 Dough
Aug 11-13, 15-20, 22-28 - Pleasance Dome A darkly comic drama from internationally acclaimed Molière award-winner, David Lescot. Explore a lifetime through one person's daily interactions with money, and the transactions we engage in to build a life – from the Tooth Fairy to negotiating with the funeral director. Landing in Edinburgh direct from New York, this fast-paced play sees three actors bring over forty characters to life in one hour. Based on the largely millennial and older audience attending a mid-afternoon performance of Dough as part of the Fringe I suspect the lyrics 'You're a slave to the money then you die' from The Verve were being evoked in their memories. Perhaps even more so during the suffocating cost of living crisis, it was a brutal reminder of the world outside this darkened and warm room. At times a very bleak and tragic tale of Me (Zach Lusk) who is like nearly all of us who grew up comfortable but was never far away from money troubles or the victim of bad decisions within and outside our control. It is difficult to escape the pull of spending and for over six decades Me never escapes it. There is a shared feeling with this room of older Fringe patrons who have tipped over into the second half or later years of their lives and realise how much our capitalist society has a grip on our lives and will until the bitter end. However, the play is not completely a graveyard to our society and dreams but there is great humour, and not all just gallows too which largely comes from Hannah Mitchell and Matthew Brown who in one hour play over forty unique characters from undertakers, spoiled children to downtrodden parents. It's easy to be conditioned and see a title like Dough and as you watch the early moments of the play as the young Me twists his parents around his finger to squeeze more money out of them expecting this to be the Making of a Banker and be about to watch a play in the ilk of The Lehman Brothers and the rise of another banking bastard instead we see ourselves and our fate unfolding. There's not a message of optimism at the end and the play rightfully embraces the nihilism and universality of capitalism's pull on Me and us all. 4/5 Book your tickets here > https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/dough Lee Hutchison |
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