Theatre Reviews

Frankenstein: How To Make A Monster

HHHHH

VENUE: Traverse Theatre

TIME: times vary, 6–25 Aug, not 12, 19

TICKETS: £22

Blowing the cobwebs off a classic isn’t easy, especially when it’s one like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that’s spawned so many adaptations and left behind just as many clichés. Yet this thrillingly lippy production really does make the old monster feel fresh again.

Six charismatic young beatboxers, under the joint tutelage of Battersea Arts Centre and the BAC Beatbox Academy, have hijacked the stage at the Traverse Theatre to give us the remix of the Gothic creature feature we never knew we needed.

Their a cappella sound-storms are impressive enough (everything you hear is on the mic), but their creative take on the text also makes it richly resonant for a 21st century audience. Among the modern fears and frustrations they stitch together: social media angst, malignant narcissism, body dysmorphia, the rise of hate crime and urban alienation.

And while that might make the show sound serious, How To Make A Monster is also simultaneously as fun a show as you’ll find at the Fringe.

The scene where body parts are pilfered, for example, veers from gross and comic to soulful and sexy as each organ gets a theme song – including a bit of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ for an appendage that’s usually overlooked.

Elsewhere, the showdown between doctor and creation becomes a beatbox battle, and later a bullying spotlight shines on the audience to give us a taste of what the persecuted monster is going through.

All that and you get a starter lesson in beatboxing from the Academy’s co-director Conrad Murray. Sick.

Vigil HHHH

VENUE: Summerhall,

TIME: 1pm – 2pm, 2–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19

TICKETS: £10

Thousands upon thousands of animals and plants are going extinct every day. Many more are living with that threat.

Communicating the urgency of this is the purpose of Vigil, a oneman show carried by the talented Tom Bailey. Vigil’s repetitive structure is cancelled out by a tight thematic focus, a subject of vital importance to our collective

Who Cares HHHH

VENUE: Summerhall, TIME: 6:20pm – 7:35pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 1, 12

TICKETS: £12

Jade, Connor and Nicole are three ordinary teenagers going about their schoolday in Salford. Or so outward appearances tell us, for much of the purpose of this issues-based piece of new writing produced by LUNG (whose past hits include Trojan Horse, E15 and Chilcot) and the Lowry in Salford is that the struggle people face isn’t always written on their face. This is particularly so when they’re young, and they have no life experience or support network to call upon.

All three are young carers, looking after their parents because no one else is there to: Jade with her paraplegic father after an accident; Connor with his mentally unwell mother after the departure of his father from the home; and Nicole with a mother whose illness futures.

A projector flashes up names of species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being on the ominous sounding “red list”, and Bailey, who starts by gently swaying, progressively brings the animals to life with his subtle movement. When he becomes the “even fingered gecko” (thoroughly examining his hand with intrigue) and assumes the poise and soft-eyed glare of a deer, he’s pointing out that they are like us, we are like them. It follows that humans could theoretically appear on the “red list” too.

As the show progresses the depictions gain dimensions; the means she no longer recognises her. To a light and uplifting pop soundtrack over the transitions, the trio of performers—Jessica Temple, Luke Grant and Lizzie Mounter, respectively—play their roles with compassion and relatable enthusiasm.

“laughing owl” brings Bailey’s first verbal contribution to the show, the “sulphur molly”, “Darth Vader’s giant pill-millipede” and “thespian glass mouse” are all intentionally humorous, and the pace at which the names appear and vanish quickens to the extent Bailey can’t keep pace.

The shifts of tempo and an intense score ensure Vigil isn’t one dimensional, though the first half is a slow-burner. Bailey’s performance, a fusion of elegant movement and emotionally charged monologues, is a compelling one. Vigil is heavy but hard-hitting.

Writer and director Matt Woodhead’s play balances the issues addressed with the humanity of these characters, and takes us through the everyday struggles young people in these situations face. That includes: isolation, bullying, lack of focus on their own education, and austeritydriven lack of access to financial and practical support. Yet the best of what is done here is in the way the onstage action relates to what’s happened around the play.

Its verbatim script was compiled from two years of interviews with young carers in Salford, who were involved with everything from casting to design, and the piece ends with a call to campaigning action. It feels not so much like a window on the world of these young people as an invitation to step into it and do what we can to help. ✏︎ David Pollock