Fringe theatre reviews: The Pigeon Factory | Bull/Fight | Roleplay | Grandma’s Shop | Churchill’s Urinal

THEATRE

The Pigeon Factory ★★★★

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

Billed as an “absurd satire of capitalist production,” this journey inside the mind and basement of a madman could also be a critique of a communist one, with hard-working pigeons trapped in the means of their production: Perspex tanks. Here, Edith, vivacious Doris, “big man” Albert and the increasingly skeletal Vera’s lives are dictated by the number of eggs that they lay.

Written and performed by a mesmeric Aaron O’Neill, in a suit that’s somewhere between office and funeral ready, it becomes clear that this host, who welcomes us and his wiry-framed pigeons into a rigid structure of tea, story time and “contemplating the void” is equally as capable of a rage induced crushing.

A comic book horror play, it’s evocative of film noir and 1960s where it possibly takes place in a cold and clinical set. As well as the characterful chickens, named after film stars – with words forced into their mouths of fun, frivolity and dates with the Kennedy brothers – the man has an equally controlling relationship with mannequin called Marianne. All of it exists within an ever-imposing Schedule, in which he orates his own atrocities.

“Retirement” that may mean something else involves the weight of real destruction. Anthropomorphised by O’Neill’s acting and the strength of his storytelling, the script drips, like blood, with the subtext of the words this bureaucratic psychopath’s victims are unable to speak. When it becomes clear that he’s has been here for “25 years,” an audience member can’t help but proclaim “oh god.”

A simple message sits behind the striking set-up: we’re all trapped in boxes and have a desire to break out, but when we can’t achieve this, channel it into controlling others. It’s perhaps behind the desire to put on any play – and, as he steps into the black box of the theatre space/cave that we’re in, here at the Underbelly, the illusion that we, the audience, are in charge is shattered. Sally Stott

THEATRE

Bull/Fight ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

In a secret Spanish prison in 1936, the poet Federico García Lorca (Gabriel Bird) has been snatched and imprisoned by the fascists, his guard (Tom Catton) a cruel-eyed tormentor who looks at him with homophobic disgust. Although Lorca doesn’t know it yet, his end is near, shot (so the play speculates, for the nature of his demise is unknown) and dumped in an Andalucian field for his outspoken socialist views and possibly his sexuality.

In a theatre in Madrid in 1933, Lorca and his cast rehearse his play Blood Wedding ahead of its premiere that year, mindful that they risk censure from the increasingly puritanical Spanish government for the most minor of sexual suggestions. A man and a woman may not hold and kiss; only a touch on the shoulder and above is socially acceptable. Through light-hearted but intense discussion, Lorca and his troupe navigate how passion and humanity might still be expressed under such strictures.

Produced by young Edinburgh-based theatre company the Mythography Collective, with backing from Stirling’s Macrobert Arts Centre, Bull/Fight is a play of simple means and huge creative ambition. Staged in a small basement room, surrounded by an in-the-round audience on low bench seating, five performers move through poignant, crackling textual sequences which take us inside the experience of trying to live freely and creatively under an authoritarian rule which might snatch freedom or even life on a whim.

As the piece progresses, however, it transforms into something more physical, a strident, expressive work in which the performers march out a desperate rhythm, taking on the persona of those fleeing physical, political and spiritual repression in their homeland. Finally, the actors’ entwined bodies create a mock bullfight rippling with power and threat.

This Lorca seeks the duende, the moment things come alive with danger, whether at the horns of a bull or the barrel of a rifle provoked by his art. Remarkably purposeful and cohesive for a piece devised by the collective (under the direction of Ed Robson and Philomene Cheynet), few more exciting early-career plays have emerged from Scotland in recent years. David Pollock

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THEATRE

Roleplay ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

Danielle Moore was always more debating club than sex worker, but when the podcast company she works for is offered the prospect of investment from huge multinational streamer Playback, she and her producer find it hard to resist the possible life-changing wealth a potential quarter of a billion new listeners might bring. The catch is, she first has to add a hundred thousand new monthly listeners to her relationships podcast Shenanigans.

Ambitious Dani throws herself into the task, courting a suburban S&M devotee and her high school bully-turned-sex worker for interviews. As she courts attention with as much sexual provocation as she can, her own personality also shifts, becoming bolder but less concerned with her emotional safety and the values she thought she held.

Written and solely performed by hot property Australian actor and theatremaker Hannah Reilly, and directed by Paige Rattray, Roleplay revels in its own risqueness; the scene where Dani throws herself into an attempt at stripping is as loud and in-your-face as it needs to be. Yet it also keeps a tight hold of the questions it asks of society – and particularly of young women – about their own self-worth in a world where presenting themselves as sexually willing and available can be a form of currency.

It’s a fast, funny, youthful play with a fine line in neologisms (“hetero-pessimist”, “boy-sober”, “hoemanship”), in which two voices beyond Dani’s are key; her old friend Renee, now settled down with a partner and child, and Dani’s mum, a scathing but wisely experienced foreign correspondent turned business etiquette consultant.

At one point, Dani has a personal revelation which tells her there is power in being desired. Her mum questions whether that power means anything if it’s rooted in male desire. Their relationship, in particular, encapsulates Roleplay’s heart as not just an examination of how women are viewed and commodified, but how generations of women find solidarity when they don’t always agree. David Pollock

THEATRE

Grandma’s Shop ★★★

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 19 August

Rails of colourful clothing – houndstooth, leopard print, florals – and blown-up newspaper cuttings set the scene for Julie Flower’s solo tribute to her grandmother Hilda, a Sheffield shop owner and self-styled “eccentric cat lady” who fed 30 strays on second-hand clothing profits. Flower, 49 (“early mid-career,” as she puts it), addresses the audience as a “family history group,” her structure spooling through time like microfiche footage.

Hilda emerges as a real contradiction: an “ardent working-class socialist” with a defaced photo of Thatcher behind the counter, who nonetheless embodied a kind of Thatcherite self-reliance as a shopkeeper. A Guardian journalist, now a psychology professor, recalls being drawn to Hilda’s junk shop with no sign, everyone somehow knowing what it was. A bell marks each scene change; railings that once read “bargain” and “quality” flip by the end to read “confidence” and “love.”

It’s an endearing hour, though oddly paced, rushing through decades in one breath before lingering too long in the next. The show will likely resonate most with audiences old enough to recognise the world it recreates – the specific texture of a particular kind of shop – unbranded, unmarked, known only by reputation – which has largely disappeared. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

Churchill’s Urinal ★★★

Pleasance at EICC (Venue 150b) until 23 August

Rosie Holt’s unnamed first female Chancellor of the Exchequer in this new political satire is very keen to point out she isn’t Rachel Reeves, the actual first female Chancellor. Yet the central concern of the play, that the private bathroom adjacent to the Chancellor’s office contains a men’s urinal, is based on fact revealed by Reeves when she took office.

This Chancellor, she tells us, specifically wanted to "break glass ceilings and shatter porcelain urinals", yet she can’t do anything about this particular urinal due to conservation rules. As it was installed by the ever-divisive Winston Churchill and exclusively used to receive his urine during his 1920s Chancellorship, the public hint of its destruction brings ever-angrier protests by flag-waving traditionalists onto the streets.

Holt’s a high-quality comedy performer, and although the piece sometimes veers towards madcap light humour verging on tweeness (her opening dance for Instagram is a good example, or the bit about her Japanese smart toilet with a voice programmed to sound like John Nettles), the real points of the play bite deep and generate good laughs.

So the world is designed by and for men, dangerous culture wars can grow from the stupidest origins and being a high-profile woman is no picnic. Michael Lambourne is quality support as the ghost of Churchill, and the fact Stewart Lee contributed to the writing might be felt in its merciless deadpan. David Pollock

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