Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: #CHARLOTTESVILLE | Ohio | The Monkeypox Gospel | The Ego + more

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

Ohio ★★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 24 August

With the United States thrown into turmoil by Donald Trump’s second prsidency, it’s fascinating to see those American dramas of doubt, division and aggressive certainty play out across the Edinburgh Fringe; and nowhere more so than Priyanka Shetty’s impassioned solo show #Charlottesville, produced by Yellow Raincoat and Richard Jordan in association with the Pleasance.

Subtitled “The play that Trump does not want you to see!”, Shetty’s show is a powerful docudrama about the events of 2017 in the city of Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, which Shetty witnessed as a young first year theatre student of Indian origin.

Enraged by a city council decision to remove some statues and memorials commemorating Confederate leaders, the American far right, emboldened by Trump’s election the previous year, vowed to stage massive demonstrations in the normally quiet university city; and amid the torchlit white supremacist marches and huge counter-demonstrations that followed, one woman demonstrator was killed by a man who drove his car into the crowd.

Shetty chronicles all this in vivid narrative style, with sharp and telling use of projected video images. Alongside this shocking story of a quiet town confronted with an overt politics of hatred, though, she also has a tale to tell of the more subtle oppression and marginalisation she suffers at the hands of her university department, who see nothing wrong with directors repeatedly refusing to cast her for student productions because of her skin colour, and aggressively forbid her to make a show about the Charlottesville events.

The result is a riveting tale, told with intelligence and feeling, that cuts to the heart of the lingering racism and overt white supremacism that is helping to reshape American politics. And Shetty’s powerful stage presence is a living reminder both of the profound crisis the United states faces, and of its enduring capacity, despite Trump’s best efforts, to offer new Americans from across the world the chance to find, and raise, their own voices.

In their show Ohio, at Assembly Roxy, US indie-folk duo The Bengsons - Shaun and Abigail - offer their audiences a much more meditative insight into the tensions that divide American society.

In what they call “an ecstatic grief concert” - a one-hour cycle of songs punctuated by narrative - they chart their own personal journeys from childhoods shaped by religious faith (hers light-touch Jewish, his in a strict and devout Christian sect) through a long youthful process of doubt, rebellion, rejection, and rage, towards some kind of new accommodation with the aspects of life that are both spiritual and unknowable.

The experience that shapes them includes Sean’s increasing profound deafness, inherited from his preacher father, and the premature birth of their son, when the baby’s life hangs in the balance.

None of this, though, ever seems to diminish the magnificent, raw strength of their music, of Shaun’s guitar and Abigail’s wild, magnificent singing, which ranges from the gentlest of dances and laments to heart-tearing rebel yells of rage and grief; in a show whose music comes from the very heart of American culture - religious, folk-based, touched by soul and blues - yet always succeeds in forging it into something brilliant, and new.

Joyce McMillan

The Monkeypox Gospel ★★★

Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61) until 24 August

There’s a lot going on in Ngofeen Mputubwele’s debut stage show The Monkeypox Gospel; and so there should be, given the importance of the subjects he tackles, which include the science of pandemics, the politics of vaccination, and the impact of lingering colonial attitudes on human health and health care.

His subject is the monkeypox (now renamed m-pox) epidemic of 2022; but since m-pox, like AIDS, is often transmitted by sex between gay men, Mputubwele fears that by writing honestly about it, he will finally expose himself to complete exclusion from his Congolese family and community.

The problem with the show, though, is that in a short 60 minutes, Mputubwele - who is an award-nominated podcast producer, as well as a journalist and lawyer - throws absolutely everything at it, from a massively noisy mixed soundtrack that sometimes drowns out his words (although he is a big man with a big voice), to awkward episodes in which he works through his traumas - as a gay man from a strictly religious background, and a black African living in New York - by performing extracts from Verdi’s La Traviata, and dancing to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s ballet music.

That he has a powerful story to tell is not in doubt; but before he brings it to the stage again, he needs to declutter and re-focus the narrative, and then allow it - through him - to speak for itself.

Joyce McMillan

The Ego ★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 24 August

The Ego takes time to heat up, but as with a frog in water, there’s no escaping the message at its heart when Anemone Valcke and Verona Verbakel bring proceedings to the boil.

In fact, the play isn’t about the ego at all (the softest, most fragile part of a person, as they understand it), but of internalised misogyny and #MeToo.

The action comprises videos captured during or after significant life-events – like when Verbakel’s part in a movie gets cut, or when she calls her mum in tears before going onstage to do a kissing scene – and direct conversations with the audience.

There is an unsettling commentary on informed consent performed to the tune of Marilyn Manson, and a message, written over Google Docs, reveals the soft, fragile centre of the play (what it is, what it isn’t, why it is, and where it came from).

This is overlayed by footage of manatees, who by law, cannot be harmed. What would it be to have the same rights as a manatee, they ask?

The overall shape of the piece means the final moments are somewhat anticlimactic, but each layer holds intrigue and meaning, and its conclusion poses powerful questions, nonetheless.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Jello Brain ★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

What starts off as a show about an anxious young woman’s fear of getting of getting Alzheimer’s disease, following her mother’s diagnosis at the age of 55, turns into not so much a demystification of the illness and its effects, but a celebration of a charming mother-daughter relationship that prevails through the challenges.

Written and performed by Natalie Grove, it begins with Natalie’s Mum going to live in a place called ‘Memory Care’ and Natalie taking Xanex to deal with her worry of also getting the disease which, conversely, might in the long-term also make her ill.

Grove’s head is initially filled with the facts she’s researched online about the disease, which are adding to her anxiety but also her knowledge. Her worries slowly alleviate as she and her mum adjust to their new lives, with the world of the care home, with its supporting cast of characters and their activities, evoked in a way that feels pleasantly domestic rather than offputtingly institutional.

A day-to-day charting of a series of events, including Natalie’s trips to see her psychologist, rather than a piece with a more focussed story, it’s refreshing to see such a positive piece about Alzheimer’s and caring, with a heartfelt script performed by a warm and identifiable narrator with compassion and, by the end, strength.

Sally Stott

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