Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Ni Mi Madre | Oh, Calm Down | Glitch | Adam Riches: Jimmy + more

THEATRE

Ni Mi Madre ★★★★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 26 August

“They f**k you up, your mum…” as the Philip Larkin poem goes. But maybe they also make you who you are. In Arturo Luíz Soria’s one-man-playing-one-woman show, he gives a glittering, gregarious and grotesque portrayal of his formidable Brazilian mother, Bete; a sex-positive, narcissistic force of nature, in-yer-face gay ally and no-nonsense icon of female emancipation. Here, high camp not so much bridges the gender divide as obliterates it in a cloud of Louis Vuitton, and Soria’s performance is as flawless as his script is brutally honest, extremely funny, horrifying, heartfelt and wise.

With a classic set-up up of a dressing table, bedecked with tropical flowers rather than Hollywood lights, Bete shares her no-nonsense ideology of “honouring your body” and the supreme power of “The Mother” and tells of her battles to bring up her ever frustrating and endlessly critiqued children, including the one playing her today who has, at times rather surprisingly, lived to tell the tale. It’s a beautifully original concept that allows Arturo and his mother’s perspectives to exist in tandem, but also draws in Bete’s relationship with her mother and the intergenerational trauma that filters through the three characters lives.

What could be described as abuse or competitive parenting is presented by a man who’s clearly been pushed by his mother, fuelled by both her love and dynamism, but also his desire to rebel, to become the stunning performer that he is today. Passing judgment is less the point than showing what happened for what it is, and it’s more complicated and real because of it. When Soria strips away Bete’s colourful clothing and auditorium filling attitude, we finally get to see him as himself, a powerful example of someone who has reconciled himself with his childhood, turned it into a glorious piece of theatre and now steps through off the stage to leave behind the pain.

Sally Stott

THEATRE

Oh, Calm Down ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

This touching, time-hopping two-hander explores two different types of obsessive compulsive disorder. In 1999, Lucy undergoes a 24-hour labour to give birth to Claire, then spends the following weeks relentlessly fretting about her safety. In the present day, Claire gets expelled from drama school and returns home to care for her dying grandmother, unable to control the constant anxieties that spiral through her head.

Writer and performer Charlotte Ann-Tilley had a hit at last year’s festival with Almost Adult. Here, inspired by her own experiences, she overlays these two stories – one about post-natal OCD, the other about existential OCD – stylishly and sensitively, observing parallels between them. Both mother and daughter are met with a lack of compassion. Both women resist their diagnosis. Both women isolate themselves.

Director Ed White’s staging is smooth and slick, utilising nothing more than a couple of chairs against a backdrop of six neon poles. It also features two great performances: both Ann-Tilley and Maddy Banks are convincingly stressed as Claire and Lucy respectively, with the two of them also subtly multi-roling as other characters in each story. The show’s themes are leavened by an endearingly blunt sense of humour, too.

It could have more shape and drive and detail perhaps, but Oh, Calm Down emerges as a frank and unflinching examination of a misunderstood condition nonetheless.

Fergus Morgan

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THEATRE

Glitch ★★★

Assembly George Square (Venue 8) until 26 August

Romanian actress Edith Alibec notes that her new play is not autobiographical - as well she might for one who inhabits her protagonist with such mischievous credibility. As befits one who cried real tears for imagined relationships in adolescence yet cannot muster the emotion to grieve her adult romances, her anti-heroine has limited tolerance for the behaviour of her bereft mother, lost in memories of her marriage and battling breast cancer.

She engages in superficial hook-ups while she holds a flame for her high school crush. Their paths cross at the ten-year reunion, an awkward scene which she captures with an outsider’s cynicism. Childhood friend Anna, who masks her impulse to self-harm by buying into hippie wellness culture, is also in the mix but Glitch always returns to the mother-daughter relationship, an ambivalent influence when she is facing her own unwanted pregnancy.

Glitch is a well observed, convincingly acted study in emotional alienation which finds humour in the bleakest of circumstances and runs with it as a survival technique all the way to a hopeful, accepting ending.

Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

Adam Riches: Jimmy ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

At this sweaty rate, Adam Riches is going to finish the Fringe a skinny shadow of his former self. Summerhall’s TechCube venue is as sultry as a humid June date on Centre Court as the former Edinburgh Comedy Award winner prepares courtside to manifest the mercurial tennis ace Jimmy Connors, a punk of a showman who dominated the game in the early Seventies until he was out-bratted by John McEnroe. But Riches is not concerned with Connors’ two Wimbledon wins; instead, his focus is trained on Connors’ wildcard shot at the 1991 US Open at the age of 39.

Riches plays us through the tournament shot by surprising shot, underscored by a soundtrack of jazz drum rolls and paradiddles. You don’t have to be a tennis fan to be caught up in the comeback drama as Connors faces potential first round humiliation at the hands of McEnroe (Patrick, that is) or to buy into the unlikely triumph of his rally with Paul Haarhuis.

There is no rest for Riches as he intersperses the action with flashbacks to Connors’ childhood drilling by his mother and grandmother, a fierce double act in a male-dominated scene who instilled his twisted pathology where a hatred of losing was more of a driving force than a love of winning.

Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

The Interval ★★★

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 17 August

There’s a real sense of lived-experience to this funny, polished monologue from Scottish writer-performer Rhona Ashwood. Set during a theatre interval prolonged by technical problems Ashwood plays a service worker who’s duties are limited to selling ice-cream and directing people to the toilets. Perhaps understandably, she’s trying to keep it together; appear polite while constantly informing people that the ice cream scoops are inside the tub but the constant repetition is wearing her down. Struggling to keep her frustrations from boiling over she expresses herself with micro-aggressions such as sending people the wrong way out the fire escape.

She also occupies herself by doodling furiously which leads to a beautifully worked visual gag that’s a highlight. There are dark little hints that this will go somewhere quite unexpected — it doesn’t really and it’s perhaps better for it. This is a well-worked miniature of the mundane that maintains a strong sense of reality even though it’s happy to bend it — just a little — for fine comedic effect. It doesn’t strain for deeper significance but at its core it’s a tough little portrait of everyday quiet desperation. A tight, funny piece that makes you keen to see whatever Ashwood does next.

Rory Ford

THEATRE

Ticket to Wonderland ★★

PBH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms - CC Blooms (Venue 171) until 9 August

In an Edinburgh cafe, somewhere in Waverley Station, Alice is starting a graveyard shift. Reimagined here as an overly-qualified waitress, Carroll’s canonical protagonist is rescued from the day’s mundanities by a series of unsuspecting customers, who also double as Wonderland’s wacky hosts. An overhead tannoy provides opportunities for humour by affecting transformations in narrative time and space, and moments of magic and trickery make for a charming but under-utilised tool. The energy onstage remains consistently low, but when the cast come together during the play’s final moments, this proves a happy exception to an otherwise unfortunate rule.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts