Preview: Old favourites at the fringe

Plays that have been popular right down the decades are given a new lease of life in Edinburgh this August

Feature by Jo Caird | 15 Jul 2010

The Caucasian Chalk Circle (3BUGS) 

Last year 3BUGS wowed with their highly unusual production of Ophelia (drowning), which took place in the swimming pool of the Apex Hotel. This year they’re staying dry at The Zoo with the Brecht classic The Caucasian Chalk Circle. The company specialise in experimental theatre and they’ll be using puppetry, along with music and physical movement, to tell Brecht’s parable of the servant girl Grusha who steals her mistress’s baby and raises him as her own, becoming a better parent than his natural mother and father could have been.

 

A Midsummer Night’s Madness (Hackney Harlem Theatre Company)

Susie McKenna, associate director at East London’s Hackney Empire and the woman responsible for the theatre’s highly acclaimed pantos is bringing a troop of actor-musicians north this August with A Midsummer Night’s Madness, a hip-hop take on Shakespeare’s classic comedy. The company of 16-21-year-olds was formed two years ago as part of a cultural exchange programme with young actors in Harlem, New York and has since performed in both sides of the Atlantic.

 

Odyssey and Antigone (Belt Up Theatre)

Belt Up have caused a bit of a stir at the Fringe in recent years with their interactive, site-specific productions The Trial and The Tartuffe. The company launched in 2008 and made their debut at the National Student Drama Festival that year. They then went on to win the Edinburgh International Festival Award for their interactive project The Red Room. This year the interactive fun continues with The House Above, a “custom-built theatre environment” featuring nine shows, five writers and a cast of 16. Expect exciting and potentially unsettling experiments in music, dance, physical theatre and storytelling in Odyssey, adapted from Homer by The Trial writer Dominic J Allen, and Antigone, adapted from Sophocles by fellow Belt Up founder Alexander Wright.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle
The Zoo
6-30 Aug (not 17), 6.30pm, £6.50-£7.50

A Midsummer Night's Madness
C @ Adam House
4-30 Aug (not 16), 5pm, £5.50-£8.50

Odyssey
Pleasance Dome
4-30 Aug (not 17, 24), 1pm, £9.50-£10.50

Antigone,
C @ Soco,
4-30 August (not 25), 9pm, £10.50-£11.50