Five shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe, vol. 9
A gig-theatre adaptation of a Greek myth, a compellingly cryptic American two-hander, a dance show from Hong Kong, 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 ninth in a series of 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 is 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 has seventeen days left…
The first set of The Scotsman’s Fringe First awards have been given out. Four shows at the Traverse Theatre were recognised: Cyrano, So Young, A History Of Paper, and Batshit. You can read more about the winning shows here.
The Scottish Government has pledged to provide more funding for Edinburgh’s festivals going forward, with Angus Robertson posting an open letter on Twitter/X announcing his intention to form a “Strategic Partnership for Scotland’s Festivals.” You can read more about it here in The Stage.
“Scotland’s arts festivals are a jewel in the culture sector and national life. They provide an invaluable platform for our performers and creatives, help provide hundreds of millions of pounds to the Scottish and local economies, are a cultural shopfront to the rest of the world and much more besides.”
“Working in partnership with festivals during and since the Covid pandemic, it has been impressed on me the importance of the Scottish government and its public agencies taking a strategic approach to supporting and promoting arts festivals to ensure that they flourish and maximise their contribution to Scotland.”
Fest Magazine has published its second issue, featuring a whole load of interviews and reviews. You can read it online here.
Natasha Tripney has published a new issue of her Substack Cafe Europa, featuring her thoughts on Paines Plough’s My Mother’s Funeral, Sergio Blanco’s Divine Intervention, and Sh!t Theatre’s Or What’s Left Of Us.
Graham Norton has been in town, and done a couple of Instagram posts recommending shows, including Cyrano at the Traverse Theatre, Every Brilliant Thing in the Paines Plough Roundabout at Summerhall, and Awkward Productions’ Gwyneth Goes Skiing at Pleasance Courtyard.
The FringeShip - that’s the cruise ship that Playbill has hired - arrived at Leith Docks yesterday, because apparently that seemed like a good idea.
FringeReview has published a useful list of all the outlets covering shows at the festival, from national newspapers to personal blogs. You can find that here.
Half Man Half Bull - Summerhall, 6.40pm
Over recent years, theatre company Wright&Grainger - that’s Alexander Wright and Phil Grainger - have earned a reputation for reimagining Greek myths as gripping gig-theatre. Previous hits include Orpheus, Eurydice, The Gods The Gods The Gods, and Helios. This year, they are presenting a double-bill of shows, back-to-back.
The first tells the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, recasting the Athenian hero as a coked-up teenager and the monster he slays as a soulful victim. The second tells the story of Daedalus and Icarus, and movingly meditates on parental grief.
The songs are great and the staging spectacular. You can catch one show, or the other, or both. They makes sense however you choose to see them. You can read my four-star review for The Scotsman here and you can get tickets via the button below.
The Sound Inside - Traverse Theatre, various times
This two-handed drama from American playwright Adam Rapp tracks the increasingly weird relationship between a professor of creative writing at Yale University and a precocious, prodigiously talented student of hers.
At first, they just get drunk and debate literature. Then, things get murkier. The professor has terminal cancer. The student is writing a strange, semi-autobiographical novella. It emerges as a compellingly cryptic yarn, totally open to interpretation.
The play was nominated for six Tony Awards when it ran on Broadway back in 2019. Matt Wilkinson’s slick UK premiere staging at the Traverse Theatre features detailed performances from Madeleine Potter and Eric Sirakian, subtle lighting from Elliot Griggs and a doomy soundscape from Gareth Fry. You can read my four-star review in The Financial Times here and you can get tickets via the button below.
Sessions - ZOO Playground, 2.20pm
Written and directed by Sam Bates, this two-hander focuses on the relationship between George, a troublesome young man who narrowly avoids serving a prison sentence after a violent offense, and David, the youth officer assigned to help him.
The debut production from Working Progress Collective, a Midlands-based company co-founded by Bates and actor-musician Beth Pollard, it is a moving, gritty and timely study of toxic masculinity and the damage it does when left unaddressed.
Produced by Stacey Cullen, designed by Finlay Murray, and starring Adam Halcro and Naytanael Israel, it had successful previews in London, Salford, Buxton and Nuneaton, and now runs at ZOO Playground for the rest of the festival. You can watch a trailer for it here and you can get tickets via the button below.
Enowate - Pleasance Courtyard, 12.30pm
Born in Cameroon and raised in London, dancer and choreographer Dickson Mbi first started performing on the streets of Covent Garden as a teenager, then trained at London Contemporary Dance School and embarked on an extraordinary career that has seen him collaborate with everyone from Robbie Williams to Scottish Ballet.
In 2016, Mbi returned to Cameroon, to the rural village his parents came from. The experiences he had there - including a close encounter with a tiger - had a profound effect on him and formed the inspiration for Enowate, his celebrated show combining the animistic practices of his Cameroonian heritage with his contemporary hip-hop style, against a backdrop of original music and otherworldly animated projections.
Enowate – pronounced en-oh-wa-te – opened at Sadler’s Wells in 2022, then won the Olivier Award for Oustanding Achievement in Dance the following year. Now, it arrives in Pleasance Courtyard’s 750-seat Grand space for five performances from August 21-25 as part of the Here & Now showcase. It has also been recommended by The Guardian’s Lyndsey Winship. You can get tickets via the button below.
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No Dragon No Lion – C Aurora, 1.50pm
Last year, a new showcase of work from Hong Kong-based artists piloted at the Edinburgh Fringe. This year, Hong Kong Soul returns with three productions: Theatre du Pif’s Must I Cry, a double bill of dances from Wong Tan-ki and Dick Wong, and showcase-organising collective TS Crew’s own spectacular show No Dragon No Lion.
Choreographed by Hugh Cho and inspired by the philosophy of Hong Kong’s most famous son, Bruce Lee, it features a diverse ensemble of performers across a wide array of disciplines, from beat-boxing, to martial arts, to parkour, to break-dancing. At its heart, it is a radical re-interpretation of a classical Lion Dance. The aim, says Cho, is to combine traditional and contemporary arts to evoke the true spirit of Hong Kong.
Earlier iterations of the show ran at the Fringe in 2019 and 2022, when it received the Asian Arts Award for Best Show. The full, fifty-minute version finally arrived last year, after which it was performed as the opening act of New York City’s New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square. Now, No Dragon No Lion returns to Edinburgh, running at C Aurora throughout August. You can get tickets via the button below.
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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.
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Fergus