Photo Credit: Gilles Destexhe

Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Mon 13 May

2 out of 5 stars

Almost one-fifth of the world’s population live in areas where water is physically sparse and a quarter suffer from shortages due to insufficient infrastructure. Water scarcity is one of the most worrying global problems of the 21^st century. Îlo, by Belgian company ChaliWaté, addresses this soaring issue through mime, exploring the topic from both the perspective of a human and a thirsty desert plant. The play depicts the protagonists’ desperate struggle for survival, which can depend on a single drop of water. In their pursuit of the precious liquid they attempt deception and violence before realising only collaboration can save them.

Although ChaliWaté doesn’t specifically mark its work as children’s theatre, the slapstick humour of their mime finds greater appreciation with the younger audience. At times the physical language of the show tips over into pure acrobatics, replacing content with form and forcing the story into a standstill. For a show that eliminates all dialogue and hence has to work on a visual level, the design seems inexplicably neglected. The pale yellow disk representing the torrid desert sun stands in both aesthetic and narrative discrepancy to the customary flowerpot on stage. Although it’s clearly ChaliWaté’s intention to not be precise, it’s irritating to be unable to determine whether the action takes place in the desert or on a windowsill. It is similarly ambiguous whether the dramatis personae are plants or humans or indeed both simultaneously. The show goes beyond its objective to be surreal and becomes simply inconsequential. As soon as rules are established and an illusion created, it’s shattered – with all possibility for anticipation and emotional involvement gone with it. While it’s commendable to raise awareness of water scarcity and ChaliWaté’s approach is refreshing, the execution prevents the show from living up to its potential.

Showing as part of Imaginate Festival 2013

Showing @ King’s Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 25 May

4 out of 5 stars

Following Downton Abbey’s popularity, producers seem stuck trying emulate it’s success with programmes like Upstairs Downstairs and The Paradise now also on UK televisions. However Patrick Barlow’s satirical take on the early 1900s, instead revels in the reserved pomposity of Britain at that time. In 1930s London, trying to assist a mysterious woman, Richard Hannay (Richard Ede) finds himself framed for murder. His attempts to straighten the situation out while keeping away from the law take him from England to Scotland, meeting a variety of caricatured characters played by Charlotte Peters, Tony Bell and Gary Mackay.

This light-hearted tongue in cheek spy-novel parody delivers big slapstick laughs with physical theatre movements, wrapped in the wistful brown paper of the World War era. It harks back to shows like ‘Allo ‘Allo! and Dad’s Army but the text’s boundless wit, the cast’s comic timing and the endless limits for parody, show the slapstick up as a weaker element of the comedy. The ingenuity of the physical theatre side (wind signified by fluttering hats of flapping coat tails) is a pleasingly engaging way to approach the technical process, matching the inherent silliness of the rest of the play.

Adapted from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film, Barlow’s text is specifically for a cast of four, meaning Maria Aitken is exceedingly inventive in getting across the original’s key points. The maniacal doubling of Mackay and Bell during the train station scene not only conveys the journey to Scotland but turns the simple part of plotting into one of the highlights of the show. This lack of actors also increases the humour; the rather frenetic movements between character changes corresponding with the fast-paced dialogue of the narrative. The scope for ridicule, either through the (heavily stereotyped) accents, the period or the genre, is so big that the more absurd the action, the more it seems like it was meant to happen. This is a riotous and enjoyable romp through a type of story usually depicted in a far more serious light.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge

Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Thu 30 May

Pedro Almodóvar / Spain / 2013 / 90 min

3 out of 5 stars

After winning the 2012 BAFTA for Best Picture in a Foreign Language with his sinister The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar returns with a light-hearted comic romp. When a Spanish flight to Mexico discovers the landing gear is faulty it’s forced to circle above Spain until an emergency runway is procured. Having put the economy passengers in a drug-induced sleep, the heavy-drinking crew focus on those in business class. The state of immanent peril, heightened by a mixture of alcohol and narcotics, softens everyone’s customary façade allowing them to speak unusually freely about themselves.

Without specific religious connotations, Almodóvar creates a sort of confessional purgatory, trapping his characters between Heaven and Earth, where everybody can discuss their issues (they’re nearly all sexual) without judgement. This gradual unpicking, the characters slowly shunning their qualms, reveals the neglectful ways people sometimes treat each other. Almodóvar’s surreal reality (typical of his films) means the characters’ extreme circumstances feel appropriate to the narrative but they’re also so ludicrous, they put your own troubles into perspective. The three overtly camp stewards, mincing and flaunting around are a bit hackneyed, bringing a clichéd child-like mockery-comedy, which quickly gets tired – missing a darker edge as with Bad Education. Almodóvar is highlighting the importance of clear communication between friends, family and colleagues and how deception can become a trap.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge

Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 18 May

3 out of 5 stars

With the Panda and Polar Bears both prominent symbols of man’s detrimental effect on the planet, Angela Clerkin harks back to a more savage ideal of the mammal, to depict our negative effects on ourselves. An embellished autobiographical account, Clerkin plays herself in the story of her last case as a solicitor’s clerk, with Guy Dartnell filling all the other roles. During a pre-trial interview with a murder suspect, the interviewee tells Angela, “It wasn’t me. The Bear did it.” Defying her superiors, Angela becomes embroiled in a quest to hunt down the elusive creature.

The pair paint their narrative through a combination of addresses to the audience, acted out scenes, songs and an occasional drawling noir-type narration. The vignettes play out like memories of the introspectively recounting Clerkin, a bubble of action floating in darkness, created through Rae Smith and Lucy Sierra’s shadowy illumination of their minimalist, multi-function set. Flanked by props and costumes and with most changes happening within sight, Lee Simpson’s exposed, rough and ready approach creates an intimate relationship with the audience. Despite the intermittent voice-over tugging on the fictional strings of characters like Philip Marlowe, Clerkin’s fresh-faced and earnestly frank rapport with her viewers further dismantles ‘the fourth wall’, rendering the atmosphere more like an animated private conversation.

Sometimes the artistic flourishes feel a bit much (Dartnell’s bluesy song about ways a bear could kill you), overcompensating for the slightly drawn-out plot. At other instances however, visual additions (the blood-red lengths of string pulled like scars from Clerkin’s body) poetically emphasise that although the story revolves around finding a bear, it’s also very much about Clerkin herself. Amidst the many comic moments is a reflective character analysis, with Clerkin using the bear as a metaphor for our wilder, more primitive side, to talk about the darker aspects of her own personality. What starts out as a light-hearted, if not surreal investigation, grows into a candid exploration of self-discovery into the hidden turbulence of repressed aggression.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge

Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Thu 23 May

Tobias Lindholm / Denmark / 2012 / 99 min

4 out of 5 stars

After the successes of Borgen and The Hunt, writer Tobias Linholm directs his latest script. The cook for an ocean tanker, Mikkel Hartmann (Pilou Asbæk) is looking forward to returning to his family, however before he’s able to disembark, Somali pirates embark the ship and the crew are taken hostage. CEO of the company that owns the boat, Peter Ludvigsen (Søren Malling) enters into negotiations with the buccaneers to establish a price his board will stump-up for the men’s return.

Lindholm’s vivid depiction of the crew’s rapid dishevelment into squalor (filthy, sweat-soaked vests) creates a visual affront to the senses. This directly contrasts with the crisp, sterile world of Ludvigsen delivered fresh shirts by his doting wife – the stark difference emphasising the unpleasantness of the ship. Although a feeble phone line loosely connects the two worlds, the film contains many failed connections. The detainees are physically disconnected by their isolation at sea and the language barrier but also literally through Ludvigsen’s hanging-up the phone in his naïve attempts to control negotiations. As Ludvigsen and the pirate’s repeatedly deceive each other, the sailors are left in the dark as to what is really happening, the unknowing causing more fear and stress than any weapon. With horrible realism, Lindholm parallels the unnerving state of capture with the financially motivated process of release.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge

Photo Credit: Andree Lanthier

Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 18 May

5 out of 5 stars

A devised movement piece performed by seventeen practicing Shaolin monks and resulting from a collaboration between the monks themselves, two Belgian choreographers, a Polish composer and a leading British visual artist, hardly sounds likely to result in a light evening at the theatre. So it is a refreshing surprise to find the contemplative nature of Sutra is leavened with plenty of playfulness.

Sutra has been inspired by the experiences of choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Ali Thabet at the Shaolin monastery, but there is no discernible story here. Rather, it is an ever-changing mandala of scenarios in which Antony Gormley’s wooden boxes become beds, ships, a maze where a child monk plays hide and seek with his older brethren or an opening lotus flower with the Buddha-like child at its centre. It is a performance that turns on the energy and charisma of the monks and the mesmerising moves of Thabet, the only trained dancer in the performance. It is however, ten-year-old monk Dong Dong who provides the heart of the show, connecting monks, audience and European cast with his irresistible innocence.

The sensory experience is completed by composer Szymon Brzóska’s atmospheric soundtrack. Performed by shadowy musicians half-concealed behind a filmy curtain, there is a perfect synergy between movement and sound, musicians and performers. It provides the kind of magic that can only be created through the medium of live theatre, by people who understand that there is no real distinction between art and spirituality.

Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 16 May only

David Cronenberg / US/UK/Canada / 1986 / 96 min

4 out of 5 stars

The Fly is one of those rare movie remakes which is better than the original it’s based upon. Yes the black and white version is a classic but for the most part, it’s a meandering experience that doesn’t really do much with its interesting concept. Roll forward to the eighties and the idea of what could happen if a human teleportation experiment went wrong and accidently mixed the DNA of a man with a house fly gets fully explored.

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist who slowly becomes a human sized fly over the course of the film. The special effects have aged, but while they’re typically eighties (although still passable by today’s standards) it’s Goldblum’s performance, degenerating into the beast, which makes this film infinitely watchable. Geena Davis is great as the journalist Brundle involves in his unnatural experiments, finding just the right balance between strong minded and capable heroine and terrified bystander unable to do anything in the face of Brundle’s metamorphosis. It’s a film where a second remake is more a case of when rather than if, and with contemporary modern effects would look amazing but it would take an intelligent script, an adept director and a skillful and nuanced actor to better this 80s cult classic.

Follow David on Twitter @DavidPustansky

The end of term at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh was celebrated with an all-day party, at the centre of which was the Edinburgh leg of the T in the Park 20^th anniversary roadshow. As the weather held, unsigned indie-rockers Vigo Thieves played their anthemic stadium tunes from an open-top bus. Their rock, reminiscent of U2, felt unconstrained and even from the heights of their vehicular staging, they feel at once personal and epic. What tunes like Heartbeats lack in originality is made up for by how completely they fill the whole open-air space. Vigo Thieves’ euphoric alternative sound fits perfectly with the bittersweet cocktail of emotions of an end of term. Vigo Thieves are rising stars, though as yet unsigned, they have big gigs coming up in Glasgow, have been garnering ‘one-to-watch’ recommendations in the national press and of course are playing T in the Park in its 20^th year.

You just finished your set on top of the bus, have you ever played a gig on public transport before?

Nope, it’s the first time. I’ll phone my mum to tell her I’ve made it. It was a bit windy, it sounds crazy but it was just good to get out and play.

I went up there to take a few photos and it was so cramped!

Very tight. Especially when we’ve got quite a big set up now. Chris had to make do with just one keyboard, usually he has two. We’ve got a travelling saxophone player we couldn’t bring because it was too tight. It was really cramped.

You’ve been going from strength to strength, with tons of people saying you’re the one to watch. What’s next for Vigo Thieves?

At the moment we’ve got a new video and single coming out at the end of this month and then we’ll be doing touring over the summer and the festival period. We’ll be releasing our new EP, Heart and Soul Part III in August.

The sort of music you play is stadium rock, kind of anthemic stuff; do you think it benefits from being open air?

Definitely, last year when we played T in the Park, the tent was absolutely packed out. That’s where we wanted to be and that’s the kind of songs we try to write. We feel they’re for bigger stages and festivals. Earlier this year we did two nights at King Tut’s. It’s indoors and it’s not a particularly large venue but there was a festival atmosphere. We kind of get that but I think it’s the songs we play that help us get that feedback and that vibe. It’s triumph and it’s everybody relaxing.

I can’t think of too many bands in Scotland at the moment the play the music you play. Do you find it’s harder or easier to get gigs being unique?

I think one thing we don’t shy away from is that we’re very commercial. We have no apologies, we’re very radio friendly and don’t try to shy away from it. I think all of the bands try and go left-field and try to have an image before they think about writing a song. It should be the other way about. I think that’s one thing that benefits us, as you said, there aren’t any other bands up here playing the sort of music we play. That’s good for us because more people are paying attention.

Do you find you get a big international response?

If you look back at some of the stats and feedback on Facebook and Youtube it’s grown. We had people from Chicago email last week about publishing, we had people from Spain, Slovenia, Italy, looking for the rights to publish our stuff and playing it on the radio over there. It’s getting there, the music is reaching different places.

You’ve mentioned the radio, do you find you use it?

If you’re an unsigned band you get played on a Sunday on the radio. You get Ally McCrae BBC Introducing, there are BBC Radio One spots, XFM, Capital FM. Hopefully over the summer with the new songs, we can hopefully work on getting plays. As an unsigned band those spots are hard to get.

Do you find Facebook or Youtube is better for getting your message out?

The big thing for us is that we’re definitely hands-on with the social media side of things. It’s something we work quite hard on. A lot of Youtube videos we work really hard on so that first of all people see something that’ll engage them and then the song backs it up. Youtube certainly plays a massive part in getting our music out there.

Do you have any plans for albums?

After this third EP comes out then we’re gonna pick the ten best tracks off the three and then release it as an album. Probably just before Christmas.

Apart from T in the Park, where is your next gig?

The next big thing we’ve got is The Arches. Following on from the two sold-out nights at King Tut’s we wanted to go bigger and better so we planned a headline gig at the Arches on the 7^th of September which should be our biggest show. We’re confident it’s going to sell out, but we’re keen to get it sold out fast to let everybody know we’re stepping up.

Find out more at vigothieves.com

Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 17 – Thu 23 May

Alexey Balabanov / Russia / 2013 / 87 min

3 out of 5 stars

The first film from the new distribution arm of Edinburgh’s Filmhouse cinema is Alexey Balabanov’s minimalist pitch-black satire about an old soldier in the New Russia. When your world changes, you can change with it or be left behind; Balabanov’s drama chronicles the lives of those left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and tells the story of a war hero seeking consistency and honesty in a new Russia overrun with violence, betrayal, consumerism and selfishness.

The Stoker has been left behind, declared a hero of the Soviet Union for his military service but now he’s living figuratively and literally under gangsters, stoking the furnaces of their den, watching as bodies are coldly disposed of and slowly compiling his novel. His friends Sniper and Sergeant are similarly damaged by war, but have fallen into the role of unglamorous hitmen. Corpses pile up with the tension, as the cycle of betrayal reaches its conclusion.

Like the production’s exquisitely realised vision of the post-Soviet Russia of the nineties with its primitive infrastructure meeting crass consumerism, the clash of Western gangster movie and classic Soviet tropes is evident. Despite its brief length and spurts of stylish violence, the movie is languorous and loaded with multiple shots of the characters walking which increase the film’s scale outside of its claustrophobic interiors. If the film has a register, it’s the three veterans exceptionally distanced and reactionless performances, overlaid with the jaunty beat-driven soundtrack; histrionics are non-existent and all the players seem trapped in their roles and powerless to escape. Ultimately The Stoker is slight, and like its characters and setting, hangs between modern gangster films such as Killing Them Softly and A Bittersweet Life and the slow-burning Soviet cinema Balabanov throws into the mix.

Follow Steven on Twitter @StevenDinnie

On general release

Baz Luhrmann / Australia/USA / 2013 / 142 min

4 out of 5 stars

Reunited with his one-time Romeo, Baz Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio bring to dazzling motion F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of love and obsession. In 1920s New York, fresh-faced bondsman Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) moves into a humble abode amongst the newly wealthy residence of Long Island, across the bay from his cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton). Carraway’s neighbour is the enigmatic and charismatic Gatsby (DiCaprio), who while famed for throwing extravagantly lavish parties that attract the cream of the Big Apple’s socialites, himself remains somewhat a mystery. Gatsby and Carraway strike up a friendship, but is Gatsby more interested in the elusive Daisy?

One memorable aspect of Fitzgerald’s novel is his colourfully descriptive language, peppering Luhrmann’s version through Carraway’s omnipresent narration; imparting Fitzgerald’s visceral imagery of Carraway’s outsider’s eye on Gatsby’s world of profligacy. Like with Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann’s stylised visuals course through the story, spilling out of the screen in an orgy of colour when depicting people’s excess but clouding over with threatening gloom for scenes of a more sinister intensity. As Gatsby and Daisy’s covert affair becomes increasingly embroiled, the once morally outraged Carraway allows his ethical belief in fidelity to slacken, partly out of affection for Daisy but more so because of his infallible belief in Gatsby.

Caraway’s rose-tinted view of Gatsby, mirrors the roaring twenty’s society; oblivious of the financial sector’s bad practices and believing the good times could never end. This heady exhilaration before the Wall Street Crash, chimes with the attitudes of the pre-2008 banking community, gorging themselves on an economic bubble of excess. While the image of Gatsby represents American Dream ideology – building himself up from nothing –Fitzgerald’s text is more cynical. They way Gatsby acquired his wealth and his struggle to control it point instead to the American Dream being more of a delusion. This is confirmed through Gatsby’s consuming fixation on always doing the best, whether romantically or financially, being ultimately to his detriment.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge