Fringe theatre reviews: Glass Child | The Spectacular Vermin Sisters: Taking Back What's Ratfully Ours + more

Glass Child ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 16 August

The term “glass child” is used to describe a sibling of a person with special needs: one who is all but invisible due to the greater needs of the other. But there is nothing remotely invisible about either of the real-life siblings in this extraordinary show presented by the House of Oz showcase: not Kayah, who has Down’s Syndrome, or his younger sister Maitreyah.

Maitreyah opens the show, speaking haltingly about her family and her upbringing in small-town New South Wales. Then, into this serious, confessional performance bursts Kayah, dressed as a tree, swiftly and with panache stripping down to his underpants. Words are difficult for him, but movement is fluent and instinctive, full of personality and humour. Dance is the language in which the siblings are most at home.

Directed by Kate Harman and Gavin Webber for Queensland-based dance and performance company The Farm, Glass Child is finely judged. After a bit more speaking - Maitreyah takes us through the basics of Down’s Syndrome, Kayah tells us what he’d like to do with Emma Watson - the words fall away.

The pair dance through a range of styles and emotions, from tender to exuberant, playful to defiant. There are snippets of home video and a short animation. Anna Whitaker’s sound design feels tailor-made, and weaves in some great music: Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand is particularly well used.

This is not a show about disability, except in the way it challenges those who make snap judgments about people who are different. It’s a striking display of strength (physical and emotional), what it means to find a way to express yourself which isn’t about words, and a sibling bond which is both utterly unsentimental and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Susan Mansfield

The Spectacular Vermin Sisters: Taking Back What's Ratfully Ours ★★★

Just The Tonic at The Caves (Venue 88) until 17 August

Johno, the defiantly tepid warm-up act, has lost all his swords, and two “frolicking whores” are preparing to shuffle hop step across the stage like it’s1926 again – until one of them sees a rat, who has a sister that’s another rat.

It’s the kind of late-night comedy cabaret in the Cowgate caves where you’re as likely to have a laugh as get a microphone stand in your face, probably simultaneously. “What’s going on?” asks a man in the audience. I’ll explain.

It’s real-life sisters Amelia and Avi Gorman’s first full-length show, in which, tonight, they’re joined by their parents in the audience, as well as Chloe on tech, in a sort-of sexy, definitely horrifying mix of music hall, cross-species breeding and gothic glares that refuse to be dampened by pink frilly costumes.

With short sequences cut together like a cartoon-strip, it delights in its own deviancy almost as much as Avi (recently returned from clown school) does snorting drugs and sleeping with glove puppets.

“Don’t be so traditional”, the sisters, or possibly their sewer dwelling alter-egos say. Call me old fashioned, but an unexpected pregnancy could also be developed into more of a story. However, the dance routines are silly-strong, far too big for the small space and all the funnier for it. Sally Stott

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Houdini Speaks to the Living ★★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 22 August

Given that this staged debate about the veracity of Spiritualism between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini is drawn largely from primary sources and claims to be around 75% verbatim, it’s understandable that it can occasionally be a trifle dry.

Even so, writer-director Beth Burns and her co-writer, magician Patrick Terry, do a good job structuring the material so that it dramatically works. The rather emphatic performances actually help; Terry (who would make a terrific Lon Chaney) makes for an authentic period conjuror while Robert Matney’s Doyle is a rather shambling, uncertain figure (with a very curious Scots accent).

It’s apparent from the beginning that Doyle’s interest in Spiritualism was fostered by the loss of his son in WW1 and Matney sympathetically sketches a man coming apart at the seams due to grief. The authenticity of the text give this historical interest but it’s also serves as a neat dramatic frame for Terry’s illusions - which range from quite hokey — although it probably wowed them back in 1924 — to a genuinely impressive spirit writing puzzle.

It’s perhaps best viewed as a stealth magic show (volunteers from the audience are required) than an entirely successful drama but it holds the interest. Rory Ford

This is Not America ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August

Three American men tell us about themselves, as they’re questioned over what we presume is a brutal murder.

In sequence, they are Cassius, a suave and narcissistic film star who enjoys attention, no matter how stalkerish; Rocco, a swaggering Italian-American wiseguy New Yorker, who communicates largely through talk of violent threat and penis size; and sex-obsessed Sal, whose apparent self-impression as a sensitive ladies’ man masks a more seedy undercurrent.

All reveal themselves to be different aspects of the same personality, as played in solo performance by Jack Stokes (whom we unexpectedly discover is from Leeds when the performance is over), and they’re soon joined by a fourth character, the menacing Paulie. Obsessed with the film Rosemary’s Baby and Satanism, he inevitably brings events to a terrifying, brimstone-infused conclusion.

Written and directed by Philip Stokes, the journey followed by each (aspect of the same) character hangs together loosely, giving us an impression of their worldview and denying the killing as though we were an investigating officer.

To an extent a reflection of different facets of troubled American manhood, Stokes appears to have chosen to play the three key characters as variants of Tom Cruise, Robert DeNiro and Woody Allen, respectively. Yet his intense, committed, physical performance is wonderful and well worth recommending, and adds a great deal to the disturbing finale. David Pollock

READ MORE: Author Andrew O’Hagan on the stage adaptation of his novel Mayflies

One More Time ★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 15 August

In One More Time, Angel Chan cycles between old age and childhood, her dress printed with a child’s drawings to match the show’s scrapbook aesthetic. Sound and lighting add texture, and lullabies and nursery rhymes thread through scenes exploring perfection, pressure, and English as a second language.

The play drifts: a thunderstorm crashes, a heart monitor beeps, but scenes arrive unmoored; it’s unclear what she’s reaching towards or hoping to redo. In the end, dying is reframed as a form of carrying on, with themes of self-belief and presence surfacing, but never fully cohering. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

You Talkin’ to Us ★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 15 August

Energetically performed but indifferently written, this eccentrically plotted piece from Daniel Sanchez O’Brien gets a fair bit of mileage out of the cast’s enthusiasm, but even they begin to tire before the end.

Three largely incompetent Scottish criminals with a curious fixation on Scorsese’s The Irishman attempt to unionise in the face of their bullying mob boss. After a failed robbery, they engage the services of an unemployed lawyer and…nothing much happens, but it does so at full speed and maximum volume.

The players ensure that there actually are some laughs here but its slim pickings and you’re left wishing that they had better material to work with. Rory Ford

Irene Cleans Up ★★

Studio at Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152) until 15 August

Irene Cleans Up is styled as the modern-day answer to My Fair Lady - only instead of selling flowers, the eponymous Irene is a cleaner with an uncanny palate for wine.

Works which explore the cruel intersection of gender and class are sadly as relevant today as they were 70 years ago, and these worthy themes are abundant in Irene Cleans Up; unfortunately, they are undermined by a repetitive script, meandering plot, and characters whose motivations and relationships just don’t feel particularly compelling.

In the end, Irene gets her fairytale ending (minus Professor Higgins, what a relief), but the payoff still rings hollow. Ariane Branigan

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