Fringe theatre reviews: Afronauts | Acts of Contrition | Adding Up America: Solving the Race Equation | Reparations | Naked SARA! | Call Her The Ringmaster

DANCE, PHYSICAL THEATRE & CIRCUS

Afronauts ★★★★

Underbelly George Square (Venue 300) until 31 August

Based on a bizarre real-life tale, but approaching it with a sense of optimistic Afrofuturism rather than disdain for the eccentric character behind it, Afronauts tells of the Zambian Space Academy. This was a far-fetched programme announced by Zambian nationalist Edward Makuka Nkoloso to coincide with the country’s independence day in 1964, for which he pledged to beat the USA and Russia to the moon.

A combination of child-friendly storytelling, exciting and comedic physical theatre, and impressive circus stunts which are evocative of a trip to the stars, Circus Zambia, Wake the Beast and Underbelly’s co-production Afronauts is played by a team of seven young performers who are put through tough physical games and set-pieces, and assembled into some impressive human towers, which are all meant to train their characters for weightlessness, zero gravity and isolation.

There's a vivid sense of playfulness about the hard taskmaster Nkoloso’s determination to beat the superpowers here, yet on the video screen in the background we see the real-life result of his obsession. BBC footage of the day shows Nkoloso rolling a bunch of kids down the hill in oil drums and telling them to do star jumps, while a visiting BBC reporter mocks their juvenile efforts.

Maybe the Zambian Space Academy was never a serious attempt to put Zambians in space, despite Nkoloso’s obvious, near-fanatical eccentricities; perhaps it was always just an excuse to try and promote a newly independent country to the world. Even if it was just a childish fantasy, however, that’s exactly in keeping with the spirit of this great fun show, which treats the whole episode not as a failure, but as the first flickering of hope that a newly-independent African nation might be able to do great things under its own identity. David Pollock

THEATRE

Acts of Contrition ★★★

Braw Venues at Hill Street (Venue 41) until 30 August

LIKE Darren Brownlie’s Crocodile Rock, playing up a storm at the Gilded Balloon, John Gerrard McFauld’s Acts Of Contrition is a play about growing up gay in Scotland at a time when gay rights were supposed to be recognised, but when social attitudes were often struggling to catch up.

As a child in the 1990’s, mainly brought up by his highly religious Catholic grannie, wee Gerrard therefore finds himself increasingly aware that he is gay (not interested in football, in love with the pomp, pageantry and drama of Catholic worship), but unable to accept the truth about himself, far less share it with others.

McFauld’s writing and acting is therefore particularly strong in capturing the period when Gerrard - now at university in Glasgow - strenuously pretends to himself and everyone else that he is very camp but heterosexual, and embarks on a serious relationship with a girlfriend to prove it - a phase of his life which, of course, cannot last.

McFauld is a vivid writer and a strong, charismatic actor, and Gerrard’s story would make an excellent sustained monologue. Here, though, it is weakened by the unnecessary presence of two other actors, notably Lena Sakalla, who plays Gerrard’s increasingly uneasy girlfriend with some success, but struggles in other ill-conceived cameo roles.

There’s plenty of talent and potential here, though, well worth celebrating; and some courage, too, in facing up to the truth that for some gay people today, the barrier to an honest and fulfilling life can lie as much in the attitudes they themselves have internalised, as in the society around them. Joyce McMillan

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THEATRE

Adding Up America: Solving the Race Equation ★★★

Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 31 August

For singer, storyteller and real-life Applied Mathematics graduate Monique DeBose, the question of race in America really does begin with a simple equation; one black father and one white mother, who met when they were in the Peace Corps and got together to create her, a bi-racial child who’s trying to find her own sense of identity in this world.

This feeling of uncertainty continues into her adult life. Playing a character referred to as M, leading to a certain amount of plausible deniability as to how much of the piece is autobiographical, she begins the play singing in the jazz clubs of Beijing. Here, she has a black lover from Ghana. Soon her white husband from England will be arriving to join her in their new life together.

Talking herself through all her questions about personal direction and her own identity and place of belonging, DeBose reveals various chalkboards with her own made-up equations scrawled on them around the stage. It’s something of an affection designed to play into the theme of the show, but it fits with what she’s trying to get to the heart of, that humans just don’t behave in the same ordered, logical way as mathematics do. A very engaging performer, DeBose is also a first-rate jazz singer, and the music is worth the admission alone. David Pollock

THEATRE

Reparations ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

The twentysomething young Black woman speaking to us begins at the end of her story, offering a tantalising preview of the life of crime she's embarked upon, promising to tell us how she ended up stealing another woman's life and going to prison for it. Aisha is from London, the estate across the park from where all the rich people live, and she speaks of a hunger to be recognised, having been ignored all her life.

The daughter of a “clinically insane” mother and an absent father, she lives with her Somali-speaking auntie and became a prolific shoplifter in her youth, giving her a prison sentence and a criminal record before she was even out of her teens. When Aisha meets white, middle class wellness influencer V in the park, she manages to convince her she’s the disowned daughter of a Ugandan oil baron, playing on her privileged new friend’s white guilt.

A year later they’re on a retreat together in Peru taking ayahuasca, and Aisha’s wondering how she can make this lifestyle permanent. It begins as a kind of Tom Ripley tale set in contemporary London, but Maryam Garad (a reasonable performer and a snappily confident performer) subverts expectations nicely, turning a thriller into a piece about Aisha’s repair of her own past. David Pollock

THEATRE

Naked SARA! ★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

Sara Eakman’s slight, garbled monologue is more stand-up (sit down?) routine than theatre, a wouldbe tour of her “major baller year” when she upped her number of sexual partners from single to triple figures. What can she say? Her ADHD meds made her horny, although she theorises thinly that her strict religious upbringing was the root cause of her sexcapades. There’s a seed of a set-up here but Naked SARA! fails to develop any of its ideas sufficiently. The anecdotes are underwhelming, the family background material is dispensed with hurriedly and there is no sense in the writing of why this story needed to be told at all. Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

Call Her The Ringmaster ★★

Braw Venues @ Hill Street (Venue 41) until 30 August

Framed as a fable narrated by an Enchantress, this show uses circus imagery – ringmasters, tightropes, tigers – as an extended metaphor for modern dating, delivered through rap, dance, and a sparkling black-sheet backdrop. There are memorable individual lines (“the odds are no good, but the goods are odd,” “rock bottom has a hidden trap door”), and glimpses of something more specific underneath, touching on dating as a neurodivergent, autistic woman navigating a neurotypical world. But the central metaphor and its threads never quite cohere into a clear shape, leaving the show’s overall point difficult to pin down. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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