Five of the best circus and clown shows at the Edinburgh Fringe
Performance art inspired by ancient myth, spectacular acrobatics, sinister satire, 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…
Dreams Of The Small Gods - Summerhall, 7.50pm
Inspired by classic mythology and ancient ritual, Scotland-based artist Zinnia Oberski’s Dreams Of The Small Gods is a 50-minute-long solo performance incorporating aerial circus, masked ritual and performance art to explore ideas of holiness and profanity. Oberski plays the central character – the Wild Woman – while dramaturgy comes from Herald Angel Award-winner Ellie Dubois.
It was acclaimed during its original run at Manipulate Festival – Edinburgh’s international festival of puppetry and physical theatre – in early 2020, and now returns with the support of both the Made In Scotland showcase and Summerhall’s Autopsy Award for Scottish artists.
“Dreams of the Small Gods is inspired by mythology, folklore and faerie-tales,” says Oberski. “It is about the ancient power of the Earth and the natural world, and how this power is channelled through humans, in particular women. Instead of striving always for new I decided to create something very, very old, about a magic that we've forgotten but that is still tangible to us through the medium of the body.”
Kin - Assembly Rooms, 3pm
Circus company Barely Methodical Troupe – BMT for short – was founded by Louis Gift, Beren D’Amico and Charlie Wheeller in 2013. Its first show, an arresting and acrobatic exploration of male friendship entitled Bromance, was a hit at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe, and went on to tour internationally.
BMT’s second show, Kin, was choreographed by Olivier Award nominee Ben Duke, and examined camaraderie and competition. Originally commissioned by London’s Roundhouse in 2016, it arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe the following year and cemented the company’s reputation for creating cutting edge circus shows that are both sensitive and spectacular, both exhilarating and intimate.
BMT are back at the festival this year for the first time since 2017. The company is performing Kin again – but with an entirely new cast. Gift, Luke Chadwick-Jones, Shane Hampden, Arthur Parsons, Nikki Rummer and Fiona Thornhill will be wowing audiences all month with a combination of circus skills and stunning displays of strength.
Project Dictator - Pleasance Courtyard, 6.10pm
Rhum + Clay – the theatre company led by Julian Spooner and Matt Wells that has previously had Edinburgh Fringe hits with Shutterland in 2011, Testosterone in 2017, Mistero Buffo in 2018, and The War Of The Worlds in 2019 – is back with a new devised show, Project Dictator.
Inspired by the experiences of and made in collaboration with several anonymous artists living under oppressive regimes around the world – Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Hungary and elsewhere – Project Dictator is a darkly satirical clown show that unsettles almost as much as it amuses.
Performed and directed by Spooner and Wells, with help from Hamish MacDougall of fellow devising company Kandinsky and music from Syrian composer Khaled Kurbeh, the show originally had an acclaimed run at North London’s New Diorama Theatre earlier this year. Its arrival in Edinburgh is not to be missed.
Transhumance - Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 11.45am
New York City-based, American-Kiwi theatre and circus artist Ania Upstill first performed their solo show Transhumance in the US in 2020, before taking it on a tour of Australia and New Zealand later that year, stopping off at the Adelaide Fringe and winning one of the festival’s prestigious weekly awards for Best Circus and Physical Theatre in the process. A two-year, pandemic-enforced hiatus later, and Upstill and their show are eventually arriving in Edinburgh.
Transhumance is a totally non-verbal clown show about gender, very loosely inspired by Upstill’s own experiences. It is, in Upstill’s own words, a journey through gender, which imagines different genders as different station stops on a train line. Upstill plays a clown – yes, they wear a red nose – who alights at each stop to explore. It is a witty and playful piece about what it means to be trans.
A graduate of California’s Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, Upstill has toured and taught clowning extensively in the US, New Zealand and elsewhere. Transhumance, which runs for the first fortnight of the fringe and is supported by New Jersey-based company Thinkery and Verse, who had a hit here in 2018 with Bride Of The Gulf, marks their debut at the festival. “I’m dipping my toe into the water of Edinburgh,” they say. “I’m excited to connect with audiences there.”
This is promotional content.
Utter Mess! - Greenside @ Infirmary Street, 12.35pm
Isle of Wight-based, internationally-renowned company StoneCrabs Theatre had a hit at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe with a double-bill of Busu and The Damask Drum – a classic Japanese farce and a classic Japanese tragedy, made in collaboration with Tokyo-based Busu Theatre. Now, the two companies reunite again for a new show exploring memory and magic, Utter Mess!, inspired by the short stories of acclaimed Japanese writer Kyoko Nakajima.
The production, which is written and directed by StoneCrabs Theatre’s artistic director Franko Figueiredo, focuses on two actors attempting to create a clown show, played by regular StoneCrabs associate Inês Sampaio and Busu Theatre’s Etsuko Shirasaka, who have somehow ended up in Tokyo’s mysterious Museum of Lost Things. They cannot remember how they got there. They cannot remember their names. They cannot remember much, to be honest. It is, as the title suggests, complete chaos – but chaos imbued with StoneCrabs’ typically thrilling theatricality.
The show will arrive in Scotland having already toured to Tokyo, London, and the Isle of Wight. The company are used to international collaboration and international touring, and hope to do more of it with Utter Mess!. “We are hoping to take the show to more audiences in spring 2023,” says Figueiredo. “I think the collision of theatrical cultures has produced a real gem, and I want as many people to see it as possible.”
This is promotional content.
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Fergus Morgan