London

It didn’t take long till I saw my first pair of exposed buttocks in Edinburgh. It rarely does. Despite the less than tropical climes of the Scottish summer, there will always be actors who are raring to get their clothes off – though whether it’s in the name of art or narcissism is often difficult to tell.

This particular pair of buttocks belonged to Charles Aitken, who is one of the few reasons to go and see Tim Fountain’s adaptation of ‘Midnight Cowboy’ at the Assembly Rooms (and that is, I should make it clear for his acting talents rather than his mooning). There’s always at least one show a year that bases its Fringe appeal on the more famous film from which it’s adapted, and each year I become more and more convinced that it’s a lousy cynical exercise which does little but appeal to people who are too lazy to go and dig out some of the genuinely original material in Edinburgh. Feature continues

Stripped of the atmosphere of the New York streets, the play seemed like a form of spoken karaoke, elevated only by the sense of happy-to-be-corrupted innocence Aitken brings to the role of Joe Buck, and the relationship he builds with Con O’Neill’s compellingly sleazy Ratso. There’s an embarrassing fetish party scene - involving some absurd wigs and costumes - that the cast should pray will be consigned to the outer reaches of audience forgetfulness. It’s one of many indications that this Midnight Cowboy is ultimately more dud than stud.

There was a slight irony that the exposed buttocks were on view immediately after Mel Smith’s ‘Allegiance’ where – as has been widely reported – the actor failed to light up on stage because of pressure from the Scottish authorities. You wonder whether people will look back in wonder to this age of skewed puritanism where smoking a cigar on stage is forbidden, but getting butt-naked scarcely merits a flicker of an eyebrow. That is unless you make the pilgrimage to Aurora Nova to witness the apocalyptic beauty of the show brought over by the St Petersburg clown troupe Derevo. In ‘Ketzal’ the company proves once more that it can turn the human body into a canvas for emotions you didn’t realise you had until you’re lost in the simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating aesthetic of the performers’ world.

Don’t be put off by the embarrassingly pretentious blurb in the programme ‘We enter the world naked and we leave it naked. In between is Life, the body’s beautiful poisoned song.’ Though to be fair, it’s difficult to know how you could sum up an experience like this in a few snappy sentences.

As you enter the theatre, it becomes obvious that in the low-lit auditorium there are people clad all in white with headscarves on, who are twitching as if they have a colony of ants in their pants. They are positioned among the steadily gathering audience until the show begins, when they move onto the stage, and start to dance like manic robots. There’s something obsessive, almost possessed about them – so although there’s no story developing, it’s impossible not to be fascinated by their every move. Then a black backdrop comes down, and the real visual magic begins.

It should be explained that one of the defining characteristics of this troupe is the androgyny that permeates it. Every single member has shaved their head, and because of their high level of physical training it’s not always easy to tell who’s male and who’s female, even when they’re only wearing a g-string – on more than one occasion I was asking myself ‘Are those pecs or breasts’. Already you are unsettled: all the criteria by which you, either consciously or subconsciously, judge other human bodies have been completely redefined. Behind the black backdrop the troupe starts to play their visual games, which we view through a torn hole: at one point it seems as if they’re revolving like spokes on a human wheel, at another heads rise up in a column as if they were on a totem pole.

Could I understand the underlying themes? Well, no, not exactly. There was a dominant iconic female character, who seemed to rule over the twitching Hieronymus Bosch-like figures like a malign goddess, and a sinister satyrical male complete with fake phallus and coxcomb. The tension between the two animates the piece – and in their strange power-struggle, images spring up which will never leave me. At one point, as fairground music jangles in the background, the performers improvise a carousel in the shadows. It should look obscene: naked bodies riding slowly up and down on other human bodies, but it doesn’t. At another point when a deep red semicircle lights up the stage like a setting sun, the performers pour water onto the ground and create an extraordinary tableau of silhouettes and reflections. This is some of the finest physical theatre I’ve seen – worlds away from the Edinburgh of cheap sex-references and film-remakes. It’s no small tribute that when it ended I would have been happy for it to go on for another couple of hours.