The ギャング（団）'s all here! The Edinburgh Festival 申し込む／申し出s everything from dodgy geezers to a literary doyenne... and an old man's moving insights
率ing: 
Performers (議会 Rooms)
判決: ?Cartoonish criminality?
率ing:
Doglife (Summerhall)
判決: A real hint of danger?
We may associate Irvine Welsh with raw fiction about Nineties working-class Scotland, but his new play Performers, hyped as one of the Festival’s big events, is 始める，決める in late Sixties London and 目的（とする）s for an almost farcical 空気／公表する with some far-fetched trouser-dropping.
Is Irvine going soft in his old age? The show opens with Kray-時代 ギャング（個々）s arriving at the offices of film director Donald Cammell. They wait for him for ages ― shades of Godot. Are they there to collect money or （警官の）巡回区域，受持ち区域 him up? No. They have come to audition for his 最新の film.
George Russo (left) and Perry Benson in Irvine Welsh's Performers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
There is a factual basis for this. Cammell did indeed cast gangland 堅いs in 業績／成果, a Mick Jagger/Anita Pallenberg film hated by its American 支援者s for 存在 violent and edgy. It has since acquired 教団 status.
Our mobsters are Alf (immensely fat and avuncular) and knuckle-dustered Bert (dandyish, 薄暗い, itchily repressed). Perry Benson is in his plump element as Alf, squinting through 厚い spectacles.
George Russo does his best with Bert’s meagre lines, but the pace of the thing is glacial. Maya Gerber is excellent as a strumpety 長官. 吊りくさび Kirk, as a flower-力／強力にする 生産／産物 assistant, calls to mind the young Jude 法律.
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With better 発射／推定 and 会社／堅い editing ― they should （土地などの）細長い一片 away most of the Cockney rhyming slang, for a start ― Welsh and his co-writer Dean Cavanagh could have a reasonable half-hour 無線で通信する comedy on their 手渡すs.
Fat Alf is 入り口d by the idea of 事実上の／代理 in a film and agrees to （土地などの）細長い一片 to his voluminous smalls ― and beyond ― for a 審査する 実験（する）. There are some wry one-liners and the sight of Mr Benson’s enormous, 明らかにする gut has a 確かな theatrical novelty.
Yet one senses this 事業／計画（する） may 初めは have aspired to greater ambitions. Did it hope to tells us something about the vanity of violent men? Was there an idea of showing us a grittier 味方する to Alf and Bert? If so, it was lost.
Alf, played by Benson, 減少（する）s his trousers during Welsh's farcical play 始める，決める in late Sixties London
Cammell’s film 業績／成果 達成するd artistic 長所 by 目的（とする）ing for 不明瞭. Welsh and Cavendish’s play went the other way and feels a bit so what-ish.
For a real taste of ギャング（個々）s mixing with 演劇, try the startlingly authentic Doglife, where former 罪，犯罪-world 凶漢 Thomas McCrudden again takes to the Fringe 行う／開催する／段階 (as he did last year) to 述べる his trouble-scarred life.
Director Jeremy Weller and the Grassmarket 事業／計画（する）s use 演劇 to help people 直面する their experiences. The show, a bit whispery and 配達するd in chewy Glaswegian, takes the form of episodes between McCrudden and さまざまな women. His violent ways have left this bullish, muscular man darkly unable to 対処する with the words ‘I love you’.
It is theatre as a public confessional. At the end, McCrudden apologises to his family and also to the audience ― society 捕まらないで.
The cast of untrained actors are 大いに believable. At a festival which has never felt so middle-class, what a welcome dose of reality this 供給するd.
率ing:
To Hell In A Handbag (議会 Rooms)
判決: What would Oscar say?
Governess 行方不明になる Prism and Canon Chasuble, two minor characters in The Importance Of 存在 Earnest, are given lives beyond Wilde in a droll if over-long pastiche.?
Helen Norton’s 行方不明になる Prism (she could be John Sergeant’s twin sister) is not やめる the 中心存在 of sobriety after all. Cork your communion ワイン!
Chasuble (Jonathan White, doing much Wildean chin-dropping) once たびたび（訪れる）d あへん dens and has a sideline as an agony aunt.
The show was written by Norton and White and 含むs such lines as: ‘His Grace The 大司教 of York may be a most pious churchman but helping others is not high on his 名簿（に載せる）／表（にあげる） of 優先s.’
The result is highbrow whimsy perfect for ‘Earnest’ 熱中している人s.
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