Marriage arranged in hell

FILM FESTIVAL

EAST IS EAST Cameo, August 22

UCI, August 24 Filmhouse, August 27HHHH

IN the tradition of northern working-class comedies like The Full Monty and Brassed Off comes this film, set in the Salford of the early 1970s when times were 'ard but folks were 'appy. George Khan (Om Puri) is a chip-shop owner, which is a joke right there; a Pakistani immigrant who presides over a very English institution. He even marries an English woman called Ella (Linda Bassett) and together they have seven kids who are growing up to be as Lancashire as hot-pot. In short, George has gone native. Or so it seems.

The trouble starts when George tries to arrange the marriage of his first-born, prompting the son to bolt from the altar like a startled horse. The Imam at the mosque tells him that he will feel happier when his children marry into the Pakistani community. George treats this piece of advice as a test of his manly authority - yet a slightly buffoonish but essentially decent character starts to reveal a darker side as he tries to exert control over his family, while becoming increasingly alienated from them. Ella has clearly acted as peace-maker in relations between father and children - but when George turns into a cantankerous Pakistani patriarch, her negotiating skills begin to fail.

The film is based on an acclaimed stage play by first-time writer Ayub Khan Din, who also wrote the movie script. Din manages to keep the comedy going while addressing the more serious issue facing every ethnic minority - whether to integrate or strive to retain a cultural identity.

George wanted his children to learn Urdu, but they never quite got the grip of his mother tongue. Bacon butties are more their thing - when dad's back is turned, of course. For them integration is an inevitability, not a choice.

The clever thing about East Is East is that it presents a picture of an Asian community which is recognisable enough to outsiders for them to get the humour, but sufficiently detailed to feel like an insider's view.

The fact that director Damien O'Donnell is clearly not of Pakistani extraction has perhaps helped emphasise that the story is as much about the gap between generations as cultures. This pulls the humour out of an Asian ghetto, while O'Donnell's ability to sustain a running gag is the real beauty of a film which could easily become the low-budget comedy hit of the year.

Eddie Gibb

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL A BRAS LE CORPS:

Boris Charmatz and Dimitri Chamblas Festival Theatre Run ended

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WHEN the concept of 'pure dance' is discussed, the focus is often too much on the idea that it's the steps alone which are involved in a piece.

Charmatz and Chamblas, two young French dancers and choreographers, clearly have no such limitations in their thinking, and have recognised that the space in which dance takes place becomes part of the performance.

The duo perform in a small square surrounded on all sides by the audience. With a physical ferocity that is almost shocking, the two men measure the size of the movement area with a terrifying accuracy, all but brushing the faces of the viewers with their flailing limbs.

This is quite laddish stuff, the two of them swapping the most improbable balances as they wrap their bodies around one another. Mainly in silence, but with occasional bursts of Paganini, they prowl in pools of light or near darkness, now alone, then together, with a curiously tender violence.

Every aspect of the physical experience has been choreographed, right down to the breathing, heavy from exertion but periodically held to change the balance of their energy. Here is strength, balance, speed and stillness, interwoven to form a visceral experience for the onlooker which is accentuated by the proximity of the action.

In a larger area, the power might be dissipated: in this setting, every member of the audience walks away with some of the tension and skill clinging to them.

Don Morris

FRINGE ART

JOHN STEZAKER Portfolio Gallery Until September 4

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JOHN Stezaker's Angels and Demons are images of children's faces blown up beyond human scale and altered to become symmetrical. We're often told in surveys and scientific research that symmetry is attractive; that balanced, even features are our ticket to Darwinian success, but Stezaker's pictures show that perfection is disturbing. A tiny baby becomes a colossus, a giant rubber-headed Michelin child. A smiling, over-groomed little princess becomes a gap-toothed harbinger.

Stezaker's images are neither glossy nor glamorous. They do use computer technology, but the humble photocopier and the mirror - humbler still - are used as well.

The photographs were initially the archive of a now defunct child model agency, and the doctoring they have received is enough to transform them - but not enough to disguise the fact that they are borrowed images.

Stezaker has long collected all kinds of photographs, from newspapers, archives and other sources. It is important to him that he deals with pictures that are already out there.

Each image in the Angels series contains an invisible seam where the join should be, and it is this seam that strikes you as the subject of the pictures, not the children at all. The children's faces contain a line that has been crossed - a line between the real and the fantastical.

Angels are messengers from the other side and the images take us beyond photographic realism to another world.

These pictures are probably most immediate and disruptive because they are pictures of children - but Stezaker has, in the past, performed similar techniques with pictures of trees, showing a sense of unease at the heart of the Garden of Eden.

This is not an easy exhibition to look at, but it does ask some interesting questions. In the sense of discomfort you feel, you suddenly understand what William Blake meant by fearful symmetry.

Moira Jeffrey

FRINGE COMEDY MARTIN BIGPIG: My Granny Was A Bearded Lady The StandUntil August 29

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MARTIN Bigpig doesn't need rave reviews to sell his show. Most of the near full-house crowd have been persuaded to come along after meeting the irrepressibly exuberant Irishman in the street. For once it's a shot in the dark that comes up trumps.

Boasting a beard that makes ZZ Top look like delegates at a bum- fluff convention, Bigpig pulls all manner of skeletons out of the closet as he takes us on a guided tour of his family tree. There's the gambler, the black sheep porn star and assorted sideshow freaks, all of whom are brought to life as Bigpig shows off his basic street theatre skills.

But unlike the dog-on-a-rope brigade at the Mound, Bigpig doesn't expect applause simply for larking around with machetes, whips, fire and broken glass - such two-a- penny trickery merely provides the framework for his relentless humour.

Where he comes into his own is when he strays from the script. Aware of his strengths, he invites the audience to heckle him, and succeeds in transforming even the most banal remarks into elaborate skits. Audience members are assigned roles along the way - but while the "stupid lassie" in the front row laps it up, the "gay boy" up the back seems a little disgruntled. But when the affable Bigpig hangs around to chat after lights up, even he can't help but succumb to the blarney.

Claire Prentice

FRINGE THEATRE

DRUMMERS Traverse TheatreUntil August 29

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SIMON Bennett's new play blazes with authentic south London street suss and a black, laddish humour that's full-throttle and obscenity- laden. Its roots are in the British gangster genre of the 1970s.

Max Stafford-Clark's production for Out of Joint is an easy ride precisely because of that, and at times it's an electrifying one, featuring performances of integrity and verve.

Ray is out of prison and up to his old tricks again: knocking off posh people's houses and fencing the goods through some very dodgy connections indeed. Baby brother Barry is doing skag, having bought into the impossible allure of Pete's seedy underworld. But Pete himself is a loose cannon, and a takeover bid for his shabby kingdom is imminent.

You have to wonder, though, how far drama in this vein can go. It's rough and tough enough to get the younger crowd in, but it's hardly pushing the boundaries that the likes of Mark Ravenhill and Jez Butterworth already stretched half a decade ago. Yet Drummers is undoubtedly a brutally engaging twist on the solitary underworld figure seeking redemption in a world where family loyalty is all.

Neil Cooper

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL

TURANDOT PlayhouseAugust 16, 28, 20, 22

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IF Turandot the opera is to be good then Turandot the character has to be good. Unfortunately Japanese soprano Chieko Shimohara lacks the purity of voice and the power necessary to drive the work's emotional machinery.

It has to be said, however, that there are moments of true pleasure in this production. The beautifully choreographed chorus sings with erudition and the sets and costumes are often stunning - but there is nothing binding these moments together. Overall there is a disjointedness, a confusion of ideas, a shallowness in the visual effects which lack both cohesion and integrity of purpose.

As Chieko Shimohara continues to bellow her way through the production, Chen Sue Panariello (Liu) and Deng Feng Zhao (Calaf) turn in solid, if rather lacklustre performances, but as the Turandot Titanic sinks under the waves, the passengers and crew are dragged down with it.

Never in this production does the magic of this opera grip you. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Michiyoshi Inoue manage to rouse the spirit from time to time, but the emotionally charged high points of Puccini's score are dampened not just by uninspired singing but the congested over- emphasis of unnecessary visual images during the quieter passages.

Carole Danielson

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