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 – AssemblyGeorge 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…”
“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…”
Harri Pitches’ debut hour, The Sound of the Space Between, is perhaps more performance art than ‘show’ – a series of soundscapes and images created with nothing more than a couple of fancy torches, some microphones and a loop pedal. The result is evocative and intense, a meditation on grief and longing.
There’s not a lot of narrative here – which I guess is the point. It’s an expression of feelings, a jumble of nightmares and memories, yearning and fear. Barefoot, clad in a pair of grey pyjamas, Pitches opens with the information that he’s suffering from sleep deprivation. This explains the hallucinatory dreamscape that takes hold of him every time he shuts his eyes. Eventually, he works out that he’s in a garden that he used to know when he was a child, and remnants of long-forgotten knowledge return to him – details gleaned from his dead grandparents. He misses them; their loss makes him regress to boyhood.
The soundscapes work well, enveloping the audience, so that it feels like we’re inside his head. If I have a criticism, it’s that it’s all a bit one-note, and doesn’t really build to anything. The heightened emotions are all there from the beginning and, once we learn quite early on that this is about bereavement, there is no further development of the theme.
Nonetheless, this is a heartfelt piece, and Pitches performs with absolute commitment. All I need to know now is where I can get one of those amazing torches.
Award-winning actor and clown Julia VanderVeen is hosting a memorial service for her beloved grandmother, the improbably-named Mamie Lee Ratliff Finger. It’s time for Julia to deal with her grief head-on, a mere eighteen years after Mamie’s demise.
We’re all here to pay our respects to the piratically-attired matriarch, and we’re soon ensconced in VanderVeen’s giddy, absurdist world, our cheeks hurting from laughing, our hands held to our mouths in gestures of oh-God-what-now? 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. Sometimes she moves achingly slowly, making us chuckle just to relieve the tension; other times, she capers about the small stage frenetically, or performs a ridiculously elaborate dance, contorting herself into a range of awkward poses. There are props a-plenty littering the stage – a more-is-more approach akin to Natalie Palamides’ in Weer.
Macbeth? Check. Card tricks? Check. Hobby horse? Of course. What else could you possibly ask for?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the show tells us more about Julia than it does about Mamie, although we do learn quite a lot about her grandmother in the process. It would be a crime to reveal too much here, as it’s the unpredictability that makes it so entertaining; suffice to say, I’m pretty sure you’ve never been to a memorial service quite like this one – and if you have, I hope your therapist is good.
Sly, silly and absolutely hilarious, My Grandmother’s Eyepatch is the funniest show about grief I’ve ever seen.
The frenzy of the Fringe is over. It’s been beyond wonderful to see our city so vibrant again, after two quiet years. We’ve seen a startling range of exciting shows, covering many genres. We’re exhausted – but it’s not quite over yet. It’s time to award our virtual bouquets to the best performances we saw. The standard seemed higher than ever this time: has the break given writers and performers more time to sharpen their acts, or were we just lucky with the productions we chose? Either way, there were lots of contenders in each category, but we’ve narrowed them down to our favourite five.
So, without further ado, we present our choice of the best shows we saw at Edfest 2022.
THEATRE
An Audience with Stuart Bagcliffe (ZOO Playground)
An Audience with Stuart Bagcliffe is the sort of play which exemplifies the Fringe at its best. Written by Benny Ainsworth and directed by Sally Paffett (Triptytch Theatre), this ingeniously constructed monologue features Michael Parker as the titular Stuart, delivering Ainsworth’s script with consummate skill.
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings (Summerhall)
Based on a short story by Gabriel García Márquez and adapted for the stage by Dan Colley, Manus Halligan and Genevieve Hulme Beaman, this is the tale of Elisenda and Palayo, two impoverished people who live in a rickety shack on the edge of a small town. Their tale is related by Elisenda (Karen McCartney) in a deliciously sinister style. She’s aided by Palayo (Manus Halligan), who barely utters a word, but moves humbly around the stage, using a curious mixture of handicrafts and high-tech devices to illustrate the story – a series of simplistic figurines, illuminated by tiny cameras and lights, take us into their miniature world.
Sap (Roundabout @ Summerhall)
Rafaella Marcus has scripted a deliciously labyrinthine tale about sexual identity (specifically bi-invisibility), one that cleverly assimilates a Greek myth into its core. The maze-like structure is beautifully captured by Jessica Clark and Rebecca Banatvala’s hyper-physical performances, directed by Jessica Lazar and Jennifer Fletcher.
Hungry (Roundabout @ Summerhall)
Chris Bush’s sharply written two-hander examines the relationship between Lori (Eleanor Sutton), a chef from a relatively privileged background, and Bex (Melissa Lowe), a waitress from the local estate. Hungry is a class act, so assured that, even amidst the host of treasures on offer at this year’s Roundabout, it dazzles like a precious gem.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Assembly Roxy)
Let’s face it, we’ve all seen Macbeth in its various shapes and guises – but I think it’s fairly safe to say we’ve never seen it quite like this. Flabbergast Theatre’s eight-strong cast reel around the stage, plastered in mud and raving and flailing around like demented beings. This is a play about the madness brought on by the seductive power of hubris, so it feels entirely appropriate. It explodes, it capers, it struts its fretful stuff upon the stage and signifies plenty…
COMEDY
Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen (Roundabout @ Summerhall)
Both Samuel Barnett and Marcelo Dos Santos deserve huge praise for what is undoubtedly one of the best collaborations between writer and performer that I’ve ever witnessed. The narrator is working me like a master magician, mesmerising me, misdirecting me, even scattering a trail of clues which I somehow manage to overlook. The result? When the piece reaches its conclusion, I feel as though I’ve been punched in the solar plexus.
Kylie Brakeman: Linda Hollywood’s Guide to Hollywood (Gilded Balloon Patterhoose)
Making her Edinburgh Fringe debut, Kylie Brakeman delivers her cleverly scripted lines with consummate skill, and the whip-smart, snarky one-liners flow like honey laced with vinegar. It’s more than just a series of laughs. It also nails the cynicism and hypocrisy of the movie industry with deadly precision. I leave convinced that Brakeman (already a major name online, with over sixty million views) is destined to play much bigger venues than this one.
Emily Wilson: Fixed (Pleasance Courtyard)
Emily Wilson’s Fixed is part musical, part stand-up and part catharsis. She appeared on The X Factor USA back in 2011, as one half of the earnestly named duo, Ausem. “Because my best friend’s called Austin, and my name’s Emily, so together we’re Ausem!” She was 15 and thought she was destined to become a star. But then she hit a snag. The judges decided they liked Austin, but not Emily… What emerges is a thoughtful commentary on fame, ambition and exploitation, and it’s riveting.
Christopher Bliss: Captain Wordseye (Pleasance Courtyard)
Christopher Bliss (Rob Carter) is a new name to me and I can only regret that it’s taken me this long to encounter him. He’s that rarest of things, a brilliant character comedian… and a literary genius to boot. I can’t wait for his words of advice on poetry, which I have long considered my Achilles heel…
The Anniversary (Pleasance Dome)
Jim (Daniel Tobias) and Barb (Clare Bartholomew) are eagerly preparing for their 50th wedding anniversary but they’re not always in control of things and some of the items in the finger buffet might better be avoided. This handsomely mounted helping of slapstick from Australian company, Salvador Dinosaur, features no real dialogue, just gibberish and the occasional mention of each other’s names – but the soundtrack is far from silent. It’s essentially a piece about the indignities of ageing, replete with references to forgetfulness, dodgy bowels and the ill-advised over-application of both prescription drugs and prunes. It ought to be tragic but it’s somehow horribly funny.
SPECIAL MENTIONS
Fills Monkey: We Will Drum You (Pleasance Courtyard)
Sebastian Rambaud and Yann Coste are two brilliant percussionists, the kind of people you imagine could go through an entire day without ever breaking beat. They begin with conventional sets of drums, hammering out thrilling polyrhythms as the audience claps along. But they have an air of competitiveness about them and the stakes keep rising. It really helps that the two percussionists are also accomplished clowns. Working under the direction of Daniél Briere, they’ve devised a show that switches back and forth through a whole series of scenarios, never lingering too long in one place to ever feel repetitive.
Manic Street Creature (Roundabout @ Summerhall)
Manic Street Creature, written and performed by Maimuna Memon, is an assured slice of gig theatre that focuses on the subject of mental health from a slightly different perspective – that of the carer. Memon tells the story through a sequence of songs being recorded in a studio session. She’s a confident, assured performer, with a thrilling vocal range, accompanying herself on acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards and shruti box. When everything’s in full flow, the story takes flight and I feel myself propelled along by its urgent, rhythmic pulse.
The Ofsted Massacre (The Space @ Surgeon’s Hall)
Phil Porter’s script feels like it’s been torn from the inside of a stressed-out teacher’s head: a revenge fantasy, born of despair. It’s also a very funny play, drawing on Shakespeare, while lampooning staffroom stereotypes and exposing every cliché. This production, by Kingston Grammar School’s sixth form drama students, is a triumph. The young cast embrace their roles, eliciting gales of laughter from the audience with their well-timed punchlines and impressive slapstick.
Making a Murderer: The Musical (Underbelly Bristo Square)
Like millions of others across the UK, I was transfixed by the Netflix documentary, Making A Murderer – so when I spot a poster on the Royal Mile with the words ‘The Musical‘ tacked onto the end, I’m intrigued – and simultaneously doubtful. Isn’t that going to be… disrespectful? But, in the capable hands of writer Phil Mealey, MAMTM offers a compelling version of the familiar events, a fresh perspective on the story that never feels like a cheap shot. The songs are terrific throughout, ranging from spirited rockers to plaintive ballads. What’s more, the production supports (and is supported by) The Innocence Project.
The Tiger Lillies: One Penny Opera (Underbelly Bristo Square)
Describing an act as ‘unique’ is often considered a cop-out, and yet I can’t think of a more appropriate word to describe The Tiger Lillies, three remarkable musicians currently strutting their inimitable stuff at The Cow Barn on Bristo Square. Originally formed way back in 1989, they’ve been through a number of personnel changes over the years, though the macabre compositions of singer-songwriter Martyn Jacques have remained a constant. They describe themselves as “Brechtian Punk Cabaret”, and who am I to argue with them?
Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters (The Wee Room), Edinburgh
You know when they say there’s not enough room to swing a cat? Here in The Three Sisters’ Wee Room, you’d be hard pressed to squeeze in a photo of a cat. The first joke of the gig appears to be the venue. It’s literally a cupboard. From September to July, it’s no doubt used for storing toilet rolls. I know it’s a trope of the Fringe: every available space will be pressed into service. But I’ve been to most venues, and this is a new low. There are twenty-three of us crammed inside an airless box. I find myself being a lot more churlish than usual. “You can’t keep selling tickets,” I say to the guy at the door, as venue staff bring along another small bench and attempt to direct two more punters inside. “The room fits twenty-five,” one of the bench-movers says, nicely. And proves her point by using the bench to prop open the door, and inviting the couple to sit facing the corridor.
I feel bad when I realise the guy at the door is actually Ben Miller (not that one), because I don’t want to make things difficult for him. It’s not his fault, after all. I’m sure he’d like a bigger room. Or, you know, an actual room.
Still, Miller (not that one) doesn’t seem fazed. Maybe he’s used to it by now. He introduces himself, and establishes the concept: we’re in a science lesson. And, despite his nervous supply-teacher vibe, he’s in perfect control. He asks a bit about people’s experiences of school, and reassures us that this lesson will be interesting, so long as we like to learn. And it is: in particular, the science behind his timid-looking stance. He has pectus excavatum, which means he has a concave chest, and that his heart and lungs are all squashed up inside (not to labour a point, but I know how they feel). The set is structured exactly like a lesson: there is some lecturing, a PowerPoint, a Q&A, and even a pop quiz, to check that we’ve been paying attention. It’s funny too. Miller (not that one) is adept at using his low-status persona to maintain a calm, gently humorous tone, even in the face of some very esoteric heckling, clearly intended to test his science credentials. This is stand-up-disguised-as-science, rather than Robin Ince-style science-disguised-as-stand-up, and I laugh a lot. I never knew I had a favourite element until now…
Miller (not that one) is also playing an evening slot at ZOO Playground, so – if you’re claustrophobic – maybe try to catch him there instead. If cheek-by-jowl doesn’t bother you, then head to The Three Sisters. Either way, this is definitely the most enjoyable science lesson I’ve ever attended.
Bouquets & Brickbats 