PRESENTED at Scotland’s self-described new writing theatre, the Traverse Theatre’s festival programme TravFest (with its offering of new work from Scotland and around the world) is the starting place for many a Fringe-goer. If your play is being staged at the Trav (especially if it’s being presented in the larger auditorium of Trav 1), it really is in an international shop window.
This is the case with the world premiere of Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell’s latest piece So Young (Traverse, until August 25). With such acclaimed plays as Decky Does A Bronco (2000) and The Sheriff of Kalamaki (2023), Maxwell has proved himself a master of forensic humanism. His new piece employs similar techniques of subtle emotional exploration.
It’s 2021 and 40-something friends Liane (Lucianne McEvoy), Davie (Andy Clark) and Milo (Nicholas Karimi) are grieving for Helen, their friend (and Milo’s wife) who – while in remission from cancer – died very recently from Covid-19. Milo has invited Liane and Davie over to his Glasgow home to have takeaway food and – to his friends’ anxious concern – to meet his new girlfriend.
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When the aforementioned new partner, Greta (Yana Harris), turns out to be a 20-year-old who remembers high school teacher Liane from her school days, the metaphorical merde hits the proverbial fan. Liane and Davie’s disbelief is unavoidably mixed with their unprocessed grief.
That grief combines with the memories, affections (and resentments) of a long period of friendship. It also clashes with the unexpected clear-sightedness and moral courage of Greta, in the face of the emotionally wounded Liane’s -generational dismissiveness.
The writing is, typically of Maxwell, thoughtful, emotionally complex and, importantly, often wonderfully, bleakly comic. Liane’s announcement to Davie that she is “politically opposed” to Milo’s relationship with Greta is – in the context of Liane’s outraged hurt – characteristic of the play’s intelligent humour.
Director Gareth Nicholls’s confident and engaging production enjoys a smart and convincing set by designer Kenny Miller. It also boasts universally strong performances from a fabulous cast.
Interestingly, Maxwell’s script demands most of the female actors. McEvoy – whose performance is deeply moving, tremendously sympathetic and, often, excoriatingly funny – gives, surely, one of the performances of this year’s Fringe.
Harris’s playing of the embattled Greta is unerringly credible.
There are no doubts about the credibility of the production of Carmen (Festival Theatre, run ended) presented by the Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique of Paris and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Staged on Brechtian principles (a bare stage, populated temporarily with such period costumes and props as the story requires), this presentation of Georges Bizet’s magnum opus was a superb way to begin the Edinburgh International Festival’s 2024 opera programme.
The nakedness of the performance space – in which the action emerges from behind multiple rows of curtains – facilitates director Andreas Homoki’s intelligent choice to shift the action back and forth between our own times and early 19th-century Seville. At the outset, Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu wanders on to the stage wearing the clothes of a typical, 21st-century civilian and picks up a copy of Prosper Mérimée’s novella Carmen.
Beguiled by the titular protagonist – the seductive, adored and ill-fated young woman who has historically, and problematically, been defined as a “gypsy” – Pirgu’s character imagines himself in the army uniform of Carmen’s wretched lover Don José. From there, Mérimée’s tale – as retold by Bizet’s librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy – unfolds as a work of gently self-aware metatheatricality exemplified cleverly by the swaggering toreador Escamillo (played by the superb bass-baritone Jean-Fernand Setti) wearing a 21st-century leather biker’s jacket.
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The never-ending potency of the Carmen myth thus established, Homoki needs a great Carmen, and he has one in the extraordinary French mezzo-soprano Gaëlle Arquez. From her famous introductory aria Habanera forward, Arquez is simply transfixing. Her singing has a power, range and passion that is equalled only by the utterly compelling, reckless passion with which she imbues her iconic character.
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Louis Langrée, does tremendous, lively justice to Bizet’s marvellous score, not least in its renditions of such famous pieces as The Seguidilla and the Toreador Song.
There’s music of a very different kind in June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me (Summerhall, until August 24, then touring). Supported by a fine trio of theatre musicians (Ray Aggs, Amy Duncan and Harry Ward), actor-dramatist Charlene Boyd (who is a long-time singer with Johnny Cash tribute band Jericho Hill) explores her relationship with the country and western legend (and inspirational wife to Johnny Cash) June Carter.
The piece – which is a co-production between Grid Iron Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Scotland – draws upon Boyd’s remarkable research trip to the Appalachian Mountains (where June was born and raised) and the country music Mecca of Nashville, Tennessee. Played on a cabaret-style set inspired by the Bluebird Café in Nashville, the show unfolds an engaged, sometimes justifiably angry biography of Carter, including her struggle to be successful in a very male-dominated, not to say misogynistic industry.
Did you know, for instance, that it was June who wrote Cash’s hit song Ring Of Fire? It is, surely, impossible not to share Boyd’s incredulous rage about June not having been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
(Image: free)
Boyd’s insights into Carter’s life are conveyed through the prism of her trip to the United States. They are also combined with her own life as a divorced, working-class mother trying to progress in the stage and screen arts in Scotland and beyond.
Directed by the excellent Cora Bissett, Boyd shifts between the roles of Carter, a biographical narrator and herself. As she does so, she creates a piece that is, by turns, informative, emotional, musically uplifting and, in personal terms, unusually and disarmingly honest.
The Fringe is for arts lovers of all ages, a fact that is underlined by The Last Forecast (Assembly @ Dance Base, until August 18). An excellent physical theatre piece for children aged five and over, it is the work of the ever-impressive Scottish children’s theatre company Catherine Wheels. Created and choreographed by Bridie Gane, this piece – in which Gael, a gecko-type animal, blends in with the brightly chequered surroundings in her island home – is a humorous, thought-provoking and highly original show.
The perfection of Gael’s very human environment is disturbed by the arrival of a decidedly chaotic outsider. It is threatened, too, by the storm and flooding that is being constantly flagged up on the shipping forecasts (which play humorously with the maritime place names familiar to listeners of BBC Radio 4).
The contrasting movements of Shanelle Clemenson’s nimble Gael, who is able to camouflage herself when the newcomer is sniffing around, and the clattering stranger (Kieran Brown) are executed beautifully.
The outsider’s use of a toilet brush to clean under his arms, then his bum, followed by his teeth gives young theatre-goers a great gross-out moment.
The set and costume designs (by Alisa Kalyanova and Alison Brown respectively) are a visually enchanting delight. The soundtrack is deliciously varied, culminating in a fantastic use of a traditional Scottish reel.
All in all, this is a gorgeously complete show about such themes as identity, coexistence and the climate crisis, which is pitched perfectly for young audiences.
For tour dates for June Carter Cash visit: gridiron.org.uk
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