arsenal of household junk, they cobble together The Fellowship of the Ring from scratch. Gloves flap into birds, coconuts become horses. There is fan service, winks to internet memes and all the quotable lines that have lodged themselves into pop culture, but the real joy lies in watching them skewer the pomposity of Hollywood.

Gandalf’s forced-perspective grandeur is gleefully undone, with jabs reserved for postering hunks and glitzy celebrities. Fandom and farce collide here, and in the wreckage something oddly majestic emerges.

Alexander Cohen

Failsafe ★

Dovecot Studios (Venue 198) until 24 August

Failsafe, which explores a suicide and sex pact between two former schoolmates, promises the brand of black humour famed by cult TV phenomena like The End of the F***ing World.

Where the 2017 serial (based on a comic book of the same name) excels in its witty and sensitive portrayal of two young, doomed adults, Failsafe visibly struggles.

The lighting design, which multiplies the performers shadows and casts them in a range of colours, is to be commended. However, this is not nearly enough to carry the 90-minute production, which can hopefully enjoy a more rounded life in the future.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Jane Eyre Wasn’t a Whore ★★

The Loft at PBH’s Free Fringe @ The Outhouse Bar (Venue 99) until 23 August

“Sometimes when I get emotional, I see my life in Brontë quotes,” says Carly Polistina as Anne, a struggling actress living and working in New York City. Cue her divine plan to secure a role in a Brontë project, and as fate would have it, navigate the realm of modern dating.

Bookworms will be delighted with this piece and its literary references. It is both brilliantly performed by Polistina and charming as it provides a close reading of the cutthroat and competitive acting world. However, the overall narrative lacks the critical discussion, immediacy and intrigue promised by the title.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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