Fringe theatre reviews: Chip and Gus: A Comedy with Balls | The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey + more

Chip and Gus: A Comedy with Balls ★★★★

theSpace @ Venue 45 (Venue 45) until 29 August

Having written just the other day about The Distance at Summerhall and mused on the growing trend for plays which incorporate some form of strenuous physical activity – from running treadmills to static exercise bikes to The Distance’s parkour scaffolding – into the drama, I’ve found a new and unexpected entry to the genre.

Chip and Gus is literally a comedy with balls. Ping-pong ones, to be precise, a big bucket of them, which middle-aged barroom philosopher and educated man Gus produces in the backroom of an upstate New York sports bar, amid his regularly scheduled monthly beer and ping-pong session with his old friend Chip. While both men talk, they literally do play several games of ping-pong between one another.

To the viewer this seems like a feat of dextrous concentration, not least because the nature of their conversation is dense and rapid-fire. Gus (John Ahlin) is an educated intellectual with a racing mind and a tendency for madcap invention, who might feel tight-lipped around women he’s attracted to, but whose endless musings on everything from philosophy to grammar come spilling out around his friend.

Chip (Christopher Patrick Mullen), meanwhile, acts like your typical New York junior wiseguy, although he’s actually a failing musician, barely-acknowledged experimental composer and music teacher, who’s in the process of splitting from his wife but doesn’t want Gus to know. Chip’s just about smart enough to keep up with his friend, their verbal sparring clattering back and forth across the table as rapidly as those ping-pong balls.

Apparently an Off-Broadway success, Chip and Gus somehow feels like a very New York play, specifically one of a previous, Mametian generation. No great archetypal human problems are solved here, but it’s a lovely, well-performed and mentally and physically dynamic portrait of a middle-aged male friendship, albeit one possibly about to be derailed by old relationship secrets. David Pollock

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Aquarius Rising ★★★

Greenside at Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

Taking a story of queer life, love and ambition amid the bright lights of Los Angeles and flipping it in the face of extreme climate anxiety, writer and actor Ben Fallaci homes in on that unique quality present in most tales of LA, that’s it’s a kind of mundane dreamscape where weirdness and jeopardy exists just below the surface.

His character Aries is from Massachusetts, and his decision to take a road trip to LA in search of life-changing opportunities is offset somewhat when his casual boyfriend Colin, a Sagittarian Swiftie, comes with him. Despite not being single, the cliquey, incestuous gay scene of the city opens up before Aries.

He also discovers dreams aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, as he begins working for a merciless, bullying film producer, a kind of saturnine contractual obligation for being permitted access to the merest hint of an association with power.

The comparisons to Hell continue when the wildfires arrive and begin burning the city, sending Aries on a desperate odyssey for a valuable script and a couple of Warhol paintings of Liza Minelli.

Performing on an oddly high stage, the towering Fallaci certainly commands the room. Playing Aries as wide-eyed but bitchy, buffeted by a world out of control, his play is at once silly and thoughtfully satirical. David Pollock

The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

From the moment the lights go down, we find ourselves in a fairy tale: a land of broken toys, where everyone is obsessed with fixing things; a man (Magnus Coffinkey) trying to repair a magic bell which can grant him a wish; a fall from the bell tower; a broken heart.

We are already captivated by this story when the two performers, Joseph Zammit (Coffinkey) and Rebecca Camilleri (the narrator, and all the other parts) reveal another layer of the story: they are a couple trying to cope with the grief of losing a baby, and are making the fairy tale to try to understand their journey of loss, separately and together.

The show was written by Maltese theatre-makers Angele and Malcolm Galea, reflecting on their own experience of loss. Angele Galea also wrote the show’s beautiful music, which does so much to convey the atmosphere of enchanted sadness.

Camilleri is particularly strong, taking on a wide range of roles in the fairy tale as well as that of the grieving writer. Zammit moves seamlessly between Coffinkey and Jeremy, a man who is trying to look after his grieving wife while keeping at bay his own sorrow. Both are outstanding physical performers.

The production, directed by Philip Leone-Ganado, is perfectly poised in the way it holds both worlds. The grief is real, but never mawkish. The fairy tale is funny and strange and sometimes sad, and is always a story in its own right, never reduced to being an allegory.

I almost wish I didn’t have to tell you all this, because the ideal way to see this show is to know nothing. It wraps you up in its own magical world where not everything that’s broken can be mended, and somehow that’s okay. Susan Mansfield

A Forgotten Woman: Mrs Oscar Wilde ★★★

theSpace @ Symposium Hall (Venue 43) until 29 August

At a time when many “forgotten women” are being recovered from the margins of history, the story of Constance Lloyd, the woman who married Oscar Wilde, is ripe for reappraisal. Wilde’s famous homosexuality has almost completely erased the fact that he married and fathered two sons.

Actor Lexi Wolfe, half of disabled and neurodivergent-led theatre company Slade Wolfe Enterprises, brings Lloyd’s story to life through a series of letters to her brother, Otho. A clever woman who reconciled herself to spinsterhood rather than outstrip a potential husband with her own sparkling wit, she met her match - quite literally - in Wilde.

Wolfe’s intelligent, compassionate performance portrays her as a measured raconteur of her own story. A writer herself, and a campaigner for women’s Suffrage, she is stoic about her husband’s gradual estrangement, facing the rumours and scandal, Wilde’s trial and her own chronic illness with resignation and grace.

While it becomes clear early on that Lloyd isn’t likely to get a happy ending, she has a clear, engaging voice and a story well worth listening to. Susan Mansfield

READ MORE: Five Fringe shows about Vincent Van Gogh? We are all ears

Bad Boy ★★★

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

Looking for an easygoing slice-of-life Fringe dramedy? Bad Boy is a decent shout, nicely paced and amiably performed by Swedish actor Daniel Adolfsson who doesn’t have to try too hard to draw you in to the aimless orbit of intermittently employed actor Jack.

Jack teases with an idea for a story he’s working on but in the meantime he wants to share a whimsical period in his own life. Jack works on a suicide helpline and writes songs on the side as heartbreak therapy. He shares a couple and it’s standard rootsy troubadour stuff with a fluid storytelling bent. No big earthquakes, just some life tremors.

Turns out his girlfriend has done left him for another actor and he has inherited her dog. He’s not keen on canines, nor responsibility, but like the plot of a charming indie film he’s about to have his defences worn down by his neighbour from across the landing and her cute daughter.

Adolfsson relates these exchanges as much as inhabits the characters, though he does capture eccentric landlord Roger with a few brushstrokes. Bad Boy is a snapshot of bad calls, sweet encounters and small victories culminating in a warm, comforting and poignant rhetorical question. Fiona Shepherd

A Wolf Shall Devour the Sun ★★★

Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) until 31 August

Wolves in fairytales are typically depicted as predators, dissemblers, or both; shady characters to be distrusted and feared. In some folkloric traditions, the big bad wolf is even a proxy for the devil, while lycanthropic fantasies abound.

Garbed in leather and fur, storyteller Dougie Mackay and musician Jemima Thewes set out to reclaim the wolf from such superstitious propaganda and paint a more sophisticated picture of our lupine relatives with a sprinkling of statistics on the reintroduction of wolves to Europe, but mostly with a trio of stories, one apiece from Norse mythology, Siberian fabulism and Irish legend.

Mackay is a pretty straight storyteller, no inhabiting of characters or interpretative movement, just an informal recitation of the text, pitched suitably for all ages. Instead, his tales are embellished with deft shadowplay, hand drawn animation, very sparing use of sound effects and liberal outbreaks of song.

Thewes accompanies herself on guitar, harmonium and thumb piano, while Mackay keeps the beat on djembe drum, enhancing the evocation of eerie environments, where humans go missing on the fringes of forests and the outcome is never quite what it seems. Fiona Shepherd

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