The ten best shows of the Edinburgh Fringe*
*of the 64 shows this extremely tired critic has seen over the last three weeks. 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 eleventh in a series of special issues on the Edinburgh Fringe, which continues until Monday. There will - probably - be one more of these next week, rounding up some final bits and bobs from the festival. Regular service will resume some time 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 seven days left…
More awards were given out over the weekend. The second round of The Scotsman’s Fringe Firsts saw VL, Weather Girl, Son Of A Bitch, Living Stone, Comala, Comala, and A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson Or God: Whoever Reads This First recognised. You can read my write-up of that in The Stage here.
The second round of Skinny-Fest Festival Awards - AKA The Besties - went to Oran, Testo, A Giant On The Bridge, Failure Project and others. There’s more here.
Sh!t Theatre’s Or What’s Left Of Us and Harriet Madeley’s Outpatient both received one of Summerhall’s Lustrum Awards, too, and the shortlists for The List’s inaugural Edinburgh Festival Awards - AKA The Listies - have been announced.
I wrote an opinion piece for The Stage on the surfeit of solo shows about awful things at the festival, which you can read here. It provoked a bit of a response, which you can read in the comments and here. Alistair Smith, The Stage’s Editor, wondered whether the dominance of solo shows was a wider problem, too.
“I worry that this surfeit of solo shows about awful things is a problem for the festival, too. I worry that a culture of solo shows about awful things has become established. I worry that theatre, and the theatre section of the Edinburgh Fringe programme in particular, is becoming a reserve for solo shows about awful things. Of course, awful things are important and there should be space for shows about them. But there should also be space for silliness and weirdness and laughter and joy. These things are important, too.”
U&Dave’s funniest jokes of the festival have been revealed. You can read them all here. The winning gag, from Mark Simmons, is…
“I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it.”
There are a few entertaining pieces in The Guardian from Mark Fisher, including this one on comedians turning to theatre, this one on fifty years of Paines Plough, and this one-star review of Willy’s Candy Spectacular.
The Times has rounded up its four-star and five-star reviews here, as has The Skinny here. And here, again, are The Stage’s, The Scotsman’s, and WhatsOnStage’s lists.
The second issue of Fest, featuring loads of reviews and interviews, is here.
The latest Fringe-focused issue of Natasha Tripney’s Café Europa is here:
Cyrano - Traverse Theatre, various times
Australian actor and writer Virginia Gay’s metatheatrical, modern-day, comedy retelling of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 drama rebrands its main character as a queer woman, gives her love interest Roxanne more autonomy, and makes her rival Christian into a hilarious himbo. Gay’s real stroke of genius, though, is to have the six characters - including herself as a normal-nosed Cyrano - construct the play for themselves, Pirandello-style, in a dazzling twist that turns the play into a compelling interrogation of gender-roles and body dysmorphia. It is joyous stuff. You can read my five-star review in The Financial Times here and get tickets via the button below.
Shotgunned - TheSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, 7.20pm
This time-hopping two-hander from emerging Scottish writer and director Matt Anderson is a real gem. The debut production from new company Kangaroo Court, it deftly tells the story of Dylan and Roz’s relationship, jumping around from their break-up, to their awkward first meeting, to their unexpected pregnancy, to their flirty first date, always circling the tragedy that sits at the centre of their story. It is a structurally slick and emotionally intelligent piece of writing, and it features two wonderfully understated performances from Fraser Allan Hogg and Lorna Panton. You can read my five-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
F**king Legend - Pleasance Courtyard, 12.20pm
This solo storytelling show from Olly Hawes is terrifically discomforting. On the surface, it is an unremarkable story about an annoying, slightly arrogant bloke that goes on a stag do, gets drunk and high, then cheats on his girlfriend with a local waitress. Hawes adds layer after layer of irony into the story, though, and tacks on a truly disturbing coda set in the distant future, and it becomes something much bigger: a disturbing study of the modern male psyche and the damage it does. You can read my four-star review in The Scotsman here and get tickets via the button below.
Sorry (I Broke Your Arms And Legs) - Pleasance Courtyard, 2.05pm
This one-man-play-cum-Powerpoint-presentation is the latest show from emerging comedy company Maybe You Like It, who had a bit of a hit at last year’s festival with the riotous farce Pleading Stupidity. It features James Akka as a socially anxious schoolboy who has been forced to apologise to his rival for the position of head boy after breaking all his limbs in a fit of frustration. The gag-rate is through the roof. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
VL - Roundabout @ Summerhall, 8.10pm
Six years ago, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s hilarious two-hander Square Go introduced us to Max and Stevie, two Scottish schoolboys fretting about the local bully. This year, they are back - as are brilliant performers Scott Fletcher and Gavin Jon Wright - in VL, which sees them stress about their growing sexuality instead. They are terrific comic creations and I hope this is not the last we see of them. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Stuffed - Pleasance Courtyard, 2.25pm
Long-term readers of The Crush Bar will know that I have been a big fan of clowning company Ugly Bucket Theatre and its silly-but-serious approach ever since it burst onto the scene with its hilarious shows 2 Clowns 1 Cup and Bost-Uni Plues five years ago, then followed them up with the desperately moving Good Grief. With Stuffed, its new show about foodbanks, the company has gone in a different direction. It is less funny than previous productions, but just as creative and infinitely angrier. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Ugly Sisters - Underbelly Cowgate, 6.30pm
This Untapped Award-winning show from Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill - AKA piss / CARNATION - is essentially an avant-garde dramatisation of the discourse that has sprung up around Germaine Greer in recent years, and particularly around a dehumanising article she wrote in 1989 about encountering a trans woman after the US launch of her book The Female Eunuch two decades previously. It is totally ridiculous, gloriously messy and touchingly tender, often at the same time. You can read my four-star review for The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Playfight - Roundabout @ Summerhall, 5.30pm
This time-hopping three-handed debut play from Julia Grogan - who collaborated with theatre company Dirty Hare last year on the award-winning devised show Gunter - focuses on three teenage girls as they discuss their growing sexuality underneath the shade of an old oak tree. Underneath their frank, funny and unfiltered chats, one can feel the powerful forces in their lives - religion, society, men - shaping their desires and their futures. It is deftly directed by Emma Callander and features three strong performances from Sophie Cox, Nina Cassells and Lucy Mangan. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Sisters Three - Summerhall, 9.10pm
This second show from emerging company TheatreGoose who had a hit at last year’s festival with Her Green Hell, is a metatheatrical romp through historical female trios. Written and directed by Emma Howlett, it follows the three sisters from Chekhov’s Three Sisters as they reimagine themselves as the witches from Macbeth, as the Gorgons in Greek mythology, as the Sugababes, and others - and discover that, over the centuries, female characters have rarely been able to choose their own fates. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Revenge: After The Levoyah – Summerhall, 3pm
This two-handed comedy is like a Guy Ritchie movie on stage. It is 2019, and two Jewish siblings are roped into a ramshackle plot to kidnap Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. That plot sounds bluntly provocative but Nick Cassenbaum’s play is actually an astute - and extremely amusing - portrait of what it is like to be young and Jewish in modern-day Britain, told what to think by everybody, especially a hysterical media. It is raucously staged by Emma Jude Harris and features two terrifically energetic performances from Gemma Barnett and Dylan Corbett-Bader. You can read my four-star review in The Stage here and get tickets via the button below.
Some more shows I enjoyed: The Sound Inside at the Traverse Theatre, So Young at the Traverse Theatre, Luke Wright: Joy at Pleasance Dome, Half Man Half Bull at Summerhall, The Mosinee Project at Underbelly Cowgate, Vigil at ZOO Southside, Squidge at Pleasance Courtyard, Really Good Exposure at Underbelly Cowgate, A Giant On The Bridge at Assembly Roxy, The Italians In England at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall.
Some more shows I have not seen, but am confident are great because people I trust told me they are: Tennis at ZOO Southside, One Man Musical at Pleasance Dome, L’Addition at Summerhall, Adam Riches: Jimmy at Summerhall, Pop Off, Michelangelo! at Gilded Balloon Patter House, Weer at the Traverse Theatre, A Little Inquest Into What We Are All Doing Here at ZOO Southside, A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson Or God: Whoever Reads This First at theSpace @ Niddry Street, Weather Girl at Summerhall, I’m Almost There at Summerhall, Dear Annie, I Hate You at ZOO Playground, Or What’s Left Of Us at Summerhall, The Chaos That Has Been And Will No Doubt Return at Summerhall, My Mother’s Funeral at Summerhall, These Are The Contents Of My Head at Assembly Checkpoint, A Jaffa Cake Musical at Pleasance Courtyard.
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 3202 subscribers and 104 paid supporters. You can join them using the button above.
Fergus