Fringe Music and Cabaret

And for My Next Trick

Underbelly Cowgate

FOUR STARS

Caleidocello

C too

THREE STARS

Jamie MacDowell & Tom Thum

Assembly George Square

THREE STARS

Rob Adams

AS A physicist to trade, even Kevin Quantum in his previous life might have marvelled at some of his tricks. How, for example, do the three test tubes of different coloured salts that he stirs into a glass bowl of water manage to re-emerge in their original form? Doubtless it’s all an illusion but Quantum has such an entertainingly off-hand manner that you want to believe that he makes the impossible possible at every turn.

His show is genuinely interactive – nobody could afford so many “plants” surely – and just as the audience become involved in having a signed £10 note disappear, only to turn up later inside a kiwi fruit, or have the watch that they hadn’t noticed had gone returned to them, they get to choose the format.

In this instance, that meant a Countdown-style parade of ever more bewildering sleight of hand and thought transference performed against the clock. Items being produced from behind people’s ears and the correct cards being chosen with unfailing consistency, although possibly not quite as often, or as mirthfully, as the eight of hearts turned up here, might well be available in other Fringe cabaret shows. But an empty bottle being punched through a, thankfully unscathed, young man’s chest? That’s magic.

Run ends August 27.

VIENNESE cellist Peter Hudler does indeed use a kaleidoscope of techniques in Caleidocello. From the conventional elegance of a Bach prelude, Hudler’s programme moves on through Philip Glass impressionism into international folk idioms with the shimmering Kalimba, where his left-handed hammering on and plucking of strings between bridge and tail-piece creates a believable impression of the titular African thumb piano, followed by blues, bluegrass and an ancient Syrian melody.

Impressive cross-bowing, percussive attack with both bow and fingers, sweetly produced harmonics and strong chordal playing add to the variety of unamplified sounds and if occasionally the phrasing is a little rushed and exposed, there’s an appealingly rough-hewn expressiveness in what sounds like a variation on Blues in the Night and on the Sicilian song, where Hudler sings along for emphasis, that brings the recital to a full-on rugged conclusion.

Run ends August 28.

SOUND production, ranging from hi hat and snare drum to trumpet and trombone impressions and synth patches, meets laid-back soul-pop in Australians Jamie MacDowell and Tom Thum’s early evening presentation. Thum is the beatboxer who makes all these sounds “with his face”, according to MacDowell, and at one point incorporates a sample of the crowd yelling into the electronic groove behind MacDowell’s blue-eyed soul singing and clear electric and acoustic guitar patterns.

It’s all performed with practised ease and matey informality but the show needs more material that comes up to the standard of Bill Withers’ Grandma’s Hands, which Thum adapted for his own grandmother and sings with a genuine sense of personal involvement.

Run ends August 20.