Festival: Critics' choice

Ken

The untimely passing of theatrical seeker Ken Campbell a decade ago left a huge hole in what used to be called alternative theatre. That space is slowly but surely being poked around by a new generation of onstage anarchists who have been infiltrated by Campbell’s madcap spirit. Playwright Terry Johnson fell under Campbell’s influence several decades ago while working with the creator of an eleven-hour staging of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s hippy sci-fi conspiracy epic, Illuminatus!, as a young actor.

Ken is Johnson’s new homage to Campbell, and is produced by Hampstead Theatre alongside improv troupe and one-time Campbell charges The Showstoppers to mark the 10th anniversary of Campbell’s death. The show also sees Johnson return to performing onstage for the first time in many years in what he calls an ‘interrupted monologue’. The interruptions in Johnson’s dramatic reminiscence of a man who has had a huge influence on popular culture come from a very familiar looking figure played with uncanny accuracy by Jeremy Stockwell.

Campbell entered the young Johnson’s life by way of a phone call meant for the person who used to occupy the young would-be playwright’s room. What follows is a life-changing friendship that saw Johnson become a co-conspirator of Campbell’s as he embarked on a series of what he called capers. As well as Illuminatus!, Campbell’s assorted adventures included touring with The Ken Campbell Roadshow, directing Neil Oram’s 24-hour epic, The Warp and a series of monologues he called The Bald Trilogy.

Campbell was not only a big influence on Johnson. He also inspired everyone from Nina Conti to Bill Drummond to follow their own individual paths. Together, Johnson and Stockwell reveal a free-wheeling genius in all his grumpy and unhinged glory with a theatrical exuberance and a pop-eyed irreverence that make more self-consciously serious dramatic musings appear dull. As one might expect, this becomes quite a caper

Ken, Pleasance until August 27, 3.20pm

www.pleasance.co.uk

Gayle Anderson

Fringe Comedy

Tom Ward

Just the Tonic at The Mash House – until August 26.

Jim Tavaré

Laughing Horse@ The Counting House – until August 26.

Tom Ward has the barnet of a beat poet and the soul of a surburban freedom fighter. He's back to take you on another magical mystery tour with his third Fringe show. Popcorn Lung may sound like the title of a lost Nirvana album but it's a trip into Ward's wonderful and unique fuzzy-round-the-edges universe. His trademark themes of love and loneliness are there in all their glory but this year there's an iron fist in that bespoke velvet glove. Not usually one to cause a fuss, he's decided it's time to take a stand against our increasingly cutesy culture. Time to speak out about urban gentrification before we all drown in a sea of fluff and coffee cups with our names on. If you like your comedy smart and strange this is the show for you. Ward will help you think outside the box. He may even impersonate a box. Or a kettle. He has form for impersonating household appliances.

From the Leaky Cauldron to Auld Reekie. Jim Tavaré played Tom the innkeeper in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His own story is enough to make you choke on your Butterbeer. In 2017, the actor, comedian and double-bassist was involved in a head-on car crash near his home in Los Angeles. It resulted in horrendous injuries that left him on life-support. Returning to the Fringe for the first time in 20 years, 'Deadpan To Bedpan' tells the story of how this quick trip to the shops changed his life forever. Swapping his trademark white tie and tails for hospital pyjamas, Jim will serve up stories of massive medical bills, a fluffy dog named Mr Kippy and the ultimate DIY disaster. It's a seriously funny tale of survival against the odds. This man is drier than Bond's martini.

Rob Adams

Fringe Music

Catriona McKay & Chris Stout, St Andrew’s & St George’s (August 20)/Martyn Bennett’s Bothy Culture, Edinburgh Playhouse (August 21)

Harper Catriona McKay and fiddler Chris Stout are one of the most electric of musical pairings in any genre.

Their repertoire comes from the traditional music canon and can have the rugged appeal of an informal session playing a set of jigs and reels. Yet the poise, style, elegance and dynamics they bring to a melody put them in the highest echelons of string quartet performance and the immediacy and spontaneity with which they create and recreate music is entirely in keeping with jazz. They are also tone poets, always seeking and finding new sounds and fresh nuances from their instruments and phrasing.

All of which makes their annual Fringe appearance promise, at once, the familiar and the uncharted and the chance to witness something unique and exciting from two players who are forever cresting another summit.

Musicians from folk, jazz and classical backgrounds converge in the mighty GRIT Orchestra to bring one man’s musical sorcery to magnificent fruition. Having pulled off what its creator doubted was possible – have an orchestra recreate his final masterpiece of sampled sounds, songs and motifs – Greg Lawson’s multi-culti circus repeated the feat by making Martyn Bennett’s glorious amalgam of Scottish riffs, Islamic praise songs, Scandinavian dance metres and club beats, Bothy Culture fuel Celtic Connections’ biggest-ever spectacle last January.

They might not have the same visual accompaniment this time but that won’t matter. The orchestra is quite a visual experience in itself and the sheer physicality of Lawson’s arrangements and the sense of fun and party spirit allied to complete attention to musical detail of the players guarantees this will be an unforgettable occasion. Edinburgh International Festival might just be about to host an alternative Hogmanay.

Keith Bruce

Classical Choice

MARIN Alsop is no stranger to Scotland, and neither is Stephane Deneve, both having worked with the RSNO. This week, however, they direct orchestras making their Edinburgh Festival debuts. In the case of Alsop’s Baltimore Symphony, it arrives 13 years since it was last overseas at all, and a year ahead of its centenary.

Alsop, also about to become the first female chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, is accustomed both to breaking that “glass ceiling” wherever she works, and also to playing music associated with her mentor, Leonard Bernstein. He specifically took her through Schumann’s Second Symphony shortly before he died, a work he had conducted at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960. This year it features in the first Baltimore concert, alongside Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and the Gershwin Piano Concerto with French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, both works with which Bernstein was closely associated.

On the following evening a Bernstein Birthday Bouquet, by Luciano Berio, John Corigliano and John Williams, precedes an evening of the music he wrote himself, including the chewy Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium” with violinist Nicola Benedetti, and dances from his best known musicals.

Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances concludes the programme conducted by Deneve and played by the young musicians of the Colburn Orchestra. They arrive all the way from Los Angeles, where their conservatoire is directly across the road from the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the LA Philharmonic, whose dynamic young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel has been another of their prestigious guest directors.

His predecessor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, contributes the opening work, Nyx, which is followed by the violin concerto by Samuel Barber, with highly-rated former Colburn student Simone Porter as soloist.

Colburn Orchestra, with soloist Simone Porter, conducted by Stephane Denver, Monday August 20; Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with soloists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Nicola Benedetti, conducted by Marin Alsop, Friday & Saturday August 24 & 25. All concerts Usher Hall, Edinburgh.

Mary Brennan

Fringe Dance

I hate to say it, folks – but Week Three of the Fringe is looming and we’re fast approaching the Last Dance Saloon... There’s still time, however, to catch some of the most talked-about - and high starred - performances before they leave town, and the good news is that venues like Dance Base and Zoo Southside are bringing new companies on-stage next week.

It’s worth making time, meanwhile, to catch up with Ima Iduozee’s solo at Dance Base either tonight or tomorrow (7.30pm). Called This Is The Title, it is 25 minutes of elegant, nuanced physicality with Iduozee turning his thoughts on what shapes a choreographic language into movement that impresses with its prowess and grace. And you can still combine an afternoon visit to the National Museum of Scotland with some - entirely free,non-ticketed - dance-watching courtesy of Janis Claxton’s site-specific POP-UP Duets (fragments of love) which moves through the building daily until August 26 (not 20 or 21) at 3.30pm. Romance is clearly in the air when the person standing next to you falls into the arms of a partner who has emerged from the crowd, and - like in those blissful Hollywood musicals - they go into their dance. Claxton’s choreography for various passing couples is a witty, stylish response to the Museum context itself: one of the most enjoyable, uplifting encounters you could wish for on the Fringe.

And before you say ‘goodbye’ to all that August dance – say ‘hello’ to some dance-makers from the Midlands who are emerging as ones to watch in the future. Working closely with DanceXchange and Dance4, Zoo Southside has put together a mixed showcase under the umbrella title, Distinction. It opens tomorrow, runs until Monday 27th, daily at 4pm.