fringe round-up: Lady Macbeth Firmed My Buttocks
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Your support makes all the difference.Islington Sophie and her drippy friend are Valiant Pantaloon, a feminist theatre group set to wow Edinburgh with their Javanese puppet reworking of Macbeth, when disaster strikes. Not only is their venue a sports centre that reverberates to Meryl's disco-aerobics class, but they are double-booked with lewd cabaret chanteuse Whitney Dodd. Shuttling furiously between its multiple storylines, Cecilia Delatori's comic four- hander shows female fear and loathing on the Fringe, as Sophie battles for supremacy over Claire Grogan's tight- bummed fitness diva and despatches Whitney with a poisonous plate of fondant fancies.
The play's scattershot irony and quick-change energy targets everything from fitness fascism to past-life healing therapy, and there are some great moments along the way (such as the scene where Pantaloon's one critic takes a wrong turn in the labyrinthine venue and ends up reviewing a manicure - did Delatori perform at Marco's leisure centre in a past life?)
But, overstuffed with characters and ideas, the plot gets knotted, and the piece ends up losing some of its comic impact in a race to reconcile its various elements and show the audience just how Lady Macbeth firms Sophie's buttocks.
n 3pm, Gilded Balloon 233 Cowgate, to 31 August
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