Review: Tales from the Shoulders of Giants, Greek Gyros Grill, Free Fringe

A Greek migrant, a Belgian tourist, an Englishman and a Scottish homeless man walk into a downstairs space beneath a Greek takeaway. No, it’s not the beginning of a terrible (and likely stereotyping) joke, it’s the start of a poetry reading at Greek Gyros Grill. Two of the four were there as audience; one was there to perform, and the fourth? Well, he was there as it’s Free Fringe and clearly it offered a good place to have a nice sleep. Thankfully, he didn’t snore.

Free Fringe is an interesting beast. Why more people don’t attend it is a question I am sure is being asked every year. Although the regular interruptions as takeaway staff come down to use the storeroom and random strangers looking for the toilets does mean this venue is one of the more questionable ones. Which is a shame, because had more people taken a risk to explore this particular show; they would have had the most delightful hour of poetry for nothing more than a kind word at the end and a voluntary donation.

Panagiotis Skoutelis‘ (the Greek in this quartet) Tales from the Shoulders of Giants is a collection of poems based on what is clearly his specialist subject, science, or more precisely, cosmology. Whether there are two people or one hundred, you suspect he would deliver his work with the very same joyful energy. He tells us early on that he works in a school, and you can only imagine how his infectious joy must surely wash over the kids he is involved with, even if he confesses he is only an armchair scientist, not actually teaching it in schools!

We are treated to tales of planets falling in love, of time arguing with other scientific concepts about who is the most powerful, then there are red dwarfs, atoms, particles, all becoming the Gods and Goddesses of Greek mythology as Skoutelis merges the two ideas. Perhaps the highlight is when he asks the audience (yes, the Belgian tourist and me – the homeless man was by now fast asleep) to assist in reading out a poem, handing out fragments of the verse that could be read in any order. It’s a moment of shared joy reading with these two new friends.

Skoutelis is open that he is doing the free fringe to gain experience and learn his craft more thoroughly. Here his use of the microphone is an area he could work on. First, with just two in the audience, does he even need it? He certainly doesn’t when reciting his final piece, A Brief Tragedy of Time, hopping wildly from side to side as the scientific entities all argue with one another. But when he is using the mic, he is not always speaking into it, and so his voice rises and falls as he moves in close then away from it again. But elsewhere, he copes amazingly well with the interruptions of the evening; you don’t get the takeaway staff wandering through to check the storeroom in many other venues, and it’s all experience needed for bigger spaces.

Tales from The Shoulders of Giants is very much a show for the science geeks amongst us. Yet you don’t need to understand the science to enjoy Skoutelis’ pure delight at sharing his poetry with us. Maybe next year he will have introduced a poem about the Greek poet, the Belgian tourist and the English reviewer to his repertoire.

Written by Panagiotis Skoutelis

Produced by PBH’s Free Fringe

Tales from the Shoulders of Giants plays at Greek Gyros Grill until Sunday 30 August as part of PBH’s Free Fringe for EdFringe