Fringe Round-Up

Edinburgh Festival: Afters

After hours in a London bar, three regulars trade beery banter with the landlord. Suddenly, a mouse transmogrifies into cult writer Charles Bukowski. "I ran with the vermin," the beat poet explains, his nose a- twitch, "I was supposed to be a rat but they fucked up." Who "they" are, we never discover since this bar-room drama deals in bathetic comedy rather than metaphysical revelation. Afters's gritty, witty, magical realism extracts its humour from the collision of the supernatural with everyday pub culture. Conversational jockeying reveals ordinary lives and low- paid jobs but Bukowski's baleful presence works to raise the drinkers (and the play) from the mundane to the humorously heroic as each soliloquises his dreams.

To Sat. Gilded Balloon III (venue 12) LS