Copycat

24/08/26

Pleasance Dome (Jack Dome), Edinburgh

I’m initially drawn to Joe Sellman-Leava’s show because it promises to tackle the thorny topic of AI and, as an author and therefore somebody who sees it as perhaps the most dangerous invention of the 21st century, I’m keen to learn more.

And yes, it does handle the subject, but in a frustratingly roundabout way.

We find our narrator seated at a desk in front of a laptop, surrounded by heaps of discarded paper. An overhead projector allows him to display the different images he sets out on his (non-virtual) desktop. He proudly shows us a sketch book from his schooldays, which features caricatures of the teachers who guided him through his academic years. One in particular, it turns out, was an inspiration to him – and a section of the show will be all about Mr Swift.

Then Sellman-Leava does some impersonations – good ones as it turns out. His Ed Miliband is right on the nose. Just as I’m settling into that, he impersonates Big Arnie before segueing into selected excerpts from Lord of the Rings. It starts to become clear that Copycat is made up from a lot of disparate threads.

When we eventually get to the AI stuff, it is absolutely terrifying – the point that our National Health Service’s computer system has been outsourced to Palantir – an AI company often accused of ‘techno-fascism’ – is a particularly chilling premise. Sellman-Leava points out that we are all turkeys voting for Christmas, a conclusion with which I heartily concur. But then once again, we’re heading off in a different direction to revisit Sellman-Leava’s end-of-term show, in which he is obliged to impersonate the aforementioned Mr Swift.

Sellman-Leava is a talented and confident performer for sure, his warm, friendly demeanour connecting with his audience – but when he gets to the extended sequence where the presentation collapses into a confusing blare of random voices, augmented by impressive sound and lighting effects, I find myself thinking how much more effective this would be if the framework of the story were more straightforward.

There’s plenty of interesting content here but, in this form, they’re all fighting each other for dominance – and there’s no clear winner. Nonetheless, it does raise some vital points – and asks important questions..

3 stars

Philip Caveney

Spring Awakening

24/08/26

theSpace@Surgeon’s Hall, Edinburgh

I’ve said this before: it’s mind-blowing to think that Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen was written way back in 1890, when Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled the Deutsches Reich, Queen Victoria was on the British throne and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was our PM. Not that anyone was brave enough to stage it right away – it wasn’t until 1906 that the transgressive play premiered at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater.

A whole century later, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation opened on Broadway – and this is the version we’re seeing today. You might think a contemporary adaptation would go further than the original, but it’s actually not the case. Yes, there’s more swearing, but there’s a softer ending – and no rape or masturbation scenes.

Nonetheless, this still feels like a bold piece for a school to take on. The very fact that I find myself thinking They must have a really progressive head teacher and I wonder if all the parents are on board just proves how relevant the play’s themes still are. These students are the same age as the characters, and Wedekind’s whole point was to illustrate the dreadful consequences for young people of silence, censorship and repression.

Set in Germany, in a conservative provincial town, Spring Awakening tells the story of a group of teenagers, forced to abide by a very strict set of rules that no one ever explains. Wendla (Melody Moppett) asks her mother (Alice Davidson) to tell her how babies are made, but Mrs Bergmann is too embarrassed to explain. “You have to love your husband,” she tells her daughter, leaving her horribly ill-equipped to deal with her burgeoning sexuality. Wendla finds herself drawn to Ilse (Minna Williams), who ran away from her abusive home at fourteen and now appears to enjoy a bohemian lifestyle in an artists’ colony. What Wendla doesn’t know is that Ilse’s freedom carries a heavy price.

Meanwhile, Moritz (Greg Cameron) is struggling to keep up with his studies, working day and night, unaware that his fate has already been decided. “There are only sixty places in the final year,” says Headmaster Knochenbruch (Rufus Pilcher). There’s no room for Moritz, whatever grade he achieves – but his father won’t forgive him if he fails. What’s a boy to do?

Hänschen (Alexander Christie) and Ernst (Joe Ridley) have their own problems: they know how they feel about one another, but they’ve been taught that homosexuality is a sin. Still, as ever, love and lust prove stronger than societal disapproval. They might just be the happiest characters in the play.

On the surface, Melchior (Jasper Simmons) is better off than the others. His mum (Davidson) is relatively open-minded; she’s raised her son as a free-thinker and taught him about sex. As a result, he’s seen as the fount of all knowledge by the other boys. He’s also a thorn in the side of the Headmaster, and an easy scapegoat when things go horribly awry…

This is a very ambitious project and, for the most part, Kingston Grammar School’s KGS Theatre Company pulls it off. Meg Christmas’s direction is impressive: there are a lot of bodies but the stage traffic and choreography run like clockwork – no mean feat in a performance space without any wings, just an awkward opening upstage centre. I also like the simple set: stage blocks are positioned in regimented formation, with cleverly-concealed pockets behind them, holding microphones and minimal props.

Musical director Mark Laflin provides keyboard accompaniment, augmented by cast members Williams, Ridley and Catherine O’Shea on acoustic guitars.

The whole cast work well, both in their individual roles and as an ensemble, but the standouts for me are Moppett and Williams, who both have beautiful singing voices and imbue their very different characters with strength and vulnerability. Allegra Kelly also offers a strong performance, evoking our sympathy as the maltreated Martha.

If you’re looking for a lively, provocative start to your day, I recommend you take yourself to the Surgeon’s Hall for this high-octane, fearless production of Spring Awakening.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Tom Neenan: Portrait of a Tom as a Young Neenan

23/08/26

Underbelly (Bluebell), Edinburgh

Tom Neenan is a bit of a favourite here an B&B. We first chanced upon him at the Fringe in 2015 with The Andromeda Paradox, a whip-smart parody of The Quatermass Experiment. The following year there was Vaudeville, a kind of Hammer horror spoof, which won one of our Fringe Bouquets.

With the oddly-named Portrait of a Tom as a Young Neenan, he steers closer to a traditional stand-up set, explaining that he hurriedly invented that title when his original choice, Work in Progress, was nixed for obvious reasons.

POTATAAYN is based around true events. During the lockdown in 2020, Neenan took up painting pictures as a method of passing the empty hours. Unlike so many comedians who undertake artistic endeavours, he turned out to be genuinely talented and his paintings can be easily found online. (I should probably be grateful he didn’t attempt to start writing fiction, but stick around, that could still happen.)

In 2024, Neenan was commissioned to paint a portrait of an eccentric 86-year-old Yorkshireman called Lionel and, around the same time, was also invited to attend a wedding that he really didn’t want to go to – mostly because, during lockdown, he’d become addicted to eating sweets and his suit was now uncomfortably tight…

From these disparate elements, Neenan derives a set that has me (and the rest of the audience) laughing throughout, ranging from amused chuckles to hearty guffaws – and, while I do occasionally find myself wistfully missing the clever parodies of those earlier shows, he’s clearly taking a different route here and is doing so with his customary aplomb.

Suffice to say that Neenan still has that peerless timing and an ability to deliver a punchline with a wicked self-deprecating grin. If you’re hunting for guaranteed laughs – and let’s be honest, there are thousands of  people who come to the Fringe with exactly that aim – you’ll find what you’re looking for in Underbelly’s Bluebell.

Oh and yes, Tom, I do remember when Snickers bars were called Marathons…

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Second Best School Shooting

23/08/26

Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand), Edinburgh

Parker (Rachael DeBoer) and Ava (Shaylaren Hilton) are besties, hanging out in Parker’s bedroom, studying and painting their toe nails. So far, so ordinary. But it soon transpires that this is a school day and that they’re home because something terrible has happened…

One of their classmates brought a gun to their physics lesson yesterday, planning a massacre.

The girls are in shock.

But they don’t feel entitled to their trauma because, while their shooter was stopped before he hurt anyone, another incident across town led to thirteen teenage deaths. Social media is full of sympathy for the students of the other school. Meanwhile, no one’s even acknowledging that anything happened to Parker and Ava.

Parker’s on board with that. She just wants to forget it ever happened, to bury herself in physics revision and try to get the GPA she needs for a college scholarship. Ava, on the other hand, is furious. How dare people brush their experience under the carpet? Of course she’s glad that no one she knows died but that doesn’t make everything okay. She’s been through something terrifying and she wants to effect change.

She wants to mount a challenge to the NRA, to gun laws, to late-stage capitalism and selfish billionaires.

But all she’s got is a TikTok account, some headed notepaper and a purple Sharpie. It’s not exactly a fair fight. How is a schoolgirl to make her voice heard?

Written by Alice Stanley Jr and directed by Riley Rose Critchlow, The Second Best School Shooting offers a rare insight into the effects of gun violence on teenage survivors, whose emotional landscape is shaped by the ever-present background fear that they could be shot at. Anywhere. The script is sharp and snappy, creating a believable dynamic between the friends, and confronting the audience with some uncomfortable truths about the world we’ve created for our young people.

DeBoer and Hilton are perfectly cast as the contrasting central duo, DeBoer skilfully capturing Parker’s outward calm as well as her internal struggle, while Hilton cleverly allows Ava’s high-octane performance to slip, revealing the panic she’s struggling to control.

Developed alongside March for Our Lives, the political group formed by students who were in the 2018 Parkland tragedy, The Second Best School Shooting is an urgent, important piece of theatre. I urge you to see it.

4.2 stars

Susan Singfield

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

22/08/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Once again our Fringe sojourn has to be briefly interrupted for the much-anticipated release of Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘does-what -it says-on-the-VHS-box’ release, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. It’s mostly about the transgressive consequences of watching an 18-certificate slasher movie when you’re under the recommended age – and the long-term effect that such an occurrence can have on an impressionable child.

This was a formative experience for Kris (Hannah Einbender) back when she was twelve. Now she’s an emerging queer filmmaker, who’s drawn some attention with a remake of Psycho, seen from the POV of the shower curtain. She’s determined to be the one who will successfully reboot the Camp Miasma franchise. The series has now sunk into the depths of redundancy having been remade, sequelled, prequelled and relaunched countless times. 

The film’s history is played out (hilariously) over the opening credits via a series of posters and VHS covers. It’s all about a lakeside holiday camp, frequented by teens and used as a regular hunting ground by a serial killer called Little Death. The non-binary killer hides their face behind a ventilator-styled mask and uses a gigantic spear to decapitate victims. (Think Friday the 13th and you’ve pretty much got the inspiration.)

But Kris has always been intrigued by the fact that the first film’s final girl, Billie Presley, did a runner after its release and has never been heard from again. Kris manages to track her down and finds Billie (now played by Gillian Anderson) living alone in the deserted holiday camp that was the setting for the first movie. She appears to be existing on a diet of fried chicken and regular viewings of her acting debut on 35mm.

She welcomes Kris into her Camp Miasma home so they can get to know each other…

Anyone who watched Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow will be familiar with her aesthetic: colours amped up to picture-postcard intensity; still photographs employed as landscape backgrounds; and a liking for undercutting tense situations with comic dialogue. Kris’s hapless Zoom pitch to the potential producers of her new project is a particular highlight. The film is also obsessed with multi-coloured candy bars and packets of gummies – another forbidden delight from childhood.

Anyone put off by the ‘Slasher’ aspects of this film, should note that, though it does get pretty gnarly, the kills are exaggerated to the point of absurdity with victims spouting geysers of Kensington gore. I actually laugh out loud in several places. Schoenbrun’s much more interested in the sexual side of the story. 

Einbender is nicely vulnerable as the young protagonist desperately looking to reconnect with something powerful from her past, while Anderson is as brilliant as ever as a kind of reclusive Norma Desmond figure, still inextricably ensnared in the events of the film that first brought her to the public’s attention. (Keep your eyes peeled for a brief but unmistakable tribute to David Cronenberg.)

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma certainly won’t be for everyone but I enjoy every profane minute of it. 

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Big Stuff

22/06/26

Assembly Roxy (RoxyBoxy), Edinburgh

Stuff. Love it or hate it, we’re all surrounded by it; it’s just the way we deal with it that differs. How about you? Are you a hoarder or a declutterer?

As two self-declared stuff-shunners, we’re fascinated to see what Canadian comics Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus have to say on the subject.

We hit our first obstacle as soon as we enter the cutely-named RoxyBoxy shipping container (an apt venue). We’re given pencils, cards and a question: what object do you own that reminds you of someone you love? In my best handwriting (I’m always keen to please), I put, “the books my husband wrote,” not realising until later that it should be someone who’s dead. Philip is sitting next to me, very much alive and frowning at his card. “I haven’t got a clue,” he says. I remind him of his great uncle’s mandolin, which is hanging on our wall. “I never met him though,” he says, then shrugs and writes it down. I guess we’re really not ‘stuff’ people.

But that’s okay – because that’s the point of the show. One person’s trash is another one’s treasure and all that. Matt and Naomi are married and, unlike Philip and me, do not agree about clutter. Where Matt sees a bag full of half-used lipsticks, Naomi sees her late mum, putting on her face. Matt wants to chuck it all in a skip; Naomi wants to hold on to everything. The answer – unsurprisingly – lies somewhere in between.

Directed by Kay Sandler, this is a gently comic, life-affirming show – part love story, part obituary, part (metaphorical) communal hug. Snieckus provides the warmth – she genuinely has one of the friendliest faces I’ve ever seen – while Baram tempers the show’s more saccharine moments with his precisely-timed jibes. Their affection for one another is palpable and it envelops the audience too.

Are there any profound revelations or transformative ideas? No. But do I leave with a smile on my face and a general sense of wellbeing? Yes, I do.

I’m still a minimalist though. That hasn’t changed.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield

Dracula: Lucy’s Dream

21/08/26

EICC (Lennox Theatre), Edinburgh

It may be that you’re thinking, ‘Hmm. Yet another version of Dracula?’

If so, think on. I’m willing to bet that you’ve never seen an adaptation like this one. French-Norwegian theatre company Plexus Polaire present their production in the spacious environs of The Lennox Theatre, using a mix of actors and life-size puppets to depict exactly what it says in the title. This is a visual representation of the dreams of Lucy Westenra. There’s hardly any dialogue, only a series of almost hallucinogenic scenes, which flow together into a surreal hour of movement, music and puppetry.

I sit there mesmerised and can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like this before. There’s a cast of only five performers – though I only realise there are so few of them when they take their bows at the end.

First there’s Lucy, wandering around the huge stage – but then there are two of her and, an instant later, three, running back and forth between gliding stone pillars – and, of course, there’s Dracula, who shifts between human and puppet and back again, at one point even breaking into separate components and floating eerily around the stage. Yngfeld Aspeli directs with all the skill and flair of a magician.

And the truly astounding thing is, you cannot see when one thing becomes another, so seamlessly is it integrated. A couple of times I fail to hold back a gasp of astonishment as something entirely unexpected happens. How do they do that?

There’s unearthly music and chanting voices, spectral lighting effects and half-seen shapes that shift and lurch through the gloom – oh, and there’s a dog! One that that looks real enough to put on a lead and take for a walk…

The Lennox Theatre is packed and the only advice I can give is to GET THERE EARLY because you’ll want to be as close to the stage as you can possibly can be, the better to see the magic unfold. Dracula: Lucy’s Dream is quite simply, a masterpiece.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child

21/08/26

Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

Morning shows can sometimes have a tough time of it on the Fringe. If potential viewers have been out late the night before – and especially if they’ve partaken of a few libations – then they might prefer to wait until midday before relaunching themselves. Inevitably, that means that some fabulous shows don’t receive the kind of attention they truly deserve. In the case of Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child, it’s only the arrival of a perfectly-timed email invitation that has us dragging ourselves out from under the covers and hurrying along the Edinburgh streets to arrive at Zoo Southside with minutes to spare.

We’re glad we make the effort.

Bellina Logan’s monologue, directed by Maggie Soboil, is the story of her long and sometimes difficult relationship with her late mother, Averil, an English actress living in America. Due to a brief relationship with a Black theatre director that ended in pregnancy (or as Logan puts it ‘Imagine if Maggie Smith got in on with Shaft’), Logan is born the ‘mulatto’ of the title. (And yes, that outmoded term for a person of mixed race is frowned upon now, but was in common usage back in the 1970s.)

Logan is a gifted performer, able to portray a whole collection of characters with uncanny skill. She races back and forth across the stage, giving this her all, throwing out an entire catalogue of accents and vocal mannerisms with absolute authority. Averil is perhaps best described as ‘eccentric,’ a haughty upper-class force of nature with a gift for devastating put-downs and inventive curse words. Taking Bellina along for the ride, she restlessly flits around the world whenever she feels she’s spent too long in one place and, though she claims not to even like cats, somehow manages to end up owning a whole menagerie.

Then there’s Betty, Averil’s loyal housekeeper, who has crooked teeth and therefore always covers her mouth when she speaks. And there are local shopkeepers and neighbours and people who just happen to be passing by, every one of them captured like a vivid snapshot with only the briefest gesture.

I am laughing uproariously through the first half of this and then becoming increasingly tearful as Averil begins the long slow journey towards the end of her life, the terrible inescapable descent into dementia… but it’s been wonderful spending an hour with her and her very talented daughter.

If you’re looking for something clever, funny, heartbreaking and utterly engaging, my advice is to set your alarms. Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child is well worth getting out of bed for!

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

Redacted: The Cover-Up of a Cover-Up of a Cover-Up

20/08/26

Pleasance Dome (King Dome), Edinburgh

A wet Thursday at the Fringe seems like the perfect time to review Redacted – The Cover-Up of a Cover-Up of a Cover-Up. It’s one of those frenetic, utterly silly slices of physical theatre that are a mainstay of Edinburgh’s three-week extravaganza. Sure, it’s not going to stick in your mind for very long, but it’s great fun while it’s happening.

It begins with Roswell. Doesn’t everything begin with Roswell when we’re talking conspiracies? 

This is the story of Marnie Makowski, who arrives in that fabled New Mexico outpost in 1973, looking for her missing sister. She soon discovers that the disappearance is somehow mixed up with the mysterious 1947 sighting of an alien spacecraft – or is it something else – something even more extraordinary – that nobody seems able to mention without their words being covered by an eerie wailing sound?

Marnie sets off on a convoluted journey to try to uncover the truth, pursued by a couple of relentless detectives and a mysterious guy with an eye-patch and a knife. Meanwhile, the solution she’s looking for is a complex riddle, written in invisible ink and wrapped up in a great big enigma.

Voloz Collective’s turbo-charged adventure features actors Olivia Zerphy, Paul Lofferon, Emily Wheatman and Sam Rayner, who throw themselves maniacally around the performance space, while musician and foley artist Jonny Venvell provides accompaniment on drums, guitar and melodica.

As the story unfolds, there are ski chases, helicopter chases, foot chases, underwater chases and… well, you get the general idea. This doesn’t slow down for more than a few seconds at a time and, even then, it’s only to throw in another conspiracy or three. Princess Diana? Elvis? How do they fit into this?

Using only a modicum of props and their own agile bodies, the young ensemble conjure the necessary landscapes, buildings and methods of transport – while Marnie occasionally pauses to remember precious moments shared with her sister.

When we finally reach a conclusion I feel almost as breathless as the cast, but the enthusiastic applause from the packed crowd at King Dome suggests that a good time has been had by all.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Long Way Home

20/08/26

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Snug), Chambers Street, Edinburgh

Layla Warren’s earliest memories are of war-torn Tehran, where she is sheltering in her grandparents’ basement from Iraqi bombs. Four decades and three continents later, here she is at the Edinburgh Fringe, recounting her almost incredible tale.

Warren is an engaging speaker. She knows how to turn those enormous eyes on her audience, demanding our attention. The problem is, there’s so much extraordinary information packed into the hour that it’s impossible to take it all in. It’s like listening to a podcast on triple speed. There’s five shows’ worth of material crammed into one, so that – inevitably – we find ourselves skating over the surface.

Directed by Sepy Baghaei, the best moments are those when things slow down; when we’re shown instead of told. A scene where Warren dons traditional Iranian dress and dances at her leaving party stands out, as does her blind grandmother memorising Layla’s face through touch.

There are so many incidents I want to see in more detail, to understand them better and marvel at teenage Layla’s blagging skills. A fifteen-year-old bluffing her way onto an international flight? Landing a job at a top London club? Deciding she wants a TV career so just heading to LA and finding one (the evidence is on YouTube; she was known as Layla Kayleigh then)? It’s all fascinating, but we’re only allowed a tantalising glimpse before we gallop on to the next event.

Sometimes, the breakneck speed works to Warren’s advantage, illuminating the astonishing nature of her life. More often, it undermines the importance of traumatic experiences, such as sexual assault or family breakdown. As an audience, we need longer to process these incidents.

There’s so much potential in this autobiographical show – but its depth is obscured by its overwhelming breadth.

3 stars

Susan Singfield