home
|
about
|
news
|
contents
|
gossip
|
photographs
|
venues
|
brighton
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
film
|
features
|
interviews
|
awards
|
fashion
|
recipes
|
no more drinks
|
newsletter
|
links
|
contact
Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Jovanka Steele - BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME
Verdict: Tiptoe-ing the Atlantic Divide
Edinburgh - Gilded Balloon - August 02
As a British Prime Minister crawls humiliatingly up the anus of an
American President, what better time to look at why his English subjects
hate Americans?
Jovanka Steele nails the Special Relationship firmly under her microscope.
At a time when President Bush's mooted war against Iraq threatens to cut
remaining ties of gratitude and friendship between the old and new worlds,
who better to insert a jemmy into the fault-line?
For Steele's a confirmed Anglophile, while remaining confidently and
endearingly loyal to the country of her birth. Not much of an accent
remains, though she's a proud born-and-bred American who's lived in both
countries, with a merciless eye for our respective foibles.
Take walking. We're aggressive and purposeful. We walk to get from A to
B. On arrival in Britain, Steele found this unfamiliar. 'To Americans,
walking's what happens when Burger King doesn't have a drive-through'.
Steele's childhood was well-balanced: 'My father was a coke dealer', who
exploded the tv set with his shotgun when he couldn't find the
remote. She herself was named after 'the coffee table in Ikea on which I
was conceived'. As things have turned out, her brother regrets being named
Osama.
She finds people in Los Angeles more supportive of her rejection of alcohol:
there it's ''OK, good for you'. Here, it's 'Fuck You''. But less tolerant
of old age: 'I had to leave LA. I was getting near 30. It's like 'Um, can
you go?''
Steele's acute observations cover a cinema-scope range, from the night she
was mugged and turned it into a rewarding experience in self-esteem,
to bathing the cat, covering her bottom (she regards it as podgy), and the
pitfalls of not wearing the hat shown in her flyer (upsets the stalkers).
On this night, for the first time (she says), Steele ends the show with one of
the most interesting acts involving Tabasco Sauce ever performed on stage.
It's certainly a Fringe First, though not in the sense meant by Edinburgh's
august award-granting body. She does it in one gulp, and tells a couple of
excellent one-liners at the same time. What a girl!
Written and performed by Jovanka Steele. Technicals by Lauren.
END
John Park
reviewed Friday 16 August 02 / Gilded Balloon Teviot Billiard Room
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
