Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 2
The second instalment of this newsletter's festival specials, feat. a new Kieran Hurley play, new work from companies LUNG Theatre and Chronic Insanity, and two solo shows.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a Substack newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue is the second of a series of specials I am sending out during late July and August, all focused on shows performing at the festival. Each issue will highlight five shows worth seeing. Three will be picked by me, and a couple will be paid promotions. Hope that is okay.
Some issues will be themed. Most will not be. Some I will have seen and loved. Some I will just have heard good things about. Some artists I will know and admire. Others I will just like the sound of. Please feel free to get in touch if you want to let me know about a show you love.
One last thing: you can support this newsletter in a couple of ways. Firstly, you can share it with anyone that might be interested. And secondly, you can become a paid supporter for the cost of a cup-and-a-half of coffee a month using the button below. That’d be just great.
Adults - Traverse Theatre, various times
Glasgow-based playwright Kieran Hurley is the writer behind Mouthpiece, the terrific two-handed drama exploring class boundaries in Edinburgh and the arts industry that was showered with critical acclaim and awards when it premiered at the Traverse Theatre five years ago.
Before that, he collaborated with fellow playwright Gary McNair on the hilarious Square Go, and performed his own award-winning solo shows Beats and Heads Up, the former of which was turned into a film in 2019. He is one third of theatre company Disaster Plan, too, which staged the evocative outdoor show Move on Silverknowes Beach in back 2021.
Mouthpiece is back - only as a reading - at this year’s festival, but Hurley’s new play Adults is part of the Traverse Theatre’s programme. Directed by Roxana Silbert and starring Game Of Thrones’ Conleth Hill, it is an 80-minute, three-handed black comedy about an unexpected meeting at an Edinburgh brothel. You can get tickets via the button below.
Woodhill - Summerhall, 20.55
LUNG Theatre is the Barnsley-based company specialising in verbatim shows that previously produced 2018’s Trojan Horse, about alleged radicalisation in Birmingham state schools, and 2019’s Who Cares, about Britain’s broken care system. Both of those shows were excellent, and the company was deservedly made a National Portfolio Organisation earlier this year.
This year, the company are back with something a bit different. Like Trojan Horse and Who Cares, Woodhill is a documentary play developed from real words spoken by real people, exploring the deaths of three inmates at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes in 2019, and the problems with Britain’s prison system. Unlike Trojan Horse and Who Cares, though, it will intriguingly incorporate dance and movement throughout.
Co-produced with Oxford’s The North Wall Arts Centre, where it previews pre-Edinburgh this week, Woodhill runs at Summerhall for the entire festival. You can read LUNG Theatre artistic director Matt Woodhead’s somewhat zany reflection on his company’s becoming an NPO in The Stage here, and you can book tickets for the show using the button below.
24, 23, 22 - Underbelly Cowgate, 14:10
Few theatre companies are as prolific as award-winning Nottingham-based outfit Chronic Insanity. Led by Nat Henderson and Joe Strickland, Chronic Insanity has made a commitment to stage 12 shows every 12 months, and seems to be sticking to it. True to form, it has two projects running simultaneously at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Firstly, the company is in digital residence at the Traverse Theatre for the entire festival, presenting five online works over three weeks, including internet-wide treasure hunt Flavour Text, interactive drama Myles Away, binaurual audio play Red Breast, experiential Pinocchio adaptation PNOC.io, and video-conference murder mystery There’s Something Among Us.
And secondly, Chronic Insanity will be staging 24, 23, 22 in-person at Underbelly Cowgate all month. Written by Doug Deans and directed by Strickland, the show is a two-handed, time-hopping gig-theatre piece that garnered acclaim when it premiered online in 2021 and when it ran at Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre in 2022. You can get tickets for it using the button below, and for Chronic Insanity’s Traverse Theatre projects here.
Pleasure Little Treasure - Underbelly Cowgate, 17.25
Theatremaker Elina Alminas grew up in post-Soviet Estonia, in the country’s first strip club, which happened to be run by her extraordinary grandmother. “I was born in 1991, the year the USSR collapsed,” she explains. “In the USSR, all sex establishments were illegal. My grandmother opened the first strip club in newly independent Estonia, during a time of great poverty and corruption.”
Alminas’ second solo show, Pleasure Little Treasure, tells the remarkable true story of her grandmother’s struggle to keep her strip club business afloat amid the chaos and criminality that surrounded it. Incorporating storytelling, drag, clowning and television footage, the show is an innovative multimedia meditation about what it takes to survive as a woman in a perilous, patriarchal society.
Raised in Estonia and now based in London, Alminas trained at Goldsmiths and France’s famous Ecole Philippe Gaulier. Her first solo show, Laura, was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018, and transferred to Soho Theatre. Clearly, determination is in her DNA: she will perform Pleasure Little Treasure – it is at Underbelly Cowgate for the first half of the festival – while eight months pregnant. “It is a bit crazy, but I am really looking forward to it” Alminas says. “I hope I can connect with programmers and producers, and other artists who I can collaborate with in the future.”
This is promotional content.
How To Bury A Dead Mule - Pleasance Dome, 11.50
Northern Irish actor Richard Clements’ grandfather Norman was a fusilier in World War Two, who saw action on the battlefields of North Africa, Sicily and Italy. “His unit was crossing a minefield in Central Italy, in a place called Monte Cavallo, when one of them stepped on a mine and all hell broke loose,” Clements explains. “They all died, apart from my grandfather. He crawled off the minefield with a fractured leg and shrapnel wounds, and was severely impacted for the rest of his life.”
Developed during lockdown, How To Bury A Dead Mule sees Clements’ tell his grandfather’s story, from his horrific experiences during World War Two, to the effect they had on him for the rest of his life, to his death in a County Down care home in 2011. Written and performed by Clements and directed by Matthew McElhinney, it incorporates storytelling, ambient music, and projections of archive footage into an emotional and atmospheric exploration of conflict and its consequences.
Supported by the NI War Memorial Museum and Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, the show originally ran at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 2022, earning a nomination for Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards, and now runs at Pleasance Dome for the entire festival. “I am immensely happy to have got the show to this point,” says Clements. “I think this is a story that needs to be heard by as many people as possible, nationally and internationally, and I am open to all ideas to do that.”
This is promotional content.
Thanks for reading
That is it for this issue. I will be back in your inboxes in a few days with five more shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this email. Or you can find me on Twitter, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Right. See you again in a few days.
Fergus