Pleasance Courtyard

Revolver

23/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath), Edinburgh

In 1966, when Revolver was released, my mum was 18 years old, and had already been a fan of The Beatles for quite some time. As a Liverpudlian teenager, she’d spent many a lunchtime in the legendary Cavern Club, and was lucky enough to attend the Fab Four’s notorious 1964 homecoming gig at the Empire. She was, naturally, a member of their fan club – and still has her Christmas Flexi Discs to prove it. So, when she was scheduling her visit to this year’s Fringe, it was obvious that there was one production she wouldn’t want to miss…

Writer-performer Emily Woof’s play doesn’t disappoint. It’s about three women, the first of whom is Jane Fraser, a former teacher turned TV-researcher, delighted to be working on a documentary about female fandom through the ages. The second is Helen, Jane’s mum, who spent her adolescence dreaming about John Lennon. And the third is Valerie Solanas: writer, activist – and pistol-wielding would-be killer.

Directed by Hamish McColl, Revolver is an intricate piece of theatre, dealing with the very questions Jane thinks the ‘Fangirls’ documentary should address. But, while the protagonist is thwarted in her endeavours by James, the ratings-driven film-maker who hired her, Woof makes her points cogently, drawing salient connections between fame and feminism, reverence and rage.

James’s sensationalist approach to the documentary – he favours the tagline ‘Young, Dumb and Fun’ – undermines the girls who screamed for their pop idols, ignoring the sociopolitical circumstances that gave rise to them. Woof uses Helen and Valerie to illuminate the disconnect between history and herstory, to validate the heightened emotions of teenage fans – and to shed light on the boiling rage that drove Solanas to shoot Andy Warhol.

Tracks from The Beatles album are played throughout, sometimes to mark transitions and sometimes as the soundscape. This works best when there is a clear association between the songs and what is happening onstage, e.g. Tomorrow Never Knows provides the perfect background to an acid trip. Occasionally, the song choices seem a little random, taking me out of the moment while I try to understand the link (Tax Man plays us out, for instance, and I don’t know why), but overall the soundtrack serves the piece well.

I like how knotty this is: Woof doesn’t shy away from the complexity of the issues at hand, and her performance is both bold and nuanced. I’m not entirely convinced by the sexual fantasy sequence (the language seems too sophisticated for an inexperienced young girl), but that’s my only quibble with the writing.

A thoughtful, exacting play, Revolver demands serious consideration from its audience. “Nobody can deny that there’s something there.”

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

Mariupol

17/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath), Edinburgh

Katia Haddad’s two-hander is an epic tale of love and loss spanning thirty years, exposing the quiet horrors of war: the tendrils that insinuate their way into ordinary people’s lives, strangling their hopes for happiness.

It’s 1992, a year after the dissolution of the USSR, when “Steve” and Galina (Oliver Gomm and Nathalie Barclay) meet at their friends’ wedding in the titular Ukrainian city. Steve (real name: Bondarenko, nicknamed for his karaoke renditions of Stevie Wonder songs) is a well-travelled naval officer, while Muscovite Galina is a literature student, who has so far only dreamed of seeing foreign lands. “You’re in a foreign land,” Steve reminds her, and he’s right: Ukraine is now an independent state. But it doesn’t feel foreign to Galina: “We speak the same language,” she says. And indeed they do, in more ways than one. But, after a whirlwind holiday romance on the picturesque Belosarayskaya Sandbank, it’s time for the two to say goodbye and return to their ‘real’ lives.

Three decades later, Russia invades Ukraine. Galina’s teenage son, a member of the Russian army, is captured by Ukrainian forces in Mariupol. She’s desperate to rescue him – and can only think of one person who might be able to help. But can Steve – who has lost everything and is fighting for his country’s very existence – really be expected to come to the aid of an enemy soldier?

Gomm and Barclay are both perfectly cast, delivering heartfelt but understated performances, which feel totally authentic. They seem to age before my eyes, and it’s impossible not to empathise with these two regular Joes, who ought to be free to focus on more mundane problems. Directed by Guy Retallack, Mariupol is an expertly-crafted piece of theatre, starkly illustrating the brutality of war without ever sensationalising it. Hugo Dodsworth’s monochrome video projections emphasise the awful devastation in Ukraine.

Of course, the ongoing nature of this particular conflict adds real urgency to the production, and I find myself crying as the dreadful human cost is laid bare. But tears are not enough. The play supports the David Nott Foundation, which trains doctors in countries impacted by conflict – including Ukraine – and I feel compelled to make a donation as soon as I get home. If you’d like to do the same, you can do so here: https://davidnottfoundation.com/.

A deeply moving and important play, Mariupol is horribly relevant but beautifully drawn.

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield

The Unstoppable Rise of Ben Manager

10/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Above), Edinburgh

Bunkum Ensemble’s The Unstoppable Rise of Ben Manager is a Kafka-esque nightmare of a play, skewering the emptiness at the heart of many people’s work.

Ben Weaver (Jack Parris, who also wrote the script) is an ordinary kind of guy, an unassuming office drone, who works to live, to pay the bills. As the play opens, we see him suited and booted, in town early for an interview, eating an almond croissant to kill the time. But Fate has something different in store for Ben today: when he picks up a lanyard bearing the name ‘Ben Manager’, he finds himself caught in a Faustian trap…

Ben aces his interview. As Ben Manager, he is king of the vacuous PowerPoint, master of the mindless acronym. He knows his OOOs from his ETDs and he’s great at restructuring (“You’re all fired!”). What’s harder to understand is what it’s all for: what does the company actually do? What exactly is his role? Disoriented, Ben tries to remember what used to drive him. “I think I’d like to be creative,” he muses. “Maybe costume design?” But these half-formed thoughts are nebulous, impossible to grasp, lost to the demands of his daily routine.

Parris is commanding in the central role, a leaf-cutter ant caught in the corporate machine. As events build to an almost hallucinatory crescendo, his mental unravelling is cleverly physicalised, and I love the disconcerting effect of the baby-sized puppet-colleague (operated by Teele Uustanti), its words spoken into a microphone by musician-performer Mike Coxhead). The audio-visual design is also impressive, adding to Ben’s (and our) growing sense of disconnection from reality.

Although it elicits plenty of laughs from the audience, The Unstoppable Rise of Ben Manager is fundamentally a brutal and discomfiting piece of theatre – and I’m not sure I’d find it amusing at all if I worked a nine-to-five.

4.3 stars

Susan Singfield

A Jaffa Cake Musical

10/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Forth), Edinburgh

Every year, the Fringe manages to boast an improbably-titled musical with broad audience appeal. In 2024, Gigglemug Theatre’s A Jaffa Cake Musical was a huge hit but, for reasons too complicated to explain, we didn’t manage to see it. So when it was announced that it would return for one final run, we decided we really should catch up with it. Tickets were duly arranged and we set off with high expectations.

But on the fateful day in question, Storm Floris decided to strut its stuff, managing to shut down the entire Pleasance Courtyard. Some frantic rescheduling ensued – a mere hiccup for us but no doubt a massive pain in the backside for all the productions affected. Finally, several days later, here we sit in the sold-out Forth and the show begins.

You might think, with that seemingly random title, that this is simply a silly fantasia, conjured up for everyone’s entertainment. But Sam Cochrane’s zany creation is loosely based on fact – the 1991 court case that determined the most important question of all: whether a Jaffa Cake is actually a cake… or a biscuit. Let’s face it, we’ve all asked ourselves the same thing at some point in our lives. And there was a lot on money riding on the outcome, since cakes (a necessity, apparently) are not subject to VAT while biscuits (a mere frivolity) are. Go figure.

Rookie barrister Kevin (Cochrane) lands his first big trial and, wouldn’t you know it, he is to defend Jake (Harry Miller), the Godlike genius who actually invented Jaffa Cakes, from the depredations of the villainous Tax Man (Katie Pritchard, embodying a character that pretty much everyone can hiss at). Opposing Kevin will be confident young barrister, Catherine (Sabrina Messer), who has a winning way with the old dance moves and has yet to lose a case. Meanwhile, the stern Judge (Alex Prescot) plays the keyboards while he presides, backed by bass and drums. (I did say it was loosely based on fact.)

Fuelled by its own sheer exuberance and gifted with a collection of witty songs, arranged by Rob Gathercole, A Jaffa Cake Musical is a delicious concoction (much like its inspiration) that hooks its audience, much like the tantalising taste of that smashing orangey bit.

There’s plenty to admire here, not least the antics of the seven-strong cast – bowler hats off to Pritchard in particular, who is a quadruple threat: singing, dancing, playing the saxophone and swapping roles with absolute assurance. The staging is simple but effective, everything nicely colour-coded in distinctive shades of orange and chocolate brown, and one song in particular has such a catchy hook you’ll almost certainly leave the building humming it aloud. (I know I do.) Ali James directs with aplomb and a jolly good time is had by all.

Lights down. Applause.

Which only leaves me to answer that all-important question: is it a cake or a biscuit? Well, why not cut along to the Pleasance (weather permitting) and judge for yourselves?

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Kanpur: 1857

06/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath), Edinburgh

Set in Kanpur, India, in the aftermath of the so-called “Sepoy Mutiny,” an unnamed Indian (portrayed by the play’s author, Niall Moojani) is sentenced to death for insurrection. The captive is a Hijra, often described as ‘the third sex,’ who are traditionally assigned as male at birth, and can decide which gender they wish to assume in the fullness of time. The officer in charge of the execution, played by co-director Jonathan Oldfield, offers his victim an opportunity to speak, or rather demands that they do so. Afterwards, they will be strapped to a cannon and blown apart in front of a crowd of onlookers – or, as we’re known in these quarters, a Fringe audience.

A serviceable-looking cannon has been sourced, and it’s pretty much the only prop in evidence. I can’t help thinking about the difficulties of bringing such a cumbersome weapon down into the Pleasance Courtyard’s ‘Beneath’ performance space, but happily that’s not my job.

Oldfield’s officer serves in a distinguished Highland regiment, though his accent is – perhaps inevitably – cut-glass English. Now, he suggests, is the time for the condemned to explain what has brought them to this awful situation. A garrulous sort, the officer can’t stop interrupting his victim’s narrative, asking awkward questions, offering his own privileged perspectives, even at one point picking up a guitar and lending some lilting accompaniment.

Kampur: 1857 has interesting points to make about the nature of colonialism, reminding us that, during the conflict there have been acts of barbarism on both sides – though these observations come from Oldfield’s character, speaking from the more comfortable point of view of somebody who isn’t about to be evenly distributed across the landscape, and whose side’s reaction to the mutiny has been massively disproportionate.

The piece, which lies somewhere in that strange no-man’s-land between storytelling and drama is at its best when the two characters are exchanging views, bickering, joking, vainly trying to bring each other around to some shared worldview. Oldfield gets the best of it, his sneering superiority played at full-throttle, while Moojani’s dialogue is more reserved and contemplative. Meanwhile, tabla player Hardeep Deerhe provides a rhythmic accompaniment to his words.

It’s impossible not to feel swept up in the play’s final moments, as the victim waits, helpless and silent, their final seconds ticking inexorably away…

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Single Use

06/08/25

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three), Edinburgh

Ella’s life is a muddle: she’s struggling to separate her mounting troubles and figure out how to deal with them. A bit like her recycling.

Ella (Verity Mullan) is an expert procrastinator. She’s unfulfilled by her bar job, but can’t be bothered to look for anything else. She likes the idea of her allotment, but tending to it is a step too far. She never pays her rent on time and doesn’t get on with her flatmate anyway. She cares about the planet, but it’s not her fault takeaways are delivered in plastic boxes – and who has the energy to cook? From the outside, it’s clear that Ella is depressed. It’s just that she hasn’t realised it yet.

Written by Mullan and directed by Emma Beth Jones, Single Use works well as a character study. Mullan is an engaging performer, imbuing Ella with a winsome vulnerability and spark. I particularly enjoy the physical comedy – her exaggerated sense of repulsion as she deals with her icky bin bags; the slurping of beer from Tupperware – all perfectly complemented by Flick Isaac-Chilton’s sound design.

However, there are too many disparate plot strands competing for our attention and it’s not always clear who the various voice messages are from. I’m confused by ‘Stusi’ (Ella’s young stepsister), who is first described as someone to whom “puberty has not been kind” – leading me to assume that she is about thirteen years old – but then turns up in a car to give Ella a lift home. The climate crisis element feels particularly under-developed, with the tantalising messages from Malaysia left to fizzle into nothing.

Ultimately, there are some promising ideas here, but they perhaps need a little more cohesion and development for this piece to fully realise its potential.

3 stars

Susan Singfield

Edfest Bouquets 2024
Another incredible August in Edinburgh. Another Fringe packed with wonders to behold. As ever, we’ve put together our annual list of virtual bouquets for the shows that blew us away.

Julia VanderVeen : My Grandmother’s Eye Patch – ZOO Playground

“A lot of the comedy comes simply from VanderVeen’s exaggerated facial expressions and her tendency to skewer audience members with a scarily intense stare…”

Luke Bayer – Diva: Live from Hell – Underbelly (Belly Button), Cowgate

“Channing (the name is obviously a reference to Bette Davis in All About Eve) is a delightful character, supremely self-obsessed, deliciously callous and intent on achieving stardom at any cost…”

The Sound Inside – Traverse Theatre

“Director Matt Wilkinson handles the various elements of the play with skill, and guides it to a poignant conclusion…”

Summer of Harold – Assembly (Checkpoint)

‘If you’re looking for an hour-and-a-half of impressive theatre, with snort-out-loud humour as well as profound emotional moments, then Summer of Harold ticks all the boxes…”

Rebels and Patriots – Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs)

“Loosely stitched with a sprinkling of history and Shakespeare, it all adds up to something very thoughtful…”

Chris Dugdale: 11 – Assembly George Street (Ballroom)

“There are some examples of mind control that have us shaking our heads in disbelief – and I may be guilty of muttering the odd expletive…”

Natalie Palamides: Weer – Traverse Theatre

“A great big slice of the absurd, expert clowning performed with such reckless abandon that you can’t help loving it…”

V.L. – Roundabout at Summerhall

“A whip-smart comedy that also has some incisive things to say about the difficulties of adolescence and the importance of friendship…”

Sam Ipema: Dear Annie, I Hate You – ZOO Playground

“A wonderfully inventive and cleverly-assembled slice of true experience, by turns funny, profound and – at one particular point – very challenging…”

Michaela Burger: The State of Grace – Assembly George Street (Drawing Room)

“Not so much an impersonation as a transformation. Burger talks eloquently and provocatively about the lives of sex workers, explaining why there is a need for their business to be recognised…”

Honourable Mentions

Werewolf – Summerhall (Former Women’s Locker Room)

“I love it. The wardens do an excellent job of inhabiting their characters at the same time as managing the narrative, expertly drawing what they need from the participants…”

Megan Prescot: Really Good Exposure – Underbelly (Belly Button)

“Prescott is an accomplished performer. She tantalises and reels us in before skewering our internal biases and forcing us to think…”

The Daughters of Roísín

24/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker 1), Edinburgh

The Daughters of Roísín, written and performed by Aoibh Johnson, is an ode to the women of Ireland, whose histories are too often forgotten. Serving as a kind of companion piece to Luke Kelly’s 1980 poem, For What Died the Sons of Roísín? this play is a poignant reminder of what the country’s women sacrificed.

By now, we all know about the infamous Magdalene Laundries, where so-called ‘fallen women’ were sent to work before having their babies, which were then taken from them and sold to wealthy adoptive families. But even those who avoided the overt cruelty of the convents were failed by a Catholic state that viewed them as sinners.

Directed by Cahal Clarke, this play from Wee Yarn Productions tells the tale of Johnson’s great-grandmother, who fell pregnant as a teenager. Her vulnerability is highlighted by the phrase she uses to insist her parents let her go to a dance (“I’m almost an adult; I’m seventeen”), which segues into a mournful lament (“I’m only seventeen!”) when she discovers she is going to have a child. After all, how was she supposed to know? No one ever spoke about sex. She didn’t understand what she was doing.

Johnson’s performance is utterly compelling: she flits effortlessly between the past and the present, breaking the fourth wall to draw us in with direct questioning, then clipping up her hair and becoming the frightened young woman confined to her room, with only the tiniest of windows to peek out of for the nine months of her pregnancy. No one must see her; her ‘sickness’ would bring shame to the family. And, when she gives birth, the baby – Johnson’s grandfather – is spirited away and adopted.

This is a lyrical piece of work, blending poetry, song and prose, at once a scathing condemnation of the church and a love letter to Ireland’s lost women. Oisin Clarke’s simple lighting and sound work well, allowing breathing space for the moments of silence and darkness, which are eerily effective.

One of my favourite things about the Fringe is the sheer breadth of what’s on offer; I love the fact that serious plays like this sit alongside stand-up comedy and circus acts and everything in between. The Daughters of Roísín is a thought-provoking, important piece of theatre, and I’m glad it’s found a home here at the Pleasance.

4.3 stars

Susan Singfield

F**king Legend

14/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two), Edinburgh

Olly Hawes isn’t a bad guy. Okay, so maybe things get a little out of hand on stag dos now and again, but he and his pals are not like those other lads, misbehaving drunkenly in historical European cities. Sure, they go to the same places and drink the same booze, but their raucousness is performative and self-aware. They’re being ironic – and that makes all the difference. Right?

In this one-man show, Hawes veers between biting humour and apocalyptic despair; it is at once a confessional and a call to arms. The affable persona he creates serves as a hook, allowing him to reel us in and bring us face-to-face with our own hypocrisies.

There’s a gulf between the opening scene, where Hawes stands contemplating which socks to wear, and the terrifying ending, where we all stand on the precipice of a climate disaster. But Hawes is an effective guide, leading us from an introspective focus on the daily minutiae to a bird’s eye view of what’s happening just out of shot. If this sounds bleak, it is, but don’t be misled – it’s also very entertaining.

There’s an overt meta-quality to this monologue. Hawes invites us to picture our own lead character. It might be him or it might just be someone a bit like him. It might be us. (It is us. We’re all guilty.) The piece is presented as a screenplay, with Hawes narrating the cues, which works well as a simple means of establishing where we are in time as well as place.

There’s no denying that the ending is frenetic and hyperbolic – but it feels earned. This is clever writing with a relatable protagonist, striking exactly the right tone to keep the audience on board.

And we need to actually do something about climate change, don’t we? The planet’s burning while all us f**king legends look away and party.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Hamstrung

03/08/24

Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand), Edinburgh

Theatre’s most famous skull, Yorick, is amply fleshed out in this playful monologue, written and performed by George Rennie. Shakespeare provides scant detail about the “fellow of infinite jest” –  we only know that he sang, danced, made people laugh and gave the young Hamlet piggybacks. But Rennie mines these few familiar lines to breathe life into a character renowned for  being er… dead. 

Rennie is an engaging actor, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage and easily connecting with the audience. The early stretches of the play establish Yorick as a jester, keen to do his job and entertain. But his smile stretches thin as he strives to perform his routines; he’s clearly aware that something is wrong. Where is his master? Where is the King?

From here, the monologue takes a darker turn, as Yorick slowly realises that the King isn’t the only one who’s dead. There are some clever touches, including a revelation about what really happened when Hamlet thought he saw his father’s ghost. Most affecting is Yorick’s yearning for the player he loved when they were both touring performers. Being plucked from obscurity to work at court has proved both a blessing and a curse.

There are some elements that don’t work quite so well, including an extended sequence featuring two audience volunteers – in today’s show, it’s Philip and me. Although we have fun participating, the scene is long and it’s hard to see what it adds to our understanding of the character. It’s introduced as Yorick’s attempt to ‘tell his story’ but I can’t work out how it does that. (It could just be that I missed something. I was a little distracted by the fact that Philip and I were sharing one pair of reading glasses because he’d left his at home.) Structurally, I feel like this comic relief would fit better in the first half hour, as it weakens the deepening tension and unsettling atmosphere of the second act.

Still, there’s a lot here to like, including the sound design, which complements the story well, reflecting Yorick’s state of mind. Now get you to the Pleasance Courtyard; to this favour you must come; Rennie will make you laugh at that.

3.5 stars

Susan Singfield