Five more shows to catch at the Edinburgh Fringe
Solo shows, gig-theatre two-handers, devised docu-dramas, and the seventh Doctor Who...
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue is one of twelve specials I will be sending out during July and August, all focused on shows performing at the Edinburgh Fringe. Each issue will highlight five shows worth watching - three picked by me, plus a couple of promotional ones, too.
Some issues will be themed, some won’t be. Some shows I will have seen and loved myself, some I will just have heard good things about. All of them, though, will be made by exciting, mostly emerging/early-career artists.
You can read more about the thinking behind The Crush Bar here, and you can subscribe to get it sent straight into your inbox - go on! - using the button below…
Manic Street Creature - Roundabout @ Summerhall, 3.55pm
Over the last decade, Summerhall has become the centre for boundary-breaking, thought-provoking theatre at the Fringe, and the Paines Plough Roundabout is the building’s beating heart. The intimate, 168-seat, in-the-round venue has played host to some memorable shows – from Square Go, to Blackthorn, to Islander – and is set to stage several more this year.
Among them is Manic Street Creature, the new solo work from actor, musician, and former interviewee of this newsletter, Maimuna Memon. Memon composed the music for Wildcard Theatre’s superb gig-theatre piece Electrolyte in 2018, and for Chris Bush and Rebecca Frecknall’s Nine Lessons and Carols at the Almeida Theatre in 2020. Her debut EP is out later this year, too.
Produced by Wildcard Founder Joey Reid Dawson and co-directed by Kirsty Patrick Ward and Bill Buckhurst, Manic Street Creature is a “semi-autobiographical, concept musical” and “a fresh and thrilling take on a modern love story”, all wrapped up in one, featuring Memon as Ria, a musician writing an album about a recent relationship.
Blanket Ban - Underbelly Cowgate, 5pm
Luton-based Chalk Line Theatre turned heads with its debut show Testament in 2018, and its second, The Nobodies, in 2020. Now one of the New Diorama Theatre’s Graduate Emerging Companies and an associate at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, it brings its third show Blanket Ban – another production that was supposed to open at VAULT earlier this year – to Edinburgh.
Directed by Sam Edmunds and Vikesh Godhwani and devised by the company in collaboration with its two-strong cast, Maltese theatremakers Davinia Hamilton and Marta Vella, Blanket Ban is a timely docu-play about the blanket ban on abortion in Malta, created using verbatim interviews and innovative technology.
Along with ChewBoy Productions’ Caligari, Ugly Bucket’s Good Grief, and Max Percy + Friends’ This Is Not A Show About Hong Kong, Blanket Ban is one of four winners of the prestigious Untapped Award, a prize run jointly by the New Diorama and Underbelly, and supported by Methuen Drama that has thrown up several fantastic fringe shows in the past – and will do so again this year.
Double Drop - Summerhall, 3.20pm
Cardiff-based Dirty Protest Theatre’s Double Drop was a highlight of last year’s Covid-affected, rain-drenched Edinburgh Fringe. Performed outside underneath Edinburgh Castle, Lisa Jen Brown’s 1990s-set two-hander was an exuberant hour of friendly, ecstasy-fuelled fun.
Written by Brown, with original music from alternative folk band 9Bach, it follows a teenager, Esmi, torn between her responsibilities to Welsh tradition and her love of rave culture. Old and new, tradition and trance, bards and beats all come crashing together during one drug-addled Eisteddfod.
This August, Double Drop makes a welcome return to the festival, setting up shop at Summerhall, where Dirty Protest Theatre had a hit with Alan Harris’ superb Sugar Baby five years ago, and where the show should hopefully stay drier than it did last August.
The Unicorn - Pleasance Courtyard, 6.30pm
The inspiration for Sam Potter’s striking new one-woman play, The Unicorn, was an anonymously written magazine article about sex addiction. “The way the writer described it really stuck with me,” says Potter. “The idea of sex addiction as an expression of trauma, as a way of getting out of your own head just fascinated me.”
The Unicorn – developed from a fifteen-minute segment shown at the 2019 Alchymy Festival at the North Wall Arts Centre – sees Oxford School of Drama graduate Georgina Fairbanks play Andrea, a woman who loses her job after making a sexual harassment complaint and combats her consequent depression through intimacy. Another Oxford School of Drama graduate, Anthony Greyley, directs.
Potter, whose twin career as a writer and director has seen her work everywhere from Theatre503 to the Royal Shakespeare Company, says she hopes the Edinburgh Fringe run of The Unicorn – and its subsequent regional tour – starts conversations around the show’s subject. “There is a taboo around discussing female sexuality in the open,” she says. “I want to help change that.”
This is promotional content.
Apartness - TheSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, 10.45pm
Two acting legends are in Apartness, the intriguing new tragi-comic film-theatre-hybrid from award-winning writer-director Kevin Short. Sylvester McCoy (best known for playing the seventh Doctor Who) and Linda Marlowe (best known for her role as Sylvie in EastEnders, and for her long association with Steven Berkoff) star via screen, with stand-up comedian Eleanor May Blackburn appearing in-person.
The show’s concept sees McCoy and Marlowe appear on screen as an older couple living through lockdown, resolutely obeying the rules. Blackburn appears both on screen as their kindly neighbour, and in-person as the exact opposite: by day she is an angel, by night she is raising hell in an illegal comedy club - and you are her audience. The idea, Short explains, was inspired by his own experiences as producer during the pandemic, and by the consequent question: is art more important than life?
The beauty of Apartness, continues Short, is that it can run at both a cinema and a theatre; after the show’s Edinburgh Fringe run, he is planning on touring it to both. “It is very funny, and there is lots of audience interaction and participation,” he explains. “It is not your typical Edinburgh Fringe show, though. It is a new concept for new times.”
This is promotional content.
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Fergus Morgan
So many fantastic shows here - can't wait to get up to the fringe this year.