Five of the best cabaret, variety, and drag shows at the Edinburgh Fringe
An Australian sensation, a song-filled solo show, an extraordinary true story, and more.
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…
Reuben Kaye: The Butch Is Back - Assembly Checkpoint, 9.30pm
Reuben Kaye is rapidly becoming an institution at the Edinburgh Fringe. The Australian comedian and cabaret artist’s last show – self-titled Reuben Kaye – was a gloriously filthy, scathingly funny hour of stand-up and songs, and one of the funniest shows at the festival in 2019. It was certainly the show that made me laugh the most.
Expect more of the same this year, as Kaye returns with a new ninety minutes – The Butch Is Back - that has picked up a host of awards and five-star reviews down under and was nominated for “most outstanding show” at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival last year. You can get a small taste of it through some clips on YouTube.
The Butch Is Back is not all Kaye will be doing at this year’s festival either. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, he and his band – The Close Contacts – will also be hosting much-loved, multi-award-winning night The Kaye Hole at Assembly Checkpoint, featuring a variety of the riskiest and raunchiest variety acts from across the festival. Both shows will be well worth catching.
Grandmother’s Closet - Summerhall, 12.30pm
Wales Millennium Centre is supporting and co-supporting three shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. There is Blood Harmony, the new musical created by Matthew Bulgo, Jonnie Riordan and Jess Williams, based around the songs of folk trio The Staves. There is Jo Fong and George Orange’s The Rest Of Our Lives, a daily morning dose of comedy and cabaret.
And there’s this. Written and performed by Luke Hereford and directed by François Pandolfo, Grandmother’s Closet is an joyful, autobiographical solo show about queer identity, and how Hereford discovered his own identity with the help of the clothes in his grandma’s extravagant wardrobe.
Featuring classic pop songs by Kylie, Kate Bush, Madonna and more, the show marks the writing debut of Hereford, who usually directs, and the directing debut of Pandolfo, who has worked extensively as an actor in Wales and beyond, and arrives in Edinburgh after an acclaimed outing in Cardiff earlier this year.
Look At Me Don’t Look At Me - Pleasance Dome, 3pm
RashDash are the acclaimed company that made that radical adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters in co-production with Manchester Royal Exchange in 2018, and that messy, music-filled devised piece about men and masculinity, Two-Man Show, two years before that.
The trio - Abbi Greenland, Becky Wilkie and Helen Goalen – recently opened new show Oh Mother at HOME in Manchester, and arrive in Edinburgh with another. Look At Me Don’t Look At Me is a two-handed, “bare-bones cabaret” about Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal, famous as a muse and model for pre-Raphaelite painters, but an artist in her own right, too.
The show, which “has profound things to say about biography, desire, illness and art”, runs at Pleasance Dome during the final week of the festival, and is part of the Horizon Showcase of art created in England, along with Peaceophobia, Civilisation, and a few other shows worth booking tickets for.
Make-Up - Underbelly George Square, 1.20pm
Make-Up, the new one-man play from Andy Moseley, arrives at Underbelly George Square after critically acclaimed, award-winning runs at Brighton Fringe and Buxton Fringe and a short tour around Scotland. It marks the Edinburgh return for Moseley and his new writing company NoLogoProductions, which has previously had hits at the festival with After We Danced in 2015 and A Beginner’s Guide To Populism in 2018.
Written by Moseley and performed by Fringe First winner Moj Taylor, Make-Up follows a drag artist, Christopher Laneghan, AKA Lady Christina, as he returns to his home town of Wolverhampton to perform what might be his final show. It is an amusing and emotional examination of identity, estrangement, and changing attitudes towards drag.
“Make-Up is inspired by a few different things, but particularly by the history of drag, and how it has evolved from 1980s to the present day,” says Moseley. “We would love to start conversations with producers and programmers, with a view to touring the show around the UK. Then, when it comes to us as individuals, I would love to get some more writing work, and Moj would love to get some more acting work, too.”
This is promotional content.
For Queen And Country - Army @ The Fringe, 8.30pm
The life of Major Denis Rake is almost too extraordinary to be true. Rake was a gay drag queen, who was recruited by the secret services during World War II, then captured and tortured by the Nazis before he escaped back to England to receive the Military Cross for bravery – and to train more spies. He even had a happy ending: later in life, he was valet of American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Writer Paul Stone – himself a former drag queen – knew he had to tell this little-known story on stage as soon as he heard it. For Queen And Country, which is only running at Army@TheFringe until August 14, features acclaimed actor Neil Summerville as an older Rake, reflecting on his life – and singing six snappily reworked World War II songs as he does so. In drag, of course.
The show has already had a brief try-out run at Islington’s King’s Head Theatre, and Stone has future ambitions for it, too. “We want to inform and educate people about Rake’s remarkable life, first and foremost,” he says. “We’d like to take the show on tour after its Edinburgh run, and maybe perform it at a bigger venue in London, too.”
This is promotional content.
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Fergus Morgan