Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 7
The debut play from David Jonsson, a comedy about class at Cambridge, a new show from In Bed With My Brother, 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 Friday’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.
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The festival has twenty days left…
The festival officially started on Friday and reviews have been pouring in. There are too many to share, so I will just link to a few of mine. I was underwhelmed by Make It Happen at the Festival Theatre, I was blown away - again - by Lost Lear at the Traverse Theatre, and I enjoyed Skye and Wild Thing! at Summerhall, plus Luke Wright’s Pub Grub at Pleasance Dome.
It was a bit windy yesterday. Storm Floris caused some disruption, including the closure of Pleasance Courtyard and the cancellation of the Military Tattoo. Everything should be running as normal today.
The Fringe Society is planning to revive a childcare scheme for performers with children at its new headquarters next year, in collaboration with Parents and Carers in the Performing Arts. The Scotsman’s Jane Bradley has more.
This piece in The Telegraph claims to represent how Edinburgh residents “really feel” about the Fringe. It raises some valid concerns, but totally ignores the thousands of locals who love the festival or whose livelihoods depend upon it.
If you are not in Edinburgh this August, this photo series from Jamie Molina in The New York Times gives you a sense of what it looks like.
Miriam Margolyes is arriving at the festival with her show Margolyes and Dickens: More Best Bits this weekend. I chatted to her for my regular slot in The Stage.
Paldem - Summerhall, 9pm
Actor David Jonsson is best known for his roles in the hormone-addled HBO banking series Industry and the charming rom-com Rye Lane. Earlier this year, he won BAFTA’s Rising Star Award, joining a list of winners that includes Emma Mackey, Daniel Kaluuya, Tom Holland, Tom Hardy, Kristen Stewart, James McAvoy, and more.
Paldem is Jonsson’s first foray into playwriting. It focuses on Kevin and Megan, two friends who have a one-night stand, accidentally film it, are surprisingly pleased with the results, then decide to start their own OnlyFans account to boost their income.
Produced by Jonsson and Sophia Gibber, directed by Zi Alikhan and starring Tash Cowley and Michael Workeye, it runs at Summerhall all festival. You can read a chat with Jonsson in The Times here and you can get tickets via the button below.
Eat The Rich (but maybe not me mates x) - Plesaance Courtyard, 2.15pm
Former Cambridge Footlights president Jade Franks’ autobiographical one-woman comedy Eat The Rich (but maybe not me mates x) has already got a lot of buzz around it, having earned glowing reviews in The Scotsman, The Guardian and elsewhere.
Directed by Tatenda Shamiso, it follows Franks - a bright, working-class woman from Liverpool - as she abandons her job in a call centre to take up a place at Cambridge University, where she is confronted with privilege, ignorance and class prejudice.
In his five-star review, The Guardian’s Mark Fisher called it “a culture-clash comedy in the tradition of Pygmalion and Educating Rita” featuring “a performance as funny as it is politically stinging” from Franks. You can get tickets via the button below.
Philosophy Of The World - Summerhall, 10.45pm
In Bed With My Brother is a theatremaking trio - consisting of Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn, and Kat Cory - that has earned a cult following with its angry, anarchic shows, including 2019’s Tricky Second Album, a wild hour inspired by KLF’s famous million-pound bonfire, and 2021’s Prime Time, a graphic fantasy about killing Jeff Bezos.
The company is back at the festival for the first time in six years with a show inspired by the story of The Shaggs, the eccentric American band formed of four sisters coerced by their father, which released one album, dismissed as a joke, then became an unexpected phenomenon with fans including Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa.
Philosophy Of The World - the title is lifted from The Shaggs’ one album - has already earned some excellent reviews, including this five-star one from Natasha Tripney. It runs at Summerhall throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
An Ode To The Casting Director - Gilded Balloon Patter House, 11.40am
A career as an actor does not only involve glitzy press nights, bustling film sets and star-studded red carpets. As all performers know, it also involves plenty of awkward, embarrassing and outrageous incidents, too, particularly during the audition process. That ridiculous reality is entertainingly explored in Sophie Fisher’s debut solo show.
Fisher started out as a fashion model, then trained at The Actors Centre, and began building a career in theatre, film and television. Along the way, she has found herself doing countless absurd things, from pretending to soar on a magic carpet while wearing a bikini, to losing a contact lens while impersonating a Viking woman, to experiencing an unexpected toe-sucking incident while playing a fictional hostage.
Now, she has poured all that and more into An Ode To The Casting Director. Directed by Linda Ludwig of award-winning filmmaking duo Linda and James, the show follows Fisher through the crazy ups and downs of life as a jobbing actor, ambitiously incorporating live-streamed video to mimic the experience of auditioning. It runs at Gilded Balloon Patter House all month. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
The Boy From Bantay - theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall, 12.35pm
Jeremy Rafal was born in a remote town in the Philippines, spent his adolescence in Hawaii, and now works as an actor, musician, writer, director and teacher across theatre, film and television in New York City. His solo show The Boy From Bantay tells the inspiring story of how he got there, inspired by a deep love of classic cartoons.
Using storytelling, projections, music and more, the show hops from the Philippines, where Rafal tragically lost his brother as a child; to Hawaii, where he fell in love with the piano; to Indiana, where he trained at one of the world’s most prestigious conservatoires; to New York City, where he finally found his place as an artist.
The Boy From Bantay premiered at New York Fringe in 2015, when it was hailed by Playbill as “unmissable.” Now, reworked with director Josh Boerman and support from Pace University, it arrives in Edinburgh, running at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall for the first fortnight of the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
This is promotional content.
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That is it for this issue. I will be back on Friday. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all - just reply to this newsletter.
Fergus
Great article but Eat The Rich is written and performed by Jade Franks, not Emma Franks