Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 6
A new play from Ed Edwards and Mark Thomas, a solo show about a Palestinian icon, an experimental piece about predicting the future, 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 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 officially starts today!
Both the Edinburgh Fringe and the Edinburgh International Festival kick off today. Currently, the Fringe programme contains 54474 performances of 3853 shows, suggesting that it could yet be the festival’s biggest year yet. Fringe Central is now open every day from 10am until 5pm at the Grassmarket Centre. You can find a full schedule of events offered by the Fringe Society here.
This week’s issue of The Stage is dedicated to the Fringe and EIF, featuring…
My big interview with new Fringe Society boss Tony Lankester, in which he discusses his background in South Africa, the challenges the festival currently faces, and his plans for the future.
My chat with Brian Cox, ahead of the premiere of James Graham’s new play Make It Happen tonight.
Lots more, including thoughts from Natasha Tripney, Alistair Smith, Richard Jordan, and others.
Summerhall’s struggles also feature in this article by Jillian Rayfield in The New York Times, which offers a good overview of the various issues facing the festival.
Alice Saville goes a lot deeper in The Independent, arguing that there is now “an understanding that the Fringe will only live up to its promise if it supports its participants to take risks in an increasingly tough economic landscape.”
The Herald’s Brian Ferguson is one of Scotland’s most trusted arts journalists. He has written about his 30-year love affair with the festivals.
Reviews will start pouring in soon, but here are a few more lists: 21 comedy shows from Andrzej Lukowski in TimeOut, 14 theatre shows from Natasha Tripney in Café Europa, 33 of both from Holly O’Mahony in iNews, a list of lists from Emily Jupp, and a list of five local spots to escape the festival from Jacob Farr.
There is a lot of stuff about the Fringe on Substack. Michael MacLeod of the Edinburgh Minute is sending out daily newsletters. Sarah McArthur has written about why comedians are turning away from the big venue chains in The Edinburgh Inquirer. Best of all, Exeunt features Natasha Tripney’s annual poem composed of snippets stolen from the titles of Edinburgh Fringe shows.
The Horse Of Jenin - Pleasance Dome, 2.20pm
The Jenin Horse, or Al-Hissan, was a huge sculpture that stood in the West Bank city of Jenin. Constructed in 2003 by a German artist and a team of Palestinian teenagers from scrap metal taken from houses and vehicles destroyed during the Second Intifada, it stood as a symbol of sumud, the Palestinian virtue of steadfastness, for twenty years, until it was dismantled by the Israel Defence Forces in 2023.
In The Horse Of Jenin, Alaa Shehada - a Jenin-born, Amsterdam-based performer, who trained with the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Freedom Theatre - uses storytelling, comedy, mime, and more to weave an amusing and emotional autobiographical story of life under occupation, in which the famous equine sculpture features heavily.
Produced by international Dutch company Troupe Courage and directed by Katrien van Beurden, the show has already run to acclaim at festivals in Amsterdam, London and New York, and now arrives in Edinburgh ahead of its return to London at the Bush Theatre in November. You can get tickets via the button below.
Ways Of Knowing - Underbelly Cowgate, 3.30pm
Emergency Chorus is the theatremaking alias of Clara Potter-Sweet and Ben Kulvichit, the experimental duo that previously produced 2016’s Celebration, which was an exercise in evoking sheer joy, and 2018’s Landscape (1989), which involved Potter-Sweet and Kulvichit acting out a series of repetitive rituals with mushrooms.
The duo’s latest work is Ways Of Knowing, a dance-theatre work inspired by the weird and wonderful ways in which humans have attempted to predict the future. Potter-Sweet and Kulvichit told me all about it in this 2023 issue of The Crush Bar.
Designed by Blythe Brett with dramaturgy from Nat Norland, the show premiered at Camden People’s Theatre two years ago, and now arrives in Edinburgh as one of three recipients of the Untapped Award, a prize that has strong track record of bringing innovative, intriguing shows to the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
Ordinary Decent Criminal - Summerhall, 11.50pm
Ed Edwards’ The Political History Of Smack And Crack - a riotously entertaining, deeply moving two-hander about heroin addiction in Manchester - was one of my favourite shows at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe. The writer returned two years ago with England & Son, a harrowing monologue about a broken man let down by the care system, which featured campaigning comedian Mark Thomas making his acting debut.
Edwards and Thomas reunite again this year for Ordinary Decent Criminal, another one-man play set in the aftermath of the 1990 Strangeways Prison riot, which sees Thomas play Frankie, an inmate and recovering addict who rediscovers his political passion.
Co-produced by Paines Plough, Newcastle’s Live Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, and Ellie Keel Productions, and directed by Paines Plough’s co-artistic director Charlotte Bennett, Ordinary Decent Criminal runs at Summerhall throughout the festival ahead of an extensive national tour. You can get tickets via the button below.
A Small Town Northern Tale - Underbelly Cowgate, 12.40pm
British-Jamaican actor and writer Nathan Jonathan was born in Manchester and spent the first part of his childhood immersed in his Jamaican heritage, eating ackee and saltfish at his grandparents’ house. When he was eleven, though, his mother moved him and his brother to Crewe to escape their violent father, and Jonathan was forced to fend for himself in a predominantly white, working-class town in the early 2000s.
Now, Jonathan is entertainingly exploring that experience in his debut one-man play, A Small Town Northern Tale. Based loosely on his own adolescence and inspired by coming-of-age television comedies like The Inbetweeners and Derry Girls, the show follows a mixed-race teenager, David, as he attempts to navigate a wild world of casual racism and sexism, early social media, dodgy fashion, and Nokia 3210s.
Produced by Lydia Hopgood, directed by David O’Mahony, and performed entirely by Jonathan, who multi-roles as nine different characters, A Small Town Northern Tale was first performed at Lambeth Fringe last September and now runs at Underbelly Cowgate throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
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Fatal Flower - Summerhall, 21.05
Dutch performer Valentina Tóth’s multi-disciplinary solo show is all about “hysterical women”, from The Queen Of The Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute; to the mothers that fell victim to the childcare benefits scandal in the Netherlands; to Tóth herself, who was a child piano prodigy, performing at Carnegie Hall at just fifteen, before she turned her back on a career in music in her early twenties to pursue a career in theatre.
In Fatal Flower, Tóth explores female anger via cabaret, comedy, classical music, pop music and more. First developed at the Amsterdam Cabaret Festival in 2022, the show has since become a big hit in the Netherlands, going on several successful tours and prompting Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant to hail Tóth as “Comedy Talent of 2023.”
Now, Tóth’s show arrives in Edinburgh for its English-language premiere. Directed by Stephanie Louwrier and designed by Gilles Pollak, it runs at Summerhall’s Red Lecture Theatre throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
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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