Fest 2024 Issue 3 by Fest Magazine

A SHINING LIGHT

Nadine

Inside: Flo & Joan Wet Mess Stellar Quines Machine de Cirque Swamplesque Who Do Ya Love? Lauren Pattison Blue Badge Bunch

“FEELS LIKE A MUSICAL BOUND FOR THE WEST END” FEST

“THE SOUNDTRACK IS EXCEPTIONAL” THE SCOTSMAN

THAT’S THE WAY (I LIKE IT) GET DOWN TONIGHT

“HIGH-ENERGY AND FEEL-GOOD” CULTURE FIX

GIVE IT UP PLEASE DON’T GO BOOGIE SHOES FEATURING:

THINGS BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

"The truth always lies between heaven and earth"

BY JUN NOH

DIRECTED BY JOANNA ROSENFELD

junnohoﬃcial

Fest 2024 Issue 3

8 The Greatest Dancer Nadine Shah on grief and recovery

12 Cutting Edge

Wet Mess brings a testo-fuelled show

19 Cult Comedian Spring Day on being raised in an evangelical sect

Comedy

22 Natalie Palamides

The love story of the millennium

Theatre

35 The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return

An irresistible trip to noughties Luton

Dance & Circus

46 Ghost Light

Machine de Cirque combine heart-in-mouth tricks and a heartbreaking narrative

Music

53 Who Do Ya Love?

KC and the Sunshine Band musical that’s bound for the West End

58 Map & Listings

Find festival gems with our map and hour-by-hour listings

Image credits (top to bottom, left to right): Tim Topple; Manuel Vason; Matt Crockett; Jill Petracek; Harry Elletson; Emmanuel Burriel; Alex Brenner; Fest Magazine

Perfect Day: Flo & Joan

The musical comedy duo take on a day at the Fringe, in verse

Photo: Matt Crockett

This is an original poem that doesn’t have music, but if you want to get a feel of what we were going for you can listen to the beginning of ‘The Jellicle Ball’ from the musical Cats and that will put you in the right mood.

At four-oh-two the alarm siren blows

We rise out of bed on our tippy toes

We comb our one hair and blow our one nose

And start our day at the Fringe

Our perfect day at the Fringe

We eat a matching slice of toast

And bid good morn to the shower ghost

Whilst checking our veins haven’t thrombosed

On our perfect day at the Fringe

The perfect day at the Fringe

We dance our good time morning dance

To wish the day be filled with chance

It’s a curse for all if you lose your ba’lance

On a perfect day at the Fringe

We leave the flat at nine precise

And go on the hunt for all things nice

Avoiding shows that are improvised

For a perfect day at the Fringe

We only travel by underground tunnel

To dodge the flyers in their huddles

Sometimes we run into Sally Gunnell

On a perfect day at the Fringe

We head to Old Town to pick out a wig

For lunch we eat a half a pig

And wonder if this year we’ll make it big

Yes a perfect day at the Fringe

We skip and skap down the Royal Mile

Hoping to scare at least one child

This is fun, we’re not in denial

A perfect day at the Fringe

A perfect day is not complete

If you haven’t screamed down every street

COME TO OUR SHOW we repeat and repeat

On a nightmare day at the

Perfect day at the Fringe

We perform our show at seven exact ‘What the bloody hell was that’

We respect our audience’s lack of tact

On our perfect day at the Fringe

Once we’ve finished our final beat

We have a post-show drinky treat

Just one or two or nine, who’s counting

A prerfrect day a the finge

A ferfrect day *falls asleep in a bar in front of the Channel 4 commissioner*

And so to sleep at three-oh-eight

Locked into bed so you can’t escape

Same again tomorrow and we can’t wait

For a perfect day at the Fringe

Another perfect day at the Fringe

SHOW One-Man Musical by Flo & Joan

VENUE: Pleasance Dome

TIME: 7:00pm – 8:00pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 14

SHOW Flo & Joan: The Joan & Flo Show

VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 2:55pm – 3:55pm, 12–25 Aug

The Greatest Dancer

Filthy Underneath, Nadine Shah’s fifth studio album, is a document of grief, pain and recovery. The Tyneside songwriter talks to Arusa Qureshi about sobriety and her return to the Edinburgh International Festival

The last time Nadine Shah played the Edinburgh International Festival, life looked a little different. It was 2021 and we were all desperate to feel the energy of live music, with gigs having only just returned post-lockdown. That year, the EIF hosted their contemporary music programme in a purpose-built outdoor venue in Edinburgh Park, where the likes of Damon Albarn, Thundercat, Black Midi and Shah herself performed. We all sat separated in rows, confined to our seats with drinks ordered on an app and delivered by staff. It was bizarre, but finally, there was music.

“It was just really exciting,” Shah tells me over a Zoom call from her home. “But then the reality of it kicks in when you’re onstage and there’s so much distance between you and your audience. I think at the time, we were just so grateful to play, but it’s definitely not one that sticks out as a show I loved playing. It’s one that sticks out in my memory as, ‘I’m glad

we got to play, but I hope we never have to play one like that again.’”

In three years, much has changed in the world, as it has in Shah’s life. She might be returning to the same festival this August but she returns with a wholly new perspective and experiences that have fundamentally changed her for the better, and which led to the birth of her fifth studio album.

“Out of all of them, it’s the most personal one,” Shah says of Filthy Underneath. “It doesn’t really hold back at all. It was born out of a time where I just was very, very unwell – my mental health was at a real low. And then during a time of recovery, I started to write again. It took two and a half months away at a rehabilitation facility. I was suffering post traumatic stress disorder, addiction issues, and I went there to get better and heal. I still feel very privileged and very lucky to have been able to have gone to a place like that, to start my journey of getting better.”

A raw, adventurous and ultimately beautiful record, Filthy Underneath documents Shah’s recovery following a period of immense turbulence that led to an attempt to take her own life. It’s a record that is produced with an expansiveness that gives way to Shah’s captivating vocals, ensuring that her voice has the room to properly soar, both as an instrument and as a vehicle for narration. She began writing while in rehab, where she had the time and space to be able to channel what she was feeling into something freeing. “Some of the songs started as diary entries in a kind of cathartic way. I was writing them and I thought well, these will never end up as songs. But of course, they always do in my world.”

Shah admits that the subjects on the album can be harrowing and macabre, which may be triggering for some listeners, but it was important for her to be honest and to speak her truth. “I wouldn’t have been able to write

“I wanted to come back with a song that was very celebratory and daft and kind of joyous. It was really important for me to do that”

the album, if I wasn’t making myself get better,” she explains. “So I definitely don’t want to be an advocate for the myth of the tortured artist. I really want to dispel that myth, because I truly believe that I’ve made my best work in sobriety and when I was in a healthier headspace.”

Photo: Tim Topple

“I truly believe that I’ve made my best work in sobriety and when I was in a healthier headspace”

Though the album can be a tough listen lyrically, Shah notes that she “didn’t want it sonically to be downtrodden. I really wanted it to be uplifting.” The lead single ‘Topless Mother’, for example, is an infectious, percussive anthem, which felt like the perfect way to return. “It just felt like a joyous one to come back with,” she says, “and it was very different from anything else that I had released before.

“I think mainly because people were very aware of this horrible period of time that I had been through, I wanted to come back with a song that was very celebratory and daft and kind of joyous. It was really important for me to do that.”

It’s rare to come across an artist that simultaneously exudes as much defiance and charisma as they do kindness. But Shah has always been a bit of a rarity in the music industry. The Tyneside songwriter’s music has often been categorised as urgent and visceral, with frank discussions on racism, Islamophobia, the absurdity of politics, grief, mental health and more, all soundtracked by her venom-fuelled post-punk. But on stage and off, she’s funny and thoughtful, forever speaking out against injustices she sees but never taking herself too seriously or worrying what others think.

Case in point; when I ask her what she wants people to feel after listening to Filthy Underneath, she replies with a wry smile, “Sexy and very very horny,” echoing some of the humour that floats beneath the album’s hypnotic soundscape. “I think there was more of an element of playing on this album, as in like, allowing yourself to play like a child,” she continues, “just messing about and not concerning myself with the audience anymore. Not worrying about critics, not worrying what my friends and all the cool bands were gonna

think. I wrote it for myself, I didn’t write it for anybody else.”

Having now toured the album and played to audiences up and down the country, including as support for Young Fathers and Depeche Mode, Shah is able to reflect on how her relationship to those songs has evolved. “I am noticing in the audience, people are dancing, and there’s nothing weird about that – I’m also dancing. If I wasn’t in a good place, I wouldn’t be on a stage performing these songs. But there’s something really beautiful about being able to perform them live. And it’s the most fun I’ve ever had.”

SHOW Nadine Shah

VENUE: The Queen’s Hall

TIME: 8:30pm – 10:30pm, 22 Aug

Photo: Tim Topple

Cutting Edge

Wet Mess on bringing their messy, testo-fuelled show to Edinburgh as part of the Here & Now showcase

Words: Jack Howse

“I think about the stage as a place where we can dream, and dreaming as a process of becoming,” says Wet Mess talking from London, while adding the final touches to their Fringe show. “I think a lot of trans / queer people can relate to the feeling of needing to dream as means of escaping, reimagining, and desiring.”

This August, Mess will be dreaming onstage each night at ZOO as they present TESTO, a one-person show that melds their experience as a cabaret artist, drag performer, dancer and music video choreographer to explore testosterone, non-binary transition and the edges of drag. The show combines theirs and others’ personal histories of these topics; “I interviewed lots of people who have experience taking testosterone, their voices are warped and distorted and feature in the show which I lip sync to”, Mess tells me.

land, including works spanning experimental theatre, installation and dance. “It was curated via a nomination and selection process that is now a programme of exciting, intriguing and thought-provoking work created in England,” Mess explains.

One of the reasons that TESTO has morphed over time is because of how many of the topics it covers are actively weaponised. Earlier this year the Cass Review sought to further police queer and trans youth by, amongst other things, recommending that gender-affirming hormones are not prescribed to under-18s. This policy has been implemented by NHS Scotland to the outcry of many.

“What I want the audience to leave with is the thing I’ve tested and questioned the most”

Mess, an alum of Edinburgh College of Art, first performed at the Fringe in 2018 as part of ThisEgg, in the acclaimed dressed.. TESTO marks their first solo show here, which they have been devising, performing, and recalibrating over a period of several months. “I think when it’s your first full length solo show you learn about how you want to work and how you develop a work,” says Mess on the process of creating the show. “What I want the audience to leave with is the thing I’ve tested and questioned the most.”

TESTO’s latest iteration has been supported by Here & Now, a showcase at this year’s Fringe of live performance artists from across Eng-

“It’s quite wild to be making a show about something that feels so hotly debated. Like to be non-binary and considering hormones in this specific year is quite intense when it’s been so weaponised by the government,” says Mess. “It feels good to create a space where these conversations are opened up and made human again.”

The art of drag has also come under scrutiny in recents years, with some people thinking it has become less policitised in recent years with shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing drag to the mainstream. “On the one hand it’s amazing to have this art and queerness celebrated and seen on a big scale, and we are starting to see conversations around non-binary identities, and trans celebrities being birthed through it,” says Mess. “At the same time, it commercialises, depoliticises

this inherently punk art form as well as excluding cis women, ALL drag kings, and basically anyone that is out of the box of man dressing as a woman. It’s complex but I think both these things can exist at the same time.”

For Mess, being a drag artist has been a powerful outlet for them to express and explore their ideas of the world, especially the messy and in-between: “I think it is often looked down on as hammy or cheesy. Drag manages to comment on the huge structure and religion we live by – gender – and simultaneously make fun of itself.” In fact over time Mess has adopted their stage and drag name as their offstage name. “I think it’s quite a

beautiful and complicated cycle of finding and redefining yourself, using the freeing space on stage to discover oneself,” they tell me.

Aside from their nightly performance, Mess is keen to see a lot of queer shows (they recommend Temi Wilkey, Katie Greenall, Bi-curious George and Kathrine Payne’s shows) and hang out with friends. “But also take it slow and look after myself because the Fringe can really really eat you up.”

VENUE: Zoo Southside

TIME: 8:30pm – 9:30pm, 11–25 Aug, not 12, 19

Photo: El Hardwick

SHOW Testo – Here & Now Showcase

Children of the Revolution

The creatives behind three shows – Through the Mud, A Fire Ignites and Lessons on Revolution – discuss the hopefulness behind rebellion and activism

Words: Eilidh Akilade

Revolution is nothing new. And yet, it’s ever pressing – across time, at home and away. This year’s Fringe sees a number of plays look to the past to navigate the present, centring young activists and the political weight they carry.

After a much-acclaimed run at the end of 2023, Apphia Campbell’s Through The Mud returns to the Lyceum this August. Interweaving the stories of two Black women in America – Ambrosia, a student involved in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson in 2014, and Assata Shakur, the renowned 1970s Black Panther – Campbell explores revolutionary acts and their role in justice.

With Ambrosia’s character “embarking on this at such a pivotal time in her growth”, her revolution is played out via the lens of youth. “She’s going into college, she’s leading new people, she’s experiencing all of these things for the first time. And I think that mirrors my experience,” says Campbell.

Youth is similarly centre stage in A Fire Ignites. Written by Tara Tedjarati, the play explores the differing struggles faced by women in Iran, living with – and rebelling against –discrimination. “The critical factor is that the characters I created approach their oppression in widely different ways,” says Tedjarati. Revolution is not a singular act – and theatre such as this recognises that. Following 16 year old Parisa, who sets her hijab on fire in public, A Fire Ignites plays witness to how this political act impacts her personal relationships – primarily, those with her friend and her mother. As always, the personal is political. Friends,

flatmates, and co-writers, Gabriel Uboldi and Sam Rees were living “in a flat we could barely afford”, hoping for social and political change, when they came across the 1968 student occupation of the London School of Economics. From there, Lessons on Revolution was born: a piece of documentary theatre following the two friends as they explore this past and seek hope for their present. “[The student activists of 1968] dared to imagine a better

Photo: Jack Sain

Lessons on Revolution

"Our show holds space to think about a new future, a space where anything can happen, a space where the revolution might never come, or, perhaps, has already started"

Gabriel Uboldi and Sam Rees

future – they entered into an act of collective imagination. In this way, activism is not unlike what happens in a theatre.”

For Campbell, such unity spans across generations. “There’s nothing new under the sun. Everything’s been done before,” she says. “And so, the only thing we can do is look to that past [...] to understand where we are here and how we can do things differently or what things worked.” Previously a one-person show titled WOKE, Campbell played both roles. Now, with Tinashe Warikandwa as Ambrosia and Campbell as Assata, Through The Mud is a two-hander. The play’s very origins are rooted in a history shared; and, although separated by time, these characters’ revolutionary acts stem from a common ground. Naturally, music, too, becomes a revolutionary act imbued with history. For Assata, in the southern states, blues on guitar and bass; for Ambrosia, the spiritual storytelling of gospel, filled with hope and largely drawing on Campbell’s church community background.

Situating itself within a long and complex history, A Fire Ignites reminds audiences that revolutions reach and shape and expand across time. After the 1979 revolution, the hijab became a mandatory dress code for women. “The older generation decided that, and now the younger generation must live with [it] and many revolt against [it],” says Tedjarati. Much is

passed down through generations: revolution, as well as both freedom and oppression.

Flat, university, theatre – Uboldi and Rees accommodate revolution in multiple places, refusing to contain activism in any one location. “Our show holds space to think about a new future, a space where anything can happen, a space where the revolution might never come, or, perhaps, has already started,” the duo say. The radical possibilities are endless –for theatre, and beyond.

As Campbell says, “You can’t force an audience to react the way you want them to [...] I just want to leave them with a feeling, and that feeling is hope.” Through The Mud, Lessons On Revolution, and A Fire Ignites are acts of hope themselves: creating theatre, welcoming an audience, and hoping that these 50, 60, 70 minutes, or so, may leave them hopeful.

SHOW A Fire Ignites

VENUE: theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

TIME: 9:20am – 10:10am, 2–24 Aug, not 11, 18

SHOW Lessons on Revolution

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 2:15pm – 3:15pm, 1–26 Aug, not 12, 19

SHOW Through the Mud

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 5:55pm – 7:05pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19

Photo: Stuart Armitt

Through the Mud

@recirquel #recirquel

Cult Comedian

Spring Day talks about her experiences growing up in a cult for the first time

Words: Jay Richardson

Spring Day has a pretty dark sense of humour. Growing up in an abusive home in rural Missouri, she learnt to make “fertiliser out of shit”. And Spring Day is her real name, “a great stagename in theory but a nightmare algorithmically”. Her hippy father was only dissuaded in the hospital from calling her and Misty, her twin sister, Spring and Sprung.

And “I don’t like to lose” the London-based American comedian reflects. “If you ignore pain, the pain wins, so when something really fucked up happens, it’s a relief to talk to an audience about it. There’s also a communal release we can all acknowledge. The painful reality of life is that all security is an illusion and we just have to keep cracking on in spite of it.”

But nearly 23 years into performing standup, Day hasn’t previously spoken on stage about how, between the ages of 13 and 26, she was in an evangelical cult.

Appearing on Live At The Apollo last year raised her profile. And Exvangelical, Day’s first Fringe hour outside of the Free Festival, “is a show I’ve been hinting at for a long time.

“I didn’t think I could do it [in the UK] because I didn’t think anyone would understand. But then I started meeting other exvangelicals and realised there’s a community here too.”

Part of the New Apostolic Reformation, which advocates for spiritual warfare bestowing Christian dominion over all aspects of society, eroding America’s separation of church and state, she doesn’t name the high-control group she belonged to, giving it a close, “silly” pseudonym instead.

That’s because of their lawyers and so members of similar groups can’t disassociate

Photo: Matt

Crockett

“Dark comedy is all about creation and release of tension. And when you’ve got something incredibly dark, you’ve got all the tension in the world”

from her specific experiences. And because “every time they had some kind of scandal, be it financial or allegations of sexual abuse, they just change the name.

“My particular cult had a lot to do with [the] January 6 [attack on the Capitol Building in Washington]” she adds. “People that brought me into the church remain huge Trump supporters”.

As someone with cerebral palsy, it ultimately became apparent to Day that there “was no way for me to exist in such a system, let alone win.

“It was a hamster wheel of being told I wasn’t good enough. I was infantilised, treated as a second-class or even third-class human because I hadn’t healed myself. I wasn’t married, hadn’t given birth to the next generation of Christian soldiers. And I was just too tired to do it anymore.

“But it took years for me to leave. Especially if you’re young, they really implant ideas. They’re really, really hard to detach from and it’s something I’m still continually dealing with.”

She’s still deliberating about whether to share some experiences.

“Dark comedy is all about creation and release of tension. And when you’ve got something incredibly dark, you’ve got all the tension in the world,” she reasons. “Part of me wants to talk about it. Part of me wants to get it over with in a couple of lines because I don’t want to be doing an hour show about it in the future. I just want done with it.”

Nevertheless, she stresses that not only is she “safe, but thriving”. Having begun stand-up in Tokyo, the Japanese speaker is now on “OK” terms with her parents and has a burgeoning parallel career as a television writer. She also

Photo: Matt Crockett

writes with her husband, Jerk creator and stand-up Tim Renkow, who has more severe cerebral palsy but similarly identifies as American “redneck white trash”.

“I’m married to a great man and we just bought a new flat in London,” she reflects. “Life’s pretty fucking good. I’ve fallen into the role of being a trad wife because my husband’s more disabled than I am. Sometimes I get angry that I’ve been conditioned more than I would like. But everything is collaborative between us, which is rare for stand-ups. And I race him to the toilet every morning and win.”

As part of her “deprogramming” by psychologists, she’s examined the motives of those that recruited her to the cult, questioning “whether they were nefarious or malicious or power-hungry. And I don’t think they were. They genuinely believe it.”

She won’t be pressing anyone in a similar situation to escape. “Because if you tell someone to leave, they’ll dig their heels in, you’re confirming their sense of supremacy.

“But I know that people who have belonged to these groups have attended my shows. And I want them to know that, if and when the time comes for them to leave, they can and they won’t be alone. There are others just like them.”

SHOW Spring Day: Exvangelical

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 6:05pm – 7:05pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 13 Aug

The Besties

We’re delighted to announce the winners of the first two rounds of The Skinny-Fest Festival Awards (for Festivals) – or the Besties, for short

Our new awards – a collab between us, our siblings at The Skinny magazine, Capital Theatres, and Premier Scotland – are the only awards celebrating all of the Edinburgh Festivals. Winners are chosen each week by the editorial teams of The Skinny and Fest, drawing on their cross-festival expertise to celebrate the best work happening anywhere in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

WEEK

WINNERS

(Saturday 10 August)

The Outwith Award (for best international artist/production) for Lou Wall: The Bisexual’s Lament at Pleasance Courtyard (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Radgie of the Festivals (for boldest performance/behaviour) for Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

The Sexy Award for Sexiness (for most powerful depiction of eroticism) to Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s Penthesilea, Royal Lyceum Theatre (Edinburgh International Festival)

Night Owl Award (for a late night show) to John Norris for Mr Chonkers / Mr Chonkers Presents…Piggy Time at Monkey Barrel Comedy (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Best Kids Show for Garry Starr’s Monkeys Every-

where at The Pleasance (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

New Writing Award for The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return at Summerhall (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

WEEK 2 WINNERS (Saturday 17 August)

Check our socials (@festmag and @theskinnymag) for more detail on these awards’ categories!

Adania Shibli

(Edinburgh International Book Festival)

A Giant on the Bridge (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Mele Broomes

Piotr Sikora (for (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Wonder Fools (for (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Wet Mess (for (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

Yolanda Mercy (for (Edinburgh Festival Fringe)

The final week’s winners will be announced on Saturday 24 August socials (@festmag and @theskinnymag) to find out more!

Awards handmade by Camillo Feuchter from recycled plastic and salvaged wood

Photo: Eoin Carey

Comedy Reviews

Natalie Palamides: WEER HHHHH

VENUE: Traverse Theatre

TIME: 9:30pm – 10:45pm, 5–25 Aug, not 12, 19

Love, heartbreak and humour are the tropes you’ll find in any romantic dramedy worth its salt. So naturally, Natalie Palamides’ take on a 90s romdrom parodies all the clichés, conceits and hallmarks of the genre in the most insane way imaginable.

WEER follows destructive couple Mark and Christina –both played frenetically by Palamides, half a costume on each side – on an ill-fated night on NYE 1999. In flashbacks, we bear witness to the couple’s initial meeting in 1996, Palamides leading us through their many fights, complicated conversations and intimate moments, with the audience invited to awkwardly participate and interact in the love story of the millennium (we’re warned about the splash zone on entry).

As with the Best Newcomer Award-winning Laid and 2018’s Nate, WEER is a gloriously messy affair – water, flour,

paper, burst balloons, items of clothing and more turning the tidy Traverse stage into Mark and Christina’s battlefield. Palamides’ technical dexterity is impressive, as she switches seamlessly between the two characters, crudely playing out sex acts and other physical moments in totally daft and ridiculous ways.

Palamides is one of the very best in her field, continually pushing the boat out with her absurd and otherworldly take on clowning. But WEER encapsulates how she so deftly meshes together chaos and gross-out humour with unexpected yet welcomed hints of sentimentality along the way. ✏︎ Arusa Qureshi

Photo: Brendan O'Keefe

Ed Night: The Plunge

TIME: 7:35pm – 8:35pm, 29 Jul –25 Aug, not 14

“Five years…” growls a reflective Ed Night, midway through the comeback show he wasn’t sure he’d ever do. Where Elvis famously went all-leather for his comeback special, Night has gone for an orange Alca-

traz prison top, which – with that always-surprising voice – does lend an ominous air to the early stages.

But no, this hour is enormous fun, if hardly family viewing. The angry young man from 2019 is now a little older, wiser, but with a pleasingly surreal edge, mixing topical stuff with flights of fancy about air hockey day-jobs and XL Bully ants. Imagine if Noel Fielding taught comedy to troubled ex-cons: this could be his star pupil.

A lot has happened to Night personally too, and while sexuality and neurodiversity journeys are hardly rare this

year, he’s refreshingly frank, as ever – you will come away wondering which two TV comics went full homophobe, in response. There are health scares, and a more heartfelt section about loss, but all told with his caustic verve.

He’s had a few years, but the material here is exceptionally strong, and between routines there’s some novel crowd work too. Particularly good is his blink-and-miss-it Jedi mind trick, on the one guy not quite on board.

Five year breaks, then. It might just be the way forward.

Si Hawkins

VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive)

Photo: Rebecca Need-Menear

Kemah Bob: Miss Fortunate

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 7:05pm – 8:05pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

With a bold voice and peculiar joy, Kemah Bob takes to the stage for their debut show Miss Fortunate. Throughout, Bob unpacks their mental health amid discussions on family ties, urging us to question how we talk and what we talk about. Rooted in truth and refusing to manufacture shock, Bob offers an intimate portrait of themself, crafted with a generous warmth. Bob is truly a rising star who welcomes an experience shared, whatever that may be.

A markedly distinct work, Bob’s set is compelling whether discussing manic episodes or animal-genital-based fun facts. Callbacks are selective, surprising. Musical interludes are delightful, if a little incongruous. Crowdwork is charming, never nasty. Providing the core of the show, in brilliantly relentless detail, Bob recounts an ill-fated trip to Thailand (and its subsequent fallout); it’s exciting to have this depth, allowing the audience to relax into the story. Letting slip a genuine laugh at a number of their jokes, Bob is a delight to witness on stage.

Working towards notes on perseverance and forgiveness, Bob doesn’t give undeserved handouts. Rather, the audience is taken in tandem, allowing each rise and dip its moment. Utterly charismatic, we’re grateful for each open moment with Bob. ✏︎ Eilidh Akilade

Photo: Sarah Harry-Isaacs

Lauren Pattison: Big Girl Pants

VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy

TIME: 12:30pm – 1:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

Appreciating the pitfalls of steering Fringe comedy onto more serious subject matter, Lauren Pattison’s coming of age show is deftly and professionally crafted rather than staggeringly original. Yet the polish and superior storytelling don’t diminish the laughs and emotional import of the piece.

Having recently turned 30, the diffident Pattison is belatedly trying to quell her constant anxiety, adopting a more devil-may-care attitude and getting her first tattoo, while standing up for herself when she encounters a rowdy stag-do at another show. Her exemplar is her best friend, “Shirley”, a rock of steadiness and sound advice who finds the comic a patient driving instructor, one who’s necessarily been in far worse situations than behind the wheel with the nervy stand-up. Overhauling Pattison’s personality can’t be accomplished overnight however, and there are a few bumps in the road. Not least as the people-pleasing Geordie recalls an audience

member who accused her of flirting with her boyfriend, with the comic having to accept a degree of responsibility for the misunderstanding. Gradually though, cracks start to emerge in the edifice of Pattison’s support network

and she really needs to step up. The beats of the hour are predictable even if their exact nature is less so. But one can still really admire the assured, Big Girl skill with which Pattison ekes the humour out of her setbacks. ✏︎ Jay Richardson

Photo: Matt Crockett

Alex Hines: Putting on a Show

VENUE: Assembly Roxy

TIME: 9:45pm – 10:40pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 13, 19

There’s a lot of adjectives you could throw at Putting on a Show. Chaotic. Unhinged. Frantic. Surreal. Puerile. Melodramatic. You’d be in safe company: comedian Alex Hines has similarly thrown anything to hand at her high-production meat grinder of an Edinburgh hour. Rap. Power ballads. Horror. Mind-reading.

Two truths and a lie. Video. A fart joke. But this is much more than the sum of its lists. Firstly, here is that this show has real shape, from a faltering and wrong-footing bit of ‘stand-up’ at the start, through a fever-pitch denouement involving a murderous but basically misunderstood umbilical cord, to a showstopping number from a star of Hollywood’s golden years. Sure, the specifics of the story are mince, but this is much less a thought than a feeling. Second, elements of this are a technical marvel. There’s few performers who can deliver such a collage of tone and styles with such assuredness, and get in and out of each

bit so slickly. Some lovely moments combine a tolerance for chaos with a tightness and discipline that holds this together. “You don’t need to make it interesting. Everyone is watching me,” she says during some pacey audience interaction. This is a high tech show but we’re never left with the sense that Hines is held up by production. On one occasion tonight her tech fails, but she sails through. There isn’t a non glib answer as to what this all means. There’s something about the frenetic vacuity of internet culture, and at times one wonders whether Putting on a Show simply regurgitates this. But at least one wonders. ✏︎ Evan Beswick

Image: courtesy of Junkyard Artists

ANDY JORDAN PRODUCTIONS

Caitriona Dowden is Holier Than Thou

VENUE: PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth

TIME: 12:50pm – 1:50pm, 3–25 Aug

“Any Monk of Byland fans in?” asks Caitriona Dowden in the middle of a blissfully esoteric hour that introduces her as a special talent.

Deadpan and understated, she sets out to explain why she should be made a saint, in the process using her academic chops (she did a degree in religion, and is now doing a PhD in medieval history) to form some irresistible arguments.

Along the way we pick up entertaining details about saints (Christina the Astonishing really revolutionised the lactation game, for instance), find out why nuns have gone downhill since the Middle Ages, and hear why there’s nothing more atheist than a Catholic.

Dowden was a high achiever at school (the first time she went up a bra size was the only time she ever got a B), and jokes about having had Radio 4-themed birthday parties. As it happens, this show would go down a treat on that station.

There’s something funny and clever in every sentence, and the whole thing is structured as if it were written by someone with 20 years’ experience in stand-up. Caitriona Dowden might not achieve sainthood, but she deserves to be big. Remember her name. ✏︎ Ashley Davies

Photo: Jamie Mykaela

Raul Kohli: Raul Britannia

VENUE: Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire

TIME: 6:30pm – 7:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12

Raul Kohli brings multiculturalism to life in a topical hour of light-hearted fun. Starting with a bus journey that changed the trajectory of his life, Raul Britannia explores the es-

sence of football, acceptance and belonging.

Talking about serious issues with humour is pretty standard albeit difficult, but Kohli does a good job at weaving articulate points about race and clashing cultures into his comedy act. Sticking to facts and lived experiences makes it hard for anyone to argue with him although – he knows that some people will. He points to examples of being treated differently because of his ethnicity, but even more so to the lasting impact of the kindness showed by those who didn’t.

Some of the comedy is low-hanging fruit, including

predictable jokes about colonialism, while other jokes are proper funny. But Kohli’s real skill is humanising the Other, even Shamima Begum, in a non-judgemental, thought-provoking way.

His aim is to bridge divides and start conversations, which feels particularly relevant in the light of recent events and judging by the chatter outside the venue he succeeds. When a young, white lad from the audience is asked by a passer-by what the show is like he succinctly concludes that it’s “fuckin’ class”. ✏︎ Veronica Finlay

Photo: Jiksaw

Tom Lawrinson: Buried Alive and Loving It HHHHH

VENUE: Underbelly, Cowgate

TIME: 9:05pm – 10:05pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12

Tom Lawrinson’s name is often preceded by ‘TikTok star’ or ‘social media comedian’, monikers not inaccurate when you consider the 130 million views and 300,000 followers he has earned for his self-described “wacky” sketches. But in Buried Alive and Loving It, Lawrinson

proves his comedic chops are as well-developed off-screen as they are on.

Structured largely around his relationship with his parents and the portion of his childhood spent living in an underground bedroom in Spain, this is a solid hour of stand-up where the laughs keep coming, sometimes from unexpected places. Relatable observations about retail price match promises and boomer dad behaviour are weaved effectively with less well-trodden ground and punchlines that come from left-field or are taken further than expected, all to great comedic effect.

Lawrinson is affable and engaging company, sustaining a genial everyman persona even when the material ventures into the lewd and the quirky. For someone who has made his name in edited shorts, he thrives in the unscripted, bantering ably with the crowd and raising laughs for his responses to moments as mundane as taking a sip of water or the sound of a door closing elsewhere in the venue. An easy stage presence and a natural comic, Lawrinson can surely be considered as accomplished a stand-up as he is a TikTok comedian. ✏︎ Eve Livingston

Photo: Drew Forsyth

We Forgive You, Patina Pataznik

VENUE: Gilded Balloon Patter House

TIME: 6:20pm – 7:20pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 19

Jake and Olivia grapple with every millennial’s social nightmare: the school reunion. Stuck at their reunion, they realise they’re just as disliked as they were in 2013. However, they are offered the chance to do something about it and travel back in time to stop the embarrassing event that changed the course of both their lives.

We Forgive You, Patina Pataznik is a time-travel, high school, horror two-hander. Olivia (McLeod, highly-strung and perky) and Jake (Glanc, bimbo, sweet) have a BFF energy that steers the show through its meandering plot. Since it is essentially a series of sketches strung together, WFYPP has free rein to nip in and out of different genres: Thelma and Louise-esque roadtrip flick; anti-abuse advert; and imagined biography. This lends the show its absurdist air, as does

the B-movie-inspired sound and light design, deliberately OTT performances, continual fourth-wall breaking, and meta upon meta self-references.

The show’s disconnected nature means that the plot is hanging on by a thread,

but McLeod and Glanc are engaging enough that it doesn’t really matter as long as they’re on stage – it’s hard to drag your eyes from either of them. WFYPP is campy, it’s kitsch, and it’s a lot of fun. ✏︎ Kirstyn Smith

Photo: Jack Dixon-Gunn

Theatre Reviews

The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 7:40pm – 8:45pm, 1–26 Aug, not 12, 19,

Two boys run on stage, (fake) Ralph Lauren to the waist, Topman to the ankles, Nikes beneath. It’s noughties Luton and the town is underpinned by a collapsing housing market and the rumblings of the EDL and gang violence; but for Lewis

and our unnamed protagonist, life is all corner shops filled with vodka and house parties filled with pretty girls. Set during one momentous night, The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return unfolds like an urban epic: its small cast of characters freewheeling through streets and council estates, the fizzing freedom of youth caught against the suffocating constraints of British austerity.

There is a weightiness to this political context, yet the sincerity with which the play treats its characters is far from trauma porn; rather, a delirious joy winds throughout. The staging is neat and dynamic, with doors on the

minimal set opening like popup books – a cleverness that is matched in its script, which bounces with rhythm and humour. Its three-person cast, meanwhile, switch seamlessly between the people that make up this community, accents and physicality slipped on and off like costumes. It all feels irresistible: the energy of its characters, the tenderness between them, the intoxicating snapshot of a place experiencing simultaneous neglect and care. “This was voted the worst town to live by people who don’t even live here,” our narrator says. There’s something so moving in this long overdue reclamation. ✏︎ Anahit Behrooz

Photo: Harry Elletson

The Outrun

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VENUE: Church Hill Theatre TIME: times vary, 31 Jul – 24 Aug, not 4, 11, 18

The year of The Outrun at the Edinburgh Festival begins. With the Film Festival hosting the UK premiere of the screen version and a Book Festival event happening later this month, playwright Stef Smith’s adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir has premiered, in a production for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Royal Lyceum Theatre.

Smith and Liptrot’s styles are well matched, in that Smith delivers a sparse, contemplative take on the book, which is about Liptrot’s journey from an Orkney childhood to a life in London (via university in Edinburgh) in which she makes it her mission to experience ‘everything’, before journeying home to the most solitary corner of Orkney to recover from the fierce, self-destructive alcoholism her youth has brought her.

Isis Hainsworth is very convincing in the lead role, bringing an appropriate blend of wonder and desperation. The character is credited just as ‘Woman’, although the events and tone of the text are faithful to Liptrot’s interiorised original, achieved through interactions with others including her bipolar farmer father (Paul Brennen) and her concerned boyfriend (Seamus Dillane). Unexpectedly, rehab is where the few dark laughs are, courtesy of Alison Fitzjohn’s fellow attendee.

Milla Clarke and Lizzie Powell’s set and lighting designs switch from the streets of London clubland to a cabin under the Northern Lights, Luke Sutherland’s contemporary electronic score is bolstered by a vocal chorus

and Vicky Featherstone’s assured direction of all these elements remains a marker of real quality. It’s a powerful piece of work which deserves a far longer life than just this run.

✏︎ David Pollock

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

DRUM HHHHH

VENUE: Underbelly

TIME: Cowgate, 2:10pm –3:10pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

There’s a series of black and white photos in the Tate Britain’s collection, showing when the BBC’s first black broadcaster, Mike Eghan, was photographed by fellow Ghanaian, James Barnor. The 1967 photoshoot, starting in the BBC radio studios and

ending up in Piccadilly Circus, is the focus of Jacob Roberts-Mensah’s excellent play.

Bursts of gorgeous Highlife music come often; the upbeat, optimistic sound of a newly independent Ghana, free from British rule since 1957.

But while Eghan (played by a self-possessed King Boateng) loves the trappings of London life in the swinging sixties – the fur coat, Rolls Royce and tea with biscuits – Barnor (played by the magnetic Joshua Roberts-Mensah) remains a fan of palm nut soup and kenkey dumplings. They spar over

Ghanaian politics, dance until they are out of breath, reminisce about the old country. It’s a friendship with friction and a crash course in Ghanaian politics, dialect and culture.

‘Dada ba’, daddy’s boy/ privileged child Eghan hasn’t experienced any of Britain’s racism first hand and stays apolitical, wanting a quiet life. The two-hander is a fantastic study of identity – Barnor quotes a Walter Scott poem about Scottish patriotism at one point – but also the push and pull between tradition and expansion. ✏︎ Claire Sawers

Image: courtesy of Multitude Media

HHHHH

VENUE: Roundabout @ Summerhall

TIME: 8:10pm – 9:20pm, 1–26

Aug, not 6, 13, 20

Square Go, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s hilarious study of male adolescent anxiety from 2018, introduced us to Max and Stevie, sensitive lads low on the pecking order of their rough-and-tumble school, Hammerston High. Back then, they were cowering in the boys’ toilet ahead of Max’s showdown with a terrifying bully. In this winning sequel, it’s not violence Max fears but intimacy: he’s heading to Hammerston’s end-of-year disco where he has to find a girl to kiss, or forever be labelled a VL.

Those unfamiliar with Scottish high-school vernacular are quickly educated: VL means “virgin lips”, and so much more. Hurley and McNair depict high school as a cruel ecosystem filled with illogical codes and hierarchies, which become even more complex when you factor in the hormone-induced “pingers” that threaten to humiliate the lads at any given moment.

Decked out in garish neon trackies, Scott Fletcher and Gavin Jon Wright reprise their roles as the best pals, with Wright particularly entertaining as Stevie, who still likes to deploy ten-dollar words like “cantankerous” and “transcendental” despite having no clue what they mean. Their crackerjack performances,

and the zippy direction by Orla O’Loughlin, give VL a similar boisterous energy to Square Go, but its edges are even more tender. There’s also a hint of homoeroticism among the machismo this time

around, confused further by Wright also playing the cool girl of Max’s dreams. If Hurley and McNair continue to return to these delightful characters in years to come, it would be most welcome. ✏︎ Jamie Dunn

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

august 2 – 26 – 2024 edinburgh festival fringe danishedfringe DANISHedfringe

danishedfringe.com

A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God...

VENUE: theSpace @ Niddry St TIME: times vary, 2–24 Aug, not 11

For a duo working between clown, physical theatre and absurdist storytelling, Xhloe and Natasha capture a rare blend of accessibility and experimentation. For A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, they inhabit a metaphysical space

that matches childish imagination and warfare: two young men, Ace and Grasshopper, flicker between memories of childhood, scouting and patriotic fervour, before landing in manhood and the horrors of the Vietnam war. Their storytelling is as limpid and light as their choreography: anecdotes begin, then blur, sentimentality is juxtaposed against an intrusive violence. A scout camp game becomes a search and destroy patrol; childish rituals speak to a sinister patriotism and the sudden disappearance of certainty. As Ace and Grasshopper recount apparently random anecdotes, the

inevitable encroachment of death crushes their optimism and self-belief. Letter is a buoyant and melancholic reflection on how masculinity is shaped and, in its shaping, becomes destructive. However, aside from the sudden intensity of the final scene, Letter is never less than joyous. The artists rejoice in their physical skills, in their florid speeches and telling gestures. Instrumentals from the Beatles both contextualise the narrative and add a sparkling dynamism to the antics. Compassionate but fierce, emotional yet playful, Letter showcases the potential of serious clowning. ✏︎ Gareth K. Vile

Photo: Morgan McDowell

Good Luck, Cathrine Frost!

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VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 3:00pm – 4:20pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19

The show starts the moment the audience walks in the auditorium, greeted by the Norwegian actor Cathrine Frost who grips your hand and asks your name before sitting down. She then tells us how she works as a nurse and that there is a certain way medical professionals shake hands to encourage comfort and understand health. It is a great way to start a show that

examines women’s health as guided by Frost’s warm and charming hand.

2024 marks the English language debut of this show which has been a hit in Norway, winning a prestigious Hedda award. Frost was inspired to make this show after a traumatic birth, and the obstacles that she faced while trying to get pregnant. You can tell Frost is a seasoned performer, she is engaging and explains with candour and ease things like abortion law in her home country, capturing both the human feeling and unspoken facts and history of procedures like this. A particular highlight is when she explains Socrates’ teachings (or lack thereof) on conception through the ancient Greek combat sport of pankration.

Frost’s writing is lean and not patronising to her audience, she captures the swirling paradoxes and unspoken loneliness around reproductive health. The show’s sequence on the subject of miscarriage is certainly the show’s most gut-wrenching and again melds the raw feeling and unspoken truths of this.

The show I attended was cut five minutes short because of the blackout that affected many of the major Fringe venues on Friday afternoon. It was such a shame because the show was reaching a beautiful and communal climax. The show continued – until we were kicked out – by audience torch light and was a testament to the way Frost had been treating the audience like her peers throughout the show. ✏︎ Jack Howse

Photo:

Lucas

Ibanez-Fæhn

In Two Minds HHHHH

VENUE: Traverse Theatre

TIME: times vary, 1–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19

Written by Joanne Ryan, In Two

Minds is an honest portrayal of the challenges of living with poor mental health, specifically bipolar disorder. While heart-wrenching at times, it’s a soothing, contemplative and humorous account of unconditional love.

The play invites the audience into a home shared by a mother and daughter, hinting at something not being quite right before the state of their reality slowly emerges. On good days, there are glimpses of the relationship they could have had, full of laughter and love. In contrast, sleepless nights, hospital visits and words that can’t be taken back leave scars they never talk about.

It’s a superbly nuanced performance by Pom Boyd as the adorably charming yet infuriating mother, matched by Karen McCartney as her patient daughter, desperately trying to balance her work and relationship with looking after a parent. Beautifully directed by Sara Jane Scaife, they move around the stage quietly and gently, manifesting the delicate nature of their relationship.

There’s no obvious solution to their problems, and In Two Minds doesn’t profess to have all the answers, while suggesting that starting a conversation could be the beginning of healing. It’s a

non-judgmental, sensitive and authentic depiction of a complex relationship, exploring the questions we all have about ageing, mental health and life choices. ✏︎ Veronica Finlay

Image courtesy of Traverse Theatre

Dance, Physical Theatre & Circus Reviews

Ghost Light: Between Fall and Flight

VENUE: Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows

TIME: 4:10pm – 5:10pm, 3–24 Aug, not 12, 19

Superstition has it that ghost lights – the single bulb left to illuminate a theatre after it closes for the night – also light the way for any drifting spirits to give their own,

shadowy performances. This extraordinary performance from Quebec City circus company Machine de Cirque is too poetic to explicitly tell that story, and instead uses it to throw an eerie veil over the superhuman feats of acrobatic duo Maxim Laurin and Guillaume Larouche.

Using only the teeterboard (aka an acrobatic seesaw), Ghost Light is a hymn to partnership. Laurin and Larouche push and pull, give and take, propelling each other skyward. Their bodies seem to linger in the air, uncannily still. But for one to

go up, the other must come down, and this show is more about falling than flying. The first time Larouche crashes onto the mat, he lies like the chalk outline of a tragedy… before leaping back to his feet. The duo turns these falls into an expertly clowned slapstick routine, until that eerie, disquieting feeling drifts back in. Both performance art and splashy Big Top routine, this ambitious show combines heart-in-mouth tricks with a quietly heartbreaking narrative about risking everything for the thrill of applause.

✏︎ Katie Hawthorne

Photo: Emmanual Burriel

Ten Thousand Hours

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VENUE: Assembly Hall

TIME: 11:40am – 12:40pm, 1–24 Aug, not 12, 19

Gravity & Other Myths are a company who keep the focus tight on their acrobatic excellence, seasoning Ten Thousand Hours with just enough thematic and dramatic spice to weave their routines into a cohesive whole. Based

around the amount of time that enables mastery (in any art), their percussion-driven episodes deconstruct the acrobatic routines, emphasising the processes, and the risks, that are hidden by their slick physical prowess.

Most refreshingly, the ensemble eschews gimmicks and clumsy plots for a series of displays that variously expose the workings behind the balances and bundles, occasionally exploding into intense choreographic sequences that suggest the levels of trust and confidence that the performers have in

themselves and each other. When an audience member is invited on stage, it is no cheap trick for applause: they are invited to draw stick figures which the ensemble converts into living tableaux. It is a testimony to their quick wit and imagination, as if an earlier interlude in which a single acrobat slowly converts his warm up in something more impressive and humorous.

Unfussy, direct and perfectly paced, Ten Thousand Hours is a family show that never panders to the childish but awakens a sense of childlike awe.

Gareth K. Vile

Photo: Simon

McClure

The Mead Notebook

by Jane Gire

11:30 @ the Fancy Room

August 16th - August 25th

“No mother, I really didn’t want you to read my journal.”

- The San Francisco Marsh“Jane spins a sexy, sad tale that really shouldn’t be this funny.”

Cabaret Reviews

Swamplesque HHHHH

VENUE: Assembly Hall

TIME: 10:20pm – 11:20pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

With posters plastered around the city – the iconic green all too recognisable –Swamplesque has become something of a punchline. And yet, with an undeniable artistry, the Shrek parody burlesque proves itself far from the butt of the joke. As silly as

it is sexy, Swamplesque sees familiar characters take to the stage like never before, for a brilliantly surreal hour of fun. Claiming the stage as their own, the performers spin and kick with an awe-worthy precision. Their energy is utterly infectious. With a simple, empty stage, Swamplesque lets the performance take the reins. The show doesn’t attempt to cover the film’s entirety in just an hour; rather, it celebrates and revels in segments rich with possibility. Something of an intertextual triumph, each song is carefully

interwoven into the story with opening bars bringing cheers and knowing laughs. Although primarily lip-synced, there’s some stellar vocals thrown in for good measure.

The costumes are perhaps the show’s shining star: lush red velvet, mirror plates, green sequins upon green lace. Of course, such items are soon stripped away, each performer teasing the audience with delight. In this, pleasure finds itself under the spotlight - and rightly so. Whether a Shrek fan or otherwise, Swamplesque is a must-see. ✏︎ Eilidh Akilade

Photo: Brig Bee

Villains: A Dizney in Drag Parody

VENUE: Assembly George Square TIME: 10:35pm – 11:35pm, various dates between 2 Aug and 24 Aug

A Hairy Godmother and Cruella De Vil in six-inch stilettos star in this twin production to sister show Dizney in Drag. The stage

hosts all manner of miscreants from Captain Hook to a womanising Prince Charming.

Under the guise of a young girl wanting to become a villain, Disney’s best (or worst) loved characters grace the stage to show her how it is done. The plot, however, is as loose as the Hairy Godmother’s 4ft wig as the audience delight in well known songs of evil.

A little bit rough around the edges, it is not the well-polished performance of its predecessor, but this was of no matter to an adoring audience, more than ready to

laugh at whatever they were presented with. The hopeful villain at the centre of the ‘story’ was slightly jarring against the seductive tones of the other characters, but the unpredictable audience participation soon made up for any initial awkwardness.

There’s witty and vulgar performances and, for those sitting in the front row, a risk of participating in a belly dancing routine. This parody is a delight for any drag fan, boasting impressive songs specialising in the crude and wicked.

Jemima Hawkins

Photo: AK Kelly

Music Reviews

Who Do Ya Love?

VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 4:50pm – 5:50pm, 31 Jul –25 Aug, not 12, 19

If adapting author JF Lawton had any doubts about stringing a jukebox musical featuring the songs of KC and the Sunshine Band together, the resulting show makes a virtue of them. In a meta nod to more contemporary, postmodern styles of musical theatre, the band’s founder, songwriter and lead

vocalist Harry Wayne Casey (Fionán O’Carroll) and Dee (Paige Fenlon), his childhood friend from Florida, take themselves out of the action to discuss what his life’s story actually is. It turns out being one of the biggest and most enduringly successful recording artists of the 1970s (and “inventing disco”, a contentious but not unreasonable claim in the script) isn’t the main story which Lawton takes from those days. Instead we stay in Casey’s youth, exploring ambition, sexuality and grief through his carefree pre-fame days with friends Casey, Dee, the conflicted Gina (Annabelle

Terry) and handsome Orly (Peter Camilleri).

KC and the Sunshine Band’s songs are perfect for director and choreographer Lisa Stevens’ brisk, lively trip down memory lane, with a young, West End-experienced cast of eight delivering compelling routines to the upbeat disco funk of ‘Boogie Shoes’, ‘Get Down Tonight’ and an irresistible mid-show megamix, and the tender nostalgia of ‘Rock Your Baby, Please Don’t Go’ and the title song. It feels like a compact try-out of a musical which is bound for the West End before long. ✏︎ David Pollock

Photo: Alex Brenner

Oedipus Rex

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VENUE: National Museum of Scotland

TIME: 8:00pm – 9:00pm, 12, 18, 19 Aug

Despite a libretto by arch-surrealist Jean Cocteau, Stravinsky’s oratorio is a direct and taut retelling of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos, lent a magisterial weight by its use of Latin and leaning into the bleak fatalism that is at the heart of the tragedy. With excellent performances from the soloists, it is the massed choruses that give Scottish Opera’s production a sense of grandeur, with the National Museum of Scotland not necessarily adding to the auditory and visual experience.

As a site-specific staging, Oedipus Rex is not overwhelming: the venue itself does not have particularly strong acoustics and the arrangement of the standing audience makes it challenging to follow the dramatic movement. Yet the subtle choreography of the chorus enhances the power of the libretto, adding meaning and transforming the score into a ritualistic re-encampment of the Theban king’s downfall. Stravinsky’s score is, by turns, urgent and effusive, capturing the threatening subtext of a city that is struggling in the face of divine sanction. Raw and

abrasive, Stravinsky shifts moods, from celebrations of Oedipus’ brilliance to anxiety at his fate. While the innovative setting adds little, the production transcends through the performance and the composition, celebrating the timelessness of the myth itself. ✏︎ Gareth K. Vile

Photo: Jess Shurte

Kids Critics Taiwan Season: Little Drops of Rain

Alvie, aged three, laughs his head off at the puppets in this beautiful family show

What happens in the show?

It’s a really sweet, lo-fi family show with puppets. Live foley artists onstage use everyday objects (electric toothbrush, whisky bottle, lollipop etc) to soundtrack the story of Hope and her friend the raindrop as they go underwater.

What did you like most about the show?

I laughed off my head [sic] at the puppets. Mummy thought

one was a jellyfish and Chloe thought it was an octopus but it was an umbrella. The cloud with two eyes came and sat beside me. I saw the lady crunching the sand.

Was there anything you didn’t like?

No.

What did your grown-up think about the show?

It’s really original and beautiful. I took Alvie’s cousin (aged five) too and they both asked lots of questions after the show (and many during!). Like, ‘why did the puppet have a head and wellies and no

body?’ There was no dialogue, just sound effects and these kind of gentle gibberish voices, so watching it really worked their imaginations. They love Ponyo and My Neighbour Totoro and the music reminded us of that.

Would you tell your friends to go to the show?

Definitely.

SHOW Taiwan Season: Little Drops of Rain

VENUE: Assembly George Square

TIME: 11:50am – 12:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19

Photo: 58KG

Blue Badge Bunch

Lyra, eight, enjoys the kids beating the adults in this fun game show

What happens in the show?

It was like a quiz show, with a few different activities all about different disabilities. We had buzzers! The games were kids v adults. There was a scoreboard. The children were obviously better and won in the end.

What did you like most about the show?

The last game. It was to guess different symbols and what they meant.

Was there anything you didn’t like?

I think it was all pretty good actually.

What did your grown-up think about the show?

A fun way to spend an afternoon and I actually learnt something, as well, which isn’t always expected of a Fringe show! I was humbled a few times…

Would you tell your friends to go to the show? Yup, it was fun.

SHOW Blue Badge Bunch

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 2:25pm – 3:25pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 12, 19

Photo: Liam Keown

Monkeys Everywhere

Edie, six, has a gloriously gross time at Garry Starr’s show for both adults and children

What happens in the show?

There’s a man with a monkey. The man is trying to write the end of his show, but keeps getting distracted, mostly by the monkey and the telephone ringing. It was the Government [Prime Minister of Theatre]. The monkey also kept getting bigger and bigger and it ended up being a big monkey bin that the man tried to throw everything into and there was lots of poo. Which the man pretended to eat, which was gross, except I don’t think it was actually poo. He also did lots of jumping and threw balls at us.

What did you like most about the show?

The calls from the Prime Minister of Theatre!

Was there anything you didn’t like?

When the monkey was a big bin and a bit eurgh…

What did your grown-up think about the show?

It was a funny and engaging start to our Fringe experience this year. There were lots of laughs for everyone – kids and adults alike. Just the right side of quirky humour. Good level of audience participation as

well – couldn’t let anyone get too comfortable!

Would you tell your friends to go to the show? Yes!

SHOW Monkeys Everywhere VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard TIME: 11:30am – 12:30pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

Photo: Charles Flint

09:30

A Political Breakfast

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Burrito ‘n’ Shake, 21–25 Aug

09:40

This Show Contains No Maths, and Other Lies theSpaceTriplex, 21–23 Aug

09:45

Editburgh: The Factually Inaccurate Historical

Walking Tour

Meeting Point @ Ibis Hotel, 23–25 Aug

10:00

Helen Prior – The Pussy from the USSR

Laughing Horse @ City Cafe, 21–25 Aug

10:15

Wiki Knows Best – Micro Islands

Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, 21–25 Aug Vegan Hunter

Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters, 21–25 Aug

Editburgh: The Factually Inaccurate Historical

Walking Tour

Meeting Point @ Ibis Hotel, 21 Aug, 22 Aug, 26 Aug, 27 Aug