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An extremely likeable bunch. There were great moments, including a sketch in which a woman insisted her husband accept her as a fish, while a funeral director investigated the number of ‘surplus dead people’ in his village. But the show needed more energy and pace to lift it from a group of cheerful people having fun to a professional performance. They would benefit from some stagecraft (speaking louder, no backs to the audience). The final game was introduced as ‘The Boring Game’ and was not adequately explained, which presented the performers with an uphill struggle. And yet… I came away liking this friendly group. This was their third ever gig, and they clearly have potential. I’d be interested to see how far they’ve come by next year’s Fringe.
Latest Musicbar, 20 May
2/5
Bonnie Graham

I loved this laugh-out-loud razmatazz show. Five multi-talented performers – fast, witty, topical and surreal. Highlights were the very visual date rape of Clegg by loverman David Cameron, the teacher who killed his pupil singing ‘Psycho Teacher’, or the granny who married her grandson doing ‘Baby Love’. Mark Brailsford and Jason Deplanque were brilliant, especially as The Miliband Brothers. Heather Urquhart and Liz Peters, one blonde one brunette, looked and sang as good as the Abba girls, plus they were fantastic comediennes. Joe Samuel was the one-man orchestra which sums this show up. A few perfomers but a few million laughs.
The Old Courtroom, 20 May (until 22 May)
5/5
Bill Smith

A five star acting performance. Robert Cohen inhabits Harvey Matusow
as Liam Neeson inhabited Oscar Schindler or Michael Caine (sorry Jude) is Alfie. It’s almost impossible for one man to hold an audience for 90 minutes but he achieves it. Great stories – Jo McCarthy – the nicest son of a bitch you ever met – or Harvey’s Christmas with 18 hookers watching ‘The 10 Commandments’. I would like to have known more about his five wives – you hear what I’m saying Harvey! With newsreel and more private life, this would be great TV.
The Old Courtroom, 20 May (until 23 May)
4/5
Bill Smith

After last year’s Breaking News there was a sense of expectation for Rimini Protokoll’s new work. And we were not disappointed.

Best Before takes us into the world of computer gaming. Using computer technology, each member of the audience is armed with a game control console and in turn introduced to an egg-shaped symbol on a giant monitor at the back of the stage. Having identified which egg you are, you are told how to move your avatar – the egg – around the virtual world, which is simply a rectangular void which they name ‘Best World’.

So far it is fairly simple, the company playing roles – a flagger, or traffic control warden to us, a computer game tester, a computer programmer and a PR stroke lobbyist. And as things progress we learn more about them and about their private lives. It may be fiction but it comes across as truth. And as their tales grow, we are asked to make decisions; are we male or female, do we support armed forces or pacifism, guns, drugs, alcohol, sex at 15?

Through the simplistic use of a role-playing game, we are taken on a journey that exposes how we are constantly barraged by decision making tasks. Tasks that have real impacts, not only on us personally but also ones that have a global impact.

The piece always exaggerates the way our lives change as we grow old. It isn’t soft on us either; some of us die, of disease and war and just randomly, on the spin of a wheel. Some of us are rich, some poor, some lazy and some studious. Towards the end, we start to feel the impact of decisions that we made earlier. Some of us shunned owning a fire arm but want an army, some of us save whilst some invest in volatile markets. We crash and burn and we laugh as we do so.

There is no doubting that this is a very entertaining way to spend an evening, at the same time exposing how the computer game developers use the tricks that the company are revealing to us to their financial and political gain. If I have a criticism, it would be that at times the company seem a little under-rehearsed, but as the events unfold in a different way every time, how can they rehearse? Challenging stuff of the sort one hopes to find in the Festival.

Sallis Benney Theatre, 19 May (until 23)
4/5
Andrew Kay