Theatre
Best of Edinburgh
Lloyd Evans
Mythos: Men
Festival Theatre
Einstein
Pleasance Courtyard
Westminster Hour
Sweet Novotel
Vote Dr Phil
Surgeons’ Hall
Keith Moon: The Real Me
Gilded Balloon
Stephen Fry lies prone on an empty stage.
A red ball rolls in from the wings and bash-
es him in the face. He stands up and intro-
duces himself as Odysseus, stranded on an
island-kingdom as he makes his way home
after the Trojan War. The ball had escaped
from the hands of a clumsy maidservant who
was playing on the beach with a local prin-
cess. Now Fry, as Odysseus, begs her help
and asks for a petticoat to cover his naked-
ness. This tale comes from Homer’s Odyssey,
Book Six, but Fry doesn’t quote the refer-
ence he merely plunges on with the story.
Odysseus shows up at the palace of the local
warlord, King Alcinous, and tries to explain
how he came to be wearing the princess’s
undergarments. From here the scene moves
to Troy and Fry tells the extraordinary tale
of Paris — rejected by his parents but res-
cued by a kindly shepherd — who seduced
Helen, wife of Menelaus, and brought the
fractious states of Greece into a military
alliance. Thus began the Trojan War. In the
course of 150 minutes (and speaking with-
out notes), Fry covers about a quarter of the
Iliad and nearly all of the Odyssey, adding
supplementary flourishes along the way. In
an interlude on lexicography he dashes off
a memorable analysis of hieroglyphics and
its replacement by the more sophisticated
alphabetic system of writing. The stories that
Fry recounts form the basis of European lit-
erature and it’s hard to imagine that any per-
former in the modern age has told them with
such lucidity and panache, such mesmeris-
ing freshness. When Fry chose to become
an actor, the world of classical scholarship
lost a teacher of rare creativity and charm.
He has the magical ability to conjure up the
ancient world as if it were a pleasing corner
of his private orchard. At the end, he assured
us that the gods of Greece were not dead.
‘They are with us now — in all of us still.’
I came away from this extraordinary per-
formance feeling curiously diminished as a
human being, as if I’d been in the presence
of someone more than mortal.
Opera
The silencing of women
Alexandra Coghlan
Breaking The Waves
King’s Theatre, EdinburghOpera’s line of corpses — bloodied, bat-
tered, dumped in a bag — is a long one. Now
it can add one more to the list: the broken,
abused body of Bess McNeill. The heroine
of Lars Von Trier’s uncompromising 1996
film is a curious creation. Striving against
the restrictions of her austere, Presbyteri-
an community on a remote Scottish island,
she marries oil-worker and ‘outsider’ Jan.
But when an accident on the rig leaves him
paralysed, a promise to her husband and a
bargain with God leads her into increasingly
degrading and dangerous sexual encounters.
Savant or innocent, saviour or sacrificial vic-
tim — Von Trier leaves it unclear.
Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist
Royce Vavrek’s adaptation premiered in
Philadelphia in 2016 to rave reviews, and
two years on the opera has already notched
up multiple productions including this, its
European premiere.
You can hear why. The score is endless-
ly attractive and easily graspable, a blend of
windswept atmospherics (gulls cry in Brit-
tenish flutes, waves roll in tumbling string
scales before exploding into sharp sprays
of percussion), rigid, psalm-like chants for
the church elders and a freewheeling lyri-
cism for Bess herself, sometimes anchored
by the transgressive thrust and throb of the
electric guitar. It’s all elegantly managed and
melodically appealing, but that’s rather the
problem.
Love or hate Von Trier’s film, it tells its
story with unblinking, unsentimental clarity.
No soundtrack underscores the brisk scenes
or editorialises the many episodes of abuse
and sexual violence.
In setting the story to music, Mazzoli
responds to a gap in the original, to a space
created by the absent church bells banished
by the elders, to the silencing of women in
the services. But in supplementing the film’s
silence with song, Mazzoli softens it, aes-
theticises it in ways that are uncomfortably
familiar.
Because the character of Bess, heavy
with echoes and allusions, is like a gun that
comes ready-loaded. She’s Manon, learning
her own sexuality, she’s Lulu, she’s Salome
as she dances provocatively for her doc-
tor, Lucia in her blood-stained wedding
dress, and finally Gilda unwrapped from herEinstein, written and performed by Pip
Utton, is an engaging biography of the 20th
century’s greatest physicist. Utton has fun
exhibiting his subject’s skill as a gag-writer.
‘The only difference between genius and
stupidity is that there is a limit to genius.’
Westminster Hour is a psychological
thriller featuring an ambitious new home
secretary, Archie, who introduces mandato-
ry life-sentences for child molesters. ‘Watch
out paedos, Archie’s coming to get you!’ His
vengeful ex-girlfriend, Fiona, barges into
his office and threatens to expose him as a
seducer of underage rent-boys. ‘Mistakes,’ he
says, shrugging off his history of gay dallianc-
es. The show can’t quite evoke the bustling
reality of the Westminster village with just
two actors stuck on a narrow stage but the
script boasts plenty of savage polemic. ‘You
put the arse into narcissist,’ quips Fiona. ‘I
could have you Jill Dando’d,’ growls Archie.
Philip Hammond, the TV doctor, shares
his name with the recently discarded Tory
chancellor. In Vote Dr Phil, the witty medic
mingles traditional stand-up with change-
the-world activism. His gags are good and
his delivery is faultless. ‘Every nurse’s
uniform costs the NHS £99. But at Ann
Summers they’re £19.99. And they’re wipe-
clean.’ His policies have a single intention:
to make doctors’ lives easier. A consultation
with a GP should last at least 50 minutes,he argues. A super-tax applied to the top 1
per cent of earners would add £82 billion
to Britain’s health budget. And he calls for
‘Tax Pride Marches’ in which grateful citi-
zens will dance through the streets rejoic-
ing at the extra dosh they’re paying to the
Treasury.
Keith Moon: The Real Me stars Mick
Berry and a drum-kit. Berry may not be the
greatest actor in the world but his charm
and his enthusiasm for his subject are irre-
sistible. We first meet Moon as an unknown
wannabe in the 1960s taking lessons from
Soho jazz musicians, one of whom claimed
that Charlie Watts was an over-rated tal-
ent. The Who enjoyed a modicum of success
until the moment when Pete Townshend,
egged on by Moon, chose to smash up all
their instruments on stage. The myth of
‘Moon the Loon’ was born. Soon they were
a massive act with hits on both sides of the
Atlantic, but they couldn’t clear their debts
because they had to replace their entire
musical apparatus after every performance.
The rock-opera Tommy saved their fortunes.
Moon’s insatiable appetite for booze and
pills extended to groupies as well. His wife
threatened to leave him. ‘I’m a rock star,’
pleaded Moon. ‘Sleeping with women is
what I do. Do you think I enjoy it?’ There’sI came away from Fry’s performance
diminished, as if I had been in the
presence of someone more than mortala Faustian truth at the heart of this gripping
show. Moon’s craziness propelled him to
stardom but destroyed him in the end. He
died of success.