Uber Hate Gang
Underbelly
Little Black Bastard; Stripped
Gilded Balloon
The Tailor of Inverness
Udderbelly Pasture
Ginger and Black
Pleasance
And it’s getting bigger. Amazing as it sounds, the Edinburgh Festival keeps expanding like a slum landlord. Every year half a dozen cobwebbed halls and disused assembly rooms are forced open, spruced up and pressed into service for the ragamuffin hordes of wannabe superstars. It’s getting harder to find your way round, too. Luck was against me when I set off for Uber Hate Gang, an acclaimed masterwork from ‘Britain’s hottest young theatre company’ at the Underbelly. I found it all too easily. The dank, cold, unlit venue smelled of rotting knitwear and, if I’d sat there in the dark twiddling my thumbs and breathing TB fumes for an hour, I’d have had more fun than watching this pretentious muddle. The Gang want to unleash a sophisticated howl of protest against some unnamed fascist power but they succeed only in delivering a ceaseless barrage of infantile nastiness. Pity I didn’t get lost on the way.
Luck was still against me when I set off to see Death of a Theatre Critic. In my haste to cross North Bridge I was nearly killed by a speeding bus. (Grieving relatives would have been consoled by the amusing inscription on my gravestone.) I reached the location on time but was bamboozled by strange signposting and ended up in the wrong queue so I never learnt how my fictional colleague met his end. When arriving at a venue with multiple entertainments the best policy is to approach an usher and repeat the name of your show with an upward inflection. A title like Little Black Bastard makes this process trickier than it need be. The show is an oral memoir by Noel Tovey, an Aboriginal actor born in Melbourne shortly before the war.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in