DON'T believe what they say about Ardal O'Hanlon: the most successful Irishman at the festival so far has been this geezer called James Joyce. Last week he scooped two Fringe first awards with the Scottish Irish Theatre Cryptics adaptation of Molly Bloom's soliloquoy, Parallel Lines and with Edinburgh University Theatre Company's adaption of Dubliners.
Owen O'Neill, nominated for a Perrier stand up comedy award in 1994, has moved towards conventional theatre with his funny and moving Shooting from the Seaffold at the Traverse. It tells a story of an Irish worker on a building site and with brilliant mimicry brings to life the motley fellow workers. The saddest moment comes when one man sits in bed crying and eating raw sausages his wife had made for him, because he wants to tell her he has enjoyed them and the hotel won't cook them for him. However, the show suffers from a confused transition from stand up to theatrical presentation. Astonishingly, Irish writer and performer Eamonn O'Neill had three quarters of a page in Scotland on Sunday dedicated to his disappointing one man show on Michael Collins, God Save Ireland cried the Hero produced by Wiseguise and Sidetrack.
The show is part of the Scottish international festival at the Old Grouse House which is dedicated to Scottish work, with offerings from what are perceived as similarly colonised peoples, the Irish and the Poles. Pan Pan Theatre Company, winners of best overall production award at last year's Dublin Theatre Festival Fringe are presenting Tallor's Requiem at this venue, which they will be bringing to Dublin in October. Kabosh from the north of Ireland play Freefalling, also at the Old Grouse House, a show which has toured Ireland with success, and they will also have a new show at the Dublin Theatre Festival Fringe.
Barry McKinley's hilarious Small Box Psychosis which plays on the common fear of being stuck in a lift, is produced by the Irish Black Box Theatre Company at Cafe Kudof. And at the Theatre Workshop lucky festival goers have a chance to see Donal O'Kelly's superb Catalpa the Movie, his superb telling of male conflict between adventuring and nesting framed in the story off a 19th century Fenian expedition. O'Kelly yesterday got a five star review in the Scotsman, which began: "The gulf between a oneman show of this narrative complexity, or this linguistic and descriptive richness, and the standard one person performance is as wide as that between a still life painting and one of Bruegel's teeming canvasses". Two other Scotsman reviewers turned up on Tuesday night, which makes O'Kelly hopeful that his show might be under consideration for a Fringe First, as that paper sponsors the awards.
