Theatre reviews: Auntie Empire | The Wood Paths | Christmas Carol Goes Wrong | Friends: The Musical Parody

The Wood Paths, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ***

Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh ****

Friends - The Musical Parody, Playhouse, Edinburgh ****

Here’s a health warning: just don’t go anywhere near Julia Taidevin’s new show Auntie Empire if you are squeamish about bodily fluids and solids, exploding human entrails, or exceptionally loud, vidid and succulent body sounds, lovingly transferred to a theatrical soundtrack.

One member of the audience simply fainted away during Auntie’s opening performance at Summerhall last weekend, and it was hard to blame him. To describe Auntie’s presence as full-on is to understate the case. She is a ferociously vivid female Bouffon figure for the 21st century, the grotesque living embodiment of Britain’s persisting attachment to its imperial past; and her levels of bodily decay are fully matched by her relentless performative energy, as she stalks the stage talking in posh gobbledegook, lamenting her glory days, and leading us in communal renditions of Land of Hope and Glory, and the Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.

Whether the imagery of physical rot that increasingly dominates the show precisely captures the worst excesses of Empire is another question, and one worth debating. What’s clear, though, is that Auntie Empire still has plenty to say about the strange point in history at which we find ourselves; and that Julia Taudevin and her team – including dramaturgs Kieran Hurley and Sara Shaarawi, Bouffon director Tim Licata, and a whole crew of physical makers and designers – have created a figure of whom we will be seeing much more, in the months to come.

The final days of the Manipulate Festival also brought a brief encounter with the Theatre on Gertrude Street of Latvia, who delighted and then baffled audiences at the Traverse with a show so much in two halves that it almost fell apart, like a split log. In the first half, two big blokes took a pair of 15-inch thick logs, and chopped them in half, live on stage; this was both beautiful and contemplative, and raised deep questions about the back-breaking physical labour on which all human civilisation was founded, before the machine age. In the second half, though, they turned to woodland slapstick and playfulness, in a way that sat oddly with those meditative depths; and in the end, slightly undermined their impact.

And meanwhile, in Edinburgh’s big theatres, two shows in the hugely popular parody-send-up genre. The much-loved Mischief company arrived at the Festival Theatre with Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, their latest satire on complete theatrical chaos, set around the disaster that is the Cornley Dramatic Society’s festive production of the Dickens classic.

The meta-theatrical tale involves an arrogant director called Chris Bean who casts himself as Scrooge, but eventually does undergo a change of heart; the version of A Christmas Carol staged by his hapless company begins with predictable jokery, and ends in genuine hilarity. The whole effect is genial, kindly, and quintessentially English; and the set design, by Lib Todd, is a comic and lyrical triumph, featuring some lovely Victorian street scenes, and also a full-sized version of Barbie’s fitted kitchen, which somehow seems oddly at home.

In Friends - The Parody Musical, by contrast, the object of satire is not theatre or even television, but the actual content of the Friends story, as played out on the world’s TV screens between 1994 and 2004. The show’s 20 songs are not musically memorable; but the lyrics by Bob and Tobly McSmith are sharp as a tack, as is their script. Add a few stellar performances from a hard-working company, and you have a show that every Friends fan will adore; witty, well-made, and a touching snapshot of a decade when hope perhaps seemed a little less foolish than it does today.

Auntie Empire is at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until 14 February. The Wood Paths, run completed. Christmas Carol Goes Wrong is at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until 15 February, and the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 17-22 February. Friends is at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 17-21 February.