Fest Preview 2024

HAPPY NEW WEER

Inside: Kanan Gill Dylan Mulvaney Amy Liptrot Sh!t Theatre Olga Koch Lung Ha

Virginia Gay Wes Peden Adam Riches

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A Theatre Show by Ivo Graham

‘Questions about why Graham is so drawn to the past remain unanswered' iNewspaper

Director

George Sully

Editor Arusa Qureshi

Sales Team

Gabrielle Loue

David Hammond

Emilie Roberts

Ema Smekalova

Writing Team

Deputy Editor Ben Venables

Design Team

Phoebe Willison

Dalila D’Amico

Craig Angus, Ashley Davies, Fringe Dog, Veronica Finlay, Hamish Gibson, Katie Goh, Si Hawkins, Katie Hawthorne, Eve Livingston, Tamara Mathias, Xuanlin Tham, Jay Richardson, Claire Sawers, Gareth K. Vile, Zoë White

Cover Image

Brendan O’Keefe

Radge Media

Editor-in-Chief

Rosamund West

Commercial Director

Sandy Park

Fringe Dog Illustration

Lauren Hunter

General Manager

Laurie Presswood

Deputy Editor

Peter Simpson

Digital Editorial Assistant

Ellie Robertson

Fest Street Dates 2024 7, 14, 21 August

Advertising 0131 467 4630 sales@festmag.com

Published by Radge Media C.I.C, M9 Codebase, Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH3 9DR. Every effort has been made to check the accuracy of the information in this magazine, but we cannot accept liability for information which is inaccurate. Show times and prices are subject to changes – always check with the venue. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher. Printed by Think Solutions, Glasgow

Everything Theatre

Broadway World

8 Double Date

Natalie Palamides chats clowning, taking risks and barnacles

Comedy

41 Check Your Privilege

Olga Koch has money on her mind

12 Ebb and Flow

Amy Liptrot and Stef Smith on adapting The Outrun

EIF

96 Sobering Up

David Ireland talks about his grimly comic play

Theatre

70 Agents of Change

The creatives behind Stuffed and Tending on food banks and the NHS under pressure

Cabaret and Variety

103 Salt & Sauce

Salty Brine and Skank Sinatra on soundtracking the self

Music

106 Come Together

The Other arrives at Scottish Storytelling Centre

Kids

114 The Winner Takes It All

The comics behind Blue

Badge Bunch and The Kids

Always Win discuss competitive children

Untracht

Dance & Circus

111 Catching a Ride

Wes Peden on Gandini juggling

116 Venue Map & City Guide

Find your whereabouts and enjoy our performers’ guide to Edinburgh, from The Cat Prince to spooky local haunts

Image credits (top to bottom, left to right): Brendan O'Keefe; Laurence Winram; Rachel Sherlock; Jack Ehlen; Charlie Grey; Jesse

Oakner; Antony Revelo; Florence Schroeder; Liam Keown; Fest Magazine

Editorial

Arusa Qureshi

There’s a lot to be learned from the clowns. It’s not all slapstick silliness, casual nudity and nonsensical chaos – there’s a strong element of play that permeates everything they do. It’s about taking the unserious as seriously as possible and embracing a childlike spirit, especially in the context of the raging bin fire that blazes around us.

So what can we learn from the clowns? I’ve followed our cover star Natalie Palamides since 2017, when I was introduced to her absurd yet beautiful style via her award-winning Fringe debut LAID. Yes, it was technically a show about eggs, but there was so much more lying beneath its messy surface. In the years since, I’ve had my mind blown by Natalie multiple times – in person, online and as part of wider ensembles. And the thing that has always stood out for me is her willingness to try, fail, experiment and then try again.

In this preview issue, you’ll find numerous clowns – Paulina Lenoir, Piotr Sikora, Lil Wenker, Dan Lees and of course, Natalie – all of whom approach clowning in different ways, but always

with immense heart and a sense of wonder that is sincere, even when they’re utterly taking the piss.

Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll come across conversations with Olga Koch, Sh!t Theatre, Virginia Gay, Dylan Mulvaney and more, who reflect on topics like privilege, grief, identity and faith, again with real sincerity across the board. We celebrate Lung Ha’s four decades in the game; take a look at opera staged in the National Museum; explore The Outrun’s presence across festivals; and allow the Cat Prince to lead us through the city.

Working on Fest this year hasn’t been easy – not because of the work itself or the wonderful people I get to spend my time with. But because it genuinely feels like this thing we all do called ‘the arts’ is crumbling around us. But we’re heading into a period of change, politically and socially, and part of me is hopeful that this year’s Festivals might help us reignite some of that clownish wonder we all so desperately need. In the words of Lil Wenker, “On good days it’s a community, on bad days it’s a cult! But it’s so wonderful.”

Meet the Team

We asked: where were you on New Year’s Eve 1999?

Phoebe Willison Lead Designer

“I was working on my fitness to my mum’s 90’s Callisthenics VCR (I don’t know why either).”

Ema Smekalova

Media Sales Executive

“I was in a womb.”

Peter Simpson Deputy Editor

“On NYE ‘99 I was presumably in the house, haunted by memories of this enormous bear... or trying to get a shot on the Mega Drive.”

George Sully Director

“For NYE ‘99, I was in Wales, and decided to commemorate the millennium by doing the splits at midnight. For some reason.”

Dalila D’Amico Designer

"Running around causing trouble with the other kids."

Gabrielle Loue

Media Sales Executive

“No idea, ask my mom because I was not alive yet!”

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief

Arusa

Qureshi Editor

“Rollin’ down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice.”

Ellie Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant

“I slept right through NYE 1999, probably because I was so tired from living my first full year on Earth (it hasn’t gotten easier!)”

Emilie Roberts

Media Sales Executive

“New Year ‘99 I was probably doing what I do every New Years: avoiding it.”

Ben

Venables Deputy Editor

“I’d moved to London and, missing my cat Ringo, I had to find a new best friend.”

Sandy Park Commercial Director

“I was in Dumfries, and judging by the photo, was clearly feeling very smug about life at that point. How things change.”

Laurie Presswood General Manager & Accounts

“I once had a primary school project which asked this very question. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.”

“I spent NYE ‘99 in George Square Glasgow. As we were waiting for the end of the world, we had a competition to see who could snog the most randos (of course the word rando was yet to be invented). It was very chic.”

Double Date

Returning to the Fringe with an equal parts outrageous and tender 90s rom-drom, former Best Newcomer Natalie Palamides talks to Veronica Finlay about clowning, taking risks and cutting the barnacles

Six years after her last solo show, Natalie Palamides is back at the Fringe with a 75-minute version of WEER, performing at the Traverse Theatre for the first time. “I wanted a venue that is known for doing more theatrical pieces,” she says. “I like the conceit of that. That the show is maybe a little bit of a dramatic piece. But it’s really not.”

Described as a tragic love story between two star-crossed lovers, WEER takes place on New Year’s Eve 1999, with Palamides using a lot of tropes from rom coms and rom dramas of the 90s. “I think it’s fun to subvert those tropes that you see time and time again,” she says. “It’s fun to utilise that as a device, because when you give people something familiar, it’s very easy to take them to a new place.”

The idea of exploring a toxic relationship came from bingeing romantic content on screen. “It’s embarrassing,” she admits, “but I pretty much exclusively watch romance; either romantic dramas, romantic comedies or romantic reality competition shows. Probably because it’s severely lacking in my own life, so it’s like I can get a taste of it through these other people’s experiences. It’s just such an interesting part of the human experience to witness people falling in and out of love.”

As with her previous live shows, the creative process started with a 10-minute set that she’s worked into an hour through improvisation, without writing anything down. Many of her clown friends, like Courtney Pauroso and Bill O’Neill, operate from this place, which makes it easy to collaborate. “I don’t think any of us have scripts for our shows,” she says.

“It sounds so wanky to say but it’s like playing jazz. How do jazz musicians play with one another when they don’t know what’s gonna happen? Or any improvisers, really?”

When she develops a show, her aim is to make people laugh and take them on an emotional journey rather than convey a message. “Something that is fun for me is to shock people,” she says. “I like to confront people with expressions of vulnerability that they’re not used to. And I love to pull the rug out from underneath people... I’m exploring all these different points of view and the truth is what that audience member takes away from it so it can have many different messages, depending on who is receiving it.”

“It’s just such an interesting part of the human experience to witness people falling in and out of love”

She’s known for pushing boundaries in her previous shows, Nate and Laid, finding out where the line is through trial and error. “Whenever I was workshopping the drunk sex in [Nate], the first time I tried it, I was very trepid or timid,” she admits. “But that’s also part of the reason why I thought – I need to

Photo: Jill

“Part of clowning is knowing that the audience is always there with you”

do this. Because if I’m scared, it means there’s something worth exploring there. I just try to approach it as sensitively as I can.”

As an artist, she likes to do things on stage that feel risky, although WEER is a slight departure from her earlier shows. “I think it’s probably one of the most palatable pieces I’ve created in terms of comfortability with the audience,” she says. “I think maybe this show will attract a wider audience than some of my other pieces, because the element of discomfort isn’t as present as much in this show as it has been in Nate or Laid... This is the first show that my parents seem to like. But they are not aware of any nudity in it, and the show is not in its finished state.”

At the time of our conversation, she’s still undecided as to whether she should explain the title of WEER. “There’s one really bad joke in the show that is so superfluous and unnecessary to include,” she says, “but kind of makes the title of the show make sense. And I’m trying to decide if that is important. I don’t think it is and my late great friend Adam Brace would have told me that it was a barnacle and I need to cut it. We’ll see if the barnacle stays.”

She’s generous with her praise for other artists and is pleased to have more free time at this year’s Fringe to see performers such as Piotr Sikora's character Furiozo. The artists she most admires are those that can “bounce the audience back and forth between two tones,” she says. “I think I’m drawn to performers who do over-the-top characters that are still able to be really vulnerable and you’re still able to see the humanity in their characters even though they’re super silly.”

Looking to the future, she’d love to bring physical comedy back into television. “I just think a multi-cam sitcom with a live audience is a perfect outlet for clowns,” she says, “because part of clowning is knowing that the audience is always there with you.” She has

also fallen in love with directing and enjoyed working with Bill O’Neill in The Amazing Banana Brothers last year. In WEER, she’s going one step further by directing herself. “It could be the biggest mistake in my life,” she says. “But I really wanted to do it as a challenge to myself and as a fun exercise. And why are we making these weird plays if not to challenge ourselves and test our limits and explore all these different facets of our minds?”

SHOW Natalie Palamides: WEER

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

Photo: Brendan O'Keefe

Ebb and Flow

Amy Liptrot and Stef Smith discuss adapting Liptrot’s memoir The Outrun for the stage and screen

Words: Katie Goh

Photo: Kate Phillips

Amy Liptrot

You wait eight years for an adaptation of The Outrun and then two come along at once. Discussions for turning Amy Liptrot’s memoir into screen and stage adaptations began a year after the book was first published in 2016. The Outrun, which recounts Liptrot’s journey to sobriety on Orkney, was a bestseller upon release, shortlisted for major literary awards and hailed as ‘revelation’ by the Guardian for its fresh, accessible approach to nature writing.

“Before The Outrun, there wasn’t anything like The Outrun,” observes Stef Smith who has written the stage adaptation of Liptrot’s book. Smith was introduced to The Outrun when she took part in Playing with Books, a joint venture between the Royal Lyceum Theatre and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. “[The book] was unlike anything I had encountered before,” says Smith. “It felt like a fresh conversation about Scotland. The way it portrays a modern relationship with nature felt exciting.”

Smith’s introduction to The Outrun in 2017 was the beginning of the journey (interrupted by Covid-19) of bringing the stage adaptation to the Edinburgh International Festival where it will have its premiere this year. At the same time, a film adaptation was also being made; a similarly long process which has resulted in the film having its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – also in August.

“We thought [the play] would be out long before the movie!” says Smith. “But I think it’s only a good thing. I haven’t seen the film, but it looks like we’ve taken different journeys with the book, so I’m only excited. I’m aware of the intensity it must bring for Amy, but I think it’s great that her story is getting out because it has spoken to so many people through the years.”

Although The Outrun was published in 2016, Liptrot began writing her memoir over 10 years ago. “The book was written in my early 30s and now I’m in my 40s,” says Liptrot. She’s speaking from the Orcadian island Papay where much of The Outrun takes place. “It’s like I’ve stepped back into my life from 10 years ago, talking about the book again and living in the place where it was written about but in different circumstances. It’s sort of a decade-long circle completed.”

While Smith adapted the theatrical version of The Outrun, Liptrot co-wrote the film

"Watching Saoirse Ronan gathering driftwood off the beach, I started thinking she was doing a better job of it than I ever did"

Amy Liptrot

adaptation. “I didn’t have the bandwidth to approach the material from different directions,” says Liptrot. “It would have driven me insane!” Liptrot wrote the film with the writer-director Nora Fingscheidt. “Nora totally immersed herself in Orcadian culture,” says Liptrot. “She was even listening to Radio Orkney in Los Angeles.”

Photo: Eoin Carey

Stef Smith

In the film, Liptrot’s name is changed to Rona and she’s played by Saoirse Ronan, while in the stage show, she’s played by Isis Hainsworth and given no name. “It was one of the first decisions Nora and I made,” says Liptrot on the film’s name change. “We could talk about ‘she’ and that freed me up to think of the writing as a work of art.” Although that didn’t stop the strangeness of watching Ronan play her younger self. “It was the most bizarre thing to see this huge professional team with all their vehicles and equipment recreating parts of my life. Watching Saoirse Ronan gathering driftwood off the beach, I started thinking she was doing a better job of it than I ever did. She’s much more convincing in the role!’

Both the stage and film versions of The Outrun have taken some creative licence with Liptrot’s story, much of which is told through

intimate narration. “It’s not an easy book to adapt because there isn’t much dialogue,” says Liptrot. “But Nora came up with an Orkney layer, a London layer, and a third layer that we ended up calling the “nerd layer”. The natural world, island life, folklore stuff in the book is presented using some voiceover and different kinds of archive footage and animation. Her approach to the adaptation really clicked with me because it felt true to the spirit of the book.”

“It was a brilliant challenge to have,” Smith says about her own approach to making the memoir visual. “One of the other things that really drew me to the book was that there was no clear way to adapt it. It wasn’t a copy and paste job. I think the fact we had to wrestle with the book a bit to find its theatrical moments only excited me further.”

Smith had the additional challenge of representing Orkney on a stage. The Orcadian writer and musician Luke Sutherland’s score was the key to bringing the islands to life. “Sometimes our understanding of places is beyond words,” says Smith. “[Sutherland] has created this epic, experiential composition that holds the ancientness and beauty and brutality of Orkney in a way that I don’t know if a script can do. I feel very much in awe of and in conversation with the work he’s doing with the play. I hope it feels like you can’t separate the sonic world and the written world.”

With its majority Scottish creative team, Smith is delighted the stage adaptation will have its world premiere in Edinburgh. “Theatre audiences in Scotland are very awake and generous and ready for theatre,’ she says. For Liptrot who was a student in Edinburgh – and a past writer for Fest – it’s another full circle moment. “It’s a thrill for me to be across the different festivals, after being involved as a reviewer and always loving Edinburgh in August.”

Stef Smith’s production of The Outrun is at the Church Hill Theatre, 31 Jul-24 Aug as part of EIF. The film starring Saoirse Ronan premieres at the Cameo on 15 Aug as part of EIFF. Amy Liptrot & Stef Smith appear at the EIBF on 18 Aug.

Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun

Living Seoul

Looking ahead to the eighth official Korean Season at the Edinburgh Fringe, Artistic Director Angella Kwon discusses why audiences continue to embrace work from South Korea

Words: Arusa Qureshi

“Twenty-something years ago, people had no idea what to expect when they heard the name ‘Korea’,” Angella Kwon says. We’re currently together in Seoul, where Kwon lives and works as the Artistic Director of AtoBiz, the company that has been responsible for promoting Korean culture and arts worldwide since 1999. “Audience members would often ask if we were from China or Japan,” she continues, “because our country’s name wasn’t well recognised in terms of culture and arts. Despite this, the response from Fringe audiences has been overwhelmingly positive from the beginning.”

Since 2015, Kwon has been producing the Korean Season at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in collaboration with Assembly Festival, becoming a key figure in the presentation of traditional and contemporary Korean performance, art, and literature at the Fringe. “Our initial goal was to showcase the diversity and richness of Korean cultural arts on a global stage, fostering cultural exchange and mutual appreciation,” she explains. In the years since, the Korean Season has become a staple of the Fringe landscape, annually bringing some of the most exciting and innovative work from the region in East Asia.

“Since the successful launch of the first Korean Season at the Fringe in 2015, it has grown in brand value each year,” she says. “While our core mission remains unchanged, the scope of the Korean Season has expanded to include a broader range of genres and more interactive experiences.” Previous hits have included the popular South Korean acrobatic cooking adventure Chef, multi-faceted magic show SNAP and last year’s K-Pop comedy Kokoon

“This evolution reflects the dynamic nature of both the Fringe and global arts culture, allowing us to continually surprise and delight international audiences while maintaining the essence of Korean heritage.”

This year’s Korean Season promises to continue in this vein, with four shows that represent different facets of Korean life and culture. ARI: The Spirit of Korea, which was the winner of the Best Physical Theatre Award at the 2023 Adelaide Fringe, is a musical that brings to life the story of Arirang – an old Korean folk song from over 600 years ago, originating from Jeongseon in South Korea’s Gangwon Province. With Korean dance, martial arts and traditional Korean drumming mixed in with uplifting music and colourful storytelling, it’s a show

Photo: Myeongheon Choi

ARI The Spirit of Korea

"Our initial goal was to showcase the diversity

and

richness of

Korean cultural arts

on a global stage, fostering cultural exchange and mutual appreciation"

that offers, “a profound emotional journey that echoes Korea’s rich cultural heritage.”

Other features of the Korean Season this year include Black and White Tea Room: Counsellor, which Kwon describes as “a powerful psychological drama that explores the profound conflicts faced by individuals in unstable political climates”. Elsewhere, Sleeper deconstructs traditional Korean dance and transforms it using modern dance language, while You&It: The Musical tells a poignant love story about a man who brings his deceased wife back to life using AI. “These shows exemplify the artistic excellence and cultural depth that the Korean Season aims to present at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe,” she says.

In addition to the main programme, this year’s Fringe will see the return of the Seoul Arts Awards, which were held for the first time in 2023. “This award celebrates the most diverse and outstanding performers in non-verbal performance genres, offering them the opportunity to perform in South Korea,” Kwon notes. “Winners are selected based on their creativity, technical skill, and emotional impact.” Last year’s winning performances included talent from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and Hungary, highlighting the importance that is placed by Kwon and her team on strengthening global cultural exchange.

As we look ahead to the 26th anniversary of Korean work first being shown in Edinburgh, I ask Kwon for her thoughts on the relevance of the Fringe as an international festival in our current climate. “The Edinburgh Fringe is still highly regarded in South Korea and is considered one of the most important festivals for artists to attend and participate in,” she tells me emphatically.

“For Korean artists, performing at the Fringe is often a significant milestone in their careers. The festival’s reputation for celebrating creativity and diversity aligns well with Korea’s dynamic and innovative arts scene, making it a valuable experience for Korean performers and cultural ambassadors alike.”

Arusa Qureshi’s trip to South Korea was made possible by the Jeongseon County and Global Cultural Exchange Committee.

SHOW Black and White Tea Room: Counsellor

VENUE: Assembly Rooms

TIME: 12:40pm – 1:40pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

SHOW ARI: The Spirit of Korea

VENUE: Assembly Hall

TIME: 1:30pm – 2:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

SHOW Sleeper

VENUE: Assembly @ Dance Base

TIME: 8:30pm – 9:15pm, 2–18 Aug, not 5, 12

SHOW You & It: The Musical

VENUE: Assembly Checkpoint

TIME: 3:55pm – 4:55pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

Photo:

Jeonghwan

Kim

Sleeper

Top Picks: Comedy

From mistaken identity to medieval saints, these comedy shows will have you

in stitches

Caitriona Dowden is Holier Than Thou

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth, 3-25 Aug, 12.50pm

A deadpan delivery and comical misunderstanding won Caitriona Dowden the Chortle Student Award in 2022. Now performing her first solo stand-up hour, she’s set to explore her lapsed Catholicism, remaining religious guilt and in-depth knowledge of medieval saints.

Chelsea Birkby: This is Life, Cheeky Cheeky

Just the Tonic at The Caves, 1-25 Aug (not 12), 9.20pm

Effervescence meets existentialism in Chelsea Birkby’s sophomore hour as the smart, charming, chatty standup follows her hit debut show by embracing, in equal measure, society’s enthusiasm for ass and the musings of philosophical giants.

Dan Rath: Pariah Carey

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 12), 9.50pm

A recent diagnosis of Lyme disease has added more symptoms to a stand-up already suffering from long-Covid and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. All of which informs his latest show, adding to Dan Rath’s rising reputation as one of the most off-kilter voices in comedy.

Hot Department

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-25 Aug, (not 12, 19) 9.25pm

The sketch duo of Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva arrive from Australia powered by berserk charisma and sultry joy.

Jin Hao Li: Swimming in a Submarine

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 14), 7.10pm

In both student competitions and the BBC New Comedy finals, Jin Hao Li had already proved himself a comedian who can create a whole world with an admirable economy of well-chosen words.

Photo: Jamie Mykaela

Photo: Esme Buxton

Photo: Rebecca Need-Menear

Photo: Annika Kafcaloudis

Image: courtesy of the artist

Chelsea Birkby

Caitriona Dowden

Jin Hao Li

Hot Department

Dan Rath

Josephine Lacey: Autism Mama

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12, 22), 6pm

Many mothers anticipate guiding their children through puberty, but for Josephine Lacey, whose son is autistic, the experience is quite different. In her first Edinburgh show, Lacey welcomes us into the world of a mother and son navigating a challenging time.

Michelle Brasier: Legacy

Gilded Balloon Patter House, 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 14), 7pm

What’s in a name? Michelle Brasier was recently mixed-up for another Michelle Brasier, inadvertently being handed an envelope of coins intended for her namesake. Legacy is the story of Brasier’s exploration of identity and mistaken identity.

Sara Barron: Anything For You

Monkey Barrel Comedy, 29 Jul-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 4.45pm

Why is it that the person who first brought us into the world can also regress us into white hot carpet thumping fury with just a few motherly words? Sara Barron is using her fourth Edinburgh hour to give mum both barrels – at last!

Phil O’Shea: Never Pretend to Be an Owl

The Stand Comedy Club, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 9.30pm

A favourite on the local comedy scene, Phil O’Shea revels in delightful clowning nonsense, making improbable connections with a bag of props and tomfoolery, masterly creating inventive characters.

Sam See: And I Can’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Laughing Horse @ Counting House, 1-25 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), 5.45pm

Once a government-mandated sex educator, Sam See’s latest hour is more personal and will strike a chord with anyone who’s felt a disconnect between where they grew up and where they feel at home.

Trygve Wakenshaw: Silly Little Things

Assembly Roxy, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 8.15pm

Dadaist mime Trygve Wakenshaw’s last show at the Fringe was back in 2017. He’s since relocated to Czechia and recently picked up the main comedy award (again) in his native New Zealand. Silly Little Things is the first part of a new trilogy – promising to combine clowning silliness and experienced wisdom.

Photo: Jiksaw

Photo: Steven Millar

Photo: Nick Robertson

Photo: Matt Stronge

Photo: Ni cholas Yeo

Photo: Michal

Hančovsky

Michelle Brasier

Phil O'Shea

Josephine Lacey

Sam See

Trygve Wakenshaw

Sara Barron

Top Picks: Theatre

The best theatre at the Fringe, from climate chaos to the impact of war

Burnout Paradise

Summerhall, 1-26 Aug (not 12, 19), 12.05pm

Australian theatre-makers Pony Cam present their debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which sees them perform an escalating series of tasks on four treadmills. Can they collectively run over 20km and multi-task before burnout sets in?

A Giant on the Bridge

Assembly Roxy, 2-18 Aug (not 7, 12), 10.40am

Part of the Made in Scotland programme, this gig-theatre event explores the journey of coming home from prison, bringing together some of Scotland’s finest musicians, including Jo Mango, Louis Abbott, Raveloe, Solareye and Goodnight Louisa.

Precious Cargo

Summerhall, 1-26 Aug (not 12, 19), 3.10pm

Australian writer-performer Barton Williams (Huynh van Cuong) and Hebridean composer Andy Yearley (Nguyen Tang) present a powerful piece that interrogates the life-long impact of the Vietnam war. The show looks at the lasting effects of conflict, drawing on interviews with Operation Babylift adoptees from across the world.

3HAMS

Just the Tonic at The Mash House, 1-25 Aug (not 12), 2.25pm

Crying Shame

Pleasance Dome, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 9.30pm

Emerging queer theatre collective Sweet Beef’s cabaret show-cum-wellness journey explores loneliness. Audiences are invited into Club Fragilé for a celebration of queer culture, as the camp clowns try – and maybe fail – to foster some togetherness.

The Book of Mountains and Seas

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 1.05pm

Charlie Traisman and Makena Miller’s play follows two friends whose bond was forged through their shared experiences with eating disorders. As they grapple with the truth of their relationship, they find inspiration from an unlikely and absurd source.

Writer Yilong Liu’s heartbreaking and hysterical story of a California dad, who teams up with his late son’s last boyfriend for a colossal mission: to visit all 179 restaurants reviewed on his son’s popular Yelp page in one weekend.

Photo: Darren Gill

Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Photo: Rona Bar & Ofek

Avshalom

Photo: Alex S.K. Brown Photo: Benjamin Allen

Photo: Ralph Tonge

Burnout Paradise A Giant on the Bridge Crying Shame

3HAMS

The Book of Mountains and Seas

Precious Cargo

Weather Girl

Summerhall, 1-26 Aug (not 12, 19), 6pm

An intense dark comedy about wrecking the places we love, brought to the Fringe by Francesca Moody Productions. Writer Brian Watkins’ new piece follows California weather girl Stacey, whose regular routine plunges into chaos, before she discovers something that will save us all.

Comala, Comala

ZOO Southside, 2-25 Aug (not 7, 13, 20), 5.15pm

Pulpo Arts make their international debut at the Fringe with this reimagining of the 20th century Latin American novel Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. Expect a journey through the worlds of the living and the dead with music, storytelling, and mezcal.

A History of Paper

Traverse Theatre, 1-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), times vary

Gareth Williams’ musical adaptation of the late award-winning playwright Oliver Emanuel’s drama tells the story of an everyday and extraordinary love through the little pieces of paper that make up a life. Directed by Andrew Panton.

How I Learned to Swim

Roundabout @ Summerhall, 1-26 Aug (not 6, 13, 20), 4.10pm

Paines Plough Playwriting Fellow

Somebody Jones’s debut follows Jamie, a 30-year-old who can’t swim and decides to take on her biggest fear. A moving and witty play that explores what lies beneath the surface of Black people’s relationship to water.

Ugly Sisters

Underbelly, Cowgate, 1-25 Aug (not 12, 19), 6.30pm

Performance duo piss / Carnation’s Untapped Award-winning show merges performance art, alt-comedy and theatre. Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill delve into the circles of sisterhood, with sleepover confessions, smashed toilets, and the death of Germaine Greer.

Image: courtesy of Underbelly

Ugly Sisters

Photo: Michael Wharley

Photo: Paulina Chavez

Image: Feast Creative

Weather Girl

A History of Paper

How I Learned to Swim

Comala, Comala

Photo: Bradley Martin

Luca Rutherford.

Photo © Camilla Greenwell

Skinny

Top Picks: Music

This year’s music selection includes pop culture parodies, dance floor fillers and a multimedia medley

BirdWorld – Nurture

Summerhall, 1-11 Aug, 3.35pm

Musical partnership between Gregor Riddell and Adam Teixeira that features cello, drums, kalimbas and percussion spanning alternative, electronic, Afro-Cuban and contemporary classical music, with industrial and natural soundscapes woven in throughout.

Stumped

Scottish Storytelling Centre, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13 Aug, 6.45pm

Part of the Made in Scotland Showcase, this miniature opera explores deforestation through scenes from five ancient stories that centre on what happens when you mess with trees.

SILENCE! The Musical

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 11.15pm

The unauthorised musical parody of the Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs, featuring singing serial killers, songs with unprintable titles and a chorus of lambs.

Orchestra of Sound

Greenside @ George Street, 2-24 Aug (not 11, 18), 3pm

An electrifying one-man show by Paul Snider, which weaves together unique inventive instruments, hundreds of sounds, and explosive original music, with multimedia video displaying the many intricate sounds being recorded.

Pop Off, Michelangelo!

Gilded Balloon Patter House, 31 Jul-26 Aug, 6.30pm

Raucous pop musical comedy about Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, two besties-turned-bitter rivals who decide to become the greatest religious artists of all time so that God will forgive them for being gay.

Who Do Ya Love?

Assembly George Square Studios, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12, 19), 4.50pm

The official KC and the Sunshine Band musical, featuring eight West End performers, iconic dance floor fillers of the 70s and over 20 hit tracks. This world premiere celebrates the early life of Harry Casey, who formed the band in 1973.

Photo: Joe McNeice

Image: courtesy of Assembly

Photo: Wolf James

Photo: Ute Rée

Photo: Campbell Parker Image: courtesy of Chloé Nelkin Consultancy

Pop Off, Michelangelo!

Who Do Ya Love?

SILENCE! The Musical

BirdWorld – Nurture

Orchestra of Sound

Stumped

Top Picks: Cabaret

Discover the must-see cabaret shows, from 80s-inspired synth to a former president doing stand-up

Aidan Sadler: Melody

The Voodoo Rooms, 2-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 7.50pm

In Melody, award-winning cabaret star Aidan Sadler will blend 80s-inspired synth-wave melodies with comedic observations on everyday life and surviving the apocalypse. With original tracks, Sadler makes living in the moment his signature style.

Ellie MacPherson: Babe Lincoln

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-25

Aug (not 7, 12, 19), 4.35pm

Having unearthed a previously unknown script of Abraham Lincoln’s secret stand-up special, cabaret star Ellie MacPherson will transform herself into Babe Lincoln, resurrecting the former president’s apparently long-forgotten comedy routines. With a diverse musical repertoire, she employs her vocals and humour to make striking parallels between history and the present.

Colin

Cloud: Consequences

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 13), 7.20pm

What are your beliefs, and how do they influence your life? Comedian and magician Colin Cloud returns to Underbelly with an ambitious show, set to reveal some of the secrets of our reality and how our decisions are shaped by how we see the world.

Swamplesque

Assembly Hall, 1-25 Aug (not 12), 10.20pm

A burlesque and whimsical drag parody of Shrek, Swamplesque has wowed audiences across Australia and now debuts in Edinburgh. Celebrating queer and plus-sized performers, Trigger Happy Productions tribute to the ogre breaks down stereotypes and embraces individuality.

Janie Dee’s Beautiful World Cabaret

Pleasance Dome, 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 7, 13, 21), 2.20pm

Janie Dee has twice won the Olivier Award and in an enlightening musical cabaret will spotlight the climate and ecological crisis. Beautiful World Cabaret features an array of special guests and celebrates composers such as Sondheim, Sting, Peggy Lee and Vivaldi. Dee and her friends challenge us to consider the small steps we can take to genuinely care more for our world.

Photo:

Titou Molard

Photo: Richard Lakos

Photo: Jenny Anderson

Image: courtesy Fates Media

Photo: Lorenzo Abbate

Colin Cloud

Janie Dee

Ellie MacPherson

Swamplesque

Aidan Sadler

Top Picks: Dance and Circus

Immerse yourself into the world of Australian dance and the songs of Nina Simone

Circus Baobab: Yé!

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, 3-24 Aug (not 12, 19), 2.05pm

The debut show from Circus Baobab, an innovative troupe of artists from Guinea and the diaspora. Expect acrobatics, human pyramids, hand-to-hand combat, contortions and more, set to an infectious rhythm.

Lewis Major: Triptych

Assembly @ Dance Base, 2-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 9.40pm

The rising star of Australian dance, Lewis Major, collaborates with his company and mentor, Russell Maliphant OBE, in three unique repertoire pieces, which fuse light, movement and design to investigate poetic possibilities, life cycles and universal rhythms.

Show Pony

Summerhall, 13-26 Aug (not 19), 10.35am

Berlin-based still hungry’s brand new work, co-created with groundbreaking performance artist Bryony Kimmings, examines the dualities and challenges of life on stage for three female acrobats.

What songs may do...

Assembly @ Dance Base, 6-11 Aug, 7pm

The first contemporary dance production by choreographer Mathieu Geffré with his company Rendez-Vous dance, set to the music of Nina Simone. Two dancers expose the fractured relationship of a once romantic couple, celebrating love in all its diversity.

The Flock and Moving Cloud

ZOO Southside, 13-25 Aug (not 19), 6.20pm

Scottish Dance Theatre returns with a double-bill of celebrated productions: The Flock & Moving Cloud, created by two of the most exciting female choreographers on the European dance scene: Roser López Espinosa and Sofia Nappi.

Tennis

ZOO Southside, 13-25 Aug (not 19), 2.30pm

DON GNU return to the Fringe with their new show Tennis, part of the #DANISH programme. DON McEnroe and Björn GNU face each other once again, in an action-packed mix of slapstick comedy and beautiful dance, set in Wimbledon, 1980.

Dance & Circus

Photo: Cave and Sky

Photo: Emilia Theresa

Photo: Brian Hartley Image: courtesy of Underbelly

Photo: Chris Herzfeld

Photo: Matteo Blau

Show Pony

What songs may do...

Tennis

Moving Cloud

Circus Baobab: Yé!

Lewis Major: Triptych

Top Picks: Kids

From animal friends to singalong sessions, there’s something for every young festival lover

Fernando and His Llama Friend

ZOO Southside, 6-11 Aug, 10.30am

This moving story follows a deaf boy, Fernando, as he relocates from Colombia to Canada. His life changes when he meets a llama. Performed in American Sign Language (ASL) with voice-over, the show features an all-deaf cast from Canada. Suitable for ages five and up.

NoVa

Assembly Roxy, 1-25 Aug, (not 12, 19), 3.45pm

Delivering acrobatics and juggling, this family-oriented spectacle exudes warmth. Presented by the Canadian troupe Les Foutoukours. Suitable for children aged five, and their grown-ups.

How to Catch a Book Witch

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 31 Jul-18 Aug, 11.30am

For Kira, the library is a sanctuary. Yet, a perplexing mystery unfolds as words start to vanish from the books. Is there a secret Book Witch behind it all? This heartening production, designed for children aged four and above, features live musical performances.

Rosie and Hugh’s Great Big Adventure

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-19 Aug (not 2, 6, 13), 12pm

Rosie and Hugh are inseparable friends. They attempt to locate an elusive witch dwelling deep within a forest, herself accompanied by a pet dragon. With melodies from CBeebies’ Nick Cope, The North Wall’s show is aimed at ages three to eight.

The Last Forecast

Assembly @ Dance Base, 3-18 Aug (not 5, 12), 1.15pm

Nestled away on a secluded island, Gael, a lizard-like creature, leads a solitary existence. This peace is disrupted when an outsider arrives... Presented by Catherine Wheels and crafted by Bridie Gane, The Last Forecast is part of the Made in Scotland Showcase. Ideal for ages six and up.

Sing, Sign and Sensory

Gilded Balloon Patter House, 12-17 Aug, 11am

Introducing sensory-based workshops designed for infants aged 0 to 24 months, Sing, Sign and Sensory represents a novel approach in childhood development. The sessions immerse participants in inflatable sensory pods.

Image: courtesy of Dancing Hands Theater

Photo: Neal Megaw

Photo: Sally Jubb

Image: courtesy of Effectus Theater

Photo: Geraint Lewis

Photo: JF Savaria

Fernando and His Llama Friend

How to Catch a Book Witch

The Last Forecast

NoVa

Rosie and Hugh’s Great Big Adventure

Sing, Sign and Sensory

Top Picks: Edinburgh International Festival

The best music, dance and theatre arriving at the International Festival

Please right back

The Studio, 2-11 Aug, times vary

Award-winning company 1927 return to the EIF with a bold production that combines handcrafted animation and imaginative storytelling, to tell the wild adventures of the mysterious Mr E, inspired by the writer-director’s own childhood.

Songs of the Bulbul

The Lyceum, 9-11 Aug, times vary

Renowned dancer Aakash Odedra returns to the International Festival with a new fusion, and nuanced dialogue, between the Indian classical dance form Sufi Kathak and Islamic poetry. Within this performance, the bulbul myth symbolises the fleeting nature of dance and existence itself.

Youssou N’Dour

Usher Hall, 13 Aug, 8pm

‘The undisputed king of Senegalese music’ arrives in Edinburgh for his second International Festival performance, mixing ancient traditions with eclectic world influences, as well as a combination of the languages of Wolof, French and English.

Hamlet

The Lyceum, 15-17 Aug, times vary

Peruvian theatre company Teatro La Plaza presents a reimagined Hamlet, infusing Shakespeare’s tragedy with joy and mystery. Departing from tradition, this production features a cast of eight actors with Down’s syndrome, incorporating personal anecdotes alongside Shakespearean dialogue.

Carmen

Festival Theatre, 4-8 Aug, times vary

Opéra-Comique’s new production of Georges Bizet’s classic tale of love, passion and jealousy. The international cast is joined by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Louis Langrée, Music Director of the Opéra-Comique.

The Marriage of Figaro

Festival Theatre, 16-18 Aug, times vary

Komische Oper Berlin and director Kirill Serebrennikov revamp Mozart’s satirical opera under the musical direction of James Gaffigan. Set within a single tumultuous day – the eve of Figaro and Susanna’s wedding – Count Almaviva’s philandering threatens to disrupt their marital bliss.

Photo: Stefan Brion

Image: courtesy of the artist

Photo: Ewané Nja Kwa

Photo: Kajal Nisha Patel

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Image: courtesy of EIF

Carmen

Songs of the Bulbul

Please right back

Youssou N’Dour Hamlet

The Marriage of Figaro

Balimaya Project

The Queen’s Hall, 20 Aug, 8.30pm

The Mandé jazz superband, founded by percussionist and virtuoso djembe player Yahael Camara Onono, are known for their unique style, which combines the history and tradition of Mandé culture with the energy of London. Their second album When The Dust Settles, places emphasis on bandleader Camara Onono’s lived experience of grief and fatherhood.

Assembly Hall

Festival Theatre, 22-24 Aug, 7.30pm

Presenting its Scottish premiere, Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young’s latest creation merges Arthurian-inspired cosplay with contemporary dance. Within a dilapidated community hall, a gathering of medieval re-enactors convene for their Annual General Meeting amid dire circumstances.

Fire in My Mouth

Usher Hall, 21 Aug, 8pm

Conductor Marin Alsop, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the female voices of the National Youth Choir of Scotland come together for the first UK performance of Julia Wolfe’s impassioned elegy for the victims of New York’s 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which stole the lives of 146 garment workers.

After the Silence

The Studio, 21-24 Aug, 8pm

Bat for Lashes

The Queen’s Hall, 23 Aug, 8.30pm

Director Christiane Jatahy combines the cinematic and theatrical to search into the enduring impact of structural racism and the historical scars of slavery in Brazil, her native country. After the Silence, making its UK debut, chronicles the trials of three Afro-Brazilian women as they defend their community, reclaim their land, and advocate for their people.

Natasha Khan – better known as Bat for Lashes – brings her brand-new conceptual project to the EIF. New album The Dream of Delphi, named after her young daughter, explores her experience of motherhood during the Covid-19 pandemic, weaving together ten song poems.

Fire in My Mouth

Bat for Lashes

Balimaya Project

Assembly Hall

After the Silence

Image: courtesy of EIF

Image: courtesy of EIF

Image: courtesy of EIF

Photo: Michael Slobodian

Photo: Thomas Walgrave

Don’t miss the best new talent from our up at the Fringe View our full programme and access performances

Supported by Isobel & Michael Holland

Check Your Privilege

Olga Koch has money on her mind – the comedian talks about wealth and where talent comes from

Words: Ashley Davies

I

t seems as if everyone – quite rightly – is talking about privilege in the arts right now. Everyone apart from those with privilege, that is. It’s hard admitting you have a rich or well-connected family without risking alienating your audience, unless you’re prepared to adopt a cartoonish persona to pre-empt their misgivings.

Step forward one of the smartest standups in the UK right now, though. Naming her new Edinburgh Festival Fringe show w Comes From Money is a typically gutsy move from the woman whose previous hours have tackled topics as complex as the birth of the Russian oligarchy and the nature of parasocial relationships (fake intimate relationships that people have on the internet with strangers).

“The first inklings of this show started when [fellow comic] Helen Bauer said that every year she wanted to see a performer do something they wouldn’t have been able to do a year ago,” says Koch. “It was such a clear way to set parameters for a challenge. It’s a question that’s always in my head: ‘Am I playing it safe? Is this a show I could’ve written a year or two ago? How am I challenging myself and giving an audience something they haven’t seen yet from me?’”

Although she’s always been open about who her father is (he made a lot of money in Russia in the 1990s and was briefly deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, something she covered cleverly in her 2018 Fringe show, Fight), it might be new information to those who discovered her following her subsequent

Photo: Rachel Sherlock

“I feel like it’s come to the boiling point around me and it’s time to address it, no matter how unlikeable that’ll make me look”

broadcasting success (such as Live at the Apollo and The Mash Report).

“The people from privileged backgrounds are sitting quietly because the system very much benefits them and they have no interest in acknowledging their privilege,” says Koch, who worked in tech for seven years. “I feel like it’s come to the boiling point around me and it’s time to address it, no matter how unlikeable that’ll make me look, because it’s an important conversation to have.”

Her forensic excavation will also go into what she refers to as “the illusion that talent exists in isolation”. In other words: “When you examine it, you realise that the thing that makes up your talent is your lived experiences, whether that’s having a private education and no student debt, or your genetics, and that all comes from privilege.”

She’ll also cover the reality that those with power in the arts - the tastemakers - come from privilege too, and their decisions will likely reflect their own lived experiences. Koch, as usual, is a busy woman. She’s working on her third series of OK Computer, her snappy BBC Radio 4 show that explores the world through the lens of computer science; for the first time it’ll be recorded during the Fringe.

She’s also taking ballroom lessons with her boyfriend, joking that it was time for them to up their wedding dancing game as so many of their friends are getting hitched. But would she apply those nascent skills to Strictly Come Dancing if they invited her? “It would never happen, but of course I would,” she laughs.

But her biggest forthcoming challenge is the PhD she’ll be starting at UCL in October. Her recent Masters, undertaken at the University of Oxford, was about parasocial relationships,

Rachel

and her next academic step will explore human-computer relationships, exploring the way digital products have a strategic in-built ability to enhance and boost both the sense of apparently authentic (but obviously fake) intimacy. We told you she was clever. But she’s also hilarious.

She says the informational value in her shows is almost like a crutch to her. “If you don’t find me funny or charming or interesting, you’ll at least leave here with a snippet you can share at your next dinner party,” she laughs.

VENUE:

TIME: 5:40pm – 6:40pm, 29 Jul–25 Aug

SHOW Olga Koch Comes From Money

Monkey Barrel Comedy

Photo:

Sherlock

‘The

Under Pressure

Meet the most zen Type A comic out there

Words: Tamara Mathias

Photo: Hans Jacob

“Doing a funny show is one thing, but can it be funny 22 times in a row?”

As far as Indian stand-up history goes, Kanan

Gill is one of the OGs.

“Sorry I’m late, my boat was delayed,” he says via Zoom, from the grounds of a hipster deconsecrated church where he’s sipping coffee and squeezing in an interview while on holiday in Venice (Kanan Gill is cool, that way).

Gill has been on stage for “12 long years” – well before he and a handful of self-starter comics became overnight sensations in India thanks to a whole lot of grit, some viral YouTube videos and the well-timed entry of Amazon Prime into the subcontinent.

Back then, there was no stand-up industry and certainly no money in the game, he reminisces, but things have come a long way.

In just the last few years, he’s been on a world tour, performed sold out shows everywhere from Australia to America, starred in a Norwegian rom-com, penned a screenplay and published a sci-fi novel. Yet, somehow, he’s never made it to the Fringe.

“I finally decided I can’t deal with the FOMO anymore!” he jokes. “I’ve heard the mythology of the Fringe being high pressure, but I’m not stressed. For me, it’s about the challenge of putting my act through a trial by fire. Doing a funny show is one thing, but can it be funny 22 times in a row?”

Challenging himself seems to be something of a theme with Gill, right from the onset of his comedic career, when he quit his job as a software engineer to perform full time.

“I took it very seriously from the start. It’s that Indian education mindset – you can’t be bad at anything, even when it seems like there’s no future in it. I was hungry to get good fast.”’

Yet the very drive that renders his artistry so prolific seems to spawn an undercurrent of anxiety and existential dread that pervades his routines.

In Is This It?, his last special, he confesses, “I had anxiety back when it wasn’t cool, OK? I had anxiety back when they called it worrying!”

It strikes a chord; even while watching on YouTube you can sense the live audience unravel a little – Gill’s quarter-life crisis has infected everyone and the nervous laughter suggests the whole room has made a collective decision to break the tension.

Gill characterises his upcoming Fringe show, What Is This?, as a spiritual successor, where he’s challenged himself (there’s that word again) to take some “really esoteric ideas” and make them funny.

One topic he attacks is the ubiquitous advice to ‘settle down’. “You know how you’re always told ‘you’re in your 30s, now it’s time to settle down? Own a house, settle down. Find a partner, settle down. Have kids, then make them settle down.’ I take that idea and really blow it up.

“It’s deeply personal, but I’m not trying to sermonise. It’s more like I’m inviting people to go on a thought experiment with me.” He pauses, then laughs. “Of course, what I think the show is about might not be what the audience thinks the show is about.”

If the reception to What Is This? at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (where it was nominated for Most Outstanding Show) is any indicator, Fringe audiences are in for a treat.

Back to his feelings about his upcoming Edinburgh debut. “I’m just going to experience what it’s like,” he reiterates. “I want to challenge myself and go beyond what I’ve done before. I’m not too worried. Well – maybe about the weather. I do like to see the sun everyday.”

SHOW Kanan Gill: What Is This?

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 5:40pm – 6:40pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14 Aug

Leap of Faith

Bringing her debut to the Fringe, Dylan Mulvaney talks about her online persona, Catholic upbringing and famous friendships

Words: Jay Richardson

When Dylan Mulvaney began publicly chronicling her gender transition on TikTok in early 2022, amassing more than a million followers in just 17 days for her daily Days of Girlhood videos, the American assumed she was waving goodbye to Broadway. Notwithstanding that she’d toured in The Book Of Mormon across North America, stage roles for openly trans actors remain few.

But a one-woman

Edinburgh Fringe show is a decisive step for wresting back control of a career that has seen Mulvaney cast as an influencer, LGBTQ+ icon and lightning rod for the culture wars over gender identity. Having now quit the treadmill of posting clips every day, “nothing has made me happier than writing and working on this show,” the 27-year-old enthuses from Los Angeles. “Mishmashing” her TikTok style with more traditional theatrical storytelling, with multiple characters and musical interludes, rehearsing “I realised that I’d forgotten what it was like to, you know, sit in a room for 10 hours without windows and not check my phone,” she admits. “And it made me so happy.”

Edinburgh debut, F*GHAG, aims to be more personal than her most soul-baring or physically exposing videos.

“A screen creates distance. But theatre offers a much more personal relationship”

“So much of my online persona and the sort of content I was putting out there was broad, insofar as it had to be for millions of people,” she reflects. “But I’d like to show what my life looked like from the other side. My personal relationships, the connections I had to my loved ones and different folks throughout my life, pre and post-transition. There’s still going to be a high level of camp and funny and earnestness. But hopefully with a little bit of vulnerability in there too.”

Mulvaney’s fame grew exponentially after she interviewed President Biden in late 2022 about his views on trans issues, an event she confesses to having mixed emotions about now.

Setting some of the record straight, her

“I think I metaphorically blacked out when it happened,” she says. “I don’t know if I was the perfect person for that gig because a lot of people, especially early on, heavily politicised me. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity but I’m an entertainer, an actress, a comedian, and there are so many other wonderful trans

people that would be perfect for that job. I still look back on it fondly though.”

Which is more than can be said for her brand partnership with Bud Light in an Instagram post last year, which saw her vilified by the US right-wing media. Budweiser’s stock value tanked as conservative opinion-formers called for a boycott of the beer, with knuckle-dragging singer Kid Rock filming himself obliterating several cases of Bud Light with a submachine gun.

“There might be a small wink to a particularly sticky situation in the show,” Mulvaney coyly acknowledges. “But it’s such a small part of my story. And again, I’m always trying to find the funny.”

Public backing from Lady Gaga has helped take the sting out of some of the attacks, with Mulvaney delighted about “just having her in my life. She’s been so scrutinised and picked apart over the years, especially by the media, I’ve already learned a lot from her. The support she’s shown me privately and publicly is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.”

The haters are unlikely to be mollified by Mulvaney exploring her devout Catholic upbringing and faith in F*GHAG however.

“A lot of the queer community has been burned, or felt exiled from this idea of a higher

power and that’s something I really want to expand upon,” she says. “How can I feel connected when so many people are telling me that I don’t have a right to that connection?

“God is a very camp character in my show and at times a little silly. But there’s a lot of truth in how alone and distanced from God I felt, how I’ve had to come back to a more productive relationship with an idea of God.”

Often taken out of context and distorted on the internet, Mulvaney isn’t overly worried about those “coming to see the show for the wrong reasons.

“A screen creates distance. But theatre offers a much more personal relationship. For a full hour, they’ll have to see me up there. They’ll have to feel my energy, know who I am.

“I’m hoping they’ll come with an open mind and an open heart, leaving with the realisation that not one of us is the same but that we can all find some similarities between us, trans or not.”

SHOW Dylan Mulvaney: F*GHAG

VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 9:40pm – 10:40pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 7 Aug, 14 Aug, 21 Aug

Photo: Mark Brenner

We Can Be Heroes

As they bring their shows to Gilded Balloon’s Patter House, the most recent So You Think You're Funny? alumni talk about their comedy heroes from the competition’s illustrious history

Joshua Bethania Coming Home, 31 Jul-26 Aug

I’m a big fan of Romesh Ranganathan purely because of how funny he is. The first time I saw him it was in a small room and he was so effortlessly funny and off-the-cuff. SYTYF has given me a big head start in comedy. If you had told me what my life would be like now before SYTYF, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’ve shared stages with comedians who I’m a fan of and Gilded Balloon have helped to accelerate my first hour.

Sophie Garrad

Sophie Garrad and Leigh Douglas: Daddy’s Girls, 31 Jul-22 Aug (not 19)

Tom Allen’s style speaks to my own experiences and background. He doesn’t fit the mould of poshness despite appearances. As a posh girly with a cockney dad, Tom’s stories about

being different from his family and having cockney parents resonate with me. If a future SYTYF finalist ever talks about me, I hope they say “You can’t think of Sophie Garrad without thinking of Prada”.

Samira Banks Best of So You Think You’re Funny, 31 Jul-26 Aug

It’s difficult to pick a SYTYF hero, but if you put a gun to my head (in the form of a completely non-violent request) it’s Heidi Regan. She has a way of being herself: silly, intelligent, absurd and hilarious. I hope she never reads this because it is an embarrassing level of praise and I sound like a real beg. As for my own experience winning SYTYF, it has been a whirlwind and changed my life, opening so many doors for me early in my comedy journey.

Christopher Donovan

Sophie Garrad and Leigh Douglas Samira Banks Joshua Bethania

Photo: Steve Ullathorne

Image: courtesy of GIlded Balloon

Photo: Steve Ullathorne

Photo: Steve Ullathorne

Christopher Donovan

Best of So You Think You’re Funny, 31 Jul-26 Aug

It’s remarkable how many acts that got their start in SYTYF. Huge names I admire like Kevin Bridges, Romesh Ranganathan, Fern Brady, Glenn Moore and of course Peter Kay. This year, I’m looking forward to shows of recent winners and finalists, like Joshua Bethania and Chelsea Birkby. The final last year was the most nervous I’ve felt for anything. Everyone behind the scenes like Katy and Karen Koren want to help you even after the contest is over. Good luck to everyone involved in SYTYF 2024!

Lizzie Norm

Best of So You Think You’re Funny, 31 Jul-26 Aug

Lucy Beaumont comes across as honest and joyful. I love her soft and daft working class persona; it resonates with me. When I discovered she was a runner-up in SYTYF it made me proud, like I could be as good as her maybe. Anyone involved in SYTYF is inspiring; the whole thing is a whirlwind of comedy talent. When it came to last year’s final I was nervous, I can’t believe I got placed but I’m so glad I did, what a buzz!

Chris Weir

Well Flung, 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 14)

Ruth Hunter has a singular voice, who always approaches a subject from a unique angle. I’m fortunate enough to be on the Scottish comedy scene with Ruth. A club set from her is warped and strange and deeply, deeply funny.

Long may she reign! SYTYF meant a lot to me. To be recognised in that first year doing comedy, when you’re wondering if you’re any good or shouting into a void. Competitions like SYTYF kept me pursuing this difficult, odd career path – and for that I will never forgive them!

Kathleen Hughes

Cryptid! 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 12)

When I started I was eager to be liked and understood. I’d edit my material to suit what I thought people wanted to hear, toning down my accent and avoiding Scots words. Fern Brady’s Power & Chaos changed my view –every word is personal and true, no matter how ‘weird’ it might sound (and a lot of it is very weird). 2021’s SYTYF was incredible. I applied after one open mic, managed three more, and then didn’t perform outside of my living room until the final. I never could have anticipated the opportunities that opened up afterwards.

Nate Kitch

Tomorrow Might Not Happen, Now, 31 Jul-26 Aug

Phil Kay’s experimentation and absurdity deliver something satisfying. He goes with what could happen, not what should happen. I try and capture those moments too, throwing caution to the wind, then piss in it. In 2021’s SYTYF final I was adamant to make the work I wanted to make. It paid off. I gave them Nate Kitch, the comic. Karen Koren said afterwards, ‘You’re like my boy Phil Kay’. I didn’t win, but I didn’t lose either. I was me.

Nate Kitch

Chris Weir

Kathleen Hughes

Lizzie Norm

Image: courtesy of GIlded Balloon

Photo: Andrew Jackson

Photo: Duncan Lorthioir

Photo: Steve Ullathorne

Wise Fools

Words: Ben Venables

Before embracing clowning, Paulina Lenoir studied design. “I realised the objects I was making could not exist in the real world,” she says over a Zoom call.

While at Central St. Martin’s, Lenoir and a like-minded student and friend were tasked with designing a washing machine. “We designed one for post-apocalyptic future, with a swing that collected rainwater. The clothes underneath,” she says. “Then for my final degree project, I made these long, heavy shoes. I was fascinated with how design and architecture influence people’s rhythm. And living in London, we’re forced to be fast. It was a way to protest

against an imposed speed of the city,” she says, then adding: “But they were basically a big pair of clown shoes.”

She speaks while surrounded by costumes, dresses she wears on stage. She holds up a white one: “This one was a ‘cloud’. The theme was the afterlife.” Then she picks up a green dress: “Cabbage” she says.

Lenoir debuts her solo comedy hour at Assembly through the eyes of her character, the dreamlike, poetic fool, Puella Eterna. She brings a whole world of influences into her creation.

“I’m inspired by the characters in Fellini films: There’s this film he made called Juliet of the

Paulina Lenoir, Piotr Sikora and Lil Wenker on creating a world through their singular clowns

Paulina Lenoir

Photo: David Pickens

"Clown is about uncertainty and the unknown"

Piotr Sikora

Spirits. It’s this sort of wife at home, but she has this old fantastical world which she goes into. It’s like parallel universes, and all these people are dressed up with feathers and huge hats.”

Then there’s fashion critic Diane Pernet: “She’s dressed in perpetual mourning. She has tall hair and a veil and created an iconic look”; Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven: Lenoir gives me the T on how Marcel Duchamp may have stolen the Baroness’ idea, turning a urinal into the art-work The Fountain; the poet Edith Sidwell: “She was in love with a peacock when she was young.” She adds: “That’s kind of the world... This poet character I created, she was born from an existential crisis I was having. And then at the time I was studying flamenco as well. And I found the melodrama funny, you know, there’s something about the tragic that is hilarious.”

Her enthusiasm for the arts and folding them into her character perhaps stems from wonder cultivated as a child: “That’s where I find joy; from when I was little, I used to dress up all my friends. I love playing dress up.”

Lil Wenker is also bringing her first show BANGTAIL, to the Pleasance; a cowboy epic merging Spaghetti Western films and accountancy – together at last. The origins of her show also stem from childhood. “The whole genesis of the show comes from watching Westerns with my Dad when I was a little girl. We’d stay up, that was our thing.”

Reflecting on her father’s influence on her show, she says: “He’s a lovely, very soft, Midwestern accountant who loves cowboys and Clint Eastwood’s characters. My Dad is the inspiration in a very loose way. It’s kind of a modern tale of this cowboy: what would it be like to have a cowboy in a Midwestern accountancy office? What does a modern man do and how does he find his purpose?”

Wenker’s other influences are based on classic comedy films, starting in the silent era: “The Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Buster

Keaton.” She credits co-creator and director Cecily Nash (who had a hit at last year’s Fringe with TROLL) for her eye for physical comedy: “She has an amazing eye for that. She’s helped me trace out my thinking, both in a way that’s true and untrue, but also feels right for the kind of the show that I’ve been wanting to make.”

Both Lenoir and Wenker trained with master clown Gaulier in Paris. Afterwards, they found themselves in the good company of fellow clowns. As Wenker explains: “On good days it’s a community, on bad days it’s a cult! But it’s so wonderful. This is why I moved to the UK; this is where the clowns are.”

Piotr Sikora would agree on finding belonging with other clowns off-stage. “Usually people who are doing clown are nice people and kind

Photo: Alan Moyle

Furiozo

people. We usually know each other or hear about each other and support each other.”

Sikora returns to Edinburgh with his word-of-mouth hit Furiozo: Man Looking For Trouble. The punk-rock comedy now comes to Underbelly with Sikora’s hooligan-with-aheart exploring fury and masculinity.

Starting in improv, Sikora found there was no turning back once he discovered clowning.

“Clown is a curse,” he says, “When you see it, you cannot not see it. Then step by step, I was going into the dark side.”

What show could possibly make such a life-changing impression? “Nate by Natalie Palamides,” he says. “It was like opening the doors to a different universe. It showed me the possibilities of contemporary clown.”

"There’s something about the tragic that is hilarious"

Paulina Lenoir

Sikora’s character Furiozo draws inspiration from diverse sources, from Polish hip-hop to the Netflix series Furioza. “I cannot say that I was inspired by the movie itself. But there’s a character played by a Polish actor called Mateusz Damięcki. It’s an incredible character and Furioza is an association of hooligans.”

While Sikora’s Furiozo is “comedic, dangerous and super crazy” it’s also a tribute to ‘hooligans’ gained from an adult perspective on the experiences of living as a child in Poland at a time of huge political and culture change, fearing those expressing their anger. “When I was a kid I was afraid of them, but now I see they were just trying to survive. They were trying to create something and share it through their hip-hop. Polish hip-hop, Polish punk rock. So it’s coming from my culture. But what I like about this show is that it’s very Polish, but at the same time, very universal.

“It’s important for me in the show not to make fun of hooligans because I think it would be very easy. As much as they’re aggressive and a bit of a dangerous group, I treat them as a rejected group. Usually, it comes from poverty, from a lot of very difficult factors. It is hardly ever a conscious choice.

“I try to defend my character in a way to show something more than only those things that are stupid and funny.”

SHOW Paulina Lenoir: Puella Eterna

VENUE: Assembly Roxy

TIME: 10:00pm – 11:00pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 19 Aug

SHOW Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble

VENUE: Underbelly, Cowgate

TIME: 9:40pm – 10:40pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19

SHOW Lil Wenker: BANGTAIL

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 4:15pm – 5:15pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12 Aug

Photo: Hudson Hughes

Lil Wenker in Bangtail

Plastic Fantastic

Dan Lees chats about finding inspiration while sifting through a charity shop’s record collection

Words: Si Hawkins

Photo: Rob Trendy

Sometimes the best ideas spring from absolute bloody desperation. Two years ago Dan Lees had booked a few solo work-in-progress shows alongside his main Fringe hour, with clown trio The Flop. But as those extra dates neared, he still had nothing to fill them. A flop was distinctly plausible.

“I was just wandering around – I like going to the charity shops in Edinburgh – and sort of tearing my hair out,” he says, “thinking ‘what am I going to do for these three shows? They’re getting closer and closer.’ It was about three days before, I was looking through some albums, and the idea came to me; so I went round Edinburgh and collected a bunch of them.”

"Rather than telling clever jokes, let people laugh at you"

Eureka. The eccentric joys of old LP artwork threw up a format so fertile that those once-troublesome WIPs have spawned two proper Fringe runs. Last year’s show – The Vinyl Countdown – caused joyful mayhem at Banshee Labyrinth, one of those glorious latenight word-of-mouth discoveries, and now he’s back with Vinyl Reflections. Same schtick, different sleeves, essentially. Odd album covers are a comedic goldmine, it transpires; they’re already pretty funny, then dapper Dan brings these forgotten musical figures to life.

“I think the 70s is the golden age,” says Lees, “the older covers. Obviously they didn’t have digital photography then, so you basically did a shoot and were stuck with the photos you got. Some of them are absolutely bizarre – how was this actually trying to sell this record?”

Not that Lees is ever overly led by commercial concerns – he’s a clown prince nowadays, co-founder of the London Clown Festival and director of some memorably absurd Fringe moments. He had a big hand in Legs, then Logs – with Julia Masli and the Duncan Brothers – in 2019 and 2021, and the latter duo’s opus last year, Jeremy Segway, A Life Out of

Balance, plus notable work by Viggo Venn and Zuma Puma. Which is quite a leftfield departure from his original plan: to become a guitar legend. “Someone said that all comedians want to be rock stars,” he says, wistfully, “playing songs to thousands of people.”

Musical comedy happened instead, initially via the duo Moonfish Rhumba. “That’s when I started to meet people who’d done clowning,” he says. “My first impression was: it sounds like a cult.” He eventually took the now traditional clown pilgrimage, training with Philippe Gaulier near Paris, but only after some revelatory classes with Phil Burgers, aka Dr Brown.

“He asked me to do it, and it was a real moment of ‘ohhh, this is actually what I’m trying to do!” Lees recalls. “Which is, essentially, ‘be the butt of the joke.’ Rather than telling clever jokes, let people laugh at you.”

He can’t resist a music analogy. “With stand-up, you want that golden, bulletproof ten minutes. Whereas clowning, who knows what will happen? ‘I’ll do more of that, we’ll see where that goes.’ It becomes more like jazz.”

The actual sleeves Lees embodies remain relatively secret – googling the real albums could kill the magic, he suggests. And the idea isn’t entirely new. Joseph Morpurgo interpreted neglected LP covers in 2015’s Edinburgh Award-nominated Soothing Sounds for Baby, but while that was an ambitiously scripted multimedia mash-up, Lees’ vinyl versions are more freeform. He literally riffs, mixing guitar licks with his vocal hijinks, conjuring his characters’ weird sounds live, drafting the audience in on backing vocals. Anything could happen.

“It’s really bringing together everything I enjoy,” he says. “I get to use all of my different skills, the music as well, which I love. I get very excited about doing them.”

And, of course, the many charity-shop LP purchases also help some worthy causes. They must have made at least a tenner out of him so far.

SHOW Dan Lees: Vinyl Reflections

VENUE: PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth

TIME: 10:10pm – 11:10pm, 3–24 Aug, not 5, 12, 19

Rush Hour

Eric Rushton is living his dream of being a comedian. And he’s not sure he likes it.

Words: Jay Richardson

“I

t’s funny, I’m going through a crisis at the moment about whether comedy is definitely making me happy,” the 28-year-old Eric Rushton admits. “I don’t think I would be as happy without it. But is that a worry? Is my identity solely wrapped around this one thing? Am I using the dopamine, with everybody think-

ing ‘you’re a legend’ for 20 minutes, rather than actually dealing with the insecurities I have?”

A little bit awkward, a little deadpan, with a low-energy style that saw some initially confuse him with a character comic, Rushton’s act has been described by fellow stand-up Jamie Sutherland as “monetising his social freak”.

Photo: Shane Coles

At last year’s Fringe, his producer, who has experience of working with neurodivergent comedians, respectfully asked if he’d ever sought a diagnosis. The standout, bleakly hilarious routine of his show Not That Deep, where he talked about having to write three good jokes a day or he’d kill himself, felt considerably nearer the knuckle when an acquaintance took their own life during the festival.

Rushton had started his run with the “massive confidence boost” of having just been named the inaugural winner of The Channel 4 Sean Lock Comedy Award, recognising that he embodied the alternative comedic spirit of the late, playfully inventive comic. It also secured him development with Steve Coogan’s production company Baby Cow, writing a sitcom based on his experience of having seven siblings. But, incredibly, when he came to self-produce and film Not That Deep as a special, it proved notable for him having to eject his older brother from the front row for being too disruptive.

Such Brave Girls, whose path into television he hopes to emulate.

“That was my way of trying to fit in,” Rushton recalls. “I’d always wanted to do comedy as a kid but was too scared, I was never a drama kid at school. I thought I’d maybe like to write scripts one day. But this comedy society, I threw myself into it and forced myself to do stand-up. My first year away from home, coming from a big family, it was nice to find another family who took me under their wing.

"I’d always wanted to do comedy as a kid but was too scared"

“I was really self-conscious about my appearance at 18, which still lingers, so it’s mad that we filmed my first date. Was I distracting myself from living normally, making ‘content’ to deflect? It took the pressure off because we were making a silly video. It didn’t matter if it was embarrassing and she didn’t want to see me again.”

His 2022 debut, I Had A Dream And You Were All In It, recalled his father’s death. But it also showcased a romantic streak “that’s a running theme throughout my life”. For all that he favours wearing bright tracksuit tops on stage, for the contrast of this “nerdy, beta persona going all Stormzy or into beast mode”, there remains an endearing, loveable vulnerability to the Midlander that’s acutely showcased in the 2015 documentary Eric Rushton Won’t Die Alone, shot while he was a painfully shy student at Warwick University. Conflating his comedy career with “looking for ‘The One’”, the film captures his earliest stand-up and follows him preparing for his very first date, encouraged and enabled by his friends in the university’s comedy society, including Arnold T. Rice, who still shoots his work, and a young Kat Sadler, creator of the acclaimed sitcom

His latest show, Real One, finds Rushton further confronting adult life and his dreams, recalling how he was fired as a maths teacher, supposedly at the same school he once dodged expulsion from for his sweet-selling racket. Sacked for “potentially threatening behaviour”, for aggressively pursuing the thief of his £2.99 decaffeinated Lidl coffee, it’s his “most personal” show he reckons, about how the bullied boy begat the troubled young man.

So what would a successful Fringe be for him?

“Finding ‘The One’. Someone from Hollywood putting me in a Marvel film. I’d love to skyrocket to huge, external success and validation.

“Or,” he smiles, “just a mediocre run that comes with the realisation that happiness comes from within.”

SHOW Eric Rushton: Real One

VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive) TIME: 3:20pm – 4:20pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14 Aug

Feeling Sheepish

Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Al Roberts discuss friendship, living together and living apart

Words: Craig Angus

The year is 2014. I’m at the Fringe watching a sketch trio called Sheeps perform at the Bedlam Theatre. The group are warming up for their upcoming ‘Wembley Stadium’ show with an Edinburgh run, fine tuning their act ahead of the biggest night of their lives. Only that’s all they do. One sketch, set in an aquarium, is fought over and disassembled. I sit there in tears, thinking this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Like the best stuff in this realm it’s clever, but prioritises the ludicrous over the cerebral. And I’m struck by the chemistry of the trio; Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Al Roberts find each other hilarious and, to be quite honest, seem to love one another.

stealing turn in the uniquely brilliant Stath Lets Flats, playing Al, his downtrodden namesake, bouncing off the Demetriou siblings’ frenetic energy perfectly. But love, for each other, for working together, and for the craft, brings them back to Edinburgh as a unit.

“It’s sillier to do it the older you get,” Johnson says of the reunion. “It feels harder and harder to justify why you’re doing it and that makes it funnier. There’s a joke under every joke which is ‘why on earth are you doing this?’”

“It's sillier to do it the older you get” Daran Johnson

Talking to them a decade on, it’s clear they do. Sheeps are back with their first hour of new material in six years. In the interim they’ve been busy flourishing independently as creatives. Williams published his first novel (Homes and Experiences), created the BBC series Ladhood and wrote and starred in Pls Like Johnson’s writing credits include Parlement and Cartoon Network’s Elliott From Earth (with additional research suggesting work on Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and Seinfeld, you decide). Roberts had an understated but scene

Two years ago the group performed a greatest hits style compilation show (the factually inaccurate but brilliantly titled Ten Years, Ten Laughs) which, rather than acting as a coda to a then 12 year partnership, suggested there was more to come. “The bits we enjoyed doing the most were the eight new minutes in that hour,” Johnson says. “So we were partly curious to see if we could do it.”

Where the writing and rehearsal of the early Sheeps shows were characterised by, as Johnson puts it, “having quite extraordinary amounts of free time in the house together”, the creation of The Giggle Bunch (That’s Our Name For You) has been more regimented, out of necessity, with Roberts producing rehears-

als. Williams says: “We’ve carved out days in a way that’s more appropriate with being middle-aged and taking our working lives more seriously. But it’s still been fun.”

It’s probably for the best that the group aren’t living together anymore, even if that intensity is at the root of their creative synergy. “There was a period of four years,” Johnson says, “where it was really weird for me if I was in a room and neither of the other two were. The only friends we had in London were also mutual friends. If we were going to the party the other two would be there. There was a solid year where none of us had partners or went on a date, we only saw each other. By the end of it we were on a pretty clear wavelength.”

Expect the Sheeps to revel in pushing those shared sensibilities, with no real thought of a bigger stage for their specific brand of surreal comedy. ‘If the agenda was to get a TV show commissioned, Williams deadpans, “this

would be the worst possible way to go about it. It would be fun, it’s just not a conscious motivation anymore.”

For Roberts, the main reward is to work with Williams and Johnson after all their years together. “It’s exciting to present a sketch to these guys and see what they think, to try and surprise each other, to try and make each other laugh. Nothing else that I’m doing feels like it comes close. Johnson nods in agreement: “Anything else I’m doing I just wonder, ‘Will Liam and Al find it funny?’ They’re my best friends. It’s nice to do a thing together. It’s fun to do a show just to make the show fun rather than to another end.”

SHOW Sheeps: The Giggle Bunch (That’s Our Name For You)

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard TIME: 8:00pm – 9:00pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 17 Aug

Photo: Tom Kingsley

The Art of Producing

Producer Mark Ashmore of Future Artists talks about working with the Tartan Tabletop team to bring Dungeons & Dragon Comedy: The Never-Ending Quest – The Return to Gilded Balloon after selling out in 2023 and success at Adelaide Fringe

Assomeone that has produced theatre at the Fringe for over a decade, what lessons have you learnt over the years?

For me as a producer, I always tell my artists that the audience comes first. We are creating for them, not ourselves. The Fringe is about the audiences and they do change each year – for example, there are less student audiences out here and the average ticket holder is 40+. I watch documentaries on the Fringe, and see how it was set up to be anti-establishment by students back in the day – I guess the spirit of that is here. So the lesson here is, the Fringe changes, and over a decade of producing, one of my key jobs in to anticipate this change.

As a producer, what do you find special about Tartan Tabletop?

I discovered Tartan Tabletop playing their D&D comedy improv show on the Free

Image: courtesy of Mark Ashmore

Fringe. The entire crew had talent for improv – I thought it was scripted as it was beat perfect comedy and everyone played a role, the dynamic was perfect. I found out later they had a popular podcast, and the Free Fringe was their first outing as a show. That was 2022. I said to them, look if I can work with you, and we can hone this into the perfect 50 minutes, make it interactive, make people feel part of something, like an indie band, then I think we have something. The lesson here is, always nip in for a pint, no matter the time of day, and talent is often found in a backroom somewhere.

What are you hoping this year’s Fringe and the return to Gilded Balloon will bring for Tartan Tabletop?

Gilded Balloon took a risk with the show last year, I really had to blag it – a D&D comedy? Who would come? And we sold out our run, with audiences coming back three or more times to see the story unfold. We then invested everything we had and went to Australia to the Adelaide Fringe, and again, the show sold out and we got our first real reviews. So this year, the adventures are new, but we have some returning characters. Noblin the Goblin is back and each show they are played by a different guest comedian from the Fringe – so this unknown makes the show a comedy tightrope. If you saw us last year, you will know what we mean!

For tickets head to gildedballoon. co.uk and follow @Tartantabletop on Instagram and Twitter

Agents of Change

The creatives behind Stuffed and Tending discuss grounding their shows in the lived experiences of those failed by politicians

Words:

Eve Livingston

If 14 years of Conservative government have been challenging for the arts, they have also been fertile ground for creative subject matter. Cultural offerings exploring themes of austerity and cuts; social inequality; health; education and culture wars have become mainstays of the UK’s arts landscape and the Edinburgh Fringe programme alike over the past decade. But as of July 4, we are told, change is afoot: a Labour government committed to “raising the next generation of creatives” holds the levers of power for the first time since 2010.

But with the election result coming just three weeks ahead of this year’s Fringe, many of this year’s festival offerings will still reckon with the legacy of the past 14 years. How do creatives examining the inequalities and harm set in motion by previous governments feel about the political moment in which their shows arrive – and will the dawn of a new government change how audiences relate to their subject matter?

“If I can make an audience empathise with one person’s individual story or truth, that’s more likely to impact change"

Both Ugly Bucket’s “blazing inferno” Stuffed, about food insecurity, and Tending, a “heartbreaking, hilarious and very human look at the experience of nurses,” use verbatim theatre to tell their stories, and both emerged from one of the defining failures of the previous government: the Covid-19 pandemic. Stuffed was born from company members’ experiences of volunteering in food banks over lockdown, while Tending has its roots in the experience of one nurse in particular – Izzy Howes, assistant producer and longtime best friend of playwright El Blackwood.

Grace Gallagher

“The initial idea came from our conversations during Covid – both of us recognised that rather than hearing directly about nurses’ experiences, what we were hearing was stereotypes and hero worship,” says Blackwood of her conversations with paediatric ICU nurse Howes.

“Often that can lead to the justification of extended bad treatment; the idea that they’re angels so they can’t stop and they can’t complain, because that’s not who they are.”

What followed were interviews with 70 nurses taking place over a year, and exploring all aspects of their work from the good to the bad, the personal to the structural and everything in between. Every word spoken in Tending was also spoken by a real-life nurse in one of these interviews, Blackwood points out, making the final production all the more impactful.

“I think this approach is far more representative and far more authentic than fictionalising nurses’ accounts, and you get a multiplicity of perspectives rather than creating something monolithic,” she says. “The audience

feels like they’re witnessing something and that lens is an incredibly powerful one.”

It was the same pursuit of truth and authenticity which led Ugly Bucket to verbatim theatre, an approach which has underpinned previous productions as well as Stuffed. Co-artistic director Grace Gallagher and colleagues embarked on a similar research process to that of Blackwood, using testimony from conversations with people working in food banks across England to shape the script and physical clowning elements which make up the production.

“A lot of what we try to do is around educating people, and we could make a show about statistics and the sheer magnitude of numbers, but we prefer to think about this idea of

Photo: Jack Ehlen

Stuffed

“A time of political change is a fantastic time for the show to be on"

El Blackwood

emotional education and creating empathy,” says Gallagher. “As human beings we’re emotional creatures and it’s emotion that fuels us – if I can make an audience empathise with one person’s individual story or truth, that’s more likely to impact change.”

Both productions spent time in the run up to this year’s Fringe considering their relationship to the general election including, in Blackwood’s case, whether the performance should be delayed until next year. But, say both, the issues they explore are bigger than a single government.

“For us, particularly as a Liverpool-based theatre company, it felt like it could have been really easy to make a show which just says ‘fuck the Tories’ for an hour,” says Gallagher. “But while there’s a lot of accountability to be had in austerity and the government we’ve had for the past 14 years, we wanted to be constructive in moving us forward and bringing people together.

“There isn’t one answer to this problem and now we’ve got this huge shift in government, that doesn’t automatically equal the solution.”

Social impact is also key to both productions, with Stuffed collecting for Edinburgh food banks throughout their run and Tending partnering with the Cavell Trust and offering a pre-Fringe reading in Shotts, North Lanarkshire, where a high proportion of NHS staff live. Outside of the Fringe, both productions make use of panel discussions and Q&As to bring the issues to life and inspire action among audiences.

Time will tell what difference a Labour government might make to the arts sector and the country more widely, but a sense of change and cautious optimism among Fringe-goers this year is a constructive backdrop to both productions, say Gallagher and Blackwood.

“We decided to go for this year instead of next, in part because it’s such a fertile ground for discussion,” says Blackwood. “A time of political change is a fantastic time for the show to be on.”

And for Gallagher, “I hope what happens is that the hope in the show feels more hopeful, and that maybe we feel less of the helplessness.

“But I still think it will feel angry. We need to feel hopeful and positive that change is coming but we can’t sit too comfortably in that – we still need to have an audience leaving thinking there are still things that need to be fought for.”

SHOW Stuffed

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 2:25pm – 3:25pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 18 Aug

SHOW Tending

VENUE: Underbelly

TIME: Cowgate, 2:15pm – 3:15pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12

El Blackwood and Isabella Howes

Photo: James Pearson-Howes

Sing It Back

Sh!t Theatre’s Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole discuss the cathartic power of folk music and singarounds with their audience

Words: Katie Hawthorne

“We’ll get through it,” Louise Mothersole reassures me. She’s joking about our dodgy internet connection, with a Zoom backdrop that makes it look like she’s in a medieval French village, but Sh!t Theatre’s new show Or What’s Left Of Us shares the same tenacious spirit. A show about grief, and life after it, inspired by folk club sing-arounds, it marks the performance art duo’s 14th year at the Fringe. Yet, as Rebecca Biscuit admits, there was a time that they were “genuinely unsure if we’d ever work again.”

Last time Edinburgh saw the Fringe cult favourites, they were barkeeping a sticky pub for 2019’s Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum With Expats Veering between a lads’ holiday and a steely investigation of Malta’s (allegedly) corrupt border policies, it was classic, prize-winning Sh!t: boozy chaos, dry humour and steely politics, all coated in clownish face paint and Powerpoint slides.

But after the death of Adam Brace in 2023, their long-term director, best friend and Rebecca’s partner, they found themselves lost for words. “We didn’t know how to be Sh!t Theatre again, we didn’t know how to create together again,” explains Mothersole. “So as a way of just being together, we started playing folk music.”

“We haven’t written these songs, no-one owns them, and they’re potentially hundreds of years old. There’s no pressure!” Biscuit laughs. “It really became our way of getting back together.”

Playing together grew into spending nights in folk clubs across the country, where the

duo discovered sing-arounds; community sessions in which strangers and regulars alike are invited to lead the group in a song. “It was that joy and grief thing. I kept crying,” Biscuit smiles. “I wasn’t sure what I was feeling, but it reminded us of a wake; a lot of these songs about death and saying goodbye are used both at funerals and massive piss-ups. It’s about death and it’s about life, at the same time.”

So, too, is Or What’s Left Of Us. Mothersole describes it as “a show about old grief shaking hands with new grief,” telling me that it also addresses her father’s suicide in 2012. And while many previous Sh!t Theatre shows (including DollyWould and Letters to Windsor House) have put their personal lives on stage, this time it’s different – both a departure from their own theatrical style, as well as a celebration of their endurance.

“But we do aim to provide an entertaining experience,” Mothersole grins, pausing for effect. “It’s also a true crime!”

Photo: Claire Nolan

“A lot of these songs about death and saying goodbye are used both at funerals and massive piss-ups"

Rebecca Biscuit

In what feels like classic Sh!t spirit, I feel emotional whiplash while they regale me with the mysterious arson attack which befell one of their favourite folk clubs. No, they won’t tell me who did it. Yes, the show might even have pyro, if Health & Safety permit it. Biscuit and Mothersole remain masters of the art of the yarn; even after everything changes, some things stay the same.

This August, immediately after each show, they’ll be holding a real sing-around. You don’t need to be a singer, Mothersole urges. “It’s just this cathartic, joyful place where people let stuff out. We’ve had people do Lighthouse Family before, someone did ‘Under the Sea’, we’ve had actual sea shanties.” It’s totally optional, and you’ll be welcome to sing, to listen, or even to lead a song if the mood strikes.

It’s a new era for Sh!t Theatre, as they use songs old and new to live through grief old and new. “We’re still at the beginning,” Biscuit says, “Like the audience, really. But we’re all going forward together.”

SHOW Sh!t Theatre: Or What’s Left of Us

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 4:45pm – 5:45pm, 1–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19

Lung Ha at 40

Edinburgh-based theatre group celebrate their long history and vital place in Scotland’s cultural sector

Words: Hamish Gibson

How does an award-winning theatre group celebrate a 40th anniversary?

Lung Ha Theatre Company started life in 1984, going on to produce over 40 original shows, work with 300+ performers, tour Europe, and continue to champion disabled theatre performers into 2024 and hopefully beyond. The company’s founder, Richard Vallis, wanted to create opportunities for disabled creatives who were struggling to find similar opportunities elsewhere. Vallis found himself proving a point to the sceptics, that these performers were not only perfectly capable of putting on a show, but could thrive at it.

“If you give us a chance, we can go on stage and we can kill it"

Emma McCaffrey

A key part of this year’s celebrations is the launch of Lung Ha’s touring company, marked by their Fringe show An Unexpected Hiccup, produced in collaboration with Plutot la Vie.

First shown in 2021, An Unexpected Hiccup is a surreal farce that was developed in collaboration with its cast. Actor and long-time Lung Ha member Emma McCaffrey talks about the challenges of staging a play in spite of lockdown restrictions, complete with Zoom workshops and ultra-sanitised sets, as well as the cast being asked to develop their characters during an already surreal societal moment. “The characters are going through a tough time as well but they’re quite eccentric,” she says, “and going through Covid is a perfect time to understand your own madness, I guess.”

Those restrictions led to unique creative twists, from distanced performers to a new servant character whose role was to clean any contacted surfaces. Bringing the show back in 2024 has allowed the group to free itself from those restrictions while taking inspiration from the unique ideas that emerged back in 2021. Ultimately, co-director Maria Oller promises, they want the audience “to have a good belly laugh”.

Having championed disabled-led arts throughout its 40-year history, the company continues to grow, providing workshops and allowing performers to fulfil their potential. Realising this potential has been a big part of Oller’s 15 years with Lung Ha, from expanding the types of challenging plays that the group produce to “always work[ing] with the best people”.

“The Lung Ha ensemble is the essence of Lung Ha,” she explains. “Even if we now have a touring company, it’s still connected to the big ensemble, and I think that is our strength”. Both Oller and McCaffrey are also hugely grateful for

Photo: Pete Dibdin

the behind-the-scenes support that has driven much of the group’s work. Without the supporting network of family and support teams, alongside the actors’ commitment, Oller says Lung Ha’s work “wouldn’t be possible at all”.

When asked what Lung Ha has to teach Scotland’s cultural sector, McCaffrey is keen to emphasise that disabled performers and creatives are just as capable as anyone. With TV recently making improvements in disabled representation, “there’s still a bit of unsureness of disabled people being on stage”. This is partly down to a lack of proper representation thus far, and she says that disabled-led groups like Lung Ha “gives us a face” and help show “that we can also act [and] we’re absolutely good at it. If you give us a chance, we can go on stage and we can kill it”.

Oller also speaks about the practical contributions Lung Ha offers Scottish theatre, supporting mainstream companies in working with people with learning disabilities, as well as

“The Lung Ha ensemble is the essence of Lung Ha”

opening up disabled performances to all ages, including school audiences. The challenge for Lung Ha, Oller says, is to keep looking for new challenges, “being curious and open and ready”.

For McCaffrey, the passion and enjoyment of Lung Ha’s performers is key. The actors “love what they do, and that’s the huge appeal.” And this enjoyment is only the start. “Let’s get them on stage, let’s do more with them, see what more we can do. Why not?”

Exactly.

SHOW An Unexpected Hiccup

VENUE: Zoo Southside

TIME: 4:30pm – 5:30pm, 2–10 Aug

Photo: Pete Dibdin

The Flip Side

Virginia Gay on her joyous re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac

Words: Xuanlin Tham

Australian actor, writer, and director Virginia Gay – currently on the road as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival – is ready for the Edinburgh Fringe. “I’m probably not going to treat it the way I did in my 20s, when I was like, ‘fucking Edinburgh!’” Gay says, pulling rockstar fingers. Berocca is the secret: “You put it in a champagne glass, and you tell people it’s a Pet Nat.”

The last time she performed here was 2012; this year, she’s making her comeback with the European premiere of her gender-flipped retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac at the Traverse Theatre. “[The Fringe] is such a mecca for artists. There’s a beautiful democracy that I don’t think exists in any other artistic forum,” Gay says. “I know this is a psychotic thing to say, but it feels like a second home, and a kind of loving embrace.”

theatre”: liveness, togetherness, and collective

about a writer who pens beautiful dialogue for

“This [version], particularly, was a show shut

isting on scraps of connection was something

Virginia Gay

Photo: Daniel Boud

During its sold-out Melbourne run, Gay recounts feeding croissants to the audience, literalising the nourishing power of theatre; queer women coming back again and again, revelling in the story not just being “scraps”, but “a whole meal”; and someone even getting a tattoo of the play’s central image. “People bringing their sadness and saying, ‘It was allowed to blossom here and then go away’,” Gay recounts.

The audience is clued into Cyrano’s true feelings while other characters are deceived: to Gay, this complicity was the perfect vehicle to alter the course. “The original is a tragedy, and when you have a queer woman playing Cyrano, I will not have any more tragedy. We had to jump the tracks from a template that we get given about how to live, and the old stories we keep telling as performers: with the help of the audience.”

"Cyrano is, at its heart, about the process of making theatre"

It’s always felt like a female and queer-coded story to Gay. “This idea of ‘Just be prettier and talk less; if only you could ask less poetry of the world’. This sense of looking at a beautiful man and saying, ‘Yes, you’re dumb, but you’re also everything I wish I could be’.”

Fascinated by the meta-narratives of being a woman rewriting this story, Gay leans into how this deepens the betrayal of love interest Roxanne’s trust. “When [Roxanne] realises she’s been catfished and comes back saying, ‘I’m allowed to be shallow,’ the writer says, ‘Yeah, I insisted you be.’”

It remains an unapologetically joyous comedy. “When audiences are laughing, they will come with you anywhere, and they suddenly find themselves on the other side of history.” What might Fringe audiences feel, leaving the theatre? “The poetry of longing, and how exquisite a good yearn is,” Gay laughs. “Also the transformative nature of joy and hope. It’s hard to find a scrap of optimism and go, maybe we could avoid tragedy just this one time. But maybe if we all try, we actually can get a little more triumph.”

VENUE: Traverse Theatre

TIME: times vary, 1–25 Aug, not 2, 5, 12, 19

SHOW Cyrano

Cyrano

Photo: Daniel Boud

Unmissable! A punchy, provocative, and powerful small show exploring the concept of Capitalist Realism and its effects on the art world. Inspired by the writings of Mark Fisher, this exhibition features fascinating artists from the UK, NZ, Aus and the USA Open 115pm Mon to Sat, 3-24 August Curator’s talk @ Noon on Sat 10, 17 and 24 Aug.

Venue 492:

Wasps, Granton Station, 1 Granton Station Sq, EH5 1FU

scottlawrie.com

Patricia Piccinini, Teenage Metamorphosis, 2017 © The artist.

Desi Disco

Pali and Jay’s Ultimate Asian Wedding DJ

Roadshow invites audiences to immerse themselves in the chaos and revelry of a UK South Asian wedding, as the DJ duo set out to cement their position as the 19th best Asian wedding DJs...in Southall. Here, uncle Pali and nephew Jay go B2B to soundtrack their ideal Punjabi knees-up

The song for the aunties

Jay – A song the aunties love? Anything I’m singing (winks) Haha nah you gotta ask Uncle Pali about this one, he loves the auntiya! Always dedicating ‘Kala Chashma’ to them, probably puts on his black shades to watch them dance lol. Don’t be deceived though... he got game. His nickname in high school was ‘Player Pali’. Well I don’t know if that’s true, but if we all say it I reckon that’ll catch on.

Pali – Well... I’ve found in parties that the auntiya really love to dance to ‘London Tumakhda’ and also.. ‘Kala Chashma’

Jay said what?! No way I don’t put on black shades to watch them dance! You can check my Google reviews, no one’s ever said that about me. I swear! Check it right now... also leave us five stars yeah?

The Asian wedding banger to end all bangers

Jay – (pretends to adjust glasses) Well if you break down the fundamentals of punjabi music... Did that look good? Me pretending like I’ve got glasses? I’m making it look like I’m a conn-O-isseur of Punjabi music. Like obviously I know this is a text only interview but hopefully the readers think I’m proper knowledgeable. So as I was saying… the fundamentals of Punjabi music is essentially people singing about alcohol. ‘Daaru Pee Ke’ or ‘Patiala Peg’ by Diljit Dosanjh. Shoutout Diljit paaji.

Pali – Punjabi music has a wonderful and rich history... lots of complexities that comes from folk music they would sing in the village. People think it’s all about alcohol these days... but it’s not. I will select ‘Gureh Nalon Ishq’ by Malkit Singh ji

The best song to close the night

Jay – (makes train noises) Choo Choo! Come on. Is this even a question? See there’s only one correct answer for how to end the night.

Rail Gaddi! Everyone together, hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you, creating a fricking train that’s got better service than Great Western Rail! It’s legendary. Shoutout to Mangal Singh Uncle!

Pali – All aboard everyone! The train is departing the platform! If Jay even said anything apart from Rail Gaddi then I’m disowning him. I’d play that song at bloody funerals too. Everyone together, circling the venue and ending up back on the dance floor, it’s like the ending of a film. Nothing like it. It’s actually the law in some countries that you have to end the night with that song... well Jay said that to me once. I’m doubting it now...

SHOW Pali and Jay’s Ultimate Asian Wedding DJ Roadshow

VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 8:00pm – 9:15pm, 3–25 Aug, not 7, 13, 20

Photo: Rich Lakos

13:30 | 01 - 26 AUG

Fight or Flight

Anna Morris discusses moving from comedy to theatre, social expectations and her wish to give audiences plenty to talk about

Words: Ben Venables

Anna Morris is coming up for air. Departing from her usual comedic characters, she lands at Summerhall with her debut play Son of a Bitch. The story centres on Marnie who, on a delayed flight, in a moment of air-rage, insults her son with a four letter word. What a mile high cunt!

Yet, judging a mother isn’t so simple. And Son of a Bitch explores social pressures, choice and regret, and what happens when a momentary lapse becomes a defining moment.

“One of her friends had said: that was the worst moment of her life"

“I felt like I’d done the shows I wanted to do,” says Morris, about moving from comedy to drama. “I needed another challenge. I needed my brain to do something different. I needed to learn something different.”

Writing a play is different for a comedian, throwing down a daunting challenge. “How do I know if this is any good?” Morris candidly asks, reflecting on the play’s earliest drafts. Comedians hone their new ideas on-stage, gaining immediate audience feedback. “If no one laughs it didn’t work. When I used to do my comedy work-in-progress shows, I was ruthless; I scrapped chunks: Oh that doesn’t work; that’s going in the bin.”

In theatre, there are a few ‘scratch nights’ to test out new material, but there’s no equivalent signal of laughs or no-laughs to guide re-writes. “Quite a few friends were there on

that first night,” she says. But that only created a new problem: “If I ask them, are they going to say it’s good because they’re my friends?”

In the end, she adapted by sending a QR code with an anonymous Google form to the audience. “And that’s been so helpful,” she says, “because people have been honest.”

Creating theatre does have some advantages over comedy though. You’re not as alone in the creative process. With the exception of her comedy director, and current dramaturg Dave Jackson, “I’ve always done everything myself,” she says. “That’s a hard thing: letting go and going, can other people help me?”

The answer to that is yes, with Morris expressing gratitude to Son of a Bitch’s creative team, including director Madelaine Moore and producer Josie Underwood and doesn’t take her lighting and sound designers, the care and support she’s received from the venue, for granted: “It’s exciting seeing that world come to life that I’ve created in my head.”

The genesis of Son of a Bitch stemmed originally from a detail in a newspaper article about the social media pile-on and shaming of a lawyer after an altercation on a plane. “The seed of the play in my head was in this little thing I read,” she recalls. “One of her friends had said: that was the worst moment of her life.”

Morris thought: “There is a context to those few seconds.”

While Morris uses the cramped and anxious atmosphere of a plane for the story’s catalyst, it’s the before-and-after of Marnie’s life which the play explores, what are the myriad factors that lead to a mother calling her son a cunt?

“There was a lot of stuff I wanted to explore about age and the scaremongering of society,”

Photo: Karla Gowlett

she says. “People saying there is specific age when you need to sort this out and you need to do this.” Morris mentions a scene from Netflix’s political drama House of Cards, where the character Claire Underwood, running for Vice President and First Lady, hosts her opposite number as they talk over coffee. When Claire is asked if she regrets not having children, she responds with a quiet edge: ‘Do you ever regret having them?’

Morris says: “I remember seeing that going, Oh, that’s nice. Someone’s actually raised that point.”

By creating a character in Marnie, with complicated feelings about choice, regrets and motherhood, Morris hopes Son of a Bitch will elicit different reactions. “The biggest thing for me is to write something that people come out and talk about it. With the scratch nights I did, when I came out to the bar, people were talking in a way that was quite interesting. People were saying: Oh, I don’t like [Marnie]: she’s a bitch... Then I could hear another person going: ‘No, no, she’s got a lot going on.’

And then someone else said: ‘I feel sorry for that kid.’ Then another said: ‘That kid is clearly awful!’ I kind of loved that. I thought, Oh, is this what I’ve done. If I’m going to write something, it’d be nice to write something that might divide people.”

VENUE: Summerhall TIME: 6:10pm – 7:10pm, 1–26 Aug, not 12, 19

SHOW Son of a Bitch

Feast Your Eyes

Playwright Hannah Khalil and theatre-maker Sierra Sevilla discuss their food-based shows

Words: Katie Hawthorne

The Fringe is often described as a theatrical feast, but My English Persian Kitchen and For The Love of Spam are taking that literally. Expect the fragrant perfume of fresh herbs, a gently simmering stew, and try a Guamanian recipe in the form of a “spam-ape” – that’s a Spam canape, obviously.

“Theatre should be about all five senses!” grins playwright Hannah Khalil. It’s the first time she’s adapted a cookbook for the stage – My English Persian Kitchen is based on the stories in Atoosa Sepehr’s From A Persian Kitchen – but she’s found a similar rhythm in

plotting an emotional monologue and judging the best moment to turn up the heat. A play about community, cultural heritage and how it feels to “start again” as an immigrant in a new country, Sepehr’s recipes-as-storytelling resonated deeply with Khalil, despite not sharing her Iranian background.

“It’s a story I understand, because it happened to my mum,” Khalil says, who has Palestinian heritage. “It’s about being human in a difficult situation, and food as a way of accessing a place you can’t really go to, or family members you can’t see.”

For the Love of Spam

Photo: Barbara Dudek

Khalil stresses there’s no way she could stage Sepehr’s story without actual, real cooking on stage. Lucky that performer Isabella Nefar is both a great actor and cook. “Being teary around cut onions is a good thing,” Khalil laughs. “And she’s good with a knife.” While juggling her lines, Nefar will be preparing ash-e reshteh, a type of noodle soup which uses tons of herbs, barbary, lime and turmeric: “It’s going to smell amazing!” Khalil emphasises, “and it’s uniquely theatrical – you don’t get this in any other artform.” Even more importantly, it turns the stage into an informal, domestic space where Sepehr’s story feels at home.

Likewise, Sierra Sevilla’s one-woman, Spambased performance uses the tinned ham to bridge cultures. Sevilla is a CHamoru and Filipina theatre-maker from Guam, but her play started in her London kitchen. “People would say, ‘That’s nasty! Why would you eat that?’ – and I got really upset about it,” she says, as rejections of her “comfort food” mirrored the way that Western countries have treated her island.

Spam (aka Supply Processed American Meat) was invented during WW2 to feed US troops. “Wherever the US military had a footprint, you’ll find legacies of Spam,” she explains, and the tins are inextricable from her Guama-

“With writing and cooking, I can shut out the noise of the world”

Hannah Khalil

nian childhood. During typhoons her mother would make Spam kelaguen, which uses lots of lemon juice, peppers and onion, when the power went out. A long shelf-life makes it both “convenient and traditional” to a remote island prone to severe weather, but to Sevilla it tastes like home.

And yet, Spam’s ‘bad’ reputation overseas, and in the US specifically, is a rich metaphor. “The US produces Spam but they don’t like it,” she says, “in the same way that they own [Guam] as a territory but they don’t care about us.” As a result, lovingly serving audiences (possibly) their first taste of Spam is a symbolic way to unpick Guam’s history. “If I saw a show about a dish and nobody gave me that dish after? I’d feel robbed!” she jokes. “I have to feed people, that’s how we show love. And it means everything to me that they’ve opened their hearts to try it.”

For Sevilla and Khalil, cooking and playwriting are acts of community. Combined, they result in sensory storytelling which exists beyond language. “With writing and cooking, I can shut out the noise of the world,” says Khalil. “I decide the ending and make the dish I want for my dinner… As long as it doesn’t boil over!”

SHOW My English Persian Kitchen

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

SHOW For the Love of Spam

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 2:10pm – 3:10pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 7 Aug, 14 Aug, 21 Aug

Photo: Ray Robets

My English Persian Kitchen

Sex Education

Kaytlin Bailey, Michaela Burger and Ryan Patrick Welsh’s shows draw attention to sex worker rights and decriminalisation

Words: Claire Sawers

“If you hate people doing gross stuff for money, what you hate is poverty and not prostitution,” says Kaytlin Bailey, creator of Whore’s Eye View. A former sex worker, now performer and host of The Oldest Profession podcast, Bailey is utterly devoted to making people rethink what they think they know about the oldest profession.

“We cannot arrest our way out of poverty,” she shrugs. “For so many people, prostitution has become a symbol of violence against women and exploitation. But we will do nothing to address poverty or gender-based violence by making it harder for consensual adults to make money or have sex. More of us are speaking out against antiquated laws that don’t make anyone safer.”

Bailey, an advocate for sex worker rights and decriminalisation, recently toured her show to New Zealand, where sex work was fully decriminalised in 2003. She met sex workers,

clients and brothel owners who negotiate sexual services openly without fear of arrest. “Spoiler: It’s great for everyone!”, she says. Whore’s Eye View, like other shows coming to this year’s Fringe, including Stories from the Office of a Sex Dungeon, hopes to debunk outdated myths around sex work, and platform real people whose lives can otherwise be reduced to dangerous stereotypes. “I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for 13 years, so that’s my background,” says Bailey. “If you can make people laugh, you can make them listen. I also have a background in policy and history so this show is absolutely edu-tainment.”

Michaela Burger is an Australian actor bringing a one-woman play about the highend escort and decriminalisation activist Grace Bellavue. Bellavue, real name Pippa O’Sullivan, rose to fame on social media before dying by suicide in 2015, aged 28. The State of Grace features 90% verbatim quotes from

Kaytlin Bailey

Photo: Mindy Tucker

Grace’s real diaries plus hip-hop music and statistics. “I’ve fallen so in love with Grace,” says Burger. “She’s such an inspiration. She lived fully. If she was alive today she’d be so well known because of her intelligence and sass.”

Researching the role has been an at times chilling education for Burger. “Reading about sex workers being assaulted by police officers, or unfairly criticised by feminists, it’s really opened my eyes. There is often a lack of education about sex work. I wanted to learn. Sex workers are human beings doing a job.” Bellavue began sex work aged 17 as she was “horny and bored” and didn’t want to be ordinary. As the former digital marketer shared sex tips, experimented with her image and lobbied the Australian government, her fanbase grew. She used her voice to draw attention to sex worker rights. “When she was raped, she called out her rapist on Twitter,” says Burger. “You empathise quickly with Grace’s story. She just wanted to be safe.”

Ryan Patrick Welsh is a San Francisco cabaret singer who has done sex work for eight years now. “You could throw a stone in San Francisco and find a sex worker. There’s not

“If you can make people laugh, you can make them listen”

so much criticism here. But there’s a lingering feeling in [wider] society that sex work is shameful, or disgusting or weird. Sex work has been a huge gift to me, personally and professionally. It’s allowed me to pursue life as an artist.” His late-night musical show Sex, Camp, Rock ‘N Roll is autobiographical, “starting off ludicrous, high energy and camp, then becoming more heartfelt”. Welsh says attitudes towards those presenting as male or female often differ. “There are still those clichés of being slutty or being a player,” he nods.

“I’d like to demystify sex work. It’s a fact. It exists in the world. But actually sex work and stage work are so close – people pay for your presence and your labour. Both involve teasing, edging, some release.” While Welsh’s show doesn’t go into decriminalisation, he thinks that definitely needs to be the first step. “At least after my show you will know at least one out sex worker. It’s like Harvey Milk used to say to gays and lesbians; being out and visible can ‘break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions’. That’s how we normalise sex work and take ownership.”

SHOW The State of Grace

VENUE: Assembly Rooms

TIME: 7:05pm – 8:10pm, 1–24 Aug, not 7, 13, 20

SHOW Sex, Camp, Rock ‘N Roll

VENUE: theSpace @ Niddry St

TIME: times vary, 2–24 Aug, not 11, 18

SHOW Whore’s Eye View

VENUE: C ARTS | C venues | C alto

TIME: 7:20pm – 8:20pm, 31 Jul – 25 Aug, not 13 Aug

Photo: Nino Ellington

Sex, Camp, Rock ‘N Roll

Sobering Up

David Ireland discusses his grimly comic play

Words: David Pollock

Playwright David Ireland’s most recent Edinburgh Festival experience was a very good one. Ulster American hit the Traverse Theatre’s stage like a primed explosive in 2018, a fierce satire of the self-consciously right-on nature of middle-class British theatre, and the culturally appropriative ways big stars co-opt real-life stories. Critics went wild for it.

“My agent sent it around various theatres in London and it was rejected,” says Ireland, who’s from Belfast but now lives in Glasgow. “The message was, it was too controversial or offensive or whatever. Then I had a meeting with Gareth Nicholls from the Traverse – I’d acted for him as Santa Claus in a kid’s show at the Arches in Glasgow. He asked if I had any unproduced plays.

“I sent it thinking there was no way the Traverse would do it after every theatre in London said no, but he jumped at it. I was really proud of the play, but I was convinced it was going to be a disaster. I thought people would hate it and find the characters repulsive. But no, it was much loved – and hated by some.”

Lockdown delayed Ulster American’s London transfer, but it opened at the Riverside Studios in late 2023, starring Woody Harrelson, Andy Serkis and Derry Girls’ Louisa Harland. “It was great, but a very strange experience, dealing with that level of Hollywood stardom,” says Ireland. “It paralleled the play – not that Woody is monstrous, but when you’re in a room with somebody that famous it changes you, which is what happens to the playwright character.”

Ireland’s profile had clearly risen, because the National Theatre of Scotland told him Slow Horses actor Jack Lowden had expressed an interest in appearing in a play by him. “I’m a huge fan, I think he’s one of the best actors of his generation, so I leapt at the chance,” says Ireland. “I think actors tend to like my work more than audiences and critics, which has given me a career. I used to be an actor, so I write for them first.”

Jack Lowden

Photo: Charlie Gray

Setting aside the idea that a National Theatre of Scotland play (now also an Edinburgh International Festival co-production) needs a large cast and dazzling effects, Ireland wrote two-hander The Fifth Step, about men in an Alcoholics Anonymous programme. “Like all of my work it’s autobiographical to an extent, which is a horrifying thing to admit,” says Ireland. “I really love those David Mamet plays of the 70s and 80s, where it’s just two or three people in a room talking. It’s an older man and a younger man, a very basic two-hander, but with elements of absurdism and surrealism, a naturalistic play which veers off into strange worlds.”

When he mentions autobiography, does that extend to his own relationship with alcohol? “I don’t drink alcohol, I stopped when I was 23,” he says (he’s 47 now). “I don’t label myself an alcoholic, but certainly in my teens and early twenties, it was a problem. But what the play’s about is that it was more of a problem

when I stopped drinking. I found giving up quite easy, but just being a young man and being sober at a time when the whole culture was based around drinking, I thought, how am I going to socialise? How am I going to get a girlfriend? Maybe it’s easier for today’s generation.”

Alongside Lowden as Luka, The Fifth Step stars Sean Gilder as James and is directed by Finn den Hertog. “It’s a strange play to talk about, because I can’t pinpoint exactly what it’s about,” says Ireland. “Ultimately it’s about fathers and sons, about older men and younger men, but it’s also about sexuality, alcoholism, faith and religion. Like most of my plays, it’s overloaded with themes. People seem to like that.”

SHOW The Fifth Step

VENUE: The Lyceum TIME: times vary, 21–25 Aug

Photo: Simon Murphy

The Fifth Step

JULY 31-AUG 25 at 23:15

Assembly Checkpoint #322

Tickets from £9.00

Every Mother’s Son

Roxanna Haines on her vision for Scottish Opera’s immersive staging of Oedipus Rex

Words: Gareth K. Vile

With a score by Russian arch-modernist Stravinsky, a libretto by French surrealist Jean Cocteau and based on the script by Sophocles, who inspired Aristotle and Freud, Oedipus Rex is an opera that seems to epitomise the European tradition of dead white males and canonical art. Yet Scottish Opera is taking a refreshing approach, with a community chorus tackling the Latin text, the use of an unconventional venue in the National Museum and a director, Roxanna Haines, who recognises the intimate and therapeutical potential of performance.

“I think catharsis is the reason we go to the theatre, seeing ourselves on stage and experiencing a feeling of relief,” says Haines. As a student of therapeutic performance, she combines an enthusiasm for the traditional beauty of opera and a recognition of its potential for an intimate experience that is emotionally rich. “It is in the moment at the end of the show, just before the applause.

Having escaped into the opera, we are pulled back to reality.”

Haines clearly takes the purpose of a particular production seriously: Oedipus Rex could easily be justified on the grounds of its canonical importance, but “I try not to ignore the question: why this opera now?” she continues. “The lives of Cocteau and Stravinsky gave me an answer. I scoured their lives. Cocteau lost his father to suicide at nine – and we see this in Jocasta’s fate and across the Theban cycle: all of the characters take their own lives. And the theme of exile, which I dare say Stravinsky might have felt, and this is the bedrock of how we tell the story.”

By finding the relevance of the opera, Haines is able to pursue a vision that makes the art form accessible without losing its unique characteristics. “We will give the audience what they want and expect,” she admits, but she finds that “Cocteau gives us an out” through surrealism. “Much of the set is fuchsia

Photo: Kitty Whatley

Photo: Kitty Whatley

“There is drama, it is about catharsis, but I also think that there are moments of reality and humour”

pink to contrast with the beauty of the atrium space,” she comments with another laugh.

Recognising that the combination of Latin text, the tricksiness of Stravinsky’s score and the majesty of the museum itself, Haines reflects on the challenges of this production. “It is an ancient Greek play, translated into Latin and performed in a Museum. There are barriers, some people may feel like they can’t come, and I think it is important to talk about this. We have been really trying to think about how we make these things accessible,” Haines says. “But I lean into the saving grace that surrealism gives us. I think you need it with ancient Greek tragedies: people can get caught in the depth of them – of course, there is drama, it is about catharsis, but I also think that there are moments of reality and humour, even in the midst of trauma and conflict.”

Haines' passion for opera is matched by a determination that it speaks to the modern audience. Noting that this will be the first time that the opera will be performed with female members of the chorus, she was encouraged to consider how the role of Jocasta could be reconsidered when surrounded by female voices. “I don’t feel I can tell a story where the only ending is a woman commits suicide because of the systems’ pressure upon her,” she muses.

And despite the weight of history, of the Western traditional and the internal pressures placed upon the characters, Haines’ vision encourages her to discover a new freedom in spite of the source play’s obsession with fatalism and inevitability. “I am playing with the ending,” she reveals, “giving Jocasta a choice.”

SHOW Oedipus Rex

VENUE: National Museum of Scotland

TIME: 8:00pm – 9:00pm, 12 Aug, 18 Aug, 19 Aug

Salt & Sauce

Cabaret stars Salty Brine and Skank Sinatra on how the music of Annie Lennox and Frank Sinatra soundtracks their exploration of self

Words: Kirstyn Smith

Set to a “brash, brassy” soundtrack, These are the Contents of my Head (The Annie Lennox Show) invites a handful of influences to wander through the performance. There’s the titular Annie Lennox – specifically, her 1992 solo album Diva; Edna, the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s powerhouse novel The Awakening; Judy Garland; the performer’s mother; and finally Salty Brine himself.

“I pull out of myself all the biggest, grandest, most divine personality traits that I have,” Brine says. “The part of me that wants to go to a cocktail party and hold court, and make everybody laugh. You’re meeting the diva.”

This performance is one of Brine’s Living Record Collection shows: a series in which he picks an album that’s meaningful to him and uses it to tell a story through each of the songs. Having covered Cyndi Lauper, Radiohead and the Beatles in the past, now it’s Lennox’s turn.

“I’m playing with Annie Lennox’s idea of the diva, taking on this persona of ‘diva’: the feather headdress and her looking in the mirror and touching her face and the make-up. She’d been in Eurythmics for ten years before this, and had become this persona. And I’m thinking, Where does my diva come from? It’s from all these women who have touched me in different ways throughout my life.”

Something that interests Brine is the presentation of the diva, who is fabulous, effervescent, and who moves through the world with grace and ease – and how this relates to the authentic self. Who is underneath the glamour?

“And how do we come through that to be human, be messy, be angry and to understand that’s okay?” he ponders. “In every one of my shows I play some variation of myself. It’s often drag-related, sometimes it’s boy drag, but in

this show I am the most drag diva. Drag is often more authentic. You reach in and you pull out something really true about yourself, and it lets you say or do things that you wouldn’t normally say or do.”

Drag as an expression of authenticity is something cabaret performer Skank Sinatra also explores.

“It’s ironic because there’s ten times more layers of make-up and costume and wig and heels and production. So you’d think authenticity would get lost, but it really shines through,” he says.

Skank Sinatra

Photo: Fudz Qazi

Photo: Daniel Albanese

His show is also autobiographic; he uses Frank Sinatra songs as a soundtrack to stories about living in South Africa and all over Australia – and, tantalisingly, a tale of successfully getting into Berghain. However, Sinatra grapples with what the audience expects from a drag or cabaret show, particularly after the mainstreamification of Drag Race.

“Do I have to do death drops and hyperpop remixes of modern songs to satiate the audience’s want for that electric drag queen?”

No, as it happens. He found his cabaret niche while studying at drama school, realising it’s more important to try not to do something based on what he thinks the audience will like.

“I can only speak to what I enjoy watching. [Drag] isn’t a facade or protection. As soon as I pop on that stiletto, that’s where the magic happens.”

The show Sinatra is bringing to this year’s Fringe is an extension of his first foray into full-length shows back in 2016. Back then, it was called Frankly Hank, and he took on the persona of a misogynist who sang charming love songs, but whose behind-closed-doors

“I pull out of myself all the biggest, grandest, most divine personality traits that I have” Salty Brine

behaviour didn’t correlate with his smooth onstage character.

“Although this show is quite different, it was born there and I’ve come back to it now, years later. I wanted to revisit it because I always felt like I had unfinished business with that show. Now I’ve married all the different worlds together in an ultimate showcase of jazz, singing, dancing, drag, cabaret, comedy and theatre.”

A real moment of insight for Sinatra came while studying under esteemed master clown Philippe Gaulier. One day, Sinatra joked about having to find his straight man persona to charm his scene partner, “Then [Gaulier] said, ‘No, never try to get rid of your homosexuality. It is a spark that you have.’ That hit hard and really helped me on my journey to embracing all the realms of femininity and queerness in my work.”

Capturing this feeling of genuineness and forging a real connection with the audience is what both performers are hoping to get out of the Fringe.

“I’m standing up there in front of them saying, ‘I’m not good at it. It’s really hard and it’s really scary’,” says Brine. “But I would love it if the audience walked out of the theatre asking themselves how they could be more bravely true to who they are.”

SHOW Skank Sinatra

VENUE: Assembly George Square Studios

TIME: 10:40pm – 11:40pm, 31 Jul–22 Aug, not 7, 12, 19 Aug

SHOW These Are the Contents of My Head (The Annie Lennox Show)

VENUE: Assembly Checkpoint

TIME: 9:05pm – 10:35pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19 Aug

Salty Brine

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Come Together

The creatives behind the multicultural, multimedia performance The Other discuss the importance of connection and collaboration across disciplines

Words: Zoë White

“The ‘other’ is a reflection of yourself,” says Iain Mackechnie, paraphrasing Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński, from whose book Mackechnie took the title for his collaborative musical project The Other. Weaving together diverse musical styles and visual art, the project aims to dissolve the perceived barriers between ourselves and who we see as ‘other’. This year, the group are performing in the Fringe as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase.

Formed in 2019 as a collaboration between Mackechnie and four Iranian musicians, The Other received funding from Creative Scotland in 2021 and were able to bring in more artists, including Chilean percussionist Jose Rojas, Scottish harpist Esther Swift, Brazilian double bassist Mario Caribe, and English multi-instrumentalist Matt Wright.

forced displacement. With so many musicians, each influenced by different traditions and styles, it’s intriguing to hear how their compositions take shape.

Mackechnie explains that the band’s first pieces were born out of his collaborations with the Iranian musicians, including vocalist Aref Ghorbani. “Aref’s a trained Persian traditional singer. So his vocals on top of ideas just take it to another space.”

“For me the real magic comes when we play live” Matt Wright

“For me the real magic comes when we play live,” Wright says. “Whenever we play live… there’s this lovely connection that we find between the musicians and between the audience as well. It’s been a really lovely collaboration from that point of view.”

The project has evolved into a collective of eight musicians and a visual artist, some of whom have experienced immigration and

And now with more instruments at their disposal, there’s further colour and texture to be woven in. “Matt’s on sax and flute. His solos really reflect what Aref’s influence is, and they complement each other so brilliantly,” Mackechnie enthuses. “And then with Mario on double bass, there’s a couple of pieces where it moves more into a Latin feel. We have Erfan Imandar who plays Daf, which is a Persian frame drum. So he can set a different feel to it, and then Jose puts something in and we can swing about within that.”

Recently, The Other has taken on a new dimension, incorporating visuals from Yemeni artist Shatha Altowai. Altowai is an oil painter, but taught herself to create digital art ahead of The Other’s performance at Art27 Scotland’s

Festival of Migration last year. “When I went inside their rehearsal room,” she remembers, “I moved to another world. So I came up with a different art style.”

The musicians have been inspired by her work in return, and, alongside pianist Saber Bamatrof, they have recently been collaborating on a multi-media piece called Just Like Her Mum, exploring the issue of female genital mutilation. “It’s an idea that I kept hidden inside my head, not even talking about it while I was in Yemen because it’s a little bit sensitive and there’s a risk in [discussing] these issues for me as a woman and as an artist. So as long as I’m here in Scotland it’s like, now it’s my stage to speak,” explains Altowai.

The Other are keen to seize further opportunities to collaborate with artists of different disciplines, with plans to integrate dance and film in the future. Wright hopes they will be able to take the show on tour one day. But Mackechnie explains that much is dependent on the funding they receive for the project.

Despite the challenges, however, the positive impact of cross-cultural collaboration for all the artists couldn’t be clearer. “I felt it really, really inspiring to see all these different cultures together playing music,” Altowai reflects. “We understand each other with the music and sound, and translating it into artwork is really a privilege to me.”

SHOW The Other VENUE: Scottish Storytelling Centre TIME: times vary, 14–16 Aug

Aref Ghorbani

Esther Swift

The Other

Photo: Antony Revelo

Photo: Antony Revelo

Photo: Humam Hasari

The Rise of Night Owl Shows

Discover the story behind your favourite music acts

Dan Clews

When Dan Clews, Founding Director of Night Owl Shows, arrived in Edinburgh in August 2016, his mission statement was simple: to tell the story of one of his musical heroes, James Taylor. But there was more to this somewhat straightforward plan as Clews hoped to play Taylor’s music as an accompaniment to anecdotes and storytelling about the great musician’s life. The resulting show was a huge success, so much so that in 2017, he returned with his friends Charlotte Breraton and Phoebe Katis to add Joni Mitchell and Carole King to the documentary musical performances.

In the eight years since, Night Owl Shows have become a significant presence in the wider Fringe landscape, all while maintaining Clew’s initial aspirations. As a collective, they’ve performed around the world, sharing the music of their heroes. They’ve also won more than 30 laurels from festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe, Perth Fringe, Adelaide Fringe and Brighton Fringe. With a growing American following, they plan to tour Stateside in October and November this year but before that, they’ll be bringing 12 daily productions to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, featuring an entourage of more that 20 performers.

The Carole King & James Taylor Story (now merged into one show) is back, with Clews and Hannah Richards telling the story of the artists’ intertwined careers. In addition, there are shows dedicated to Elton John, Billy Joel, Sting, Dusty Springfield, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Amy Winehouse, Kate Bush, Adele, the music behind James Bond and the music movement in LA in the late 60s.

Night Owl Shows go beyond what you might expect from traditional tribute acts. Each musician involved in the productions is a performer in their own right and their goal is to tell their story as fans of the

subject. Audiences are invited to get immersed in these different journeys, leaving with a new appreciation for the artists that we consider to be the all-time greats.

Hannah Richards

MOSAICO ERRANTE

Catching a Ride

The ingenious Wes Peden chats about his new show with Gandini Juggling

Words: George Sully

Photo: Fahimeh Hekmatandis

Sporting a baby-blue jumper adorned with a butterfly, the magenta-haired Wes Peden is all smiles and passion when we speak over Zoom. Widely considered one of the best – or at the very least, most inventive – jugglers in the world, the American returns to the Fringe this year with a brand new show: Rollercoaster.

Working once again with master innovators Gandini, Peden has crafted a pop-punk circus hour full of neon rings, transparent tubes and gasp-inducing tricks. And it’s not just inspired by roller-coasters, it’s a conscious reflection on their thrills, architecture and histories. And all thanks in large part to Peden recently returning to that beloved theme park simulator game: RollerCoaster Tycoon.

“I was playing it again, building rollercoasters as you do, piece by piece, and realised that it was tickling the same part of my brain that making juggling tricks does,” he explains. “I’m using gravity and momentum to shape pathways into an interesting construction or composition.”

personality and what they love in the world into their juggling.”

Peden even seeks to challenge some of the more fundamental pillars of the sport. “The common understanding of juggling is ‘don’t drop’. You keep stuff in the air, and if it lands on the floor, that wasn’t the plan, right?” he says. “I find, if you use that premise for an entire hour, it gets a little bit old. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could change the game a little bit?”

“It almost makes me want to cry when I think about how beautiful it is”

Instead of being in thrall to that binary tension – catching good, dropping bad –Peden leaves room for branching paths within tricks (“it kind of turns into a Choose Your Own Adventure book”) so that even ‘failures’ are impactful, narrative-spawning events. This allows him to attempt much more ambitious stunts, something otherwise seen as too risky in a show performed every day for a month. “I change the rules around juggling and allow for it to go in different ways.”

What followed was a deep dive into roller-coaster lore, even going as far as learning about the quietly tragic fate of rides that lost popularity and got torn down. “That’s pretty devastating,” he muses. “So [in the show] I perform a ceremony for the death of these beautiful rides.”

The overlap of circus and thrill rides is certainly a fertile Venn diagram. “The show takes juggling in lots of different directions, always mirroring juggling, roller-coasters and the human experience to create this kind of abstract metaphor between the three.”

Moreover, Rollercoaster stands as proud testament to the near limitless potential of the art form, something Peden is deeply passionate about. “One of the things I love about juggling is its insane depth, you know?” he says. “It almost makes me want to cry when I think about how beautiful it is. Literally any object, any colour, any texture, your neurodivergence, your history all goes into what you make. And I think what’s beautiful is when people put their

Rollercoaster looks set to be a fresh, energetic addition to the festival’s circus repertoire, combining the best of Gandini’s compositional and musical nous with Peden’s own punk creativity. And his passion for the discipline is both apparent and infectious.

“I love juggling so much, and I want to compose juggling in a way that when people watch it, they’re like, ‘Oh, I love juggling too!’ I’ve had 25 years to get into why juggling is so great, and now I have an hour to convince the audience that isn’t this an incredible, incredible world?”

A culmination Rollercoaster may be, but it is far from the peak in Peden’s career. “I feel like I’ve been juggling my entire life and barely scratched the surface of where I want to go with it.”

VENUE: Assembly Roxy

TIME: 5:00pm – 6:00pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 7 Aug, 13 Aug, 20 Aug

SHOW Rollercoaster

The Winner Takes It All

The comics behind kids game shows The Kids Always Win and Blue Badge Bunch discuss the benefits of healthy (and rigged) competition

Words: Claire Sawers

Blankety Blank, Catchphrase, Taskmaster –game shows have always been a huge hit on telly, so it’s no surprise the Fringe comes with its own special selection. This year there are heaps of game shows designed for kids

– The Comedy Games with Coach Mon, Billy Banana’s Brilliant Bingo, Game on 4 – Boss Level, ComedySportz, there’s everything to play for.

physical skills, musical know-how and general knowledge, but spoiler alert, it’s the kids taking away all the prizes – a surreal haul of bargain store nonsense and baffling everyday objects.

“It’s always rigged so the kids win”

Pitting the kids against the grownups will be a theme in one late morning show from comedians Tom Whiston and Max Prentice. “The clue is in the name,” says Whiston, describing their brand new hour at Gilded Balloon Patter House, The Kids Always Win. There are five rounds, testing the audience’s

Tom Whiston

“It’s always rigged so the kids win,” says Whiston. “So if the grown-ups are answering all the questions right, we dish out a ‘know it all discount’ so they lose points.” Both Whiston and Prentice have experience of clowning so they will be goofing around in character for the show. While one plays the stern headmaster, the other will muck about like a cheeky schoolkid with a propellor cap. “It’s a bit like Just William, with that push and pull between the teacher and pupil. Dick & Dom in da Bungalow was a big influence, as was The Slammer, a CBBC talent show where everyone competed for their freedom. We also took inspiration from the silly humour of Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee and the general aesthetic of classic 70s game shows for families like Blankety Blank.”

Whiston reckons the show will work best for primary school age kids and their grownups, and assures the shy guys that there will be no pressure to get up onstage. “There will definitely be Haribo for anyone who does though,” he promises.

Over at the Pleasance Courtyard, comedian Benny Shakes is running his own disability Taskmaster for kids. “As a kid with cerebral palsy, I never got picked out the crowd at

shows. So I’ve made a show where kids with disabilities have the advantage and normies might be left shouting, ‘This isn’t fair!’. I’m having fun but I’m teaching something at the same time too,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “If people don’t like the word ‘normie’, think yourself lucky! We’ve been called 'retards', 'cripples' and much worse!”

His Blue Badge Bunch game show will involve five games, including one round where someone has to draw with their feet and another where someone makes lunch one-handed, while being poked enthusiastically by kids.

“It’s a disability awareness game show that started out for adults during lockdown on Zoom and now I’ve adapted it for kids. My goal is to bring the disabled community together and highlight different abilities. So the games show what it’s like to be partially sighted, for example.”

Shakes will be appearing in two other shows on the Fringe; his debut solo show, Respect and Disabled Cants, where he’ll host a revolving line-up of disabled comedians and friends as part of the Free Festival. ‘We’re not

brave, we’re not inspiring, we’re just here to make you laugh,’ says the tagline.

“I can read a room well now, so when I’m performing for kids I tailor it. If there are kids with autism, we may need less volume, for example. Energetic kids might need a louder or cheekier performance from me. Or if there are partially sighted people in the audience, that may mean me giving much more description.”

What’s important to Shakes is letting everyone feel welcome to join in. “I got a lot of my ideas from watching classic shows like The Generation Game and Taskmaster – this is my Cripmaster and I hope disabled kids love it.”

SHOW The Kids Always Win

VENUE: Gilded Balloon Patter House

TIME: 11:40am – 12:40pm, various dates between 31 Jul and 25 Aug

SHOW Blue Badge Bunch

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

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

Photo: Liam Keown

Blue Badge Bunch

Experience the magic of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 2024, a spectacular celebration of music, culture, and military precision set against the iconic backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.

This year, the Tattoo along with Lead Service the Royal Navy will present an unforgettable show theme Journeys

From 2 to 24 August, Journeys promises an exhilarating blend of tradition and innovation with

SET SAIL FOR A NAVAL SPECTACULAR

mesmerising pe ormances featuring world-renowned military bands, international cultural talent, as well as homegrown UK musicians and dancers.

Each pe ormance is a voyage through musical history, tradition and culture, showcasing the unique stories and vibrant traditions of nations far and wide.

Embark on this incredible journey with us this August! Scan for tickets:

Guide to Edinburgh The Cat Prince’s

Michael

Pedersen

’s feline friendly guide to the city

Now I’m all for dog friendly and baby friendly spots – let’s welcome in all the droolers and dribblers – but I think a little more feline energy needs to be unfurled upon Scotland’s capital this August.

I spent a good chunk of my youth in Edinburgh convinced I was a cat, The Cat Prince to be precise. I had a propensity for stripping star-bollock naked on playdates, declaring myself The Cat Prince and then proceeding to pound around these stranger’s households trying to recruit their children into joining my naked cat gang. This did not make for too many sequel playdates, but years on The Cat Prince vibe has come back strong. It’s about time Edinburgh Festival upped its catty chutzpah.

This August, I call upon thee to courier the cat in you – the furry feline trapped within that gawky human frame – around some of the city’s superlative loafing spots and witness your moggy moxie return (or simply ramp-up a notch). So where to you ask, well here be the scripture.

Maison de Moggy is first-up, natch –Scotland’s first and original cat café. These cats are showbiz extraordinaries, just sit back and swoon all over them – perhaps slurp on a chocolate paw-print marked cappuccino as you’re doing so. Sure there’s a decent view of an old castle en route, but that takes a second place to the best view of the day (the kitty carnival).

Cats and indie bookshops are natural bedfellows, and Edinburgh is a mecca for indie bookshops. There’s The Portobello Bookshop, down by the seaside, where you can snapup a prize tome and then saunter along the promenade until your feet get sandy. Nobles Arcade is close to hand if you fancy a whirl on the 2p machines, and Shrimp Wreck seafood shack is a champion stop-off. If you spill fish juice on the pages of your new book, good, you’re doing it right.

Photo: Lauren Hunter

Maison de Moggy

More central, there’s lovely Lighthouse Books – a queer-owned and woman-led bookshop. It’s a pure stunner and sometimes there’s summer events out in their back garden. You might have to hide your cat scent from their darling shop dog, Artie… but don’t tell her I said that, or she’ll get aw sassy with me.

Och, there’s also Argonaut Books, Toppings, Golden Hare, The Edinburgh Bookshop and more, so why not make a bookshop crawl of it? Bring a strong tote, fill it, and become a member of the Literati. Remember each book bought is an investment in the YOU of the future – even sexier, savvier, and more enlightened.

Edinburgh has abundant spooky architecture and heaps of kooky closes/alleyways, so remember to look up and down and breathe it all in (especially the closes on a Sunday morning after a big Saturday night – pish and chippy sauce galore).

Greenspaces are not to be missed – The Meadows for hippy daundering, and then Holyrood Park for gawking agog at that ancient volcanic giant brooding over the city like a bull seal ready to brawl.

For refuelling, caffeine wise, stop by Summerhall’s MF Coffee, and for scran it’s The Black Grape on the Royal Mile – small plates and scrumptious wines. There’s no finer place to quaff cocktails than Paradise Palms, and no better beer gardens than Summerhall, Bellfield Brewery and The Sheep’s Heid Inn

But for frickles sake please keep all this to yourself, or else it’ll be pure mobbed! Fringe is, after all, Edinburgh’s best kept secret.

Now quest forth – get those whiskers wet and give the seagulls hell! Paw-print sigils mark the glass.

The Big Friendship Fandango

VENUE: EFI Spiegeltent TIME: 9pm, 23 Aug

SHOW Words from the Wards: Michael Pedersen

VENUE: EFI Venue C TIME: 6.15pm, 25 Aug

SHOW

Photo: Michael Pedersen

Monday 12 – Sunday 25 August, 2024 2-4pm and 6-8pm

“I was blown away – never been part of anything quite like this, haven’t stopped talking about it since ” Book now IAmOther co uk #IAmOtherImmersive

Local Haunts Eleanor Morton’s

The Scottish comedian gives us the lowdown on the city’s spookiest places

Photo: Trusy Stade

There is no way anyone in the world needs ANOTHER listicle of Edinburgh’s spookiest places. So here are five you probably haven’t heard of, as part of my attempt to spread out the city’s over-tourism.

St Cuthbert’s Kirkyard

What the hell Eleanor? Don’t you mean Greyfriars? The one where Voldemort is buried?? No I do not. And no, he isn’t. I mean the equally eerie, Harry Potter-free St Cuthbert’s at the corner of Princes Street Gardens and Lothian Road. Not only is the site super old (there’s been a church there since 1127) it’s a classical gothic churchyard with lots of atmosphere. Plus it’s the burial place of people like opium eater Thomas de Quincey, and includes a watchtower that was built to deter body snatchers. I can’t find any reference to any specific ghosts, but there’s no way it's NOT haunted.

National Museum Spooky Gallery

(Scotland Transformed, Level 4)

For me, the creepiest place in Edinburgh, bar none, is this gallery on Scottish death culture at the National Museum on Chambers Street. The gallery boasts a load of freaky stuff, including a hearse, witch stones, Victorian hair bracelets, and of course, the famous miniature coffins found on Arthur’s Seat. Being alone in this gallery gives me the full on heebie jeebies. Plus, the rest of the museum is equally creepy – go have a look at the Maiden (a forerunner to the guillotine) and Alexander Peden’s uncanny valley preaching mask.

Craigmillar Castle

Craigmillar is not perhaps Edinburgh’s most beautiful neighbourhood, but the castle is well

worth a visit. Now an impressive ruin, it was home to many significant figures such as Mary, Queen of Scots (where in Scotland wasn’t?). It also allegedly hosts a menacing spirit in a cloak, last seen in the 1930s, who is said to have ‘evil eyes’ (he might just be hungover).

Corstorphine Wetherspoons

Corstorphine in west Edinburgh is home to several ghosts, most noticeably the White Lady. Before it was an affluent suburb with a zoo and a big Tesco, it was the site of Corstorphine Castle, home to Laird James Forrester, who would meet Lady Nimmo next to a Doocot in the grounds for secret trysts. During a quarrel, she ran him through with his own sword (rude), and her remorseful spirit is now said to haunt the area. If you sit in the local Wetherspoons, The White Lady, long enough, you may spot her (if you drink enough Tennent's).

Leith Docks

You might think the docks are scary for other reasons, but they’re also haunted. According to several different eyewitnesses, a ‘phantom security guard’ has been seen there on several occasions (especially in the area where Bredoro Shaw House stood), as well as a mysterious dark shape. According to one source, the ghost is that of a security guard with a bad temper who died in the 80s, apparently doomed to haunt his workplace forevermore. I can’t think of a more hellish afterlife.

VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy

TIME: 2:05pm – 1:00pm, various dates between 31 Jul and 25 Aug

SHOW Eleanor Morton: Haunted House

Photo: Lauren Hunter

Photo: Lauren Hunter

Ladies of Pleasure Susan Morrison on

The comedian delves into the history of sex work in the city

James Tytler was a busy man. In addition to his skills as a writer, pharmacist and surgeon, he also found time to edit the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and become the first man in Britain to fly in a balloon. Despite all these achievements James ‘Balloon’ Tytler was permanently broke. At some point in 1774, he got an idea. Young men were heading North to get drunk, get laid and probably get their first dose of the clap. In Edinburgh you could usually do all three in about 15 minutes of arriving, if you knew where to look. In London, sin-seekers had a guide to the best gals in town. Harris’s List of

Covent Garden Ladies kept gentlemen abreast of fornicating opportunities and where to find them. It’s possible Tytler got wind of this book, and thought Edinburgh could do with a list just like it. Could be a lucrative little publication. He wrote under the pseudonym ‘The Ranger’. His list was printed in 1775, entitled Rangers Impartial List of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh. Sixty-six women each get a write-up and, crucially, their business address. You can walk the High Street today and find where those ladies of pleasure lived and worked. In Halkerston’s Wynd, 163 High Street, Mistress Adams kept a house that was ‘a genteel Temple’. She was ‘about 25 years of age, very agreeable… dark brown eyes, remarkably good teeth and a tempting white bosom.’ She had a taste for the finer things in life, and was known to ‘toss off a sparkling bumper’ of wine, which the author gently warns her about. One too many and she becomes ‘rather noisy’. We’ve all got a pal like that.

At the back of Bells Wynd, 146 High Street, you would find the house of Mistress Walker. Now, you needed to watch this one. The house was ‘genteel’, and a success, but madam had a bit of a temper on her and was known to take it out on any guest who failed to pay the going rate. Despite this, it was just the place to meet someone like Miss

Susan Morrison

Image: courtesy of the artist

Peggy Bruce, a ‘most devout worshipper at the shrine of Venus’ and will let her lover be ‘everso vigorous’. All in all, she is ‘not a bad pennyworth for any gentleman’. You might want to stay clear of Miss Galloway. She learned her trade on man-o-war, which is probably why her temper is a bit snappy, too. But then there is the jewel in Mistress Walker’s crown, little Miss Inglis. She is about 24, and ‘foolishly good-natured’. She is no ‘novice at the game of love, for she is remarkably fond of performing on the silent flute, and can manage the stops extraordinary well. She twists around you like an eel, and would not loose a drop of the precious juice of nature.’

At the Fountain Well, beside the Storytelling Centre, you can find Miss Dingwell. She had a house of her own, and was ‘a fit person to grace a table, being pretty fat and comely, she is a good Winter-piece.’ In the Netherbow itself, was the notorious ‘Lady’ Agnew. ‘A drunken bundle of iniquity’ who would as ‘willing lie with a chimney-sweep as a lord’. The Ranger called her ‘an abandoned piece’. As well he might. Lady Agnew wasn’t a lady of pleasure. She’d had a fight with Tytler and he owed her money. He put her in the list as his revenge.

Tytler presumably intended to produce his guide every year, but he ran afoul of the au-

thorities for his radical views and took off for America. He lived in Salem, Massachusetts.

One evening in 1804, he drunkenly lurched out of his house, fell in the sea and drowned. A sad end for the man who gave 18th century Edinburgh its first Tripadvisor listings for the Ladies of Pleasure.

SHOW Susan Morrison Is Walking Funny

VENUE: The Stand Comedy Club 3 & 4

TIME: 3:00pm – 4:00pm, 2–25 Aug, not 12

Fountain Well

Photo: Lauren Hunter

Image: courtesy of the artist

Asian Cuisine Sean Wai Keung on

The performance-maker and foodie recommends where to find comfort food

So let’s say, hypothetically, you’ve just been part of an immersive short-form performance revolving around fortune cookies, and that you’ve left this performance with a fortune cookie of your own. Naturally, you’d want to find somewhere to eat a tasty meal before you crack that bad boy open, wouldn’t you? Well, here are a few of my personal top picks guaranteed to not let you down.

First we have Macau Kitchen on Saint Leonard's Street. Macanese food is severely under-represented in my opinion so Edinburgh is lucky to have this spot! Influenced by both Southern Chinese and Portuguese cuisine, I can’t think of anywhere else around you’d be able to get dishes like minchee (seasoned minced meat and veg) and crispy coconut duck.

Or, if you’re looking for something less heavy and more snacky then you can’t go wrong with Korean Munchies on Nicolson Street. Despite its current trendiness, it can be surprisingly difficult to find good Korean food that isn’t just KBBQ. Korean Munchies offers a wide range of snacks and instant ramyun alongside dishes like youbookimbap (rice-filled tofu pockets), corn dogs and my personal favourite, garaetteok (gooey fried rice-cake skewers). The best thing to do is to get yourself a selection and then have a picnic somewhere on a nice sunny day.

Best of all you get to choose the thickness of your noodles as you order them, as well as side-dishes including grilled skewers, marinated eggs and cold salads. Perfect for those less-warm days, and a great way to fill your belly up quickly and heartily if you’re low on time.

A little further out, but very much worth it, we have Vietnam House, on Grove Street, near Haymarket Station. Vietnamese food is so often reduced down to phở and bánh mì yet what stands out to me most about Vietnam House are their other dishes. Gỏi cuốn (summer rolls) are a weakness of mine, especially on a hot summer day, and their thịt Kho (pork in caramel sauce) is incredible. They also make a proper Vietnamese coffee and have a rainbow drink dessert which I would probably eat every day if I could.

Speaking of coffee, no Edinburgh food-guide should exist which doesn’t mention Singapore Coffee House on Canonmills. A true kopitiam (South-East Asian style coffee shop), the drinks are the stand-out here. However, the range of bites and snacks to go with the drinks is a great testament to the diversity of Singaporean cuisine, featuring roti, laksa, Hong Kong toast and, of course, curry puffs. I love it there.

Dangerously close by and also on Nicolson Street is Noodles Home, which does fantastic hand-pulled noodles to order. The portions are big, reasonably priced and offer a great variety of Lanzhou style (beefy and with clearbroth) dishes along with a few other options.

Wherever you choose, make sure you end your meal with an inauthentic and freshly baked fortune cookie. Now where in Edinburgh over August would you get one of those, I wonder?

SHOW A History of Fortune Cookies

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: times vary, 1–26 Aug, not 12, 19

Photo: Brian Hartley

Sean Wai Keung

Fringe Dog meets Adam Riches

The canine journalist meets the Edinburgh Comedy Award winner (and Piper the Dog) as he brings his play Jimmy to Summerhall

you are serving a one-man play about the tennis legend jimmy connors! ace! what inspired you to dig into jimmy’s story?

Well I saw a documentary on him a few years ago that I felt was a great story. That inspired me to read up on him a little, which revealed how great a character he is. From then on it was a simple case of scriptwriting maths. Great Story + Great Character = Fire up the Laptop.

my secret shame is that i used to chew on 60 tennis balls a day. whenever i was chomping on one ball i was already thinkin’ about the next

one. how many balls have you destroyed during the making of ‘jimmy’?

Just two, if you know what I mean Doggy…? Back in the 90s, those shorts they played in were SHORT. Thankfully, spandex had already been invented and Jimmy wasn’t backward in keeping himself forward…

this is going to be your first show at summerhall. do you think it’ll be easy to focus on the show when, just over the road, there are so many squirrels to chase across the meadows ???

A fantastic question and one I’ve been struggling to answer throughout rehearsals. And I

don’t think the venue has offered much in the way of support or solution here either. Who cares if the show is good? Who cares if people are having a great time? Right across the road, hundreds of squirrels are in dire need of a sprint dash and climb. A solution of sorts is that my venue is in the back of Summerhall and so onstage I’ll be facing away from all that temptation, so won’t get distracted. But you know what it’s like FD… when you see those little furballs with their big bushy tails…

do you have a dog?

I do indeed. Piper Doink. She’s a schnoodle – a schnauzer/ poodle mix. I used to be very scared of dogs before we got her. Not anymore. She’s helped me realise how lovely you all are. And how clever. I mean look at you. You’ve worked out how to type, adhere to a word count and attach a document to send to your Editor. She’s my best pal. I’d love you to meet her and sniff her arse.

Please follow Fringe Dog’s lead and donate to Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home (edch.org.uk)

SHOW Adam Riches: Jimmy VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 9:30pm – 10:30pm, 1–26 Aug, not 12, 19

Image: courtesy of Adam Riches

Adam Riches and Piper