The Hideout review – The Public Reviews

Sara Jackson, The Public Reviews, 9th August 2015

http://www.thepublicreviews.com/the-hideout-c-nova-edinburgh/

If you had to answer the question “What is ‘fringe’ theatre?”, you could do a lot of worse than simply pointing to this wonderful hour and replying “that”. We join Haste Theatre – a collective of half-a-dozen women – in one of C’s endless tiny rooms, as the gods Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Hades welcome us to a skewed re-telling of the tale of Theseus (sorry, “Thetheus” as his lisp would have it) and the Minotaur.

How to describe this? The show contains, in no particular order, live music, singing, dance, physical theatre, shadow puppetry, cabaret-style repartee, and a host of other skills that this hugely talented group fling themselves into with ceaseless energy and charm. Characters are slipped into and out of at a moment’s notice, audience members are shamelessly put-upon to universal good humour, and bickering gods toy with mortals’ lives and our expectations. Perhaps it could be said buy valtrex online that the company is a little too eager to show off all their abilities, at the cost of narrative focus, but then this is as much variety as storytelling.

In truth, this is a show which defies easy explanation – shall we pinpoint the tap-dance Minotaur battle, the nightshirt-clad Hades welcoming us and asking our preferred manner of dying, or the (frankly jarringly) downbeat ending out of nowhere? No, because this is fringe theatre at its finest – hugely talented actors pouring heart and soul into a show, not because it’s expected or because the figures suggest it’ll make money, but because they love what they have made. Their joy is infectious, their abilities undeniable. This is exactly why I love the Fringe. If you want to see real theatre – intimate, original, vital – this is a show not to be missed.