Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 2
A true story about an Alaskan earthquake, a thriller set on Skye, a pop musical about the climate crisis, and more. Plus: news and views on the festival elsewhere.
Welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre from Fergus Morgan.
Throughout July and August, The Crush Bar will be focused on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with twice-weekly issues featuring updates from the festival and recommended shows. Here, in case you missed it, is last Tuesday’s issue.
If you want to support The Crush Bar, you can sign up as a paid supporter. Outside of Edinburgh Fringe, that gets you another email - Shouts and Murmurs, a round-up of theatre news, reviews, interviews and more - in your inbox every Tuesday.
Theatres, companies, agencies and other organisations can also sign up as champion supporters of The Crush Bar, which gets their name in this dedicated tab on The Crush Bar’s Substack homepage and in the footer of every Friday and Fringe issue.
The festival is fourteen days away…
Holly O’Mahoney has detailed the problems the festival faces - from digs to mental health - in this feature for iNews, and suggests a few ways of solving them.
Two Edinburgh-based entrepreneurs have launched an AI-powered tool designed to help audiences plan out their Edinburgh Fringe experience.
The Scotsman’s David Hepburn has shared its best tips for navigating and enjoying the Fringe, and so has Beks Lockie in the New Zealand Herald.
Edinburgh’s trams will operate all night on Friday and Saturdays throughout August, with trams running every half-an-hour. More details here.
I will not be sharing many interviews here, but I did enjoy Natasha Tripney’s profile of Mark Thomas in Café Europa - he is in Ed Edwards’ Ordinary Decent People at Summerhall - and Joshua Taylor’s chat with Awkward Productions’ Linus Karp and Justin Martin, who plan to get married on stage, in Exeunt.
Down To Chance - Pleasance Courtyard, 2.10pm
Theatre company Maybe You Like It first arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 with Pleading Stupidity, a shambolic documentary-cum-farce about two inept Australian bank robbers, then returned last year with Sorry (I Broke Your Arms and Legs), a one-man-play-cum-PowerPoint-presentation about a stressed schoolboy.
This August, the company is back - supported by Theatre Royal Plymouth through Pleasance’s Edinburgh National Partnerships programme - with Down To Chance, a real-time thriller telling the true story of Genie Chance, a radio reporter whose broadcasts provided help and hope to thousands in the aftermath of the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, the most powerful earthquake ever to hit North America.
Directed by Caleb Barron and performed by Ellie Jay Cooper and Robert Merriam, who take on twenty characters between them, Down To Chance runs at Pleasance Courtyard throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
Hot Mess - Pleasance Courtyard, 3.10pm
Ellie Coote and Jack Godfrey are the rising stars that created 42 Balloons, the award-winning musical that told the extraordinary true story of balloon-powered aviator Larry Walters, AKA Lawnchair Larry, which premiered to acclaim in Salford last year.
Now, Coote and Godfrey arrive in Edinburgh with Hot Mess, a romcom pop musical that recasts the climate crisis as a rocky love affair between the earth and humanity.
Produced by the UK’s only in-house musical theatre department at Birmingham Hippodrome, Hot Mess features West End stars Danielle Steers and Tobias Turley as Earth and Humanity, and runs at Pleasance Courtyard throughout the festival, after previews in Birmingham next week. You can get tickets via the button below.
Skye: A Thriller - Summerhall, various times
As a producer, Ellie Keel has been behind several Edinburgh Fringe hits in recent years, including Rafaella Marcus’ Sap, Nathan Queeley-Dennis’ Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, Jamie Armitage’s An Interrogation, and Daisy Hall’s Bellringers. That is all in addition to founding the Women’s Prize For Playwriting - the 2022 winner of which, Karis Kelly’s Consumed, is finally being staged at the Traverse Theatre during the festival - and publishing her Sunday Times bestselling debut novel The Four.
This year, though, Keel is making her debut as a playwright with Skye: A Thriller, a two-handed drama set on the rugged Scottish island in 1995, following a group of four siblings who think they spot their long-dead father across a remote beach.
Directed by Matthew Iliffe and produced by K Media and Summerhall Arts, in association with Oxford’s North Wall Arts Centre and Sheffield Theatres, Skye stars Dawn Steele and James Robinson and runs at Summerhall throughout the festival. You can read my interview with Keel here and get tickets via the button below.
Mariupol - Pleasance Courtyard, 1pm
Spanning thirty years, this two-handed drama tells a human story from the heart of Russia’s war on Ukraine. In the summer of 1992, a Russian student, Gallina, and a Ukrainian naval officer, Steve, fall in love on the shores of the Azov Sea. In 2002, the pair meet again in a Moscow hospital. And, in 2022, Gallina returns to a ruined Mariupol, determined to enlist Steve’s help in saving her conscripted son.
Inspired by Russia-born, UK-based writer Katia Haddad’s own love of the city, Mariupol arrives at the Edinburgh Fringe having premiered at London’s Cockpit Theatre earlier this year, when The Stage’s Georgia Luckhurst labelled it a “profoundly heartfelt drama about the human consequences of war.”
Originally staged by Olivier Award-winning director John Retallack, and now reworked for the Edinburgh Fringe by Critics Circle Award-winner Guy Retallack, Mariupol stars Nathalie Barclay and Oliver Gomm as Gallina and Steve, and is supporting the David Nott Foundation, a charity that trains doctors in areas affected by conflict, including Ukraine. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
Elon Musk: Lost In Space - theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, 3.05pm
David Morley is best known as a prolific writer and producer of radio drama. Now, though, he is making his first foray into theatre with Elon Musk: Lost In Space, a two-handed comedy set in the near future that imagines the billionaire on a Mars mission that gets thrown into chaos by President Trump, leaving him cast adrift with only his recalcitrant AI assistant (M-UTHA) for company. Amid the satire, silliness, and sci-fi references is an insightful exploration of what makes a megalomaniac tick.
Directed by John Nicholson, co-founder of acclaimed comic theatre company Peepolykus, the show features Ben Whitehead – the voice of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit franchise, including last year’s two-time BAFTA-winning Vengeance Most Fowl – as Elon Musk and Off West End Award-nominated actor and experienced Edinburgh Fringe producer Sarah Lawrie as his computer companion.
Elon Musk: Lost In Space previews at Theatro Technis during Camden Fringe on August 1 and 2, then runs in The Grand Theatre at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall throughout the second half of the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
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The Crush Bar’s champion supporters: The Royal Court Theatre, Francesca Moody Productions, Raw Material Arts, Jermyn Street Theatre; Hampstead Theatre; Storytelling PR; Ellie Keel Productions; The Women’s Prize for Playwriting.
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That is it for this issue. I will be back on Tuesday. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all - just reply to this newsletter.
Fergus
Perfect timing! I need to book mine x thanks!!