Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 1
A storytelling show about nationhood, a musical about jaffa cakes, a drama about five-a-side football, and more. Plus: news and views on the festival elsewhere.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a Substack about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This newsletter is the first in a series of special issues focusing on the Edinburgh Fringe, which runs throughout August. Each one will contain a brief round-up of updates from the festival, plus recommendations for five shows to see. Regular newsletters will resume in September.
There are a couple of things you can do to help me keep this newsletter and its coverage of fringe theatre going. Firstly, you can share it far and wide, forward it to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage them to subscribe. And secondly, you can become a paid supporter of The Crush Bar - it’s £50/year or £5/month - via the button below. Thanks.
The festival is seventeen days away…
Several publications have published their top picks for shows at the festival already. Here are those from The Stage’s reviewing team, which includes Lyn Gardner, Natasha Tripney, Paul Vale, Anya Ryan, Nicola Rayner and myself. TimeOut and The Guardian have also published lists.
“One must question whether the Festival Fringe has lost its original spirit of open-access and inclusivity… Is now the time to introduce rules to equalise the playing field?” Economist Alexandra Colalillo has written a column for The Scotsman analysing the broken finances of performing at the festival.
This festival’s first controversy is over Terf, a play about JK Rowling and her views on transgender rights, which has now shifted venue from Saint Stephens Theatre to Assembly Rooms due to threats of protests. Apparently, the play imagines Daniel Radcliffe staging an intervention on Rowling. If you feel like reading more about it, then playwright Joshua Kaplan has spoken to The Stage.
“Passion and belief can only sustain an operation for so long in the face of relentless operating losses.” The festival does not exist in a vacuum. Many of the permanent, year-round venues that host it are struggling to survive due to a perfect storm of challenges, as this article by Eve Livingston in The Observer explores.
Also: Hannah Gadsby has been interviewed in The Independent; a new set of awards dedicated to horror-themed shows have been launched; Georgie Wyatt has written about depictions of the Edinburgh Fringe on screen in the series Baby Reindeer and the film Festival; development and promotion organisation Festivals Edinburgh has a new boss; bin strikes might impact the festival again this year.
Nation - Roundabout @ Summerhall, 10.30am
Sam Ward - who, together with producer Rhian Davies, makes work as YesYesNoNo - first made a splash at the Edinbrugh Fringe in 2017 with his award-winning show Five Encounters On A Site Called Craigslist, then followed that up with [insert slogan here] in 2018, the accident did not take place in 2019, and we were promised honey! in 2022.
Ward/YesYesNoNo’ss shows use storytelling in subtle and slippery ways, incorporate striking designs, and innovatively integrate audience interaction. “We want to make visually spectacular shows that disrupt and interrogate that relationship with the audience,” Ward said, when I interviewed him in The Crush Bar in November 2022.
This August, Ward/YesYesNoNo is back in the morning slot in the Paines Plough Roundabout at Summerhall, where he performed we were promised honey! to acclaim two years ago. His new show Nation is an “experiment in storytelling” about “nationhood and nationalism.” You can get tickets via the button below.
A Jaffa Cake Musical - Pleasance Courtyard, 3.10pm
Over the last six years, Sam Cochrane - AKA Gigglemug Theatre - has built a reputation for producing entertaining and innovative musical comedies about very niche, often very British subjects. First came Timpson: The Musical. Then RuneSical about Runescape. Then Scouts! The Musical. This year, it is A Jaffa Cake Musical.
Written and produced by Cochrane, directed by Ali James, and starring Cochrane, long-term collaborator Alex Prescot, Harry Miller, Sabrina Messer and Katie Pritchard, the show is a whimsical dramatisation of the 1991 tribunal that determined, once and for all, whether the beloved British snack was a cake or a biscuit.
It previews at The Other Palace in London next week, before running at Pleasance Courtyard throughout the festival. Audiences are encouraged to bring Jaffa Cakes along as donations to the Edinburgh Food Project, a local food bank. You can read Cochrane’s 2021 interview in The Crush Bar here and get tickets via the button below.
Same Team - Traverse Theatre, various times
This is one of two shows at the festival created by Jack Nurse and Robbie Gordon. The other, an electronica-scored retelling of the Orpheus myth called Òran, has been made under the aegis of their company Wonder Fools and runs at Pleasance Courtyard all month. This football drama, though, has been produced by the Traverse Theatre.
The show emerged from 18 months of workshops with women at Dundee Change Centre, a facility that offers football-themed, personal development programmes for people struggling with homelessness, addiction, and depression. Written by Nurse and Gordon, directed by Bryony Shanahan and starring Chloe-Ann Tylor, Kim Allan, Louise Ludgate, Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Hana Greer, it tells the story of a Scottish women’s five-a-side team and their trip to take part in the Homeless World Cup.
Same Team premiered at the Traverse Theatre in December, when I called it a “kinetically staged show about the unifying force of football” and gave it four stars in The Stage. Now, it returns for the festival. You can read The Crush Bar’s interview with Nurse and Gordon from last year here and get tickets via the button below.
Kafka’s Metamorphosis: The Musical! With Puppets! - Pleasance Dome, 3.30pm
In the 109 years since it was published, Franz Kafka’s allegorical novella about Gregor Samsa and the dark and disturbing consequences of his inexplicable transformation into a giant bug has been adapted into films, albums, video games, ballets, graphic novels, and operas. Never, though, has there been a version quite like this one.
Created by American theatremakers Matt Chiorini, Spencer Lott, and Travis Newton, and directed by Alan Muraoka – a long-serving star of Sesame Street – Kafka’s Metamorphosis: The Musical! With Puppets! takes The Metamorphosis, plus a lesser-known letter Kafka wrote to his abusive father, and spins them into a surreal show featuring puppets, shadow-play, music and more. “It’s all of that, plus twelve other things,” says Chiorini. “There is no other show like this at the fringe this year.”
The show premiered to acclaim at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2018, then did successful stints in Washington DC and New York City. Now, it arrives in Europe for the first time, running at Pleasance Dome throughout the festival, with its team hoping to tour the show further. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
You’re SO F**king Croydon - Underbelly Cowgate, 4.10pm
Croydon does not have the best reputation. For many, the town is a byword for danger and dilapidation. Even David Bowie took against it. “I hated Croydon with a real vengeance,” the legendary musician once said. “I think it’s the most derogatory thing I can say about somebody or something: ‘God, it’s so f**king Croydon.’” His quote provides the title for a new autobiographical solo show from Croydon-born actor and writer Katie Hurley, co-creator of 2016 hit Zero Down and of online comedy Bronzed.
Directed by Louisa Sanfey and designed by Ray Gammon, with dramaturgy by Frank Peschier, the show sees Hurley use storytelling, dance, audience interaction, music, and more to explore her love-hate relationship with her troubled hometown. “It’s my coming-of-age story set in Croydon, really,” Hurley says. “It plays on some of the Croydon girl stereotypes and discusses some of the challenges we face, but it also celebrates the stuff that is great about Croydon, like the community and the diversity and the culture. When I was young, Croydon had such a vibrant, amazing nightlife.”
You’re SO F**king Croydon previews at Bedford’s Bedfringe on July 25 before running at Underbelly Cowgate throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
Thanks for reading
That is it for this issue. I will be back in your inboxes on Friday with five more shows to see at the festival. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this email or find me on Twitter, where I am @FergusMorgan.
A quick reminder of the two ways you can support The Crush Bar. You can share it and encourage others to subscribe. And you can become a paid supporter. There are currently 3108 subscribers and 103 paid supporters. You can join them using the bit above.
Fergus