Isabel Oliver, Michelle Tiwo and Lula Mebrahtu in Parakeet. Picture: Jane Hobson
Parakeet at Roundabout @ Summerhall, Edinburgh
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
This is a punk musical play about “finding your flock and ruffling feathers”. As someone who walks pass the glorious parakeets of Stockwell on my way to the tube, I completely got the joy which our storyteller felt when she found there were parakeets in Margate. Who knew.
Her challenge at the top of the show to adults that we should “look up to the sky” resonated through a piece which tells of three 17 year old activists and punk performers who make a different in their community. They may not be able to vote but they can “peacefully fight again and again and again”.
I so wanted to be deafened by the music for this show and to feel that visceral anger in my rattling bones. As it was, writers Brigitte Aphrodite and Quiet Boy together with director Laura Keefe chose to keep the sound muted and let the passion of the three performers shine through.
Whilst there was joy and deep conviction, I really missed feeling the musical punch which was suggested when the two “adults” introduced themselves as punk musicians. But as they said the show belonged to the three performers and in the words of our central actor – gloriously opening her arms to us at the end – “we are proud… these wings are not for clipping” but “we are open to suggestion”.
The three are professional performers across a range of media. I look forward to seeing this piece played and developed by young 16 to 17 year olds and maybe brought back by them another year.
Chris Grady
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