Fringe theatre reviews: Good With Faces | Day of the Locust | Helen Bradley: Painter and Storyteller + more
Our latest round-up of Fringe theatre reviews includes a gripping two-hander about care, an edgy adaptation of a cult classic American novel, and ‘a charming story held in the safest of hands’.
Good With Faces ★★★★
TechCube 0 at Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August
Care is a slippery thing in Oisín Kearney’s thrilling new two-hander. In a sleek living room, social worker Heggarty (Patrick McBrearty) interrogates violinist Garrick (Clodagh Mooney Duggan) about her son’s unexplained bruise over biscuits and milk. What ensues is a gripping hour-long power struggle, as the pair’s exchange unearths a series of revelations.
On a couch she has swept her son’s toys underneath, Garrick shoots terse explanations at Heggarty, who presses. He is filming their interview, and audience members at the left of the stage can see the red light of the camera turn on and off as the power oscillates between them; when Garrick gets the upper hand, he turns it off.
These are details, along with an ever-intensifying amber light, that keep the audience watchful and anxious.
Kearney masterfully juxtaposes the assumptions that sit beneath Heggarty’s questions, and Garrick’s suspicious evasions. Is she hiding something, or refusing to perform the version of motherhood expected of her? We cheer when she flips bureaucratic order on its head – everyone has their skeletons, she argues – but cringe at her desperation.
Meanwhile, Kearney probes the class dynamics at play: Heggarty’s institutional authority sits uneasily alongside the social capital Garrick holds. Both actors navigate these shifting power dynamics with remarkable precision, making every pause, glance and change in tone feel loaded with consequence.
McBrearty and Mooney Dugan orbit around each other into such a tightly wound configuration, it’s sure to snap – but it’s nearly impossible to predict in which direction, and to what extent.
A brilliant thriller contemplating what constitutes “normal behaviour”, for both parent and child, Good With Faces takes its premise somewhere shocking. Its final 10 minutes elevate the play's question of care into something far stranger, as the actors wade into surreal territory where professional boundaries, desire and human need meld. Mika Morava
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Day of the Locust ★★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August
Published in 1939, Nathanael West’s novel The Day of the Locust is a dark satire of life in Los Angeles, in which a young painter from the American Midwest comes to California to find fame and fortune.
Instead he’s sucked into a world of violence and failure, amid a cast of broken people all chasing Hollywood’s mesmerising version of the American Dream. Largely ignored upon publication, the book has since become recognised as a 20th century American cult classic.
This adaptation by the Fake Escape company is performed solo by Callum Patrick Hughes, also the co-writer alongside David Shopland, who co-directs with Roann Hassani McCloskey. Hughes plays a parched, atmospheric score for electric guitar and loop pedal, and narrates in-character as the painter. He introduces us to his landlord, the elderly, washed-up former clown Harry Greener, and Harry’s alluring wannabe daughter Faye, whom the painter and a cast of miscreants lust after, more than once to the point of violence.
Among them are Earl the Arizona cowboy, Miguel the Mexican cowboy, Abe the dwarf and Homer, who’s more of a loser than most; a male-heavy cast of characters which emphasises a dark undercurrent of sex and masculine violence beneath the American Dream.
In fact, as Hughes notes at the conclusion of the performance, this stage version is a straight adaptation of West’s book, with the only contemporary additions being references to smartphones and the substitution of ICE raids for ‘immigration’ ones.
This seamlessly converts the original into a remarkably prescient piece of work, and as the narrator plans his masterpiece, a large, apocalyptic painted canvas named The Burning of Los Angeles, wildfire alerts via mobile phone go ignored while the ping of new casting calls turn every head.
With an edgy and thoroughly compelling delivery, Hughes builds an evocative, noirish atmosphere rich in prickly, heatwave-addled discontent. David Pollock
Helen Bradley: Painter and Storyteller ★★★★
Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August
Since 1997, Kara Wilson, who is an artist as well as an actor and writer, has created a niche for herself writing and performing shows about women artists during which she paints a picture in their style.
After tackling subjects as diverse as Tamara de Lempicka, Vanessa Bell and Beryl Cook, this year she turns her attention to Helen Bradley, who became famous in the 1970s for painting scenes from her Edwardian childhood in a naieve style.
Bradley told stories in her paintings, so is a ideal subject to be narrating her own story. Wilson worked with her family to research the play, and performs this down-to-earth, clear-sighted Lancashirewoman with oodles of charm.
Bradley was born in 1900 and only began to paint in her mid sixties after she met the artist L S Lowry. We meet her in 1978, at the height of her fame, giving a talk to a local art club as she paints a picture of a family walk with her mother and aunts. As a child among adults, she proves an observer or the characters and affairs of their small town.
Wilson’s monologue also offers insights into the lives of women in the early 20th century: one of Bradley’s aunts became a Suffragette; another left her husband to pursue a career as an archaeologist; another had to wait decades for the man she loved because he had promised to look after his mother until her death.
When she turned 80, Wilson pledged to continue bringing new work to the Fringe for as long as she is able. Here, she brings her considerable experience in writing, performing and painting to bear on the most pleasant of subjects. Nothing earth-shattering happens, but why should it? This is simply a charming story held in the safest of hands. Susan Mansfield
Bunny! ★★★
Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August
Bunny erupts into Summerhall’s intimate Anatomy Lecture Theatre in a dazzle of gold sequins, fishnets and high heels, proceeding to smoulder her way through a cabaret of songs and anecdotes.
On her prodigious talents, and the art she feels compelled to make. On the frustrations of being denied recognition (and, for that matter, funding). And on her deeply artistic response to that absence of acclaim: murder.
Glasgow-based theatre maker Craig Manson’s appalling drag creation is a scorching force of nature, as unshakable in her self-belief as she is deluded about her abilities.
That said, Manson himself is a blisteringly fiery performer, prowling the tiny stage in search of his victims (fellow artists - his paying punters remain largely safe) and singing and dancing with flamboyant abandon.
The objects of Manson’s blazing wrath, however, might mean quite a lot more to those with feet firmly inside the theatre industry - there’s a danger that novices may end up rather nonplussed by his dreadful alter ago’s homicidal fury.
That said, his self-aware satire mercilessly skewers the emptiness of theatrical fashions (including a killer put-down of performance art), something that might feel like welcome balm amid the breathless frenzy of Fringe novelty. David Kettle
Crush ★★★
Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 30 August
Two Somali teens meet at an NHS clinic, awkwardly circling each other, both hiding the extent of their eating disorders but feeling their way to common ground and a charming rapport.
Zakariya is an aspiring poet studying biomedical engineering, Najma’s art school dreams are on hold in favour of a law degree. Across a series of encounters in the same waiting room, they explore the cultural and generational barriers to confessing their conditions, made more complicated by Muslim attitudes to mental health and the religious requirement to fast.
Somali folk references are briefly invoked as a way of characterizing their inner demons but not fully explored or explained. A more imaginative manifestation of their shared culture would have given the production a theatrical boost. Instead, the dialogue often falls into soundbite speeches, clunkily engineered to make awareness-raising points for an audience of peers.
However, it was the sweet sharing of favourite songs and the galvanizing effect of a possible love rival for Zakariya’s affections which made a connection with the young people in the audience who were feeling every cutting remark, shy flirtation and innocent intimacy between the characters. Fiona Shepherd
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