International Festival

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Aatt Enen TiononBoris Charmatz - Edna Run ended

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LATE night at the Festival Theatre, an audience promenades around a basic three-level metal framework set on the huge stage, a dancer on each tier, while PJ Harvey blasts out from inescapable loudspeakers. This is Boris Charmatz and his Edna company in a work which demands the attention of its title and prompts questions on at least as many levels as the contrived performance space.

What is Charmatz saying, if anything, about isolation and movement? The three dancers move in a violent sort of unison, unseen by each other, and early on drop their trousers to dance clad only in T-shirts.

There is a masochistic energy to the work as they hurl themselves at the spartan wood and metal structure with apparent disregard for sensitive flesh. Sometimes in blinding light, this display of bodies is not erotic, more often like an Egon Schiele exhibition brought to graphic life, a three-ring circus of quirky movement put on a vertical axis.

The trademark Charmatz raw physicality is there in spasms, amid lengthy periods of stillness and heavy breathing, but the poses are confrontational in their exposing angles and the hurling of limbs consistently punishing and painful. The top tier is too high and sharply lit to be clearly visible often, further heightening the contrasts between visibility and isolation.

Charmatz clearly has something to say and in keeping with much of the dance on the Festival this year, delivers most of his message with aspects of the performance other than the dancers' movements. In the end, the audience may be almost as bruised mentally as the dancers' bodies Don Morris

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL Schumann: The Symphonies 1 Scottish Chamber Orchestra Run ended

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IF anything was to be gleaned from the first of two evenings solely devoted to the orchestral outpourings of Robert Schumann, it was how the conflict within this troubled man surfaced in his music.

The highlight came with the performance of his Fourth Symphony, which conductor Sir Charles Mackerras chose to play in its original version (Schumann had withdrawn the original and re-orchestrated it after its first performance went badly. The symphony was not published until 10 years later). The thematic development - Schumann's great strength - was fluid and the movements linked beautifully to created a unified whole. But the orchestration was markedly conservative and while it was interesting to hear how the symphony must have sounded before its reworking, it was easy to see why it had originally been so coolly received.

By contrast, violinist Christian Tetzlaff played the D minor Violin Concerto with aplomb. It was obvious through the music that Schumann was suffering dreadful mental torment at the time. While the orchestration in parts was bleak and bare, the soloist enjoyed some wonderfully moving melodies which really enriched the violin.

It was this ability to write great melodies for individual instruments and smaller ensembles which brought the best out of Schumann. That was not the case with these orchestral works - but they were worth hearing nonetheless.

Philip Gates Festival Fringe The Man Who Committed Thought Patrice Naiambana Assembly Halls until August 30

HHH Patrice Naiambana's one man play about post-colonial Africa is no off-the-peg diatribe against imperialism. None of the characters he plays in this exploration of the dark side of the dark continent is white. It is a complex and mature examination of how the black man has himself conspired to plunge post-colonial Africa into anarchy.

Naiambana plays four archetypal figures from contemporary African society.

There is the poor peasant farmer, scraping a living from his land; the westernised lawyer who evicts him from it; the African dictator who wants the land in the name of progress; and the brutal warlord - shades of Rawanda - who finally kills him for it. The message is that although all power comes from the barrel of a gun, it is not just the man who pulls the trigger who is guilty.

This is a serious and thoughtful production, but far from humourless. The dictator, President Junta, a self-styled "humanitarian dictator" who phones up Tony Blair to discuss modernisation, is a fine comic creation. But all the parts are convincing, from the desperate farmer with his nave faith in Biblical morality to the lawyer with Trevor MacDonald elocution.

Optimistic, it is not. Naiambana offers no easy answers to Africa's desperate predicament. But this is a powerful piece performed by a versatile actor who clearly lives his art.

Iain Macwhirter

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