Fest Preview 2019

VIR DAS LOVED

THE

Director George Sully

Co-editors

Evan Beswick & Ben Venables

Lead Critic Matt Trueman

Artworker Eva Legemah

Writing Team

Digital Editor Alex Smail

Sales Executive Sebastian Fisher

Cover Illustration

Eunjoo Lee

Cover Art Direction

Rachael Hood

Emma Ainley-Walker, Jenni Ajderian, Tim Bano, Marissa Burgess, Si Hawkins, Katie Hawthorne, Donald Hutera, Laura Kressly, Eve Livingston, Becca Moody, Fergus Morgan, Daniel Perks, Francesca Peschier, David Pollock, Jay Richardson, Peter Simpson, Yasmin Sulaiman, Tom Wicker, Holly Williams, Kate Wyver

Radge Media

Publisher Sophie Kyle

Media Sales Executives

David Hammond, Joanne Jamieson

Bookkeeping & Accounts

Aaron Tuveri, Laurie Presswood

Fest Street Dates 2019

6, 9, 13, 16, 20 August

Advertising sales@fest-mag.com 0131 467 4630

Contact fest-mag.com

hello@fest-mag.com @festmag

Editor-in-Chief

Rosamund West

Media Sales Manager Sandy Park

SUPERSTAR INDIAN COMEDIAN COMES TO THE FRINGE ON HIS INTERNATIONAL TOUR.

‘It’s easy to see why millions love him.’

List

POST POPULAR

LUCY RETURNS TO CRAWL THROUGH THE ANNALS OF HISTORY

‘The moves of Beyonce, the lungs of Christina Aguilera and the morals of a punk iconoclast.’

Scotsman

Getting a Little Better All the Time

Should we all just hide, or do the festivals give reasons to be hopeful?

Comedy

30 Seriously, Scientifically Funny

Think science and comedy don't mix? Think again

Theatre

#BogLife

Bet you didn't know how ecologically valuable peat bogs are, or how artistically inspirational

The Pick of the Festivals

As chosen by arts experts, the cream de la crop

Plus: City Guide & Venue Map

We've told you about the shows, now we'll show you how to get there, and where to refuel

58

Right Here, Right Now

We speak to Javaad Alipoor and YESYESNONO about dealing with the present

Dance, Physical Theatre & Circus

84 Circus of Life

Ockhams's Razor are back, and better than ever

Cabaret and Variety

89 Alfie Ordinary

He's Fabulous, and he's not scared to tell you

Musicals & Opera

94 They'll be There for You

Remember Friends? Well, now you can see the musical

Kids

104 What to do; what to see

Your guide to doing Edinburgh with the kids, Harry Potter style

Edinburgh Festivals: Light in Dark Times

Everything sucks. Everything’s... mucked up. We live in difficult, polarised times, with people and institutions exposed as flawed and failing. The festivals are no exception, but is there light in the darkness? Fest finds out

The Worst of Times

Sh!t Theatre

One year, back in 2013, we specifically applied to perform at wheelchair accessible venues. One venue got back to us offering us a slot, on the basis that it was accessible, only for us to realise that the wheelchair user would have to be lifted out of their chair and carried down a final flight of 11 stairs. We made the argument that if a person has to be carried by other people, it is not accessible. They disagreed. We did not perform there.

Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum with Expats, Summerhall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 1, 8:05pm

It is difficult to ignore the gigantic amount of flyers produced for the festival and the use of plastic. When you consider the size of the festival... and the volume of food and drink that has been served using plastic cups and cutlery over the years, it has taken a long time for the impact this has on the environment to be considered.

Birth, Pleasance Courtyard, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 12pm

The greed of almost everyone in the industry. A lot of comedians are mentally ill people who aren’t great with money and end up giving away cash they can’t afford to unnecessary producers, publicists, flyering teams. But the worst thing is the council’s absolute refusal to crack down on high rents – plenty of people I know are paying 3-4k for rent this year. It’s going to have a huge impact on diversity in the arts and the kind of voices we hear on TV down the line.

I think the most important issue would be the inability of the festival to solve visa issues for artists who are not part of the EU countries. It is a shame that the largest international theatre festival in the world, which was created about the deadliest war in human history, to foster collaborations cannot satisfy the essence of its existence by not being able to support the inclusion of artists from all over the world.

Before the Revolution, Summerhall, 13–25 Aug, not 19, 9:50pm

Guillaume Pigé, artistic director of Theatre Re

Ahmed El Attar, founder, Temple Independent Theatre Company

Fern Brady, comedian

Fern Brady: Power and Chaos, Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 6pm

I think there’s a certain attitude that seeps into the way the Fringe is organised which is important to challenge. Earlier this year the Fringe Society said that paying workers fairly would ruin the festival [as reported in The Scotsman, Feb 2019]. I don’t claim to know the ins-and-outs of how much it costs to run such a huge festival, but I do think that merely accepting that exploitative payment practices are part-and-parcel of it suggests an attitude that artists, workers, and everybody else should expect to be exploited and put up with it. I think that attitude runs counter to everything good about the Fringe.

Joz Norris Is Dead. Long Live Mr Fruit Salad, Heroes @ The Hive, 1–25 Aug, not 9, 10,

I think that people have often forgotten that Edinburgh is a city and not a festival. The festivals are international in outlook and that is brilliant but they have not always done enough to embrace local audiences and local Scottish artists or considered the impact they have on the locals. Too often it has felt like a circus comes to town for the month of August and it is a circus which brings enormous economic benefits for some in the city but not all. Then it melts away and there is little or no cultural legacy for the rest of the year for artists making year round theatre in Scotland.

Like Animals, Summerhall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 1, 19, 2:15pm

One thing that, at the time, seemed the most wonderful bonus (as a youthful smoker) was The Marlborough Girls, who frequented the Pleasance Courtyard for many years. Wearing very tight hotpants and giving out packs and packs of free cigarettes and lighters, they saved me a fortune as a smoker, but the levels of sexism and carcinogens would now both be seen as unacceptable.

The Shark is Broken, Assembly George Square Studios, dates vary, 11am

Of course there’s always going to be a competitive element to having an Edinburgh run, but I get the sense that there’s a lot more of “looking out for each other” now. For example, look at last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards Panel Prize winner Angela Barnes, and her fantastic initiative for a communal bank account that women-identifying acts could use to get a taxi home safely at night. That’s a wonderful thing to have done, and takes the stress off our shoulders as women performing late and having to get home safely.

Maisie Adam: Hang Fire, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 Jul–26 Aug, 5pm

The Best of Times

Maisie Adam, comedian

Joz Norris, comedian

David Mounfield, founder, Shooting the Breeze

Ellie Dubois, director, SUPERFAN

Lewis

Doherty

@FringeofColour have created a spreadsheet of all the shows by artists of colour which is a great way of championing work.

Boar, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 19, 10:45pm

John Pendal, comedian

There are two “reuse and recycle” days at the end of the festival, which include paper recycling at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation just off Cowgate, and props and set materials can be given to Fringe Central. They recycle as much as possible so please take part.

John Pendal: Monster, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 Jul–26

James Seager, creative director, Les Enfants Terribles and Les Petits Theatre Company

Diversity in the choice of what you can see. Circus has grown exponentially, so too has burlesque and cabaret. Smaller challenging theatre has also grown with places like Aurora Nova and Summerhall being welcome additions to the Festival. The best thing about the Fringe, however, is that your show can be reviewed and taken in the same context as a ‘huge’ show... Nowhere else in the world does this happen.

Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: The Magic Cutlass, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–19 Aug, not 13, 10:45am

Josie Dale-Jones, artistic director, ThisEgg

Staging Change (stagingchange.com) is a network of over 150 performers, makers, venues and organisations who are working together to improve the environmental sustainability of the theatre and arts industry. In August, Staging Change will be running the second year of the #SustainableFringe campaign, encouraging shows to flyer more sustainably by following top tips, adding ‘Recycle Me’ and ‘Take A Photo’ graphics to paper marketing and by printing using more eco-friendly methods.

Staging Change will also be offering a series of events and workshops around sustainability in the cultural sector, such as ‘Start Your Sustainable Fringe’ at Fringe Central, or a weekly ‘SustainabiliTEA’ at different Fringe venues, where anyone can come along for a chat and a cuppa.

dressed., Pleasance Courtyard, 20–25 Aug, 12:10pm

Alan Harris, writer

The Best of Times

Personally, I’m looking forward to trying out the new cycle hire scheme in Edinburgh (Just Eat Cycles). People love to cycle when they can and this has to be good for cutting down the “footprint” of the festival. Four years ago I found an old bike in a skip in Edinburgh, did it up and have kept it in the city ever since – every summer I have to pump up the tyres... I’m looking forward to the bike scheme as my skip bike is on its last legs. Wheels.

For All I Care, Summerhall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 1:30pm

Clare Pointing, writer-performer

Listen Deeply

“Agood bog is wet and has lots of hummocks,” says Caroline Eccles, development manager for conservation project Flows to the Future, as she threads her way between peaty pools. On the evidence underfoot, we appear to be in a good bog. A very good bog, in fact: Europe’s largest single expanse of blanket bog, covering 200,000 hectares of Caithness and Sutherland.

Most never set foot this far north or visit the watery wilderness. The North Coast 500 route circumnavigates the bog; three windy roads and a train line run north to south, and the expanse is impassable east to west. A Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) reserve serves the remote hamlet of Forsinard, my home for the weekend along with artists from the Glasgow-based collective Cryptic.

It’s a unique habitat. Accretions of sphagnum mosses are key to the bog’s creation, providing a unique, wet, acidic environment for plant and bird life. Under Eccles’s tutelage, we soon learn to discern one sphagnum from another and sniff the lemony fresh leaves of bog myrtle. We pick out the bright red flashes of sundew and weird green fronds of butterwort. Hen Harriers and golden plovers are common here – but they don’t venture out in today’s drizzle.

This bog plays a vital role in climate change: it is a massive carbon sink. The Flow Country holds 400 million tonnes of carbon, double that of all of Britain’s Woodlands combined. When bogs dry out that carbon goes into the atmosphere. The Peatlands Partnership, who lead on restoration efforts, have sought to engage the public in its protection via art.

It’s not difficult to see why the visiting artists find the expanse inspiring. Life exists on two scales here, from the vast openness of the bog to the minute intricacy of the life it supports. It’s bleak and big and densely beautiful – the sublime and the picturesque washed together.

The residences are the springboard for a multi-sensory promenade through Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens at the Fringe, including visual works by artists Heather Lander and Hannah Imlach to compositions by Luci Holland, Cathie Boyd and Malcolm Lindsay (whose choral work will be sung by the Dunedin Consort).

This weekend Kathy Hinde and sound designer Matthew Olden are finessing their work: “There’s such a similarity between what artists are doing and what scientists are doing,” says Hinde.

Rarely visited and much neglected, Scotland’s peat bogs are actually some of the finest, and most ecologically significant habitats on these islands. And, as Evan Beswick finds out, an inspiration for art

The Flow Country

She leads us on a “deep bog listening” walk, teaching us to plunge sensitive hydrophones into streams and pools, and point directional microphones at birds. A stretch of knicker elastic serves as a rudimentary aeolian harp, strummed by the south westerly. It’s a preview of the recorded sounds which form several installations. The hydrophones give access to a different world: burns sound like glockenspiels as the water burbles over pebbles; a scattering of sand on the surface is a scale outside of musical theory. “It was like a dream brief,” says Hinde.

An enthusiastic nature-watcher, she has worked with the RSPB before, extensively with field recordings. “For me, it’s grown from finding abstractions and fascinations with rhythms and [the sound of] natural things and to more purposefully trying to create works that specifically raise issues – to connect people in different ways to try and think about our relationship with the environment and what that means. We need to be thinking about ourselves as part of the environment and not separate to, or overlords, of it.”

The teams doing something. Anything

CanadaHub

Olden, meanwhile, spends much of Saturday afternoon hunched over a laptop. It displays an array of parameters and flow diagrams as he feeds in real data relating to the height of the bog as recorded from space. “Sometimes it can be quite a dry boring subject for someone to work through statistics,” he laughs. Though it’s far from it: his programming approach enables audiences to ‘hear’ a graph. “I’m kinda obsessed with sine waves and the data is all sine waves. It’s my thing! It’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years.

“It was quite exciting coming up here. I’ve seen all the data maps. I know what it looks like underneath [but] that was completely unrelated to what I saw. So being in the landscape was really exciting.” Today he’s working with eight speakers. The full performance, over a lattice of 96 connected speakers, feels set to add to the spectacle the landscape deserves. He gets back to work: “I’ll see if I can get the bird in. That’s the bit I’ve got to test next.”

Started two years ago as a means of celebrating the best of Canadian work, CanadaHub has fast become something of  an event in itself. This year, Anita Rochon’s decision not to travel internationally leads less to a problem and more to an artistic opening, as Pathetic Fallacy casts local actors in place of the creator which, really, seems a lot more interesting. CanadaHub is associated with Summerhall, the venue that this year hosts protest group Extinction Rebellion across two spaces in the basement for the whole month.

The Greenhouse

It’s hard to walk around Edinburgh in August without the feeling that it’s all rather wasteful. New venue The Greenhouse, by BoxedIn Theatre, presents a curated mini-festival of nine shows, all inside a venue built entirely from recycled materials. What’s more, the venue is zero waste with everything possible recycled or reused. And no flyers. Could it catch on? Tickets for shows and workshops are capped at £5 to ensure accessibility, and the creators are working towards Level 2 in the Venue Access Award.

#SustainableFringe

Keep an eye on the hashtag, an initiative developed by Poltergeist Theatre, for info on what companies are doing to take sustainability seriously. Over 100 venues have signed up to the initiative. Summerhall, for instance, have cut out all plastic cups (Vegware instead).

“It was like a dream brief”

– Kathy Hinde

Climate in Crisis

How the Dead Live

Is death best expressed through art?

9 July, 2011, Redcar, Yorkshire: Terrance McGlade, 77, a retired joiner, is murdered in his own home by a man he’d been on good terms with.

22 April, 2012, Liège, Belgium: Ihsane Jarfi, 32, is driven away from a gay nightclub by a group of men he’d just met. His body is found abandoned two weeks later, with marks of torture.

9 August, 2014, Ferguson, Missouri: An African American man Michael Brown, 18, is shot dead by a white police officer Darren Wilson.

At both the International Festival and Fringe, in the theatre and comedy sections, a portrait of these three deaths emerges in the work of three distinctive artists.

As part of the Free Festival, comedian Chris McGlade brings his new standup show Forgiveness, about the murder of his father Terrance. Europe’s leading experimental theatremaker Milo Rau makes his EIF debut with La Reprise, a one-of-a-kind re-enactment of Ihsane Jarfi’s murder. And, based on extensive interviews conducted in the Ferguson community in the year after Michael Brown’s shooting, Dael Orlandersmith arrives with Until the Flood at Traverse Theatre.

“There was a lot of crime within one year,” says Orlandersmith. “You had 80 black men that were pulled over by the cops and attacked by cops in some capacity.”

Sitting in a restaurant in Ferguson for three days solid, she spoke to around 60 people. “It was brutal,” she says.

Were her motivations as much social science as artistic expression? “No, no, no—dammit—I’m a playwright! I’m not a social scientist at all, no. My job is to write beginning, middle, end: story, conflict, resolution.

“I realise that this is also sociopolitical,” she says. “Whether we care to admit it or not there is a bias within us. When we get angry we may go to race and/or gender and/or ethnicity. Why do we do that? I think it’s more about [when you point a finger at someone there are] three fingers pointing back at you. Does this invoke and provoke something within yourself that you go, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? What have I said? How do I function within the world and how can I connect to another person?’ To me, that’s the hope. I hope that the work has opened up the possibility of hope and of seeing ourselves.”

She found connections between Brown and Wilson that reveal the tragedy of segregated communities more than a report on social factors could: “Darren Wilson was born May 13, 1986; Michael Brown was born May 20, 1996. Michael Brown’s mother had him when she was 16; Darren Wilson’s mother had him when she was 19. They both were born to teenage mothers; they both were abused as kids.”

As a sociologist before becoming a theatremaker, Milo Rau also blurs lines between research and story. “You try to tell a universal story through a very particular case and then, of course, you have to be honest to the family, to the ex-boyfriend, to the perpetrator—we met one of the killers too—you

Credit: Michiel Devijver

La Reprise

have to be very honest and say to them that you’re extremely interested in their point of view, in their feelings... But that this will be a theatre play; it will be a performance.”

La Reprise is billed as an exploration of theatrical tragedy, rather than a documentary. Rau sees “the facts of the case” and recognises “social forces” but it’s fluidity that engages him. Especially the lack of motivation on the part of the killers, who didn’t know Jarfi, or go out that evening in a premeditated sense, yet still ended up, on the night, torturing and murdering a stranger.

poem about dad’s murder. That was the thing that started it all off. I thought to myself that perhaps the fallout from dad’s murder is something to express through my comedy.”

Though McGlade has been performing standup for 30 years, that last sentence isn’t meant to sound funny. Comedy is his means of artistic expression; a natural way for him to explore any topic. As with Orlandersmith and Rau, he has a vocational approach: “I’ve got up every day to come to the library and the library has become my office and I’ve sat and I’ve written and I’ll go home and I’ll rehearse and that’s how I’ve approached it. Every single day with hardly a day off because it’s so personal to me.”

“I’m telling the situation of the characters; the trauma of this tragedy. What does it mean to be represented?” He adds: “How do they do it, how was it made, what does it mean to look at it? What in a perfect world does it mean to go to the theatre? What is presence and what is absence, what is destiny and so on and so on.”

But before he goes further into the philosophical underpinnings, Rau brings it back to the human element: “Another quality of tragedy is it’s about losing somebody. It’s about the quality of grief when you lose somebody who is very close and...you can’t...there is no possibility, to make it ‘unhappen’.”

This is a reality Chris McGlade has faced. He says: “I’ve lived through the most...” he pauses, “to be told that your dad was strangled to death, and to be told he was then doused in brandy and set on fire, is just the most horrendous fucking thing that you can be told...

“I had a moment at last year’s festival, four shows in, the first Saturday, the room was full, it was going well, and then—all of a sudden—I had a panic attack. I didn’t walk off stage – I ran off stage. I ran off stage and ran out the building... I got home and I realised there were things that I had to confront. I wrote this

And though it is not recognised in such highfalutin terms as in theatre, standup shares elements that blend the ideas of reality and performance. Comedians tend to face the audience, addressing them directly, often with a confessional quality; a shared experience and understanding where we look back at ourselves.

For McGlade, Forgiveness has resonated with audiences he’s previewed to so far because they’ve connected with his dad: “Dad laughed at everybody, but most of all he laughed at himself... This country is so uptight and if through this act I can just bring that tension down a little bit, well then that’s my dad’s legacy fulfilled.” ✏︎

Ben Venables

VENUE:

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“You have to be very honest and say to them that you’re extremely interested in their point of view, in their feelings. But that this will be a theatre play; it will be a performance” – Milo Rau

Until the Flood

The Festival Bookshelf

There

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 837

Who: Sorry to disappoint, but no appearance from Dickens this year. But, the next best thing, perhaps, is the appearance of Eddie Izzard at the Book Festival, reading from and talking about Pip’s larks. Bonus points for anyone who gets their first edition Dickens signed by Izzard. You get two chances, as he’s also doing a run at the Fringe.

Where: So I Called Myself Pip, Charlotte Square Gardens, 10 Aug, 5:45pm Expectations of Great Expectations (WIP), Assembly George Square Studios, 7–25 Aug, not 12, 13, 19, 20, 2pm

Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You by Sofie Hagen

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,013

Who: The Danish comic and 2015 Best Newcomer is now a published author, gracing the Book Festival to talk about her memoir, Happy Fat. She’s also back with a new show, The Bumswing, and if you don’t catch those you can listen to her hit podcasts Made of Human and Secret Dinosaur Cult

Where: Telling Her Story, Charlotte Square Gardens, 17 Aug, 3:15pm

The Bumswing, Pleasance Dome, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12 , 7pm

The Holy Vible: The Book The Bible Could Have Been by Elis James and John Robins

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 10,488

Who: Are you on email? You simply have to be these days. Nope? Then you probably haven’t been initiated into the world of Robins and James, whose podcast on XFM, and now BBC Radio 6 Music has amassed them quite a cult following. Robins just happens to be a previous Edinburgh Comedy award winner, while James is one of Wales’ best known (and bilingual) comics. He’s busy being a new dad this August, but Robins is back. Vibe on.

Where: John Robins: Hot Shame, Pleasance Courtyard, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 7:30pm

was a time when it was either/or – Book Festival for the writers, Fringe or International Festival for the performers. Now it seems everyone’s an author. Or a performer. Or both. Sharpies out.

The Other Mother by Jen Brister

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 247,322

Who: Standup, writer, radio presenter, podcaster...and now author Jen Brister has been touring last year’s justifiably sellout show, Meaningless, all year. Quite where she’s found time to write a guide to parenting from a non hetero-normal perspective is anyone’s guess. Brister is the titular ‘other’, i.e. non-biological mother to twins.

Where:

Under Privilege, Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 7:45pm

Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay

Amazon Bestsellsers Rank: 149,358

Who: Who else but the poet, novelist, Scottish Makar and all-round wonder Jackie Kay. Her Memoir, Red Dust Road, has been adapted for stage by Tanika Gupta and premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival. It’s about growing up in Glasgow to adopted parents and embarking on a 20-year search, all the way to Nigeria, for her real parents. It’s directed by Dawn Walton, who also directed Fringe smash-hit Salt, by Selina Thompson.

Where: Red Dust Road, The Lyceum, 14–18 Aug, times vary

Amazon Bestsellers: Rank: 32,977

Who: Bestselling author, Rose McGowan. Also, actor, activist, model – she’s the one who got killed by the garage door in Scream. Her memoir, Brave, gives an account of her assault by disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, and the aftermath. Her Fringe debut, Planet 9, moves forward positively and creatively from this horror, and is about creating new possibilities via a journey to a new planet.

Where: Planet 9, Assembly Hall, 15–18 Aug, 1pm

Diary of a Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 57,160

Who: You might know them better as part of Denim, the drag queens who have glammed their way to success at the Fringe over the past few years. Denim aren’t here this year, but Rasmussen more than fills the gap with tales of life in song, dance and, apparently, a children’s swimming pool. Her Nobel-nominated memoir sits on shelves alongside a new book, Unicorn, from her co-queen in Denim, Glamrou, also known as Amrou Al-Kadhi.

Where: Crystal Rasmussen presents The Bible 2 (Plus a Cure for Shame, Violence, Betrayal and Athlete’s Foot) Live!, Underbelly Cowgate, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 5:50pm

Brave by Rose McGowan

Comedy Picks

Jay Richardson selects the very very best from across the comedy programme

Rosie Jones: Backward

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 5, 12 , 7pm

After barely three years as a standup, Rosie Jones has emerged as one of the most exciting, precocious talents in UK comedy. Born with cerebral palsy, she skilfully exploits preconceptions and her slowed speech to wrong-foot audiences, puckishly mischievous in her puppet mastery. Previously unwilling to play the victim, her growing maturity as a comic is exemplified by her now leavening her arrogant persona with occasional, appealing vulnerability.

Sara Barron: Enemies Closer

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 13, 8:30pm

Moon: We Cannot Get Out

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12 , 9:30pm

As the enigmatically named Moon, Jack Chisnall and Joshua Dolphin made a minor splash in 2018. Their eclectic, compelling sketches are linked by dark wit, invention and underlying menace. And this year, the “boilersuited provincial louts” have upped the ante with their venue itself trying to kill them.

Perhaps as a result of entering standup relatively late, this accomplished New Yorker makes no overt appeal to be likeable, and paradoxically is all the more compelling for it. With the waspish panache of a high society gossip columnist, last year’s best newcomer nominee reflects upon the tenuous hypocrisies that sustain human relationships.

Sophie Duker: Venus

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14, 7pm

As a “triple threat minority”, a black, queer woman living in Brexit Britain, Sophie Duker cuts straight to prickly issues about identity and privilege with an engaging, lightly mischievous touch, while foregrounding the importance of what she’s addressing. Focusing on society’s fascination with “exotic” bodies, this is a much-anticipated debut from a fast-rising performer.

Sean Patton: Contradickhead

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 Jul–25 Aug, 7:45pm

A wonderfully skilled anecdotalist, this New Orleans native combines a hypnotic mastery of narrative and emotional manipulation with punchy, gag-filled routines. Open about his many, many issues, Patton shares the complications of his sleep apnoea, as well as his thoughts on homelessness, heartbreak, drinking, nudity and Jesus. Animated and self-lacerating, he’s expertly deft in his physical act-outs.

Ahir Shah: Dots

Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, 1:45pm

Twice nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, the intellectually superior, personally troubled Ahir Shah returns to the Fringe with another persuasive analysis of society’s ills, applying by turns a romantic and pragmatic perspective to the world while scrambling to make sense of his own heartbreak.

Jena Friedman: Miscarriage of Justice

Assembly George Square Studios, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12 , 9:20pm

With her background in US late-night satire, the deeply politicised, cuttingly acerbic Jena Friedman offers a timely riposte to the travails blighting the world, expertly navigating such hot-button topics as the rise of the far right, #MeToo, climate change and gender. Developing a pilot for Channel 4, she’s a too-rare visitor to the UK.

Jack Gleadow: Mr Saturday Night

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 5:45pm

If ever a comic was auditioning for Tonight At The London Palladium, it’s the delightful throwback Jack Gleadow, who combines an engaging physical silliness, shameless prop work and knowing nods and winks to the golden age of variety. Guaranteed to stand out on any bill, he’s a debutant to watch.

Credit: Steven Dewall

Pierre Novellie: You’re Expected to Care

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, 7:15pm

Socially anxious, slightly dufferish and reluctant to deliver heavily-themed hours, Pierre Novellie hasn’t received the modish Edinburgh spotlight that his talent and redoubtable intelligence deserves. A thoughtful, articulate observer of cultural developments, with an incisive, elegant and capricious wit, for sheer weight of great routines, he’s hard to match.

Alfie Brown: Imagination

Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, 10:30pm

Shifting easily between the personal and the political, Brown once again explores his on-off relationship with fellow comic Jessie Cave and their diverging approaches to raising their family. Then he deconstructs the identities of ostensibly unlikely political bedfellows Jeremy Corbyn and Jordan Peterson.

Stand

Up

with Janine

Harouni (Please Remain Seated)

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 13, 5:45pm

As part of the acclaimed sketch trio Muriel, Janine Harouni has won plaudits but largely flown under the Fringe’s critical radar. Now she brings her standup debut to the festival hot from reaching the final of almost every new act competition. Reflecting upon her Arab heritage in Trump’s America, the polished New Yorker is cutting and prolific, with an easy charisma.

Helen Bauer: Little Miss Baby Angel Face

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14, 6pm

For all her assertive, brook-no-shit stage presence, newcomer Helen Bauer’s fully formed persona also allows for plenty of self-deprecation. Quick with an ad-lib, she’s also blessed with an inappropriately competitive relationship with her eccentric mother and mixed feelings about her German heritage. Upfront on all manner of subjects, at full tilt she’s a force of nature.

Credit: James Deacon

Theatre Picks

Matt Trueman scours the programme and picks out the finest theatrical work it has to offer

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran

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

Javaad Alipoor is reshaping political theatre, pushing way past state-of-the-nation plays to examine the currents crisscrossing the globe. Having eavesdropped on online radicalisation in The Believers Are But Brothers, he’s turned his attention to the super-rich, specifically new money in the Middle East. Crazy Rich Iranians, if you prefer.

Musik

Assembly Rooms, 5–25 Aug, not 12, 9:40pm

Happy Hour

Pleasance Dome, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14, 10:15am

Cristian Ceresoli had a huge hit with La Merda a few years ago: a stomach-churning, head-spinning solo about anorexia spewed forth by performer Silvia Gallerano. Happy Hour reunites the pair with another trippy text: a tale of two dancing siblings in a totalitarian world where happiness is all.

Now onto their second musical the Pet Shop Boys might just be pop’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Musik is a spinoff from the lads’ first effort, Closer to Heaven, with a script written by Jonathan Harvey (Beautiful Thing). It brings Frances Barber back as its icon of the night – the drug-addled delight that is Billie Trix.

Mouthpiece

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

Edinburgh is two towns in one: old and new; rich and poor. They collide in Kieran Hurley’s knotty new play—his best since Beats—as a working-class teenager meets a well-todo writer atop Arthur’s Seat. Their tangled friendship is a touching yet troublesome thing, asking all sorts of questions about art, enlightenment and appropriation.

Credit: Brian Hartley

Credit: Murdo MacLeod

Credit: Dahlia Katz

Typical

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 13, 4:30pm

Nouveau Riche and Ryan Calais Cameron return after last year’s cult hit, Queens of Sheba. That show spoke up for women of colour, attacking the assumptions and aggressions that accumulate day after day. Typical turns its gaze to black men. Richard Blackwood stars as an ex-serviceman battling the society he fought for.

The Hospital

Dance Base, 20–25 Aug, 7:20pm

Noir or nonsense? Both share a bedpan in this dark and deranged physical classic from the Icelandic outfit Jo Strømgren Kompani. Returning to the Fringe 14 years after its first outing, it finds three nurses killing time in a remote hospital with no patients. Weird sisters indeed.

La Reprise Histoire(s) du theatre (I)

The Lyceum (Edinburgh International Festival), 3–5 Aug, times vary

Right now, Milo Rau might be Europe’s most progressive director. The Swiss polymath is demanding theatre do more. In a festival full of true crime, La Reprise scrutinizes the reasons we represent real violence. Re-enacting a horrific homophobic killing—Ihsane Jarfi’s murder in 2012—it wrings that crime for its wider context to ask what we need to change.

The End

Summerhall, 15–25 Aug, not 19, 11:30am

British theatre’s odd couple are back – mercifully, this time, on better terms. Having bullied each other senseless in Eurohouse then broken plenty of plates in Palymra, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas are dancing cheek-to-cheek in The End, a show about letting go. Sweet – but if you prefer this pair nasty, they’re trying to topple each other in One (Summerhall, 22–24 Aug, 10pm).

Credit: Nouveau Riche

Credit: Stephen Cummiskey

Credit: The Other Richard

Black Holes

Zoo Southside, 19–25 Aug, 2:20pm

Where words stutter, bodies stand up. A cohort of black British artists are making their voices heard via dance. Among them, Alexandrina Hemsley (Project X) and Seke Chimutengwende (DV8) are a dream team. Their afrofuturist duet roves through space and time to ask what a white universe tends to eclipse.

A Table Tennis Play

Underbelly, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 12:30pm

Ping-Pong. WhiffWhaff. Gossima. Table tennis’s terminology might be up for grabs, but Sam Steiner’s new play stakes its claim as a spectator sport— sometimes tense, sometimes hypnotic— as two strangers bat a ball back and forth. He has the makings of a mighty miniaturist, as marked by his debut, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons.

Are we not drawn onward to new erA

ZOO Southside, 2–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 11am

Year after year, show after show, Ontroerend Goed set a firework off at the Fringe. The Belgians have bound us and blindfolded us, dated us and hated on us and watched the world end. Their latest is timely, in more ways than one. Built as a palindrome, it asks whether human history is progress or inexorable decline.

The Examination

Gilded Balloon Teviot, 13–25 Aug, not 19, 8pm

Judge a society by the state of its prisons, urged the dissident author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Brokentalkers take him at his word in this interrogation of healthcare in Ireland’s penal institutions that combines personal testimony with political fury. A company that routinely breaks new ground, they’re well worth catching.

Kids Picks

There are children’s shows for all ages at the Fringe, from an opera for babies to a celebration of the Girl Guide and Scout movement

Fox-tot!, ages 12–24 months

The Edinburgh Academy, 2–16 Aug, not 5, 12 , 10am, 11:30am

Walk at one; talk at two... and cultivate a taste for opera in between. Fox-tot! is an interactive opera brought to the Fringe by Scottish Opera and Royal & Derngate Theatres. Set in a magical woodland, a fox learns to see the world through the eyes of other creatures. The show is aimed primarily at the very specific 12–24 months age range – but can also be enjoyed by everyone else.

One Duck Down, ages 3–12

Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul-26 Aug, not 20, 10:30am

Valentina’s Galaxy, ages 2–6

Royal Botanic Garden, 3–18 Aug, not 5, 12, times vary

Inspired by Valentina Tereshkova and Mae Jemison, the first woman and first African-American woman in space respectively, Frozen Charlotte Productions bring together the magic of theatre and science with an immersive atmosphere of experiments, rocket launches and stargazing.

In 1992, a shipping container holding 7,000 rubber ducks fell in the Pacific Ocean. Join Billy as he sails the seven seas attempting to collect every last one. This is an environmental adventure with clowning, music and puppetry brought to Edinburgh from FacePlant Theatre.

Girl Scouts vs Aliens, ages 7–13

Assembly George Square Studios, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 13, 20, 12:10pm

When four teenage friends set out for Scout camp, they weren’t expecting to find themselves in a field next to some gatecrashing aliens. Are the scouting skills they’ve learned enough to save them? Escapade Productions’ latest show celebrates the 110th anniversary of the Girl Guide and Scout movement.

Credit: Katie Bennett

Music and Musicals Picks

From a dark opera to a Festival debut by a counter cultural icon, there’s something for all music tastes across Edinburgh

Jekyll vs Hyde

PBH Free Fringe, Voodoo Rooms, 3-25 Aug, 3:25pm

Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel about good and evil undergoes a strange transformation. This adaptation is a battle between two rival artists’ visions. One act wishes to stage the story as an operetta and the other wants to play it as a mainstream shlockrock musical. Composer-comedian Laurence Owen and comediannovelist Lindsay Sharman’s combined talents in making this show have already impressed: attracting the Wilton’s Music Hall Fringe Foundation Award, which supports companies coming to Edinburgh.

Breaking the Waves

Henry Box Brown

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, 31 July–26 Aug, not 12, 19, 7:30pm

Two shows at this year’s Fringe are influenced by one remarkable story. The story of an 1850s Virginian, Henry Box Brown, who escaped from slavery by posting himself in a box to freedom. Magical Bones (see our Cabaret and Variety picks and interview) pays tribute in Black Magic at Underbelly. While over at Gilded Balloon’s new Patter Hoose venue, CTC New York Ensemble return with their a cappella retelling of Brown’s liberating flight.

King’s Theatre, 21–24 Aug, not 22, 7:15pm

Newly-wed Bess McNeil (Sydney Mancasola) lives in a Calvinist community on the Scottish coast. After her husband becomes incapacitated he urges Bess to find new lovers. But the liasions start to put her at great risk. Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s adaptation of Lars von Trier’s 1996 film—the first of his ‘Golden Heart’ trilogy focussing on innocent heroines—receives its European premiere as part of the International Festival.

Neneh Cherry

Leith Theatre, 10 Aug, 8pm

It doesn’t seem like thirty years since Neneh Cherry released Raw Like Sushi; perhaps because the punky hip-hop of that first album was so far ahead of its time. Her ability to change artisitic direction has always kept her music fresh. Broken Politics, her latest release, may captures her political activism best, responding to the far-right’s ascent, the refugee crisis and abortion. She now makes her debut at the International Festival and will perform songs from all three decades of her evergreen career.

Credit: Paul Gee

Credit: STeve Ullathorne

Cabaret and Variety Picks

What to watch when you crave some variety: Francesca Peschier picks the freshest cabaret and variety

Little Death Club

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, Aug 3–24, not 12, 8:00pm

The first rule of Little Death Club is that there are no rules in Little Death Club. The Queen of Weimar punk Bernie Dieter is back as the silky voiced mistress of ceremonies in the most debauched authentic cabaret on the circuit. Previous acts include burlesque legend Kitty Bang Bang and Le Gateau Chocolat. Expect circus, comedy, song and plenty of (literal) fire at this utterly hedonistic night out. The club of Little Death lives up to its name, French slang for orgasm.

Piñata

Magical Bones: Black Magic

Underbelly Bristo Square, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 6:25pm

How can you freshen the tired format of close-up card tricks? Well if you're Richard Essien, you fuse your sleight of hand with slick moves. Having danced with the likes of Madonna and the Black-Eyed Peas, Peckham-born Essien now fuses hip-hop culture with street magic. This year the self-proclaimed “only breakdancing magician in the world” makes his Fringe debut having wowed audiences in the 2016 West End hit magic show Impossible and TV series Around The World in 80 Tricks.

The Peckham performance party Piñata have been smashing it (pun entirely intended) down in south London at their wonderfully absurd DIY monthly cabaret. For one night only, Piñata’s incredible mix of designers, comedians and artists are bringing the rave to Edinburgh. A late night line-up featuring some of their best acts from the last three years of madness and of course, smashing a piñata with bats in a violent glittery finale.

Bubble Show for Adults Only

theSpace, 2–24 Aug, not 12, 18, times and venues vary

Yes, it already takes the prize for one of the best titles on the Fringe, but this returning erotic show does genuinely have some pop. A mixture of ridiculous clowning, sensual dancing and incredible bubble art, the show offers something truly unique. And Bubble Show for Adults Only has an impressive CV, including performances at Soho’s seedy heaven The Box nightclub.

Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose, 24 Aug, 11:15pm

Credit: Eva K Salv

Credit: Ayesha Hussian

Dance, Physical Theatre and Circus Picks

Donald Hutera picks the very best shows from Dance, Physical Theatre and Circus at both EIF and the Fringe

Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer

The Lyceum, 21–24 Aug, times vary

Two festivals ago Oona Doherty stunned Fringe audiences and critics alike with her solo Hope Hunt & The Ascension Into Lazarus. This year the Northern Irish dancer-choreographer is back with Hard to be Soft: A Belfast Prayer, addressing conflict and gender. Earlier this year I asked why she makes dance. Her response: “We’re in great need of kinetic empathy”.

The Crucible

Edinburgh Playhouse, 3–5 Aug, 7:30pm

Seeking Unicorns

Dance Base, 13–18 Aug, 1:15pm

As the Fringe’s only truly dance-dedicated venue, Dance Base is dear to fans of movement-based creative expression. 2019’s most unique Dance Base offering might well be Chiara Bersani’s delicate, sensual and thought-provoking solo Seeking Unicorns, in which the 98cm tall Italian artist forges a wondrous personal connection with an elusive and misunderstood mythical creature.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Scottish Ballet bring this adaptation of Arthur Miller’s gutsy, still-relevant 1953 dramatisation of the infamous Salem witch trials. Here the choreographer is the American Helen Pickett; having danced for a dozen years for William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt, her pedigree is good.

Super Sunday

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, 2–24 Aug, 9pm

Billed as one of the Circus Hub’s most ambitious productions yet, Finland’s Race Horse Company bring a purportedly spectacular rollercoaster ride through the wild and daring imaginations of the six-strong cast that devised it. A dystopian fairground is the setting for a series of often black-humoured stunts.

Credit: Petter Hellman

Credit: Andy Ross

Credit: Roberta Segata

Credit: Luca Truffarelli

Adelaide Picks

Fest Magazine’s Adelaide edition reviewed some great shows in the southern hemisphere earlier this year, and now you can catch them in Edinburgh

The Establishment: Le Bureau de Strange

Heroes @ The Hive, 1–25 Aug, not 13, 8:40pm

What we said: “The Establishment have an unrivalled charm as well as unpredictable comedy.”

Men with Coconuts

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, 31 Jul–26 Aug, 5:30pm

What we said: “Men with Coconuts act with gleeful spontaneity, leaning into missteps and weaponising the inevitable chaos of unplanned dialogue.”

Two Little Dickheads: Kapow!

Just the Tonic, The Charteris Centre, 1–25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 10:40pm

What we said: “If the world were ending, it would be a joy to spend the last hours with these lovely dickheads.”

Childrens

Jelly or Jam

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, 3–4 & 10–11 Aug, 12pm

What we said: “It was good, it was beautiful. It was sweet. It was very jelly.”

Chameleon

ZOO Playground, 4–26 Aug, not 13, 7:15pm

What we said: “Plummer is a serious purveyor of social change intent on achieving her goal with perfected physical comedy.”

The Long Pigs

Assembly Roxy, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 19, 7:30pm

What we said: “It’s a theatrically meaty piece of physical theatre, where every laugh is undercut by a sense of morbid unease.”

Umbrella Man

Summerhall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 7, 12, 20, 10am

What we said: “Umbrella Man draws you in like a warm blanket. The performance is rich and memorable, but it’s the layered storytelling that leaves a lasting impression.”

Chameleon Zoo

What serious intent perfected

The & Cluster Assembly 7:30pm

What meaty where sense

Umbrella Company Summerhall, 10:00am What draws ket. memorable, storytelling impression.”

Comedy Theatre

Credit: Eva Rodriguez Paredes

Seriously, Scientifically Funny

Can you apply the rigour of the scientific method to comedy?

Jay Richardson gets nerdy with Olga Koch, Harriet Braine and Dr Heather Berlin

In both comedy and her romantic life, Olga Koch is rigorously systematic. Consequently, she’s banned from dating website OkCupid, after abusing the platform to fill a gig.

“Yeah”, she laughs guiltily. “I would start conversations, then three sentences in be like, ‘do you want to meet at this specific place and specific time?’ Someone either reported me or they clocked that I was sending the exact same message to dozens of guys.”

A computer science graduate, Koch admits that her degree was important in shaping her thoughts “in a way that’s very rigid and logical, seeing everything as cause and effect”. Her show If/Then, following her Edinburgh Comedy Award newcomer nomination last year, “traces how I began thinking that way. And how, when it coincided with my first relationship, I tried to apply rigid logic to first love, something that is fundamentally not logical at all.”

Like a coder at work, she builds an artificially intelligent boyfriend, an algorithm derived from the entirety of the input of her ex’s email and WhatsApp messages, his Twitter and Facebook posts.

Applying scientific methodology to something as apparently mysterious as love is akin to what Harriet Braine explores with music. As co-host of The DesignSpark Podcast about technology with fellow comic Bec Hill and Dr Lucy Rogers, she’s the composer of the show’s myriad tunes and jingles. Several of these feature in her latest Fringe hour, Les Admirables, about the scientific pioneers Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, María Sabina, Grace Hopper and Valentina Tereshkova.

Challenged to “write within such niche parameters”, she found parodying pop songs to be its own sort of experimentation and refinement. It’s based on how familiar crowds are with a tune, how closely it mirrors the original and at what point they

Credit: James Deacon

Olga Koch

might intuit the parody. Yet while these parodies get the biggest laughs, she’s now limiting them to short bursts, “because audiences actually prefer original songs,” she explains. “[It’s] tougher as it’s harder to make them funny in the same way.”

Much more than a springboard for great comedy, though, this difficulty of actually getting a scientific grasp on how we define creativity still eludes researchers. Indeed, it has preoccupied neuroscientist Dr Heather Berlin throughout her career. Defying measurement and easy definition, “the closest we can get [to defining creativity] is divergent thinking, thinking outside the box or making novel associations between ideas,” she ventures. She references an Australian study, in which people given riddles to solve, temporarily had their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex inhibited, “the part of your brain constraining your thoughts so they’re conforming to social norms”. This suppression of their “inner critic” enabled them to think more creatively and complete the task.

Berlin, however, can look closer to home for her research matter. In her previous Fringe show, Off the Top, she analysed her comedy-rapper husband Baba Brinkman’s brain function. That suppression of the inner critic is something Brinkman feels intuitively. “Learning to be a confident stage performer is just the process of telling your brain to shut up criticisms in real time, especially for freestyle rapping,” he says. It’s about achieving the state of “flow” characteristic of an MC or comedian when creativity is just pouring out of them, unchecked.

The couple’s latest collaboration, Impulse Control, weighs up the positives and negatives of this impulsive thinking, from prefrontal cortex malfunctions (gambling addiction and OCD) to deliberate relinquishing of control in order to improvise.

Not only does the show express this tension itself—it’s carefully scripted but allows for audience interaction—but it also mirrors their marriage. “I’m the prefrontal cortex. The more thoughtful control,

Credit: Karla Gowlett

Harriet Braine

Olga Koch

“I tried to apply rigid logic to first love, something that is fundamentally not logical at all”

- Olga Koch

the brake system, thinking about the future,” Berlin says. “He’s like the id. I plan things to a schedule. But he lives life by the seat of his pants. So there’s this push and pull between us, similar to what’s happening in people’s individual brains.”

That’s not the only tension at work here, though. Berlin is only too aware that, historically, female scientists have been treated as more of an outlier than a white comedy-rapper.

“I’ve definitely faced obstacles and prejudice from being a woman in STEM,” she reflects. “But I feed off it. The lower expectations are, the more blown away they are when you actually go ‘look, I have something to say and I’m to be taken seriously’. I enjoy that dynamic and see it as an advantage.”

The same goes for Koch. When she began comedy she was aware of the same pressures to confound stereotypes that she’d experienced as a female programmer. But while If/Then explores “being a woman in a mostly male field, be that comedy or computer science”, she’s conscious that as a student “I was significantly less of a feminist... having a ton of internalised misogyny.

“Today, I’m more confident. I made a really conscious decision not to see other women in my

field as competition but those who understand my experience better than anyone else.”

For Braine, history’s marginalisation of female scientists is a creative headache too. Her show requires more setup and explanation than it would if it focused on say, Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. “The main reason I’ve decided to use a lot of visuals as well as the songs is so that people know what these five great figures look like,” she says. “I’m giving a little rundown of their lives.”

“These amazing women. There’s so much potentional in science ‘herstory’. It’s a shift of focus onto the previously untold.”

SHOW: SHOW: SHOW:

VENUE: VENUE: VENUE:

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Harriet Braine: Les Admirables

Gilded Balloon at Old Tolbooth Market

Impulse Control

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Revolution Bar

Olga Koch: If/Then

6pm – 7pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12 12:20pm – 1:20pm, 4–25 Aug, not 10, 17, 22, 24 4:30pm – 5:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 14

£4–£6 FREE £5–£7

Monkey Barrel Comedy

Focus on: Daliso Chaponda

From Liam Neeson to Bill Cosby, Daliso Chaponda’s new show tackles “cancel culture” and losing faith in our idols

Amanda Holden’s Golden Buzzer was a game changer for Daliso Chaponda. A jobbing comedian for years, paying bills from freelance fiction writing, his success on Britain’s Got Talent in 2017—he came third—instantly changed his fortunes. He went from struggling to shift tickets in small venues to selling out big ones every night.

He applied out of frustration at the slow pace of his comedy career. “I never used to get any telly. It’s easy to have conspiracy theories: am I too old? Not good looking enough? Do they already have too many brown people? But I didn’t actually know. With Britain’s Got Talent, I knew that if they didn’t think I was funny they would tell me to my face. There’s no conspiracy.”

What surprised him was how, despite his slightly edgy jokes, lots of kids liked him. “They couldn’t possibly understand the jokes. But another comedian said, ‘well, you’re happy, you’ve got a highpitched voice, you’re like a cartoon character, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand the jokes’.”

His latest show, Blah Blah Blacklist, tackles the thorny topic of “cancel culture”. Recent years have seen so many people get into trouble for old tweets that have resurfaced, or revelations and allegations of criminal behaviour. “So I talk about them. Everyone from Danny Baker and Liam Neeson to people much more criminal like Bill Cosby.”

These days, he reckons, “social media has weaponised outrage. It used to be 20 people with picket signs, but social media has allowed all the little angry mobs in every country to band together quickly.”

Chaponda examines the moment you lose faith in someone you idolised. “It’s tragic, but it’s kind of funny.” But the show isn’t just making fun of celebrities. He digs into why we idolise people in the first place – famous people, but also our families too.

Chaponda’s own relationship with his parents has had its strained moments. His father is a highprofile diplomat and politician in his home country, Malawi. He’s been openly critical of his father’s party in his routines. “It’s something my father took a while to understand. But I’m a comedian. Whoever’s in charge, I tear them up. If I ever go home and it’s a utopia, I’ll leave them alone. When the opposition was in power he loved my comedy.” His dad has come to terms with it now: “my success helps.”

A few years ago Chaponda was himself blacklisted in Malawi, after falling foul of the censorship board. But he explains, “it wasn’t even my joke, it was a journalist’s misinterpretation of that joke.”

The churn of offence is relentless, the length of the blacklist getting longer every day. In a sense, Chaponda’s show is never finished. “I’ve got 40 minutes set in stone, but if when we’re up there someone decides to humiliate themselves, they’re going to be in the show.”

SHOW: VENUE:

TIME: TICKETS:

Tim Bano

Daliso Chaponda: Blah Blah Blacklist

Gilded Balloon Teviot

6:30pm – 7:30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 14 £7–£14

Credit: Steve Ullathorne

Meet the Grandparents

Also charting a dramatic Czech departure, Alice Fraser’s show Mythos features her much-traveled grandfather, Adolf Friedenburg. The cerebral Australian comic is renowned for family dramas, and this one uses “stories from his life to open up questions—and jokes—about my own life,” she says, “and the way we do things now.”

Why is his story relevant today? “I think he’s a good example of a noble horse-riding, mountainwalking ‘old-fashioned’ man,” Fraser explains, “in a time where we’re struggling to look past some terrible masculine behaviour.”

Alate Edinburgh venue switch can feel catastrophic for displaced Fringe acts, but it’s all relative. Take Joe Bor, who was recently ousted from the now-kaput Espionage. “My director said ‘you can’t complain about having to move 50 metres down the street – your show is about your granddad moving from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.’ So, no, I couldn’t moan really.”

Bor is one of several comedians at this year’s Fringe actively celebrating their late grandfathers, whose tales are remarkable, humbling, and often intriguingly timely. The Story of Walter and Herbert is about Walter Bor, CBE, who became an influential town planner, and his actor friend Herbert Lom, best known for playing Inspector Clouseau’s beleaguered boss. Both escaped to Britain in 1939. Joe Bor— usually a character comic—had planned to return to the Fringe with an autobiographical show, but “this really inspired me,” he says. “It’s an important time to tell that story: the ‘30s, after the financial crash, the rise of the right. Comedy can be powerful.”

That generation’s achievements are hard to match. James McNicholas, a Fringe favourite with the sketch trio Beasts, makes his solo debut with The Boxer. It’s a big deal for him, but also trumped by his granddad, Terry Downes. McNicholas initially envisioned a fictional show inspired by the late boxer/soldier/actor, “but the truth was just more interesting, and often funnier,” he says.

“Now the show tells his story with occasional interjections where I demonstrate the contrast in our lives. It’s the parallel stories of one man who had to fight for everything, and another who’s never really had to fight for anything.”

Uncovering these histories can be challenging. Bor’s research began with newly unearthed letters, Walter’s unpublished autobiography, and a lengthy audio interview. Clips from it appear in the show, although that first listen “was really scary and sad: I played it to my dad and we hadn’t heard my grandad speak for 20 years.”

Fraser is a veteran of family-themed shows, but admits to recurring concerns about doing

Si Hawkins chats to Joe Bor, Alice Fraser and James McNicholas, whose Fringe shows are inspired by their grandfather’s lives

Alice Fraser

James McNicholas

Credit: Steve Ullathorne

Credit: Idil Sukan

justice to real lives. Is a comedy setting appropriate? “I don’t think I diminish him by the jokes I tell,” she concludes. “I have a bunch of tricks to make it work.”

Meet the Grandparents

Joe Bor on Walter Bor

“My grandad was a town planner, who escaped Nazi-occupied Prague in 1939 to build a life for himself in the UK. He was in charge of rebuilding London’s East End after the war, went back to Prague to be town planner there, and was one of the people that built Milton Keynes – we joke about that, but it was quite a big deal. He was very driven: he seemed to have survivor’s guilt, so to deal with that he got his head down and ultimately became very successful. I didn’t realise how much he’d done.”

Alice Fraser on Adolf Friedenburg

This is new territory for McNicholas, though, who was “pretty nervous” about his family seeing it. “I haven’t put in some of the really stupid stuff about him,” he says, “like the time he tried to kill a bat with fly spray.”

Future descendants will have easier access to their grandparents’ stories, of course: our tweets and posts are likely to outlive us. Right now though, in this unprecedented era of Brexit-fuelled unease between young and old, perhaps we should encourage grandchildren to ask more questions.

“I think it’s important,” McNicholas concurs. “We think of legacy or inheritance in terms of money, or assets. But stories can be just as important.”

Fraser recalls asking her grandmother about wartime life, for a school assignment. “I learned so much,” she says. “I remember her talking about the food at 1940s boarding schools in Australia in graphic detail, including a sort of jelly they made with all the leftovers from the week. “I reckon I think about that once a week. It certainly puts Uber Eats into perspective.”

“My grandfather was a Czech Jewish man who studied law at university when there was a cap on the number of Jews allowed to study, just before WWII. He fought Nazis with knives, was arrested for making fun of Mussolini in Italy, went skiing with his shirt off, made ball bearings for the RAF in London, made his way to Australia, laboured on the Snowy River hydroelectric dam building project, and ended up drinking champagne for breakfast overlooking Sydney Harbour.”

James McNicholas on Terry Downes

“My grandfather was a boxer. A good one too: in 1961 he defeated Paul Pender to become the middleweight champion of the world. While that was undoubtedly his crowning glory, his whole life was one of adventure. He was raised in London during the blitz, but later spent three years in the US Marines. After he retired from boxing, he became a film star. Frankly, there really ought to be a movie of his life: I didn’t have the budget for that, so a one-man show in a Portakabin it is.”

SHOW: SHOW: SHOW:

James McNicholas: The Boxer

VENUE:

TIME: TIME: TIME:

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VENUE: VENUE:

Pleasance Courtyard Laughing Horse @ The Lock Up Gilded Balloon Teviot

4:15pm – 5:15pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 14 3:45pm – 4:45pm, 1–25 Aug 8:45pm – 9:45pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 12

Joe Bor: The Story of Walter and Herbert

Alice Fraser: Mythos

£7–£10 FREE £7–£12

“We think of legacy or inheritance in terms of money, or assets. But stories can be just as important”

– James McNicholas

Joe Bor

Focus on: Sarah Keyworth

Nominated last year for Best Newcomer, Sarah Keyworth is back and has masculinity in her sights

Sarah Keyworth’s first Fringe show, Dark Horse, lived up to its name last year.

Appearing as if from nowhere, the Nottingham standup produced an acclaimed debut that was nominated for Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer. It was an hour of finely honed gags coupled with an empowering message.

Keyworth explored her own thoughts of inadequacy and displacement that she felt while growing up, and her worries about the confident little middle class girl, Roly, Keyworth nannies. She asked how Roly was going to survive intact in a world that routinely tells girls to tone it down.

The show was hard fought over the years, not least by living in London while holding down a fulltime job, without any other financial support.

“I worked a nine-to-five job and went gigging in the evening and I would fall asleep everywhere. I kept ending up in Essex because I’d fall asleep on trains then get lost and find my way back on buses.”

Now she has produced her eagerly awaited follow up, Pacific. She takes the boyishness that she felt stopped her from fitting in as a child and explores it further.

“The show is about strength and masculinity and how I like to think I’m a big strong boy but I’m not, I’m a tiny woman. It’s about toxic masculinity and the idea that men can’t express

emotions and that men have to be strong all the time. These ideas about men and women have got so ingrained that I, as a woman in a relationship with a woman, somehow still equate that to my relationship.”

It was partly the discomfort in her own gender identity that led her to begin standup, getting in with the jokes before the bullies did. But there was also a simpler reason: “Also I like attention. I think that was the main thing. Big attention seeker! That’s the main ‘why’. And I can’t act and I can’t sing so I thought I’ll do comedy!”

Growing up working class in Nottingham, comedy wasn’t necessarily an obvious choice of career path for Keyworth. But as it turns out it does run in the family.

“I don’t really know where it comes from but I have a cousin who is a comedy writer and standup, an uncle who was quite a well known standup in Nottingham and I think one of my great grandfathers was a clown of some sort.” And you can’t argue with a funny genome.

✏︎

Marissa Burgess

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME:

TICKETS:

Sarah Keyworth: Pacific Pleasance Courtyard 5:45pm – 6:45pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 13 £7–£11

The Lisa Richards Agency

the Edinburgh Fringe 30 years of Irish entertainment

LISA RICHARDS PRESENTS IRISH COMEDIANS

With 25 years of experience at the Fringe, the Lisa Richards agency is excited to showcase some of our new and established talent. A different Irish comedian each week including:

Stephen Mullan: Son of a Preacher Man (31 Jul-3 Aug)

Shane Clifford: Near Shane Experience (4 -7 Aug)

Julie Jay: Julie Really Love Me? (8-11 Aug)

Hannah Mamalis: Keeps Coming (12-15 Aug)

Gearóid Farrelly: Home Truths (16-20 Aug)

Chris Kent: Work-in-Progress (21–26 Aug)

18:45 (60 mins)

Gilded Balloon Teviot - Sportsmans

5.15pm

NewsRevue: 1979 Edition

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT PM JIM CALLAGHAN RETURNS HOME FROM A SUMMIT AND FLATLY DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF A CRISIS

What would you do if your work sent you out on a trip to a different country, you had important meetings, a few chats with a few important people, maybe even took a bit of time out to explore the place, having a grand old time. Then you return home and find that you have no gas, electric or water, your windows and doors have gone and there’s no one to call and sort it out cause there are strikes all over the place. Oh and it’s the coldest winter for sixteen years. Close your eyes and pretend it hasn’t happened. That way it doesn’t exist right. Maybe that’s what we should do with Brexit... oh wait....

SID VICIOUS, 21, IS FOUND DEAD BY HIS MOTHER

SCOTLAND SAYS ‘YES’ TO DEVOLUTION; WALES VOTES ‘NO’

Areferendum with a 48/52 split. Ring any bells? No? Still seems like Scotland are on the fight to distance themselves from England (and I don’t blame them to be honest, England are a bit like your drunk parents on a wedding dance floor making constant fools of themselves). Before we know it Scotland will have cut themselves free and be sailing off somewhere into the North Sea. Still, at least there’s Wales.

Sid Vicious’s death on February 2nd, 1979 shook the UK. A central figure in the punk scene, he inspired many people across the world when he said the famous words: “Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards and make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you alive!” Many have tried and failed to live by these wise words, none have succeeded so successfully as Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon. We know a punk legend in the making when we see one. Rock on Nicola, turn that parliament floor into a mosh pit and take out Blobby Johnson while you’re at it.

The current affairs satirical stalwart enjoys its 40th anniversary this year. We serve the team up headlines from 1979, the year of the show’s birth

MARCH 1ST

FEBRUARY 2ND

✏︎ Maya-Nika Bewley

✏︎ Samuel Hopkins (Director)

✏︎ Althea Burey

Credit: Kevin Grieve

A NEW PUB, “MARTIN’S FREE HOUSE” OPENS IN MUSWELL HILL. THE EPONYMOUS PUBLICAN IS TIM MARTIN, AND THE PUB IS SOON RENAMED “WETHERSPOONS”

In the future sometime around 2150 when mankind has come out of their post-apocalyptic caves in a world that is now known only as Brexitland, I predict historians will narrow down the leave campaigns win to one decisive factor. That being when Tim Martin first opened the original Weatherspoons pub, it unleashed a catastrophic ripple of events that set in motion the Leave campaign’s triumph. Propaganda on coasters! If only millions of people didn’t see those blasted coasters. So, I suggest we just wait for time travel then commit arson on his first pub? Who’s with me? No? Okay, cheap pints it is then.

OCTOBER 12TH

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY IS PUBLISHED

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy? It’s not like we’ll ever need that one though because our planet is at a really stable place with its climate and renewable energy resources and it’s definitely not a thousand degrees in France and we didn’t need bumble bees anyway and we’re all going to be fine STOP PANICKING. What’s step one? Asking for a friend.

MARGARET THATCHER TROUNCES CALLAGHAN IN THE GENERAL ELECTION AND ENTERS NUMBER 10

Being a girl in 1979 seeing a woman enter No 10 was an incredible event, it was such a powerful image in such a misogynistic age. I remember being with a group of female school friends when we heard the news and we all cheered. We all went to a state comprehensive school in Leicester so none of us came from Tory-voting families so our initial, short lived glee was not about the politics. Little did we know what would happen... nor that I’d be producing political satire years later for almost twenty years of my life.

SEPTEMBER 8TH

WOLVERHAMPTON

WANDERERS PAY A RECORD BREAKING £1.5M FOR STRIKER ANDY GRAY

Iwonder if the bosses at Wolves, having spent £1.5m on Andy Gray in 1979, could have predicted the £100m+ transfers being made today. The average London home cost £20,000 then, so they had a choice between one Andy Gray or an entire street in Clapham. Nowadays they’d not quite manage to buy a two bed in Battersea Power Station with that. Wolves might have been happy with the deal which made Gray a star, though Sky Sports – who sacked him in 2011 for making misogynistic comments on air, probably wish they’d bought the street in Clapham instead.

✏︎ Brett Sinclair

✏︎ Emma Taylor (Producer)

Credit: Amie Johnson

Credit: Juskteez Vu

✏︎ Andrew Linnie (Musical Director)

✏︎ Christian James

Focus on: Lucie Pohl

Overwatch star Lucie Pohl chats about distinguishing real life from fantasy

Things have changed for Lucie Pohl since her last Fringe solo in 2016.

“My crazy life began two years ago when I started doing the voice on this video game,” she says. “Suddenly I’m doing Comic-Cons all over the world and I’m in these green rooms hanging out with the Hulk and Batman, and Christopher Lloyd wanders in with a newspaper under his arm and Mia Farrow’s just there hanging around.”

Pohl’s description of “doing the voice on this video game” is something of an understatement. Overwatch is a global wphenomenon with over 60 million registered users worldwide. She voices Mercy, one of its central heroes.

“At first I had a bit of arrogance about it, like ‘it’s just a video game, it’s not my main thing’,” she recalls. “Then I started getting recognised in the street and travelling the world meeting these amazing fans who were obsessed with us and everything we do.”

It was the jarring contrast between this celebrity lifestyle and the reality of her home life which inspired her upcoming show Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Real. “I’d come back from the five-star treatment and there’d be a dead mouse in the middle of my floor and my neighbour would be

getting arrested,” she says. “My career wasn’t going how I wanted it to go: I was in the middle of a huge heartbreak, a lot of stuff happened with my family last year and it was all in the midst of me riding this video game celebrity wave.” In a time of “smoke and mirrors” when people have very separate social media and offline lives, “I wanted to say, well, what is reality?”

It’s a question her newfound fandom has presented her with: “when you meet someone who tells you they’ve played 2,000 hours on your character, part of you wants to say ‘No! Get out of the basement and stop playing games!’ But the truth is this person has found something that makes them happy, they feel good, they’ve made friends – they’re just living in a completely alternate universe.”

Overwatch fans have been hugely supportive of Pohl’s own work, coming to see her comedy live and seeking out her past appearances.

But while she’s excited about the fandom’s response, Pohl also hopes the show resonates with a wider audience. “I’ve pared it all down this year and taken out a lot of the theatrical stuff that I used to do because I want to make it about the story, the time... I’m really excited about trying something different.” ✏︎

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME:

TICKETS:

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME:

TICKETS:

Eve Livingston

Lucie Pohl: Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Real

£6–£11

Lucie Pohl’s Immigrant Jam

Gilded Balloon, Teviot 4pm – 5pm, 8, 15, 22 Aug

9pm – 10pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug £9.50–£10.50

Gilded Balloon, Teviot

Focus on: Phoebe Robinson

TV, podcasts, books, Hollywood movies – you name it, Phoebe Robinson’s probably done it. But 2019 has a first in store: her UK standup debut at the Edinburgh Fringe. Following a US tour, her show Sorry, Harriet Tubman will be heading to the festival for 14 nights in August. And Robinson— one half of hit podcast-turned-HBO show 2 Dope Queens—can’t wait.

“Yes! This is my first time in Edinburgh!” she says. “I’m very excited. I know a bunch of comics who have done it—Alex Edelman, Jena Friedman (who’s back this year), Kate Berlant, etc.—and they’ve had nothing but good things to say, so I definitely wanted to give the festival a try. I’ve always wanted to do an hour of standup, so there’s observational stuff about dating my British boyfriend, race, gender, sex. It’s really a snapshot of my life at this moment in time.”

From 2016-2018, Robinson and fellow comedian Jessica Williams (The Daily Show, Booksmart) amassed fans across the world with 2 Dope Queens, a podcast that interviewed comedians and entertainers who were female, black, brown, LGBT and from other minority backgrounds, to make an impact on representation. And the inspiration for her standup show comes from the podcast too.

“When Jessica Williams and I did 2 Dope Queens,” she says, “we would talk about meatier

issues like politics, but then we also talk about cute celebs that we would want to date and we’d always joke that we’re letting down the historical black figures who worked so hard for our civil rights, so we can be raunchy on a podcast. And I joked that we were probably letting down Harriet Tubman—a black abolitionist who helped slaves escape to freedom via the Underground Railroad—the most. So I thought that would be funny to apologize to Harriet and still do some of the sillier jokes that I do.”

Robinson’s repertoire also includes work on several TV shows, like Broad City and I Love Dick, as well as recent film appearances in What Women Want and Netflix’s Ibiza. And having just done a deal with ABC to start her own production company too, she’s one busy comedian – so it’s a good time to catch her while she’s in town.

“I do love visiting the UK,” Robinson says. “It’s such a great change of pace from NYC. This is the first time I’m going to be in Scotland, so I’m looking forward to soaking it all up, trying the food, get a little bit of culture, and being surprised by whatever cool and interesting stuff pops up!” ✏︎

SHOW:

VENUE: TIME: TICKETS:

Yasmin Sulaiman

Phoebe Robinson: Sorry, Harriet Tubman

Assembly George Square Studios

6:45pm – 7:45pm, 12–25 Aug

£12- £16

She’s co-hosted a hit podcast, done film and TV and finally, Phoebe Robinson is coming to Edinburgh

Phoebe Robinson

Focus on: Dreamgun

A Dublin comedy troupe turn famous movie screenplays into joke-filled live reads. We get the script from Dreamgun’s Stephen Colfer

Some Fringe shows struggle in the pitch. Comedians doing a live read of an abridged film script might belong to that category. But that hasn’t stopped self-proclaimed “Irish comedy weirdos” Dreamgun from finding cult success with Film Reads.

“We’ve found no way to overcome that,” says Stephen Colfer about the idea. “It’s been three years and I still can’t sell it.”

He’s being modest. Dreamgun’s spoofy live reads have tickled audiences at Kilkenny Cat Laughs Festival, the Adelaide Fringe and in Edinburgh. With guest performers such as James Acaster, Dara O’Briain and Rose Matafeo, the live recordings have been further supported by its growing podcast following.

The concept shouldn’t work, but it does. The original scripts of popular classics, such as Titanic, Jaws and Harry Potter, are edited with all the famous scenes and lines preserved, but with plenty more jokes added in. And, crucially, each performance is unrehearsed, keeping it tangibly live and unexpected.

“I just want to capture what it felt like to watch Jurassic Park on Christmas Day for the first time,” says Colfer. With 2019 being the second time they are bringing Film Reads to Edinburgh, Colfer is confident – despite knowing the Fringe “always finds new ways to punch you in the face.”

While Colfer and Dreamgun co-creators Heber Hanly, Gavin Drea and James McDonnell have been bringing sketch comedy to the Fringe since 2015, the idea for Film Reads came by accident. Seeking funding for their early Edinburgh trips, the team decided to ape film director Jason Reitman’s cult live reads of beloved scripts by Hollywood actors. They started with Jurassic Park, but when it came to the second fundraiser—Back to the

Future—they discovered that Robert Zemeckis’ screenplay was not available in the public domain.

They tried a loophole: using the film’s subtitles instead of the original script – but this, naturally, lacked scene directions. “We were like, ‘oh crap. I guess we have to do it’,” Colfer recalls. Cue a night of overly literal commentary, pop culture references and absurd descriptions. And it took off.

Soon they cast fellow Irishman Ronan Carey as the narrator. “Once he latched onto the voice that we were writing, that was when the show just suddenly existed.” Carey’s dry, deadpan narration is the icing on a cleverly written cake, leading the audience through anarchic retellings. With the right mix of detached, cynical irony and cheerful naivety, Carey is “the guiding light” that sells the parody.

The podcast is a natural extension of the format. It gives listeners the chance to catch shows they couldn’t see in person, but also opened the door to a funding model via Patreon, which now helps support the company.

Edinburgh will see them performing 18 adapted scripts over 25 nights. Expect Die Hard, The Matrix, Spider-Man and, of course, Back to the Future.

✏︎ George Sully

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME:

TICKETS:

Dreamgun: Film Reads

Underbelly, Bristo Square

10:15pm – 11:15pm, 1–25 Aug, not 13

£6.50 - £11

Credit: Killian Broder

Film Reads isn’t the only show this Fringe deserving a spot in your podcast feeds

The Guilty Feminist Live Podcast

Pleasance Courtyard, 2-4 Aug, 4pm

“I’m a feminist, but…” Deborah Frances-White’s hit comedy podcast returns to the Fringe for three live sessions.

Table Manners with Jessie Ware

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, 2-4 Aug, 11am

In 2017, singer-songwriter Jessie Ware started a podcast about food and culture with her chef mum. Catch its Fringe premiere this opening weekend.

Richard Herring: RHLSTP

The Stand’s New Town Theatre, 2-25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 1:30pm

AKA Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, these hilarious live interviews feature a wealth of guests, meeting nearly every lunchtime this August.

The Bugle Live

The Stand’s New Town Theatre, 16 & 19 Aug, times vary

Andy Zaltzman’s famed satirical podcast The Bugle has had over 50 million downloads since its launch 2007. The live tour returns to Edinburgh.

The Hoovering Podcast Live with Jessica Fostekew

Monkey Barrel Comedy, 13-14 Aug, 3pm

As well as a regular co-host on The Guilty Feminist, comedian Jessica Fostekew hosts her own foodthemed panel podcast with celebrity guests.

In Conversation with Standard Issue

The Stand Comedy Club, 11-12 Aug, 1:40pm

Sarah Millican’s “by women, for women” podcast is back for the fourth time, playing host to a range of special guests.

Secret Dinosaur Cult Live

Bedlam Theatre, 5, 6, 13, 20 Aug, times vary

2015’s best newcomer Sofie Hagen has teamed up with drag king Jodie Mitchell for this relatively new podcast that definitely, maybe isn’t a cult, but is about dinosaurs (and dads).

Podcasts at the Fringe

Eleanor Conway

A Sobering Look at Stress

Becca Moody talks to comics Tony Law and Eleanor Conway about

During the time Tony Law was drinking, up until around 2016, his comedy felt perilous. Although entertaining and funny in the most unpredictable of ways, something about Law remained unattainable. We were permitted a glimpse into his psyche but never shown the full picture. Law kept his audience at arm’s length, choosing to bewilder us with his charismatic volatility rather than be truly vulnerable on stage.

The Fringe is an stressful time for comedians who choose to sacrifice August for their craft. Edinburgh buzzes with anticipation. And a large part of that expectation lands on the doorstep of each comedian’s rented bedsit.

It’s easy to see how the allure of a beer or G&T after, or before, a late-night gig could be tempting to a strung-out comic. But those who turn to alcohol in times of stress may find themselves relying on it more during the Fringe.

‘That comic is so weird… they must be off their face on drink/drugs.’ We’ve all heard something along these lines. Sometimes the ideas are so unpredictable and surreal that we can’t quite comprehend where they might have come from. Such assumptions seem unfair as they disregard the performer’s own imagination and creativity. But what if the comedian on stage is drunk?

These days, Law’s shows are still packed with absurd, whimsical stories and foghorn impressions. In fact, the most noticeable changes aren’t found within the material, but in Law’s demeanour and attitude towards himself. Now sober, Law admits that his alcoholism had a significant effect on his comedy: “I can’t lie,” he says, “once in a while it quelled the nerves and instilled the festive spirit in me. I created in spite of the booze. It only ever allowed your guard to drop and be brave and uninhibited, letting out what is already in there.

“When I drank I was funny as fuck though for about 45 minutes. For two years at a time. Then again, I might have been ten times funnier if sober and sorted.”

Uninhibited, certainly. Funny? Undeniably. But being drunk on stage damaged Law’s comedy too: “It ruined my connectedness and quickness to engage and react and inhabit the ‘character’ of Tony Law.” This is what I had noticed from around 2013–2016 as an avid Law fan. It almost felt as though the absurdist comedian was performing behind a glass wall.

August’s party atmosphere can be problematic for comics dependent on alcohol, which Law acknowledges: “As an alcoholic you put yourself in places where drinking isn’t only acceptable

managing stress with, and now without, the crutch of alcohol, and gets some good advice on staying sane from Ruby Wax

but encouraged, and certainly the festival used to provide that. I suppose the excitement led to an increase in consumption. Between 2009 and 2014 I did my show at noon to stay away from drinkers and I kept myself sober-ish. That was around the time of the birth of my children so it looked like I was going to be a pretty solid guy there for a while.”

Eleanor Conway, who opened up about her struggles with addiction in her 2017 show, Walk of Shame, agrees: “Every night can be a party night at the Fringe, and no one bats an eyelid. It’s a license to get wasted.”

Conway noticed that drinking caused her comedic creativity to suffer. In fact, she believes that her comedy only started doing well once she quit drinking entirely: “I don’t think drunk me on stage is a performance that’s worth seeing. It’s a bit of a car crash.”

A savvy comedy audience will know when a performer isn’t being genuine. Drunkenness stops a performer from being vulnerable on stage, which stops us being able to build a relationship with them. Since becoming sober, Conway has found herself becoming more connected with her audiences: “The honesty I have around my sobriety has filtered into my comedy and that’s what my audiences come to see. I’m no-holds-barred truth and I’ve inspired others to be truthful about their own addictions… If I’m slightly scared about what I’m talking about, then I know it’s going to be good.”

For Law, sobriety brought self-consciousness, with his performances becoming “insecure and low status. Whiney”. But this didn’t stick: “I’d say during the last year [three years after quitting] I’ve now finally got funny again. Much, much more connected now.”

Comedian and mental health campaigner

Ruby Wax recognises the excruciating pressures comedians can feel during the Fringe: “If you’re young and really trying to make it, and there’s ten thousand other people doing the same thing, that would be a nightmare situation. I’d say it’s pretty stressful. But if you want to be a comedian, you should get used to it, because it’s going to be pretty anxiety-making.”

It seems that it’s about trusting yourself to make the right decisions for you. As Wax says: “If you’re twenty years old, you can get drunk every night if you’re not an alcoholic. If you’re above thirty then I’d say watch it. Maybe cut down on the alc.”

It seems that the true bravery in getting sober is about looking yourself in the eye and being truly honest with yourself. Wax’s final advice is beneficial to every single Fringe-goer this year: “Go up to Arthur’s seat, and sit.” ✏︎

Becca Moody

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME: TICKETS:

Ruby Wax: How To Be Human Pleasance Courtyard

4pm – 5pm, 18–24 Aug £16–£18

SHOW: Eleanor Conway: You May Recognise Me From Tinder

VENUE: Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters

TIME: 7pm – 8pm, 2–25 Aug, not 13

TICKETS: FREE

SHOW: Tony Law: Identifies

VENUE: Monkey Barrel Comedy

TIME: 12:15pm – 1:15pm, 1–25 Aug, not 13

TICKETS: £8–£10/PWYW

“The Fringe is a nightmare situation. But if you want to be a comedian, you should get used to it, because it’s going to be pretty anxiety-making”

- Ruby Wax

Tony Law

Everything’s Rosie

After Rosie Jones’ remarkable debut, she chats to Jay Richardson about getting personal with her new show Backward

Not even three years into her standup career, Rosie Jones’ rise has been phenomenal. Except that the impish 29-year-old has been performing all her life.

As she related in her excellent 2018 Edinburgh Fringe debut, 15 Minutes, she was born with cerebral palsy after complications during birth. Slowing her speech, “when people met me they would quite often assume that I have an intellectual disability.

“So from a very young age I worked out that the best way to show I was switched on was to crack jokes to defuse what could be an awkward situation,” the East Yorkshire native explains. “As I grew older, I realised I could do that on a bigger scale as a comedian.”

Her follow-up hour, Backward, recalls how Jones has experienced “the best year of my life since the Fringe”, appearing on The Last Leg, performing at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and at Wembley Arena for Comic Relief. “I’ve been able to do a lot of exciting jobs and I’ve now got a platform. It’s amazing to see the difference in just 12 months, how I’m spoken to differently. I hope that has a knock-on effect for others with disabilities. But I still get patronised and talked down to on a daily basis.”

Some comics spend their entire working life struggling to find a unique, authentic voice. But the ex-television researcher’s arrived almost fully formed. “For years, I thought I couldn’t be

Credit: Jiksaw

a comedian because everyone will get to my punchlines before me,” she explains. “Then I realised that if I adopted it as my style, I could make it work in my favour. And writing for television gave me other tools to be successful. So I’ve been in the comedy industry for eight years. But using comedy to get what I want for 29.”

Growing up, Jones was fiercely driven, “confused and angry that I didn’t see myself represented on television. From about 10 years old I knew that I wanted to make a difference, a change in some capacity,” she recalls.

Nevertheless, she was resigned to working behind the camera, on shows like The Last Leg and 8 Out of 10 Cats, until she witnessed Tig Notaro’s landmark show revealing that she had breast cancer. More so than the measured pace of delivery and her playful manipulation of the audience, it was the American’s decision to perform without her shirt, exposing her double mastectomy scars that proved life-changing.

“You could feel the tension, feel the slight sense of awkwardness,” Jones recalls. “But within five minutes you forgot this woman was topless. She talks about topics that make people feel uncomfortable but with the confidence to go ‘this is me, I’m proud of who I am and you should not feel that way’. I took that confidence. My version of going out without my top is my disability. After five minutes, you forget that I’m disabled and just take in the jokes.”

Also crucial was Jones’ decision to publicly come out as a lesbian. “Because of my disability it took me so long to feel I should be proud to be even more different,” she explains. “We need to get over these stigmas. And we need to be ok with people with disabilities and different sexualities. We’re all human beings with needs and desires. That’s something I’m so passionate about exploring.”

Suggesting that she might have benefited from opportunities denied to more experienced comics as a diversity hire, Jones works exceptionally hard as a justification, gigging virtually every night. No longer

an unknown quantity, she summarises her previous hour in Backward’s first 30 seconds: “I’m Rosie, I’m disabled and gay, now let’s crack on with something even more personal”.

Like Notaro, she typically projects a confidence bordering on “arrogant dickhead”, which has served her extremely well. “All of my stories in last year’s show I was very much on top, the puppet master of everything I talked about,” she maintains. “But this time I’m being a lot braver. For instance, there’s a story where I appear a victim. And for a split-second, the audience might feel sorry for me.

“If that had happened last year, I wouldn’t have been confident enough to allow it, to feel that I could pull the show back afterwards.

“Now I can say ‘being disabled isn’t always amazing, here’s something shit that happened to me. Yet despite all that, don’t you dare feel sorry for me. Because I get through it and it makes me a stronger person’.”

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME: TICKETS:

7pm – 8pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12

£6–£10

“I’ve been in the comedy industry for eight years.

But using comedy to get what I want for 29”

- Rosie Jones

Rosie Jones: Backward Pleasance Courtyard

Credit: Jiksaw

Right Here, Right Now

What does it feel like to live through the end of the world? Javaad

Alipoor

and YESYESNONO’s Sam

Ward chat about using technology to zoom in on the human condition

Javaad Alipoor is an activist first and a theatremaker second. Raised in Bradford by his Iranian dad and his Yorkshire-born “Labourlefty” mum, he’s wary of so-called “political theatre” but his plays confront some of the world’s most urgent issues.

In The Believers are but Brothers, which won a Fringe First in 2017, he took audiences on an intricate journey via WhatsApp through the internet’s murkiest, radicalised depths. His research into the alt-right and ISIS was dangerous

(“As a working class Muslim from Bradford, oh my fucking life,” he exhales), but in a different way his new work is just as challenging. Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran is the sequel, part of a trilogy with co-creator Kirsty Housley that juxtaposes digital technological advancements against “the release of some much more ancient things, like masculinity or spirituality”.

He explains that they often work through ideas by playing around on Instagram or Snapchat, trying to find unusual ways to tell a story. “It’s all about

The Accident Did Not Take Place

collaboration,” he says. “The idea of a writer sitting down like a romantic poet in his garret, it doesn’t work.” The aim is to interrogate new phenomena to find something eternal at their core: “When I think about how technology is changing the world, and those 21st century questions—climate change, migration crises, automation, the acceleration of computing power—what I’m really interested in is: what was in our hearts all along? This show is about how we try to understand living through what feels like the end of the world, and how we hold on to ourselves.”

Against a backdrop of generations of revolution in the Middle East, Rich Kids focusses upon the widening chasm between Iran’s rich and poor –and in particular the super-affluent children of the “hard fucking men” in power. As cultural references, Alipoor talks us through the flaunting of wealth on viral Instagram account @therichkidsoftehran, and the moment when Robert Mugabe’s youngest son used Snapchat to broadcast himself breaking an eye-wateringly expensive watch by dowsing it in champagne. Most importantly, though, he recalls reading an interview with a rural, Iranian revolutionary, pushed to protest by the inequalities worsening under the country’s sanction-struck austerity politics. Alipoor paraphrases, “he basically said, ‘We’re not idiots. We’ve all got Instagram and we see what [the politicians’] kids live like’.”

If Alipoor takes tiny details and uses them to talk about incendiary global crises, then Sam Ward works in reverse. The founder of Manchester-based YESYESNONO, Ward often stages overwhelmingly large questions, only to whittle them down to intimate, confessional truths. Previous work (Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist, [insert slogan here] treated audience volunteers with unusual tenderness while asking them open, revealing questions about love, home and identity. “It’s about inviting continues ›

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran

“When I think about how technology is changing the world, and those 21st century questions, what I’m really interested in is: what was in our hearts all along??”

– Javaad Alipoor

audiences to contribute themselves in an open way,” says Ward, describing the creation of these partially improvised, collaborative performances as a “making process, rather than a writing process”.

This year YESYESNONO return to the Fringe as Pleasance Associates, and with their “weirdest”, most ambitious show yet. The Accident Did Not Take Place explores information, identity and the very human quest for ‘truth’ in an age of digital technologies. Each night, three actors set about trying to “get to know” a different guest performer, against the backdrop of a disappearing aeroplane. It’s a development on the role of the audience in their earlier work: “you can push an actor further”, jokes Ward, but the rogue element of a stranger on stage helps to examine the ways in which we see each other.

“We’re interested in the notion of needing to know what happened, why it happened –even though that’s often impossible”, explains Ward. “We’re bombarded by information every day, but a disappeared plane is completely unexplainable, haunting that need for everything to be clear.” Ward shares Alipoor’s impulse to keep asking questions, rather than preaching an opinion to a captive audience.

“You never want to treat your audience like idiots,” he stresses. “Most of them will be smarter than me, anyway! I want to make a show that’s a meditation on something, rather than a message.”

In this case, YESYESNONO create “theatre versions” of digital media—footage, photos—to try to provoke discussion about the ways that information exists online, and how unfathomable amounts of data don’t necessarily make it easier to find the truth – if there even is such a thing. These are stories that speak directly to the current moment. As Alipoor says, definitively, “I’m not sure how people make theatre about anything else.”

✏︎ Katie Hawthorne

SHOW: The Accident Did Not Take Place

VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard

TIME: 1pm – 2pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 13

TICKETS: £8 – £13

SHOW: Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran

VENUE: Traverse Theatre

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

TICKETS: £15 – £21

The Digital Revolution

Theatrical arts inspired by the new digital dawn

Are we not drawn onward to new erA

ZOO Southside, 2–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 11am, £10-14 Audience participation specialists Ontroerend Goed bring a palindromic play that asks: is humanity moving forward or backward?

Before the Revolution

Summerhall, 13–25 Aug, not 19, 9:50pm, £8-10

Cairo company Temple rewind time to examine the spark that ignited revolution in Egypt.

Pathetic Fallacy

Canada Hub @ King’s Hall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19, 5pm, £9-11

A green screen and Mother Nature co-star in this Canadian co-production about climate change and humanity.

Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum with Expats

Summerhall, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 1, 12, 8:05pm, £5-12

Does EU membership a European make? Sh!T Theatre get slurry with British ‘expats’ in Spain to find out what it means to be truly continental.

Pizza Shop Heroes

Summerhall, 3–11 Aug, 5:40pm, £10-12 (Family: £36)

Phosphoros Theatre’s Amnesty Award-shortlisted show stars four former refugees reclaiming their own stories.

Javaad Alipoor

Focus on: Rachael Young

Eclipse Award-winner Rachael Young on using music and movement to put hope over hatred

“I’ve never called myself a dancer,” Rachael Young says thoughtfully. “I’m not formally trained, and my body doesn’t look like that of a dancer. It’s soft and a bit flabby, it’s older and it aches. But,” she counters, “I have always danced. And when I started making Out, sometimes the things I was exploring, I just didn’t have the words for.”

A multidisciplinary artist, Young is presenting two shows this Fringe. The first, Out, is a conversation through movement about being Black and queer, performed with dance artist Malik Nashad Sharpe. It explores freedom through music and tackles homophobia, transphobia and colonial influence. For Young, dance felt like the ideal medium to deal with this hatred because dancing is “an attempt to draw strength to go back into the world.”

Her second show, Nightclubbing, is influenced by an act of misogynoir that went viral. Young was singing in a choir for Black History Month when she heard about the five Black girls being turned away from a club. “It felt really strange to be celebrating but to still live in a time where peoples’ bodies are policed and deemed undesirable because of the colour of their skin.”

Searching for a way to transcend the restrictions placed upon bodies like hers, she kept coming back to the icon of Grace Jones. “She’s so good at saying: You’re gonna look at me anyway, so how can I make you really see me?”

Young also found a hopefulness in afrofuturism, the idea of afrocentric storytelling where the past, present or future is altered to be rid of the oppression Black people face every day. “It carves out a

space for authenticity and pulls me away from the idea of having to assimilate, like authorship over your own future.” She pauses. “It made me feel validated.”

Combining Jones’ influence with afrofuturism, Young uses music and movement to create a brand of superhuman. This Edinburgh run is possible because of the Eclipse Award, an inaugural prize designed to help Black-led companies or individual artists take boundary-pushing work to the Fringe.

The prize gives Young and her company £10,000, a full run at Summerhall, marketing support, mentorship and a care package. “Without that money I just wouldn’t have done it,” she says honestly.

The care package, organised by Sick of the Fringe, means she and her team can speak to a therapist, go to a gym, have a massage or a meeting with an osteopath, and have someone deal with venue issues for them. “I’m very lucky and I feel really grateful. But also I think it’s great that Summerhall and Eclipse are doing something to combat a Fringe that isn’t very diverse. Hopefully, me going up there shows other artists of colour that the work is wanted.” ✏︎

Kate Wyver

SHOW: Nightclubbing

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 3:45pm – 4:45pm, 31 Jul–11 Aug

TICKETS: £5–£12

SHOW: Out

VENUE: Summerhall

TIME: 3:45pm – 4:45pm, 13–25 Aug, not 19

TICKETS: £8–£12

Credit: Rosie Powell

Ejaculate Conception

Essi Rossi and Sarah Kivi talk about the

taboo of female pleasure

“Ididn’t even know it existed,” admits Essi Rossi. “I had never experienced it. I didn’t know it was possible.” She throws her hands up. “I didn’t even know words for my own body parts.”

Now, the performer and director has no problem talking in detail about female ejaculation, the process by which the urethra expels fluid during sex. One type is better known as squirting, while the other releases a thicker fluid more like male ejaculation. With sound designer Sarah Kivi, Rossi is making a show circling the elusive sex phenomenon. After talking about it over Skype for 45 minutes or so, I’m left feeling quite flushed.

Rossi wanted to change the narrative around sex. “We have a very active feminist performance scene in Finland,” she says, “but all the performances are based on trauma.” She wanted to find the sex-positive language to talk about what she describes as “one of the last taboos” and open up conversations about pleasure.

Images of female ejaculation have been banned from porn in multiple countries, including Finland and the UK, based on the idea that it could be urine, and therefore is deemed indecent. While the fluid is thought to come from the bladder, it smells, looks and feels different to urine. More crucially, to suggest that

the ban should apply to women but not men can be seen as a form of censorship over female pleasure. “It’s seen as normal for men, but for women it is too obscene,” Kivi rolls her eyes.

Part of Finland’s From Start to Finnish showcase, Ejaculation - Discussions About Female Sexuality is made up of verbatim interviews with women of varied backgrounds and sexual experiences, including sexologists and sex workers. Some of the interviewees, who talk candidly about their experiences of orgasm and ejaculation, are gay or bisexual, but when I ask about this, Rossi bats the question away. “We didn’t want to focus on the partners. We wanted to focus on the experience, the feeling.”

Kivi is a musician. As well as working on the audio recordings, she has created a soundtrack that reflects the meaning of the word “to ejaculate” – to hurl out, to shoot out. From the start, the pair were clear they didn’t want any images or video. “Looking is the most common way of paying attention to women,” Rossi says. “We wanted to make sure they would be heard.”

"It can be scary or embarrassing when something happens to your body that you don't understand, like the release of 250ml of ejaculate fluid"

Be warned: audience participation plays a role. “It starts by asking questions to the audience,” Rossi says, quickly adding when she sees my reaction, “No one is obligated to answer.” But people do. Audiences so far have been engaged and open in talking about sex, with people of all genders staying afterwards to ask questions about pleasure and performance. The show creates an open, non judgemental space to talk about something most will rarely have given much thought to.

But is squirting really so political? Kivi argues it is. “The big difference [between talking about ejaculation and the female orgasm] is that this carries shame.” It can be scary or embarrassing when something happens to your body that you don’t understand or can’t control, like the release of 250ml of ejaculate fluid. “You’re like, what the heck just happened?” She puts it simply. “We want to have these conversations to get to know our bodies better.”

The silence around the topic digs deeper into societal issues with sex and sex education. “The more a child knows about their body parts, what’s okay and what’s not, the safer they are,” Rossi says. “The same goes throughout our adult life.” We need to cultivate the language to discuss desires in bed, she argues, in order to maximise our feelings of safety, comfort and pleasure.

Before we finish, yes, I do ask: any tips? “It helps if you can be completely open with the person you are with,” Kivi says, “and not scared of what might happen. There’s a technique.” She starts to wiggle her fingers as if beginning to explain but decides it’s too intricate to show over Skype. “But it’s kind of this pressure down there. It’s the moment where you kinda feel like you need to pee, but then you just let go, then it might happen. The main point is to be open for it.” She pauses and laughs. “And it happens easiest if you’re on top.”

✏︎ Kate Wyver

SHOW:

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From Start to Finnish

The best of the annual festival of Finnish art

The Desk

Reetta Honkakoski Company

Summerhall, 31 July–25 Aug, not 12, 19, 11:35am, £5-10

Mining Director Reetta Honkakoski’s personal experience of living in a cult for several years, this ensemble explore power, discipline and the requirement to obey in a bold piece of physical theatre for ages 8+.

Ali and Alpo

Alpo Aaltokoski Company

Summerhall, 6-25 Aug, not 12, 19, 1:05pm, £8-10 When Ali Alawad’s asylum application was rejected, it completely changed the nature and purpose of his performance with Alpo Aaltokoski. With traditional Iraqi music and Finnish contemporary dance, the pair examine intimacy and separation, with Alawad taking part through video projection.

Honey

Tove Appelgren, ACE-Production

ZOO Playground, 2–25 Aug, not 12, 19, 4:30pm, £8-10

In this one-woman show, Scottish actor Sarah McCardie plays 11 characters as she tackles the pressures of being a freelance journalist and single mother of four.

SHINE

Hippana Theatre

ZOO Southside, 2–26 Aug, not 6, 13, 20, 7:45pm, £7-12

Ejaculation – Discussion About Female Sexuality

Summerhall

8:55pm – 9:55pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 1, 12, 19 £5–£10

An immersive psychological thriller, SHINE puts you in the position of a parent whose daughter has gone missing. The intense experience is designed to trick your mind, test your strength and blur your senses.

Focus on: Kiinalik

Evalyn Parry and Laakkuluk

Williamson Bathory talk to Holly Williams about climate change’s link to colonisation

Part of Indigenous Contemporary Scene, a programme of work from Canada taking place across the Edinburgh festivals, Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools is performed on ice. Well, performed with ice, its creators Evalyn Parry and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory are quick to point out. “We’re not on skates,” Parry deadpans.

The ice melts throughout the show, a potent visual image within a performance described as both a concert and a theatrical dialogue. “It’s a big conversation about everything from colonial history in Canada and climate change to very personal histories, weaving together a big tapestry of ideas,” explains Parry.

Parry is artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto; Bathory is an Inuk artist, living and working in Iqaluit in the north of Canada. Their collaboration began deep in the Arctic – on an educational expedition with teenagers from all over the world, as well as climate scientists and Inuit politicians.

“It was an unbelievably beautiful journey,” recalls Bathory. “But also difficult in many ways, and the beginning of our conversations on stage are the complexity of that journey.”

There was some cognitive dissonance in being on a diesel-fuelled vehicle, and being served five-course meals, while learning about the destruction climate change was causing to the very land they moved through. For Bathory, the contrast between this gilded voyage and the tough reality of Inuit life there was particularly uneasy.

Parry describes it as a “very colonial style of travel”, and Kiinalik explicitly looks at climate

change as a form of colonialism. For the Inuit, their landscape is literally being destroyed by it – the permafrost that they live on is melting.

“Climate change, industrialisation and colonisation are all the same thing for us as Inuit,” points out Bathory.

Still, the trip did bring the artists together: “We realised we had kindred spirits”, Bathory recalls. Parry played some of her songs on the trip, while Bathory performed her uaajeerneq – a Greenlandic mask dance, which involves painting the face and expressively distorting it. Both now feature in their show.

The Indigenous Contemporary Scene strand shines a light on communities perhaps little-known in the UK. But how much work by indigenous artists is seen in Canada today? “There’s incredible work made all across the country. But more is still needed to dismantle the systemic racism that the country is based on,” says Bathory.

Parry suggests that, since Canada’s truth and reconciliation report in 2015, there’s been greater engagement within mainstream society with “the truth about our history and the colonial system of cultural genocide that had been perpetrated.” But, she adds, it’s still “very much being digested by many people in our settler culture: there’s a lot of learning – and squirming.”

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME:

TICKETS:

Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools

The Studio [Edinburgh International Festival] times vary, 2–5 Aug £20

Who Are We?

Theatremakers and performers

Travis Alabanza and Lucy

Roslyn talk to Tom Wicker about challenging audiences and exploring identity in their shows

Burgerz and Orlando

As trans, non-binary and queer people seek greater visibility while facing discrimination, hostility or misunderstanding, two shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe seek to show audiences the fluidity of 21st Century identity. Lucy Roslyn’s Orlando finds resonance in the past, responding to Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1928 novel about someone who moves through time and genders. Meanwhile, Travis Alabanza’s Burgerz confronts today’s reality.

Queer artist, theatremaker and performer Alabanza was prompted to make the show after someone threw a burger at them—in broad daylight —while they were crossing Waterloo Bridge in April 2016, “and called me a tranny.” This came after Alabanza had experienced two months of different types of harassment. And no one else on the bridge that day did anything. “I was like, ‘this has to stop,’” says Alabanza.

Their first instinct was to seek out work that was talking about transphobic attacks, “but I couldn’t find one that was really encapsulating

what I wanted to say.” Alabanza wasn’t interested in making something “that said ‘poor me’. In my ideal world, I wanted to make a show where there were 100 people in the theatre like there were on that bridge, and then turn them into people who would do something.”

Albanza also wanted to challenge “a kind of complacency” around trans narratives. “I think we get a bit too comfortable with identity-based work,” they say. While Alabanza is glad that ‘confessional’ shows exist, and do help some people, they wanted to dig deeper. They didn’t want to make “another solo show of X or Y identity, that’s going to tell a story from A-Z, talk about the first time I tried on a dress and how it feels to be me.” They wanted Burgerz to turn a spotlight on the audience.

Alabanza, who came up via the queer cabaret and club scene, loves work that “doesn’t pretend the audience isn’t in the room”. “Burgerz is the same.” And as someone who grew up on a council estate just outside Bristol, “I feel like a guest, sometimes, in theatre’s house,” Alabanza says. “Theatre comes with all these rules and expectations.” It’s important to them to use their platform (and their social media following) to open the doors to a more diverse crowd.

Alabanza wants Burgerz to be “a fucking good show, trans or not, but also one that says, ‘let’s move beyond this personal narrative and look at the wider implications here’.” And, they add, it’s “as much about race, as much about gender, as much about loneliness.” Alabanza dislikes the way “something happens when we bring marginalised artists into the room – they become that one identity we’ve chosen for them that day.”

Travis Alabanza

Frustration with labels—from “male” or “female” to “straight” or “gay”—is also partly what motivated Lucy Roslyn to create Orlando with director Josh Roche. “It’s definitely not an adaptation,” she stresses, but she found the titular character of Virginia Woolf’s novel, who changes gender during a centuries-long life, “very inspiring.” Woolf’s Orlando is no less of an inspiration to the 21st century character Roslyn plays, who turns to Orlando’s example as she talks to the audience.

“A book can have a massive impact, if it catches you at the right moment,” says Roslyn. While Orlando might be more than 90 years old, Woolf is “so eloquent about that feeling of not knowing who

Roslyn

you are – about that feeling you don’t necessarily fit in”. Roslyn’s character in her play “is a person who struggles with the labels and doesn’t feel comfortable with them. They seem quite binary.”

When dialogue about identity is more important than ever, Roslyn says that her Orlando “is not an assault on the audience”. She hopes that they see her character “as like a friend, as someone they know,” as they struggle with society’s expectations and explore who they are. “It’s an optimistic show,” says Roslyn. “The book is optimistic,” she says. “Orlando is always Orlando, whatever happens.”

Like much of British theatre, Edinburgh has often lagged behind in its telling of the stories of minorities and marginalised people other than gay, white men. Alabanza and Roslyn are aware of this. In differing ways, they are committed to expanding that lens – to questioning the orthodoxy of identity.

✏︎ Tom Wicker

SHOW: SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME: TIME:

TICKETS: TICKETS:

VENUE:

Burgerz Orlando

Traverse Theatre

times vary, 1–25 Aug, not 5, 12, 19 1:10pm – 2:00pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 12

£9–£21 £6–£11

Pleasance Courtyard

“I dislike the way something happens when we bring marginalised artists into the room – they become that one identity we’ve chosen for them that day"

– Travis Alabanza

Lucy

THAT’S WHAT I GO TO SCHOOL FOR

8:10PM

PLEASANCE DOME - JACK DOME

CHRIS WASHINGTON

RACONTEUR

8:15PM

PLEASANCE COURTYARD - BABY GRAND

JASON BYRNE

WRECKED BUT READY

9:00PM

ASSEMBLY MOUND - MAIN HALL

NISH KUMAR

IT’S IN YOUR NATURE TO DESTROY YOURSELVES

9:00PM

ASSEMBLY GARDENS - GORDON AIKMAN THEATRE

TITANIA McGRATH

MXNAFESTO

9:00PM

PLEASANCE COURTYARD - PLEASANCE ABOVE

LEO KEARSE

TRANSGRESSIVE

9:15PM

GILDED BALLOON TEVIOT - NIGHTCLUB

ALUN COCHRANE

BRAVE NEW ALUN

9:20PM

PLEASANCE COURTYARD - CABARET BAR

ANDREW DOYLE

EXODUS

10:30PM

PLEASANCE COURTYARD - PLEASANCE ABOVE

Focus on: Leyla Josephine

Emma Ainley-Walker speaks to Scottish theatremaker Leyla Josephine, mostly about her dad

Leyla Josephine is relaxed. Talking over a pot of tea in Glasgow’s cafe-bar Mono, she’s not yet stressed about the Fringe.

Two years ago she brought her spoken word show Hopeless to Edinburgh. “I just remember sitting in Pizza Hut having a pizza by myself off the Royal Mile thinking ‘this is miserable’, but it was poetic,” she says.

It was a special kind of Fringe moment, leaving her pragmatic about the highs and lows the festival is sure to bring. But Hopeless was far from hopeless and led Josephine on to a UK tour.

Now, she’s looking forward to bringing theatre piece Daddy Drag to Summerhall with the support of the Autopsy Award, a Summerhall project which helps Scottish artists bring work to the Fringe.

“The show is about dads in general, the archetype of the father figure,” she says. “I think it’s quite an inherently Scottish father as well. As it progresses, information about my own father comes out.”

Josephine’s mum narrates the show through recorded conversations, although initially these began as research.

“When I went into rehearsal it became apparent that one of the best parts of material was her speaking and her describing him. It was a difficult conversation we had to have about the ethics of using that recording.”

Her mum came into rehearsal and gave permission for what she wanted to share, and the process continued from there. The daddy on stage is going on adventures: fishing, barbecuing, attending a wedding. It’s classic dad stuff.

Adjusting to more masculine behaviours “made me think about what I rely on as a woman, and how to shatter that. The biggest lesson in dressing in masculine drag was unpicking my femininity.”

Josephine found that presenting that masculine side was the first step to unpacking a certain level of shame. “I was really uncomfortable in the drag persona, being this kind of disgusting, crude, misogynistic character, and a lot of shame came out in those moments,” she explains.

She worked with Edinburgh based drag king Annabel Cooper to learn how to move: to walk, sit and stand, and even how to speak in a more masculine way. “It’s a lot more direct,” she says. “You need to learn to finish your sentences.”

Did she learn about her dad? Yes. “Not being embarrassed of him and also not being embarrassed of myself. When you have shame, when you hold it out to the light, it tends to get smaller.”

She adds: “It’s a celebration.”

SHOW: VENUE: TIME: TICKETS:

Credit: Daniel Hughes

Daddy Drag Summerhall

Focus on: Wardrobe Ensemble

Growing up together as part of a theatre company, The Wardrobe Ensemble return with their most mature play yet

The Wardrobe Ensemble have been one of the Fringe’s biggest success stories.

In the space of eight years, they have gone from bringing a show up in the back of a car on a £200 budget to landing a month-long West End run for Education, Education, Education, which just finished at Trafalgar Studios.

“We’re basically ten people, with no artistic director,” explains member Tom Brennan. “We create all the work together, we make all the plays together, and we make all the artistic and professional decisions together as well. I’ve always felt like we’re this big family.”

They met as teenagers at Bristol Old Vic’s Young Company, and their first Edinburgh show, Riot, was created through the theatre’s Made In Bristol programme in 2011. It was about the chaotic opening of the Tottenham branch of IKEA in 2005, when five people were hospitalised as hordes of people scrambled savagely for Swedish sofas.

“The first performance went really badly,” remembers Brennan. “Then we woke up the next day, and the London riots happened. And suddenly our show that was a bit of lightweight fun became really biting satire. The whole thing kicked off. It was complete madness.”

The troupe made a splash again in 2015, once they all graduated from university, with 1972: The Future Of Sex, an endearingly awkward look back on the sexual mores of the seventies. Then in 2017 they debuted Education, Education, Education, which

revisited the 1997 general election in a whirlwind of Union Jack dresses and D:Ream chart-toppers.

Both shows traded heavily in nostalgia, both were stuffed with a madcap energy, and both were huge hits. They’re back this year, freshly minted as associate artists of legendary company Complicité (“Their support has been completely invaluable,” says Brennan), with The Last Of The Pelican Daughters, a family drama about four sisters coming to terms with their mother’s death.

Unlike their previous work, it’s set in the present day. It has “less physical wildness”, too, says Brennan: “It feels like a coming of age... Our last two shows have been about young people becoming adults, but this is about being an adult. Not about what happens when you’re about to inherit the earth, but what happens when you actually have inherited it.”

Like it or not, he continues, the group are growing up. “We’ve just had our first Wardrobe Ensemble baby,” he says. “We want our creature comforts, and we’re a bit less afraid of sincerity now. I think this show has the potential to be deeper than any of our other works, but I hope it will still feel like a show made by us.” ✏︎

Fergus Morgan

SHOW:

VENUE:

TIME: TICKETS:

5:40pm – 7pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 17

£8–£13.50

The Last of the Pelican Daughters Pleasance Courtyard

Focus on: The Queer House

Charlotte Boden explains how the agency got into producing, or rather, how as producers they started an agency. “Our background is producing. We’re not former agent’s assistants who set up our own agency, we’re producers who realised there were amazing people we could help get agents then thought, ‘why don’t we do that?’.”

It’s certainly paid off. “A lot of our actors have had amazing meetings,” says Zadeh. “We’re also realising that one of the agency’s purposes is to help others understand representation, identity, and what is classed as offensive or a safe space.”

“Icringe at the term ‘talent agency’,” says Yasmin Zadeh.

It makes sense: The Queer House is not like conventional talent agencies. Rather than expecting their artists to rely on them for work, they actively encourage people to make their own.

“We started a night called ‘Get in the House’ where artists share work they made themselves or are otherwise working on. We then matchmake them with people in the industry who might be able to get them more opportunities. It’s like a launchpad for queer artists,” says Zadeh.

What’s even more unusual is that The Queer House produces shows that their artists make and, teaming up with HighTide, two such shows now arrive in Edinburgh.

Teddy Lamb and Mika Johnson are The Queer House artists and theatremakers who created Since U Been Gone and Pink Lemonade, both resulting from ‘Get in the House’. “Teddy and Mika came through our first one last year. We thought they were sick ideas, so we used the support we’ve got to make them into fully-realised shows.”

This is needed considering the homophobic and transphobic hate crime in recent news. Boden is coming to Edinburgh fully prepared. “We know our artists might face hate crime on the street. We have to protect them, like making sure we all flyer together, and no one is on their own. It’s disgusting that we have to think about that, but those are the measures that are necessary.”

They aren’t letting it get them down though. “These shows are going to be a lot of fun, and are a great way to see the queer experience through comedy. A lot of people can get confused by queer identity but if you spend an hour with Mika and Teddy, you’re going to fall in love with them, and the queer experience will be broken down in a way that you’ve never seen before.”

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Pink Lemonade

Assembly Roxy

£8–£12

Since U Been Gone

Assembly Roxy

3:45pm – 4:45pm, alternating dates between 1 Aug and 25 Aug 3:45pm – 4:45pm, alternating dates between 31 Jul and 24 Aug

£8–£12

Yasmin Zadeh and Charlotte Boden tell Laura Kressly how The Queer House’s ‘Get in the House’ night helped artists develop two new Fringe shows

Credit: Bronwen Sharp

Since U Been Gone Pink Lemonade

Credit: Bronwen Sharp

Baby Talk

Laura Kressly speaks to the people behind four different Fringe shows presenting pregnancy and childbirth honestly while making great theatre

Though the number of women without children is rising, most will still experience pregnancy. Yet, despite how common pregnancy and childbirth are, these ‘women’s issues’ remain taboo. This year, several productions on pregnancy and childbirth attempt to remove this stigma.

Nine Months

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, 9:20pm – 10:05pm, 12–17 Aug, £10

In these fraught times, laughter is important and Nine Months uses humour to consider changing attitudes towards women in Ireland. “It touches on issues that relate to pregnancy and childcare over the last 50 years. There are dark elements alongside comedy, with plenty of audience participation. The power of the piece is the juxtaposition of the bleak and the dark with absurd realities of childcare and parenting,” Imelda Reynolds and Frances Moylan say. “We feel it is important to bring these issues to the Edinburgh stage so that they can be discussed and shared.”

Play Before Birth

Greenside @ Infirmary Street, times vary, 12–24 Aug, not 18, £8

Play Before Birth looks at young motherhood, with an added dimension of climate change. “We begin with Klara, 21 and pregnant. An uninvited guest turns up at her baby shower. Moira is an environmental activist and the paternal aunt of Klara’s baby. The play explores what it’s like to be a young mother in the era of Donald Trump,” Molly Farley and Rohan Gotobed explain. Gotobed adds, “we need to be more open in telling stories about these subjects. Theatre is an incredible platform for empathy.”

Birth

Pleasance Dome, 2:50pm – 3:50pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 13, 22, £6–£12

A Womb of One’s Own deals with an emotive topic – abortion. “For some reason, we still want to think of women’s bodies as shrouded in mystery, and that can be really damaging,” says actor-writer Claire Rammelkamp. Based on her own experience, she tells the story of Babygirl who, at 18, discovers she’s pregnant. “I had no idea what to do or who to call when I first found out. I had a great support network, but the play explores what the process of having an abortion would be like without that.”

Pleasance Courtyard, 12pm – 1:15pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, £9–£14

“It’s about what it means to lose and create a new life. In the UK, an estimated one in four pregnancies end in loss. What the parents go through is rarely discussed,” says Guillaume Pige, Theatre Re’s Artistic Director. He wonders: “Is it because it is a non-issue to the rest of society? Or fear – prospective parents don’t want to consider they may lose the child. Because when miscarriages happen, it is like losing a dream. Or is our relationship to death at stake?”

“Theatre is an incredible platform for empathy”

- Rohan Gotobed

A Womb of One's Own

A Womb of One's Own

Credit: Arthur J Comely & Connor Egan

Focus on: Paul Putner

Paul Putner is used to being recognised, if only vaguely. British comedy’s Zelig over the last quarter century, Spaced, Black Books, Little Britain, 15 Storeys High, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, Shaun of the Dead, Look Around You, The Peter Serafinowicz Show, It’s Kevin, Alexei Sayle’s MerryGo-Round and Plebs are just some of the shows he’s appeared in.

Perhaps best known as The Curious Orange in This Morning With Richard Not Judy, he’s invariably been the go-to supporting actor for Lee and Herring, Lucas and Walliams and Harry Hill, the Kevin Eldon’s Kevin Eldon for cult comedy devotees.

“I’m lucky to have been in some shows that have been liked,” he reflects. “I’m quite happy being a Zelig. It means people go ‘hang on a minute. Was that Paul Putner in Downton Abbey?’. I’m just a jobbing actor.”

Delightfully, he’s also a pop culture maven, an insider fan, brazen in asking famous co-stars and music legends about their most celebrated roles and career lowlights, semi-discreetly regaling with tales of Dr Who luminaries and shooting the film Paris je t’aime, with Bob Hoskins, Natalie Portman and Willem Dafoe.

A Nutty Boys nut, when he recalls how he came to set up a gig for Madness, it features cameos from Paul Whitehouse, Nigel Planer and Ian Dury, who recognised him from a previous gig. “You’re the cunt who got everyone dancing at Tunbridge Wells!”

Forty years after the Two Tone label was established and Madness first entered the charts, Paul Putner’s Embarrassment is a love letter to the ska revivalists and their impact on his life.

“I was obsessive,” he recalls. “I had all the cuttings from the music press, piles of badges, posters and memorabilia. One of the show’s threads is that I went

one step beyond being a fanboy, so to speak, and became this eighth member in my own head. A charity shop Chas Smash. I had Suggs’ hair or a skinhead, wore the shades, the suits, the Crombie – that was pretty much my image through the eighties.”

Unlike the band, predominantly “chirpy cockney oiks” from single-parent families, Putner was raised comfortably middle-class in leafy East Grinstead. But his circumstances changed, bringing him even closer to his heroes, after the release of The Rise & Fall album by Madness.

“That was a lot different to anything they’d done before, quite gloomy and glum, none of this driving in my car or buying condoms in ‘House of Fun’,” he recalls. “And of course I had ‘Our House’ on all the time. And my dad asked me not to play it so much. ‘She’s the one they’re going to miss in lots of ways’. Yes, it was very poignant in lots of ways.”

Putner has never sought his own vehicle, never had the focus of peers like Matt Lucas and David Walliams, or belatedly taken top billing like Eldon. Despite acclaimed Fringe runs a decade ago in his sketch double-act with Glen Richardson, Inglorious Stereo, and as the hack US standup character Earl Stevens, he cheerfully admits that casting a spotlight on himself in an autobiographical piece is “out of my comfort zone”.

"But then you've got to challenge yourself. If Embarrassment goes well, I'd love to tour it around the country!"

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Paul Putner's Embarrassment – Me and Madness (The Band)

Frankenstein Pub

6:15pm – 7:10pm, 2–25 Aug, not 13

£10/PWYW

Every bit the comedian’s comedian, Paul Putner is the performer who you don’t know that you know. Jay Richardson speaks to more than a jobbing actor

Circus of Life

Ockham’s Razor have made a circus show for the ages. Artistic director Charlotte Mooney talks to George Sully about This Time

If you Google “Ockham’s Razor”, the first few hits will be for the philosophical principle: in layman’s terms, the simplest answer is often the right one. But the fact that the UK circus company of the same name is only a few hits down the page is testament to their reputation.

Though now boasting 15 years of innovative productions, Ockham’s Razor set the circus world alight with Tipping Point, debuting at Edinburgh in 2016, netting the Total Theatre Award before touring the world.

2019 brings us their latest production This Time

Charlotte Mooney, the company’s co-founder and one of the four performers in the show, is unfazed by following up Tipping Point’s runaway success. “In a funny way it relieves some of the pressure,” she says over email. “By far the hardest job, especially with a festival like Edinburgh, is building a name for the

company. The fact that Tipping Point was a success will hopefully be helpful as more people now know the name Ockham’s Razor.”

Much like the principle from which they take their name, Tipping Point took a core idea at its simplest (what happens if we detach Chinese poles?), knitted it together with the notion of a “tipping point” from order into chaos, and masterfully explored its permutations.

For This Time, they explored a similar marriage of tools and theme. “We have a series of rectangular frames that can be raised from floor to ceiling,” Mooney explains. “One is coupled with a loop and enables us to perform doubles, triples and quadruples trapeze folding into and around each other.”

The interlocking parts and ability to “frame” performers opens up a wealth of performative possibilities: “The ‘frame’ becomes a doorway as we consider thresholds in our lives,” she continues. “It becomes a mirror and we delve into self reflection: how we cope with our changing self.”

But the size of the new apparatus proved near fatal in sourcing a venue for this Fringe. “Loads of promoters and venues wanted to host us but couldn’t figure out where they could fit us in,” says Mooney. “We were resigning ourselves to not coming when, at the 11th hour, we learned St Stephens Church was available to hire.

“So we find ourselves in the somewhat scary position of setting out with our own venue. But our production company Turtle Key Arts has a proud history of running a venue – it’s how they began.”

Perhaps most interestingly, the four performers in This Time are aged 13 (Faith Fahy), 40 (Mooney and her partner Alex Harvey) and 60 (Lee Carter).

This came from a “desire to see different bodies and different ages in a circus show – to explore perceptions of strength and age in a very physical sense, alongside the physical relationships between generations: who supports who, who inhibits and controls who.”

It’s a unique demographic spread for a circus show. Where 2018’s Total Theatre-winning Casting Off by A Good Catch presented three generations of women (30s, 40s and late 50s), This Time looks at a more family-like dynamic.

While devising the show together, Mooney recalls that “many stories began to emerge about our experience of our parents and children, what experiences change us and what expectations we carry about who we are and who we will become.”

Contemporary circus is getting younger, with many new companies in their early 20s if not late

Credit: Nik Mackey

teens. Mooney theorises that this stems from the public retirement of professional sportspeople in their early 30s. “There is a perception that past that age you reach decrepitude.”

This show, and others like Casting Off, loudly disprove this. “The most encouraging thing for us was holding the auditions for performers and discovering that there are a wealth of aerialists out there in their 60s and 70s, many of whom started recently.”

Reflecting on the show’s familial dynamic in 2019 has extra salience following the Brexit debate, and the resulting schisms between older and younger generations across the UK.

From their research, Mooney notes the perception that “the elder generation had broken the generational social contract with the younger”:

“We are living in an era of genuine rift and betrayal. The vast majority of people live, work and socialise in narrow bands of people of similar ages and this has been shown to lead to increasing social competitiveness, aggression and anxiety. There are movements in the UK and USA which are actively looking at ways of integrating communities better—programs where teens skill share with octogenarians—which seem to show massive effects on wellbeing.

“It was fascinating to make this show now,” she concludes, “as it’s something so personal and at the same time so political.”

SHOW: Ockham’s Razor: This Time

VENUE: Saint Stephens Theatre

TIME: 3pm – 4:10pm, 1–25 Aug, not 6, 13, 20

TICKETS: £13–£17.50

Credit: Nik Mackey

Focus on: 111

Certain performance partnerships thrive on contrast. Consider Joel Brown, self-trained paraplegic dancer and a member of the UK’s leading inclusive dance company CandoCo, and Eve Mutso, former principal dancer with Scottish Ballet. Their duet, 111, part of the 2019 Made in Scotland showcase and pronounced “one hundred and eleven”, could be viewed as a celebration of differences, strengths and vulnerabilities. The title references the number of vertebrae they supposedly have between them: Mutso moves like she has a hundred while Brown, with his fused spine, jokes that he only has 11.

Their sleek show exudes an air of mutual discovery. “Joel pointed out early on the curiosity of a wheelchair-using dancer from Utah and a ballet dancer from Estonia meeting up to create work in Scotland,” says Mutso. “If you put us onstage and have us create independent movements, there’s an element of juxtaposition. We took that as a starting point – playing with it, twisting and challenging it, and then returning to it. It’s happened because we’re both keen to explore, and I much prefer exploring with other people.”

Cued to an eclectic mix of tracks by Penguin Café Orchestra, Dawn of Midi and Radiohead, plus a judicious use of silence, the production features a simple scaffold setting that the dancers climb and swing upon. “Joel introduced me to aerial training a few years ago,” Mutso explains. “I had to conquer a fear of heights and imagine movements off the ground which, coming from a ballet background, was fascinating.”

“Eve’s become a bit addicted—in the best possible way—to aerial work,” says Brown. “I love the floor, but I’m desperate to get up there,” he adds, pointing to the ceiling.

“The scaffold has become a third partner onstage,” Mutso muses, “whom we have to challenge and accept at the same time.”

111 has only had a few work-in-progress showings in the UK, which renders its Fringe run an international premiere. What does Brown think the work conveys to audiences? “I’m still answering that question. The content is dance, but I think it shows quite a romantic friendship rooted in physicality.”

His rapport with Mutso he encapsulates like so: “We met in some cosmic agreement of boldness. We have chemistry together. I’ve valued Eve’s willingness to come with me up to new heights, literally.”

“I just trust Joel completely,” Mutso chimes in. “Onstage with him I feel at home.” Asked if the show had a taste, smell or texture and what might these be, she blurts: “Metal, sweat, joy!” Meanwhile Brown, invited to describe 111 in three words, opts for cheekiness: “You’ll like it.”

Throughout August, Mutso and Brown can also be seen in Night Walk for Edinburgh, an hour-long piece of augmented reality utilising iPad and headphones and created for the International Festival by the Canadian duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.

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Night Walk for Edinburgh 111

Around Edinburgh/The Milkman

times vary, 13–25 Aug, not 19 12:30pm – 1:15pm, 19–24 Aug

£15 £10–12

Greenside @ Nicolson Square

Joel Brown and Eve Mutso, co-creators of 111, talk about their rapport to Donald Hutera

“The content is dance, but I think it shows quite a romantic friendship rooted in physicality”

- Joel Brown

Credit: Guillaume Morin

Focus On: Alfie Ordinary

What makes the drag prince absolutely fabulous?

Alfie Ordinary dreams of performing a Christmas show with ex-EastEnders star Pam St Clement. “There is a YouTube video of her singing ‘White Christmas’ dressed as Mrs Claus. It’s the best thing you’ll see today.”

During our interview, he says the word “fabulous” 11 times in 60 seconds about his character. “Alfie identifies as fabulous, he’s part of the fabulous community and goes to a specialist school for fabulous people who are excelling in their own fabulous ways.”

Alfie is anything but ordinary. But it has taken his inaugural show, Help! I Think I Might Be Fabulous, four years to make it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Instead, he has been selling out fringe venues around the world, winning awards in Brighton, Hollywood, San Diego and Adelaide. Such acclaim could have given this drag prince (son of a fictional drag queen) quite the ego.

Yet he’s a shy, humble performer still surprised by his success: “I just wanted to write a little show and do it for my friends – I didn’t really think anything was going to happen! I’ve taken it to other fringes, and it’s gone OK, so I’m dipping my toe into the Edinburgh puddle. No, that’s shit!” He laughs-off the metaphor.

But for someone used to the searing heat at the American and Antipodean festivals, Alfie under-

stands that in Edinburgh he’ll inevitably get soaked dashing from one performance to the next. “If it’s anything like Adelaide then a huge part of the experience is hanging out and meeting all the acts, supporting other people who are in the same boat.” The friendliness of a tight-knit drag community is a key inspiration for the show.

Help! I Think I Might Be Fabulous celebrates otherness, encouraging self-acceptance and selflove even if you’re on the fringe of society. “I was really interested in creating a character that didn’t exist in the centre of his own community. Alfie was created out of not being able to openly discuss issues of being different, not fitting in with the norm.”

Alfie the character remains ambiguous, opting against a sexual preference or gender label – he identifies as fabulous. As such, Help! I Might Be Fabulous resonates with audiences: “I wanted to make the point that it really is simple – we shouldn’t be prejudiced against people because they’re different.”

✏ Daniel Perks

SHOW: Help! I Think I Might Be Fabulous

VENUE: Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre

TIME: 6pm – 7pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug

TICKETS: £6–£10

Credit: Scott Chalmers

Focus on: Ada Campe

Ahead of her return to The Stand’s New Town Theatre, Naomi Paxton tells Fest’s David Pollock about her variety alter-ego Ada Campe

“She’s a throwback to what we imagine a mid-century variety artiste may have been like, but without the casual sexism, racism and homophobia,” says performer Naomi Paxton of her comedy creation Ada Campe.

“She’s good fun. She does comedy, variety and magic, and she really likes to play and communicate with the audience.” Ada’s new show—her second at the Fringe—is performed with the “psychic duck” of the title, a prop which leads us through the character’s early life in variety, and some of the influential women she’s met.

actor for a decade. She only discovered the contribution of theatre performers to the suffrage movement while working in the West End. “I’d never done the suffragettes at school,” she says. “I’d done the Tudors, then changed schools and done the Tudors some more. It was a revelation, I just loved the fact there was all this activism in the theatre, and these plays were really funny.”

With some funding help from Equity, she studied a PhD at the University of Manchester from 2011. Since then, she’s written books on the Actresses’ Franchise League, as it was known, and appeared on BBC Radio 3. The timetable of an academic means she’s had to leave the full-time actor’s life and instead scratch the performance itch with Ada’s one-woman show over the past seven years.

“Ada does not talk about suffrage theatre,” Paxton confirms, “but I love performing and the power of theatre, and there’s something so special about sharing moments in that space. When I look at the energy of suffrage theatre, they didn’t do all-female Shakespeare or anything, they wrote new work that had all these fun female characters in them.

“It’s about Ada’s life as a teenager and how she came across the duck,” says Paxton. “The subtext is that we all wonder what might have been sometimes, we feel the sliding doors moment and find people who become inspirations. Maybe you don’t build lifelong relationships with them, but these flashpoint moments turn your head and put you on a different path. I’m also a theatre historian in my other life, though, so I love the silly characterness of Ada, and the hark back to an old-school idea of what variety is.”

Trained at Goldsmiths in London and the former Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, the London-based Paxton worked as an

“I guess this is an old-fashioned variety act,” she continues, “but not in a staid, ‘oh bless ‘er’ kind of way. People often introduce Ada as a music hall act, but she’s got Instagram, she’s not from the Victorian era! It’s just a bit of nonsensical harking back. Mat Ricardo [whose show Paxton is also appearing in] said in an intro the other day that Ada puts the ‘she’ in shenanigans… I thought, ‘that’s really nice, can I put it on my flyers please?’.”

SHOW: Ada Campe and the Psychic Duck

VENUE: The Stand's New Town Theatre

TIME: 2:50pm – 3:50pm, 3–25 Aug, not 13

TICKETS: £10

Naomi Paxton as Ada Campe

“We all wonder what might have been sometimes, we feel the sliding doors moment and find people who become inspirations”

Credit: Catrin Arwel

Focus On: Magical Bones

What is magic? And does it mix naturally with breakdancing?

Jenni Ajderian speaks to Richard Essien aka Magical Bones

As an art form with a history spanning thousands of years, magic performances often centre around the same kinds of tricks: appearances, disappearances, transportations and transformations.

The real trick for each magician is to make it unique. Misdirection is misdirection – instead of waving a magic wand, you could sprinkle magic dust, or maybe do a magical backflip.

Enter Magical Bones (Richard Essien), a professional hip-hop dancer-turned-magician, who melds his two passions together to create a far more dynamic performance than your average close-up act. “What I want to do is find ideas that naturally fuse together,” he says.

me to play around with ideas. When I was on set, I’d always have a pack of cards with me. People would say to me ‘you’re quite good at this stuff, you should look at trying to fuse these ideas together’ and I thought, why not?”

Another element of Bones’ background comes to the fore in his debut hour at the Fringe, Black Magic. In the show, Bones aims to explore the history of black people performing tricks, and wants to break down the negative connotations of the show’s title. “There’s stuff on voodoo that I look into, and misconceptions about that, and also the history of black magicians – not many people know about that.”

In particular, Bones namechecks Henry “Box” Brown, a former slave who escaped captivity by posting himself in a wooden crate to abolitionists, and then used his freedom to perform magic and give anti-slavery speeches.

His history of combining street magic and escapology with breakdancing speaks for itself. “I used to do this thing where I would do windmills out of a strait-jacket, and it naturally verged on dance. It feels like a natural way, for me, of doing this standard trick. I wanted the organic feeling of two abstract ideas combining.”

This move from pure dance over to magic occurred naturally in Bones’ professional life. From dancing in music videos and commercials he moved into the cast of circus troupe Afrika Afrika: “I was among a whole range of talented performers with a whole different range of skills, and that encouraged

But it’s not all about daring feats and picking the right card. Bones believes his dance-and-magic act works so well because both elicit the same feeling. “Magic is defined as the art form, and then we have the actual feeling: it’s the wow factor. I believe that that can be experienced whether it’s Whitney Houston singing that amazing high note or Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. It’s that feeling of astonishment.

“Obviously the art of magic creates that feeling with deceptions, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be magic. When you watch someone breakdancing or body-popping, the way they can manipulate their body gives this visual illusion. There’s an element of mystery and magic to it. It’s all related.”

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Magical Bones: Black Magic

Underbelly, Bristo Square

6:25pm – 7:25pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug

£6.50–£11

“Magic is defined as the art form, and then we have the actual feeling: it's the wow factor”

Credit: Eva K Salvi

They’ll Be There For You

Matt Brinkler, executive producer behind Wannabe: The Spice Girls Show, can see the rationale. “The Edinburgh Fringe has always led the way with finding what’s hot in the industry,” he says. “The ‘90s are huge at the moment. Everyone born in the ‘80s is coming to a point where they want to relive their childhood.”

The writer and director of Friendsical: A Parody Musical About Friends, Miranda Larson, agrees. “When you have a love for a TV show, movie or book, you always want to access that world. Return to it,” she says. “A stage show is a great way to do that.”

Sneaking in at the end of the decade is 1999’s Cruel Intentions, which has inspired Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical – an American production celebrating the 20th anniversary of its source film with its UK premiere this year.

Ah, the 1990s. An innocent time, before Y2K, before memes, before Fake News. A decade in which the number of websites on the internet increased from one in 1991 to three million in 1999. A decade which served as formative, impressionable years for many 30- and 40-somethings today.

It’s no surprise, then, that those millennials (i.e. those born between 1980 and 1994) in creative careers have been drawing inspiration from that beloved decade. And there’s plenty of great source material: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Oasis, Titanic, Shania Twain, Forrest Gump. The list goes on. This Fringe alone there are several productions—all musicals—reliving nostalgic properties like Friends, Cruel Intentions, and the Spice Girls.

And this show rides pretty close to its source. “The original screenplay is our script,” says Jeremy Meadow, the show’s artistic producer. “Plus a whole hit parade of ‘90s songs, including Britney, Christina Aguilera, R.E.M., ‘N Sync and of course the wonderful ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by the Verve, which played such an important part in the movie.”

By contrast, both Wannabe and Friendsical are synthesised, amalgamated stories.

Wannabe tells a fictional narrative as a framing device, with the musical format giving “an opportunity to modernise and create a new version of iconic music,” says Brinkler. (Though he cautions they are not associated with the West End’s Viva Forever!, which is strictly a plotless jukebox musical.)

He acknowledges its straight-faced shamelessness, wanting to pay tribute to the band’s “iconic outfits”, “memorable personalities” and “innovative videos”.

In confusing times, we’re retreating to the comforts of our youth. George Sully examines four musicals riding a surge of nostalgia

Wannabe The Spice Girls Show

“When you have a love for a TV show, you always want to return to that world” - Miranda Larson

“Wannabe brings aspects of all those things to the stage together with a great energy,” he says, “but—and this is a big ‘but’—without pretending to be the real deal. We promise audiences a show with an extremely talented cast.”

Friendsical, on the other hand, uses its music for narrative shorthand. “We are fitting 10 years of content into one show, so songs are a great device,” Larson explains. “For example, we have a song that charts how Ross and Rachel get together and then break up… all in three minutes!”

But, like other beloved ‘90s properties, Friends has not survived the march of progress unscathed. Famously problematic by today’s standards, the era-defining comedy fares badly when considered in terms of gender roles, attitudes towards sexuality, and consent. But many argue for a ‘time capsule’ perspective, defending the preservation of an artefact—scratches and all—and focusing on the show’s good points.

Larson thus sees Friendsical as “a joyful celebration of a TV series that is adored worldwide, rather than an opportunity to investigate whether all of its contents are still relevant today.”

Credit: Robert McFadzean

Legally Blonde the Musical

And while technically not from that decade, 2001’s Legally Blonde feels, tonally at least, like a late ‘90s film (and is based on the original author’s experiences at Stanford in the ‘90s). But it’s arguably spawned one of the more progressive nostalgic revivals this Fringe.

And again, the format enhances this. “Legally Blonde has one of the most iconic pop-rock scores,” she says. “As a form, musical comedy can disarm an audience when that lightness and humour also has something deeper and more relevant to say.

“Using humour to address inequality and the unfairness of modern society is something we still really respond to as audiences, especially in Scotland.”

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Friendsical: A Parody Musical About Friends

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£10–£17.50

Wannabe: The Spice Girls Show

10:35pm – 11:35pm, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 19

£12–£18

Assembly Rooms 8:30pm – 9:45pm, 1–25 Aug, not 13

Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical

Assembly George Square

£10–£17.50

Legally Blonde the Musical

Assembly Rooms 10am – 12:30pm, 2–25 Aug, not 12, 19

1pm – 2:30pm, 1–25 Aug, not 7, 12,19 £13–£15

Legally Blonde the Musical is a production by MA students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Jane Hensey, Head of the Masters Musical Theatre programme, asserts its relevance. “This piece is a carefully woven story of justice and empowerment that tells the story of a woman working against presumptions and prejudices in order to get what she wants,” she explains. “This is as relevant now as when Reese Witherspoon brought the character to life on film in 2001.”

Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical

We are Family

Donald Hutera talks to busy dancer Gabriela Pouso about the fun of Fringe flamenco

ASpanish-born contemporary dance pal once demonstrated how to execute some basic, and classic, flamenco dance steps. “First you pluck the fruit,” she said, reaching up with an open palm before twisting the wrist and pulling down her arm. “Then you throw the fruit onto the ground,” at which point she flung down the hand holding the imaginary fruit as dramatically as possible. Lastly, “stamp the fruit!” as she stepped down hard and dug in with her foot till that poor, pretend piece of fruit was pulp.

Like sun and Sangria on the country’s southern coast, this short series of actions is a tongue-incheek signpost to cultural cliché. Those who know and love flamenco, in whatever capacity and to whatever degree, are aware that the art form can transcend stereotypes and that each generation of artists makes creative advances.

Some of these artists are based in Scotland, where the flamenco scene is smallish but thriving – and incestuous. Among the gifted Edinburgh-based practitioners is guitarist Daniel Martinez. His self-named company returns to the Fringe with the music and dance show Art of Believing. There’s also fellow musician Danielo Olivera, originally from Cadiz, and vocalist Inma Montero (who, like Martinez, hails from Cordoba).

The latter pair call their young company (and its accompanying school) TuFlamenco, and have two shows on offer in August: Flamenco Tablao, an entertainment that conjures the atmosphere of a typical live flamenco show, and a late-night, music-based fusion of bossa nova, jazz and flamenco called FlamencoNova.

All three of these shows can be seen—and heard—at theSpaceTriplex. But that’s not all they have in common. There’s also a considerable amount of crossover in personnel. In a spirit of creative camaraderie Martinez, Olivera and Montero—plus the dancer Gabriela Pouso—will be

performing in each other’s productions.

This closeness, and the trust it engenders, is what Pouso credits with making her a better artist. “I’m hard on myself. I’ll never turn around and say I’m an amazing dancer. It’s the people I perform with who are my inspiration – their musicality, their playing, clapping and singing, and their encouragement.

“It might sound cheesy, but to me they’re family.” Born in Galicia, but raised in Edinburgh from age eight, Pouso has been dancing for ten years after friends introduced her to flamenco. Now, like her flamenco family, she’s dedicated to it both pro-

Flamenconova

“The language between guitar, voice and dance creates a beautiful conversation where all moods can be found”

- Danielo Olivera

fessionally and personally. Why? “We know what we’ve got, and we love what we do, so we put our minds, hearts and souls into it. And it takes a lifetime to master. It’s hard work to make everybody shine independently but also work together like an amazing machine.”

Olivero, on a pre-Fringe tour in Spain, explains eloquently in an email what flamenco means to him: “It’s a way to breathe and walk, and when you get into that there’s no way you can escape. Representing the oppression of the most disadvantaged people of deep Andalusia, it’s a way to express what sometimes can’t be said in words. In terms of music it’s full of complex rhythmic patterns. The language between guitar, voice and dance creates a beautiful conversation where all moods can be found.”

Pouso, in person, fans the same ardent flames. Flamenco, she enthuses, is about establishing strong, passionate and uplifting connections between performers and spectators. “It’s pure, raw emotion and a way of life. It’s a feeling! It’s spending tireless hours practising, and then having a jam session with your friends. That’s what’s so fun about it. It’s an art form rooted in the human being.

“Die-hard fans will go to anything, and their support is great. But there are newbies who come

to one of our shows, and then contact us to tell us they’ve been blown away. A whole new world is opening up to them. Flamenco makes them feel something.”

As a dancer Pouso enjoys inhabiting flamenco’s various palos, or styles. Whether a dance’s dominant tone is joyous or sorrowful, tragic or buoyantly happy, onstage she feels confident, powerful and in control.

But in an art form so conscious of proper physical form, yet so welcoming of improvisatory impulses, does she ever put a foot wrong? Laughing conspiratorially Pouso replies, “If you do make a mistake the art is having no one notice!”

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Art of Believing

Focus On: Ogg ‘n’ Ugg ‘n’ Dogg

Two hapless hunter-gatherers team up with wolves in Theatre Fideri Fidera’s latest mix of story, puppetry and song. Artistic director Colin Granger tells us how dogs became our best friends. Woof.

Colin Granger stood in a Yorkshire country park struck by the “wonderful pristine landscape” around him. As an artistic director of Theatre Fideri Fidera, touring children’s shows, Granger is always hunting for new stories: “I wanted a more universal story,” he says.

But rather than a new tale, his surroundings were about to inspire him with an old one. “I saw some dog owners,” he says. “I thought of their names as Ogg and Ugg – I don’t know why.”

As the dog owners walked away, Ogg and Ugg stayed in his imagination and Granger knew they had lived in this spot of natural beauty many years before. “I made the park the physical setting,” he says, “10,000 years ago, about 2,000 years after the ice age, the whole landscape was lush forests.”

This was a time of abundance. “Hunter-gatherers had so much food; they were masters of the universe.”

Unlike today’s park dwellers, there was one thing they didn’t have: dogs. And wolves were hardly known as man’s best friend. Yet in the play, Ogg and Ugg turn to wolves for some extra brain power: “Ogg and Ugg are not the brightest of sparks as hunter-gatherers. There’s a forest fire and they have no idea what to do and just run like lunatics. But the wolves do know because they have instincts.”

Though this is a comic scene, Granger knew the story he was after lay in the relationship that

blossomed with the dog’s evolution. “We have no idea what happened, only what probably happened. The hunter-gathererss had so much food they could afford to throw meat to the wolves. Then the wolves may have started following them.

“If the wolves had pups it is likely that the humans had the instinct to look after them, and that accelerated the process of evolution as they chose the friendliest.”

This changed the early dog’s appearance and behaviour to all the breeds and vareties we know today. But the development that stood out for Granger was cross-species communication. “As they became dogs, they developed a different language from wolves to communicate with us. Basically wolves can make a sound like a dog but they don’t use it like dogs do. We can understand what dogs are saying to us and, of course, it works the other way round –dogs can understand us.

“I have this undying admiration for just how important dogs are for people – and that’s universal all over the world.” ✏︎ Ben

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Venables

Ogg ‘n’ Ugg ‘n’ Dogg

Gilded Balloon Teviot

12:30pm–1:30pm, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 7, 14, 21 £6–£10

Credit: Paul Mansfield

Chord Progression

Once upon a time, children’s entertainment really was just for kids. It was safe or simple or silly, something very different to what the adults got up to in their evenings. Not anymore: shows for young people at the Fringe are growing up. This year sees plenty of offerings made by or for younger audiences, that shake off any dusty assumptions that ‘youth work’ is a lesser category. Just look at one of the most exciting choices in the Traverse line-up: Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster, a show arriving on a cloud of critical and audience acclaim from Battersea Arts Centre, that’s devised and performed by the theatre’s own youth group, the Beatbox Academy.

Their take on Frankenstein blends elements of Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic with anxieties—about technology, social media, finding your true self—that teenagers navigate in their own lives today. It’s delivered with wit and endearing honesty, not to mention mind-blowing beatboxing skills. But this piece of multi-disciplinary gig-theatre is also formally inventive, using the tricks of a musical genre to create atmospheric theatrical soundscapes, as well as sick beats to dance to.

It’s astonishing, and would be astonishing whoever it was made by – the fact that it’s their youth group has no bearing on the quality. Although it does make the show feel more relevant.

Using music and street dance can be a canny way to reach out to younger audiences – especially teenagers who might have an inherited wariness about theatre not being for them. The potential power of genre-blending is something Bex Anson, director of Kid_X, is alive to. She describes her show as “a sci-fi circus concert: it looks like a giant comic book and plays like a video game, it’s very high energy with a narrative that’s a bit cyberpunk Romeo and Juliet.”

The main characters are young performers that teenage audiences should be able to identify with; even if the action is set in a futuristic world where a body upgrade company rules the stock market and humans can live to 200 – at a cost.

“Malick Bright plays Android X, the lead. He’s done a lot of music videos, and has a great array of street dance styles from bone breaking to tutting, flexing, animation, robotics, krump. He’s so expressive, able to tell stories through his body,” says Anson.

His Juliet is played by Amanda Attwood, a circus performer from Finland specialising in hand balancing. Which is relevant, because she plays Gabriella, a rooftop selfie queen. For the uninitiated, this really is a thing: the production took inspiration from Instagram star Angela Nikolau, ‘an urban rooftopper’. “They climb to the top of very high skyscrapers and take these extreme selfies,” explains Anson.

But the show also features musical artists who

Holly Williams discovers how children’s shows are growing up

Credit: Manou Milon

Comète – Compagnie Dérivation

are big in their own fields – even if they’re usually more likely to start a show at 10pm than 10am. Glasgow institution Mungo’s Hi-Fi bring their sound system, while rising singer-songwriter and rapper Eva Lazarus delivers vocals. It’s about not patronising a youth audience by giving them a soft or diluted version – here they get the real deal.

“It’s proper vibey, great music – dancehall, garage, drum’n’bass…” says Anson. “Gigs are always late night, so it’s a little bit exclusive. But Mungo’s haven’t changed anything, they’re just excited that a younger audience can get on board.”

The same impulse drives other music acts – and whether kids (or their parents) prefer rock or raving, there’s a party happening.

Junior Jungle Rave has become a festival favourite. J Nick Terrific and MC Rocky Patch leap about in animal print and spin jungle, drum’n’bass and hip-hop (with age-appropriate lyrical content only).

Born in reaction to twee baby discos, Junior Jungle Rave (“big up to the littlest massive!”) promises “no pop, no Disney, just proper tunes and real raving for kids and adults together.” Their stated mission is to get parents dancing too – not standing, embarrassed, with hands in pockets.

Daniel Offerman, of Belgian band Comète, shares this sentiment: “What we want to avoid is parents coming to our show and spending an hour watching their phone. We want an all-ages concert. It’s touching to see children look up to their dad and mum and see them dancing.”

Made up of members of pop and rock bands including Girls in Hawaii, Comète play their own tunes plus plenty of well-loved covers, from The Beatles to The Strokes. It’ll reignite little audience members – and aim to re-ignite something in their parents too. “A classic, like ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ by The Clash, works with everyone, in every city, at every age,” Offerman says. “It’s funny to see a three-year-old child know exactly at what moment they have to scream!”

Apart from adjusting the volume so it’s “not too loud for small ears”, they try not to change their

show much. And he says they get amazing reactions from kids: “It’s unfiltered and enthusiastic, and that’s what we’re looking for. We don’t have a pedagogical idea behind it – it’s just the excitement of seeing a rock show for the first time in your life: the drama, the lights, the electric guitar.”

Sometimes, he admits, the grown-ups get even more excited than their children – reconnecting with that un-jaded, youthful joy at singing and dancing along to live, loud music. That’s another thing about making amazing shows for young people – they’re actually amazing shows for everyone.

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Comète

10:30am –11:20am, 31 Jul – 26 Aug, not 8, 13

£7–£11

KID_X

Assembly Roxy

10am –11am, 20 – 25 Aug

£11 – £12

Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster

Traverse Theatre

Assembly Checkpoint times vary, 6 – 25 Aug, not 12, 19

£15–£22

Junior Jungle Rave

Underbelly, Central Hall 2:30pm –4:30pm, 17 Aug £13

“It’s funnny to see a threeyear-old child know exactly at what moment they have to scream”

– Daniel Offerman

Credit: Jamie Dunn

KID_X

Harry Potter and the Spontaneous Guide to Edinburgh

The improv gang of witches and wizards give us a magical guide to the city of Edinburgh for families

As the newly appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for the Edinburgh School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (a position I expect to hold for a long time), I’ve highlighted some of the locations linked with the novels—sorry, biographies—of the great wizard Harry Potter. I have also asked for further recommendations from our performers of each house. Even Slytherin. Diversity quotas and all that.

Renowned ghostwriter J.K. Rowling helped Harry Potter write his memoirs from right here in Edinburgh. The Elephant House, where the 2nd, 3rd and 4th books were written overlooks Greyfriar’s Kirkyard. The graveyard here adjoins George Heriot’s school, said to be the inspiration for Hogwarts (which is nonsense of course, as we have established it is a REAL PLACE). There is also a Tom Riddle (or Riddell) buried in the Kirkyard, so see if you can spot his grave! Disclaimer: This is NOT the grave of the real Voldemort, so please don’t spit or wee on it. Nearby is Spoon cafe, which fewer people know is where much of the first book was written – pop in and you might even be struck by literary inspiration!

the National Monument of Scotland, also known as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace” – a far cry from Edinburgh’s Pride, which is of course Harry Potter.

Mara Joy: Hufflepuff

The National Museum of Scotland is an absolute highlight for me, as it’s amazing to see all that the muggles have managed to achieve throughout history without the use of magic! It even covers to the scientific advances of the modern day, some of which I’m pretty sure is magic. A trip up one of Edinburgh’s hills will allow you to get a breathtaking view of the whole city and even out to sea. Calton Hill at the end of Prince’s Street will also let you see

The Camera Obscura near Edinburgh Castle has a fascinating exhibit of Muggle “magic” – all sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors of course. LOTS of mirrors. As an accomplished witch, I of course know how all of the tricks are done – I just can’t share them because even I have to abide by the magician’s code. It definitely isn’t because I can’t figure it out. No way. For any “budding” herbologists out there, a trip to the Botanic Gardens is a must – no bubotubers or venomous tentacula, but a lovely day out for a picnic when the weather is nice (which even us magical folk can’t guarantee!)

Sam Irving: Faculty

Paul Connolly: Gryffindor

Jenny Laahs: Ravenclaw

For the fellow nerdy—sorry, academic—Ravenclaws out there, the National Library of Scotland has even more books than the Hogwarts library! None of the books are cursed though, at least as far as I can tell. Our Dynamic Earth science centre also has a time machine to take you back to the dinosaurs – no time-turners required! If you have a sweet tooth, take a trip to the Fudge Kitchen on the Royal Mile (no relation to Cornelius Fudge, thankfully!). It doesn’t quite have as many flavours as Bertie Botts Beans, but the selection is still pretty good!

Will Naameh: Slytherin

Go and see how the greatest muggle potion ever invented was made at the Scotch Whisky Experience! Fun for all ages (but only Irn Bru for under 18s). Edinburgh Zoo also has a reptile house if you want to practice your Parseltongue. I’ve been using wizard Duolingo and I think I’m getting better. Sss sss hiss hiss snakey snake.

The whole family can come and see Spontaneous Potter Kidz at the Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre, for one day only on 10th August at 11:15am. And if mums and dads are able to magic away their kids for an evening, Spontaneous Potter is on every night from July 31st–August 25th at 9:30pm, but this show is 16+. Voldemort isn’t the only forbidden word we’ll be saying! ✏︎ Spontaneous Potter

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Spontaneous Potter

£7–£14

Spontaneous Potter Kidz

Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre 11:15am –12:15pm, 10 Aug

9:30pm –10:30pm, 31 Jul–25 Aug £10

Gilded Balloon Rose Theatre

“For any ‘budding’ herbologists out there, a trip to the Botanic Gardens is a must – no bubotubers or venomous tentacula” – Mara Joy

Theatre Fideri Fidera present

CHOICE AWARD 2018

“Jane McDonald meets The Morecambe and Wise Show” Dean Partleton – Cruise Director

“I love The Dots, they are simply the best” Christopher Biggins

Where to Eat and Drink

Cafes

Artisan Roast

57 Broughton St, 138 Bruntsfield Pl @artisanroast

Artisan Roast are very serious about their coffee, but for that you will be very grateful as you sip one of the best flat whites the whole of the UK has to offer. If you’re not serious about your coffee, AR will convert you to the winning team.

Baba Budan

1 Cranston St @bababudancoffee

Parked right across from Waverley, Baba Budan is perfect for a straight-off-the-train sugar boost. Doughnuts are the main draw, coming in a host of exciting flavours and combinations; grab one with a coffee, and get fueled up for a day of show-hopping.

Detour Espresso

39 Argyle Pl @detourespresso

Sat pretty much halfway down the Meadows, Detour serve up an excellent cup of coffee in a light and airy space ideal for a preshow pitstop.

Fieldwork

105 Fountainbridge @fieldworkcafe

All dark wood, exposed brickwork and old school desks, Fieldwork specialise in delicious cakes and pastries, coffee from the fantastic Steampunk roastery, and generating a thoroughly relaxed ambience.

Forest Cafe

141 Lauriston Pl

Leo Kearse

Transgressive, 31 Jul–25 Aug, 9:15pm

Scotland has some of the worst food on the planet (square sausage, deep fried pizza, the munchie box) but there are some gems in Edinburgh. OX184 on Cowgate is a bit pricey but open really late for food, and it’s got a relaxed atmosphere. The chicken wings are amazing. Kampong Ah Lee is a Malaysian restaurant on Clerk Street that does delicious invigorating bowls of laksa for a reasonable price. And comedians who use Wetherspoons as a euphemism for scuzzy low grade nightlife clearly aren’t taking advantage of steak Tuesday. A large, fully edible steak and trimmings with a pint of beer for around the 10 pound mark. Treat yourself!

Brew Lab

6-8 South College St @BrewLabCoffee

Great coffee, outrageous sandwiches and soups, and cakes and teas from some of Edinburgh’s best producers all find a home at Brew Lab, with a strong wine and beer game thrown in as well.

Cult Espresso

104 Buccleuch St @cultcoffeeedin

A welcome sanctuary from the Fringe, this split-level coffee shop just down from Summerhall pairs a stripped-back aesthetic with expertly-crafted coffees and a small but perfectly-formed food menu.

Having been booted from their former home a few years back, the Forest’s crew of volunteers have taken up residence in Tollcross and turned this former corner shop into a vibrant arts space. Expect art, music, poetry and anything else that comes to mind in the freest venue in the city.

Fortitude Coffee

3c York Pl @FortitudeCoffee

In Fringe terms, Fortitude is a perfect fit – brilliant coffee, delicious sandwiches and brilliant cakes from local heroes Lovecrumbs, all on the literal doorstep of The Stand. Seriously, it’s right next door.

Hula

103-105 West Bow, 94A Fountainbridge @ hulajuicebar

Bright and breezy, Hula does a great line in fresh fruit juices with exotic and outrageous blends that you never would have considered, as well as great coffee and exciting food.

Tips from the tops

Brew Lab

Lovecrumbs

155 West Port @hellolovecrumbs

An inventive sweet and savoury menu, tables made from old pianos, and an actual window seat give Lovecrumbs an anarchic air that turns the act of going for coffee into an adventure.

Lowdown Coffee

40 George St @coffeelowdown

A small but perfectly-formed Scandi-style basement beneath George Street, Lowdown is a calming environment from which to escape the madness of the street above.

Loudons

94B Fountainbridge, 2 Sibbald Walk @Loudons_edin

If you like brunch, you’re in for a treat; Loudons specialise in the stuff. Hungover Fringegoers rejoice at the many, many ways these guys can prepare an egg. So many! So many eggs!

Williams and Johnson

3 Waverley Bridge @wjcoffee

The Leith roasters supply many of the city centre’s best cafes, and now they run one as well – hit their cool and minimal space on top of Waverley Mall for an excellent flat white.

Pubs & Bars

The Auld Hoose

23-25 St Leonard’s St @TheAuldHoose

A cross-breed of ‘old man pub’ and ‘rock bar’, this Newington pub covers both bases in style. Slick decor, a good drinks selection and ridiculous bowls of nachos await.

Bannerman's

202 Cowgate @BannermansBar

The back room of Bannerman's is one the favourite haunts of the city’s rockers, but the main bar is a much more laid-back environment. It’s cheap, there’s plenty of space, and it’s right in the centre of town.

Blue Blazer

2 Spittal St @blueblazeredin

A ‘proper’ Edinburgh pub, in the best possible sense. Boasting one of the finest selections of real ales, whiskies and rums in the capital, the Blue Blazer’s walls have seen it all.

Bramble

16a Queen St @BrambleBar

Machina Espresso

2 Brougham Pl, 80 Nicholson St @MachinaEspresso

Machina roast their own beans, so they know what they’re about. Pair a coffee with a pastry or enormous sandwich, and consider yourself ready for a day of shows.

Brass Monkey

14 Drummond St @brassmonkeybar

Tucked in between the Pleasance and the Bridges, Brass Monkey matches a great location with a relaxed atmosphere. Much of that comes from the mini-cinema in the back room, packed with squishy cushions.

Camera

74 Clerk St

In need of a Fringe hideaway, right next to some big venues but tucked away where the flyers and embittered reviewers can’t get to you? Camera is the place – a hip subterranean cocktail bar right round the corner from Summerhall.

Hannah Moss

The Rebirth of Meadow Rain, Pleasance Courtyard, 31 Jul–26 Aug, not 7, 14, 1pm

There’s a chocolate shop on Morningside called The Chocolate Tree, it does great ice cream too! Manna House bakery in Easter Road is also great, it’s part of a line of independent shops and bars which is a nice little escape and on the way to Portobello.

Arguably the city’s finest cocktail bar, and certainly one of the venues that elevated Auld Reekie into the global cocktail conversation. It’s dark, the hip-hop bumps loud from the speakers, and the drinks are beautiful.

Tips from the tops

Credit: Ali Wright

Loudons

Matt Price

Rigatoni’s pizza restaurant on Clerk Street. The guy who owns it is hugely entertaining. He took a selfie on my phone last year and danced around the restaurant, bantering with the customers. He also looks like a member of the Italian mafia, which fits with the theme of my show this year. If you’re a performer, get away on your day off and go to the beach and have fish and chips.

The City Cafe

19 Blair St @thecitycafe

If you’ve ever dreamt of going to an American diner in the 1950s, well... you can’t. Sorry. Luckily, The City Cafe is a pretty good alternative, with its chessboard-style floor and leather and chrome booths.

Cloisters

26 Brougham St @Cloisters_Bar

Set into the side of a church, this pub is packed with period features. A huge selection of beers and ales and always lively atmosphere make Cloisters a great spot for a pre- or post-show pint.

Cold Town House

4 Grassmarket

They’ve got a bar on the roof. Cold Town House is a three-floor hive of drinks, food and fun times, but its unquestionable ace in the hole is its rooftop terrace with views of the Castle. When it stops raining, get yourself up there.

Dagda

93 Buccleuch St

A cracking real ale bar that’s also the size of a large living room, Dagda is a place to rediscover your convivial spirit over a pint. Grab one of the lovely booths if you can.

Fierce Beer Bar

167 Rose St @fiercebeer

The Aberdonian brewery have taken up residence at the west end of Rose Street, with their new bar serving up some craft beer realness. Lots of taps, plenty of exciting limited-run beers, and some comfy chairs await.

The Hanging Bat

133 Lothian Rd @TheHangingBat

A huge and ever-changing range of some of the best beers from all over the world, a mini-brewery at the back and super knowledgeable bar staff make this the place to go to get your ‘serious beer’ on during the Fringe.

Salt Horse

57-61 Blackfriars Street @salthorsebar

Salt Horse features what may be one of the most comprehensive beer selections in the capital. It’s a brilliantly eclectic and impressively dense range that will literally take you the whole month to work through.

Six Degrees North

24 Howe St, @sixdnorthedin

A New Town setting for a Belgianinspired Stonehaven-based brewery pub – sounds confusing, but if you’re into your craft beer these guys will see you right. Dozens of taps await.

Ventoux

2 Brougham St

Inspired by the Tour de France mountain of the same name, this Tollcross bar is a lovely local hangout that’s filled with fish tanks on the shelves, bikes hanging from the ceiling, and an impressive host of German beers behind the bar.

Restaurants BABA

130 George St @babaedinburgh

Middle Eastern mezze are the order of the day at BABA, parked at the Book Festival end of George Street. Expect a highly shareable menu packed with tasty Levantine dishes.

Bodega

14 Albert Pl, 36 Leven St @bodegatollx

Fantastic tacos in super-chilled and extremely friendly surroundings, Bodega bring flavours from around the world together in wonderful corn tortillas. Oh, and their margaritas are immense.

Broken Hooters and Geezers with Shooters, Underbelly Bristo Square, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 6:50pm

Tips from the tops

Credit: Steve Ullathorne

The Hanging Bat

Bread Meats Bread

92 Lothian Rd @BreadMeats_EDI

Incredible burgers, outrageous sides—try the poutine—and a great location; Bread Meats Bread is ideal Fringe fuel, and their vegan menu has come on leaps and bounds in recent times so now everyone can enjoy it.

Chop House

East Market St @chophousesteak

If the Fringe is getting you down, may we recommend the Chop House’s frankly outlandish breakfasts, or one of their incredible dry-aged steaks? Either way, luxuriate in their enormous orange chairs and take an extremely tasty break from it all.

Pizza Posto

16 Nicholson St @pizzapostouk

An ideal spot for a whistlestop between-show meal, Posto turn out brilliant pizzas at a hell of a speed. It’s a massive space so waiting times are minimal, and you’ll come away with a surprising amount of change when you’re done.

Casual Bross Bagels

19 Queensferry St, 105 Leith Walk, 186 Portobello High St @BrossBagels

Larah Bross’ Montreal-style bagels have become a local institution in just a few short years. You’ll find delicious flavours, inventive combinations and a generally cool vibe at any of their three spots around the city.

Checkpoint

3 Bristo Pl @checkpointedi

Brilliant brunch until the early evening? A great drinks selection for the late-night? A shipping container, inside the bar? Checkpoint has it all.

Maki & Ramen

13 W Richmond St

A lovingly decorated and charming hole in the wall off Nicholson St, the menu is, as suggested, half sushi and half noodle. Expect quality in presentation, ingredients and execution. Try the Master Chef Shoyu burnt garlic ramen; you will not be disappointed.

Mother India’s Cafe

3-5 Infirmary St @Official_MIndia

At Mother India, the tapas-style menu means that the breadth and variety of your dinner is limited only by your ability to share with friends. And they’re your friends, so if you ‘accidentally’ elbow them out of the way for the prawns they’ll understand.

Civerinos

5 Hunter Sq, 49 Forrest Rd @civerinos_slice

Their locations are great: just off the Royal Mile, and on the edge of the Meadows. The vibe is great: all fly-postered walls and marble statues. Above all else, the pizza at Civerinos is great: sourdough base, brilliant toppings, and big enough to fuel even the most ill-advised of schedules.

Dough

172 Rose St & 47 South Clerk St @Dough_pizzeria1

You’re on the way from one show to another, you’re a bit hungover and you haven’t eaten in a day and a half. What you need is a slice of pizza – Dough have an extensive array of by-the-slice pies, all delicious sea water crusts and fresh ingredients.

Juliette Burton

Defined, Gilded Balloon Teviot, 31 Jul–25 Aug, not 12, 5:30pm

I lived in Edinburgh for four happy years so I made sure I explored as many places to eat and drink as I could. Joseph Pearce’s Bar on Elm Row has great brunches, cocktails and ciders plus PINTS of bloody mary (yes, pints). Generally I’d recommend exploring Leith Walk, Bruntsfield and Stockbridge for a break from the festivals. To look after your mental wellbeing, find quiet spaces to hide. And if it’s a fine day, take a break and have a picnic in one of the parks. That’s the best place to eat, drink and take a breather in my experience.

Tips from the tops

Credit: Steve Ullathorne

Chop House

Civerinos

Tips from the tops High Dive Pizza Pub

81 St Leonards St @thehighdiveandslicebar

The latest venture from the fine folks behind Civerinos, the High Dive is an exciting blend of pseudo-nostalgic surroundings and delicious, inventive pizzas. Connect with the local vibe with a cocktail named after one of the flumes at the Commonwealth Pool.

The Mosque Kitchen

31 Nicolson Sq

Fern Brady

Power and Chaos, Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 6pm

Fortitude Coffee next door to The Stand is easily the best coffee shop in Edinburgh, and for food I like Henderson’s Vegan Restaurant (not the veggie deli downstairs, the upstairs one), Paradise Palms and also the Basement Bar on Broughton Street for Mexican food and cocktails. I used to go to Boda Bar and Sofi’s a lot when I lived in Leith. They’re nice Swedish bars.

El Cartel Mexicana

64 Thistle St, 15 Teviot Pl @elcartelmexicana

The best Mexican food in Edinburgh can be found in the cosy (as in tiny) confines of El Cartel. They’ve added a second restaurant near Bristo Square, but be assured that the tacos are more than worth any queuing you might face.

A Fringe institution and all-round winner, the Mosque Kitchen serves up delicious curry all day long with huge plates of spicy goodness starting at just a few quid. If you haven’t been yet, go now.

The Nile Valley Cafe

6 Chapel St

The falafel; oh sir, the falafel. This unpretentious Sudanese cafe would be our number one choice for an ad-hoc Fringe lunch – pick up their Africa wrap (falafel, feta cheese, broad beans, hummus and spicy peanut sauce) and all your comedy hang-ups will disappear in a cloud of chickpea-based positivity.

Noodles and Dumplings

23 South Clerk St

A no-frills Chinese diner in the heart of Newington, this is where you go for glutinous hand-pulled noodles and delicious multi-layered broth served in bowls the size of your head.

Red Box Noodle Bar

51 W Nicholson St

Enormously customisable noodle boxes are the order of the day here. Choose every last detail of your lunch, from the cut of the noodles to the level of heat in the chili, then dive in (literally if necessary).

Ting Thai Caravan

8 Teviot Pl

Totally affordable, incredibly tasty and more than a little exciting, Ting Thai Caravan is in many ways the perfect lunch spot. Get down early for a seat at the canteen-style benches, and pore over a Thai menu with more variety and quality than you can shake a chopstick at.

Ting Thai Saboteur

19 Teviot Pl

South Asian street food with a great range of veggie options, Saboteur is right around the corner from its illustrious sibling, but doesn’t yet suffer from the mammoth queues of  Ting Thai Caravan. We say get in while you have the chance.

Lydia Zanetti

producer of Aunty at Assembly, and My Best Dead Friend and Working on My Night Moves at Summerhall

The Summerhall courtyard is one one of my favourite places to have a pint, not only at the festival, but in the whole world. Filled with the warmest, kindest, most over excited artists and performance fans you will ever meet. Every festival that courtyard becomes a strange little family for a month. I fall in love with every single person there.

El Cartel Mexicana

Tips from the tops

Union of Genius

8 Forrest Rd

Soup’s great, and Union of Genius’ soup is greater than most. Loads of veggie options, plentiful servings and super-quick service make this a deserved Fringe favourite.

All Day Edinburgh Printmakers

1 Dundee St @EdinburghPrints

Now one of Europe’s largest print facilities, Printmakers houses two galleries, a shop, a huge print studio and a lovely cafe with a brilliantly sunny terrace. All squeezed into a brilliantly renovated former rubber factory, it's well worth checking out.

George Square

Expect to find a raft of street food vans parked up in and around the George Square homes of Underbelly and Assembly. We recommend looking out for The Buffalo Truck (black van, amazing fried chicken), Mimi’s (light blue, very nice cakes) and Pizza Geeks (glasses on the logo, brilliant pizzas).

Gilded Balloon

Teviot Pl @Gildedballoon

This Hogwart’s-style building is actually the oldest purpose-built students’ union in the world. Bought and paid for by the students in 1889—clearly they had a bit more cash back then—it’s a warren of big and small performance spaces, bars and cafes.

Mary’s Milk Bar

18 Grassmarket @MarysMilkBar

A cute little gelateria inspired by the milk bars of the 1960s but with the flavours brought right up to date, Mary’s has quickly become an Edinburgh institution. If the sun is out (it will be at least once, promise), get yourself down here for a hit of delicious, creamy gelato. You’ve earned it.

National Museum of Scotland

Chambers St @NtlMuseumsScot

The NMS has a plethora of fascinating galleries holding items from across the ages. For lovers of nice views (and delicious food at the acclaimed Tower restaurant), head to the seventh floor roof terrace for a look across the city.

The Pitt

125 Pitt St @thepittmarket

Edinburgh’s year-round street food market is home to some of the country’s best food vans, and during the Fringe it also features the delights of piano-based amphitheatre the Pianodrome.

Pleasance Dome

1 Bristo Square @ThePleasance

Year round, this is one of Edinburgh University Student Union’s venues. Come August time it’s not only a major festival venue, but also the site of some serious hanging out, coffee drinking, snack munching, morning, midday and evening boozing and star-spotting.

Summerhall

1 Summerhall @summerhallery

With a venue the size of a former Veterinary school, it takes a lot to fill it. Thankfully Summerhall has the right idea, packing the place with lots of little goings-on. In addition to a vast Fringe programme of theatre, comedy and live music, there are exhibition spaces, two cafes, an onsite micro-brewery AND gin distillery, and they even have room for the Fest offices.

Hiya!

George Egg

Movable Feast, Assembly George Square Gardens, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 4:30pm

Well I’m into cooking so I can tell you some great places to get ingredients if you’ve got self-catering accommodation. For meat, Saunderson’s on Leven Street is the best place. For fish, George Hughes on Bruntsfield Place, and for bread, The Wee Boulangerie on Clerk Street. They’re all independent local places, very friendly, very supportive and superb produce. And if you don’t want to cook yourself then The Cheesy Toast Shack (there’s a few all around George Square and Bristo Square) are so so good.

Tips from the tops

Credit: Matt Lincoln

Marys Milk Bar

The Royal Dick, Summerhall

The Hive

Tips from the tops

Double Denim

Adventure Show, Underbelly Cowgate, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 8:40pm

Michelle is always on the hunt for new vegan places and Pumpkin Brown her current favourite. It’s healthy and light and in an unexpected spot next to pubs and more touristy things. Brew Lab is a treat if you want a good coffee. Ting Thai Caravan is relatively cheap and a nice healthy option too. Secret Arcade is an awesome vodka hide-away. Also if you have time to have a sip of a rhubarb and ginger liqueur at Edinburgh Gin distillery you won’t regret it.

Late Night

Banshee Labyrinth

29 Niddry St @b_labyrinth

If a dive bar were designed by a crypt-keeper, it would look like Banshee Labyrinth. Endless caves (some of which host free Fringe shows), copious hiding places and free-flowing drinks.

Che

21 Forrest Rd

Falafel can cure all ills, so if you’ve hit it a bit too hard on a night out head to Che for a chickpea nightcap. Freshly-fried falafel, wrapped up with salad and pickles, will see you through to the morning.

3 Niddry St @clubhive

The wild and cavernous Cowgate hang-out is a notorious student haunt for good reason. If you only know The Hive for its Fringe programming, you haven’t lived; head down for a late-night drink and you’ll find an all-action party spot that isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Lady Libertine

25 W Register St @LadyLibertineEd

This latest venture from the folk behind Bon Vivant and El Cartel is a bit interesting. Mezze, cocktails, multiple areas through which to sashay, and a late closing time all combine for an ideal end of day venue.

OX 184

184 Cowgate

A lengthy bar stocked with a legion of beers, ciders and spirits and nightly DJs are a solid start. But OX 184’s secret weapon is a wood-fired grill and handsome BBQ menu served until 2:30am.

Paradise Palms

41 Lothian St @edinburghpalms

A genuine lynchpin for Edinburgh’s creative community, Palms has a bit of everything. It’s a performance space, a record shop (and record label), a veggie diner, and a hugely fun bar. Go at least once this Fringe, you won’t regret it.

Sneaky Pete’s

73 Cowgate @sneakypetesclub

It’ll make your Fringe flat seem like a palace, but what Sneaky’s lacks in area it makes up for with energy. A huge range of weekly and monthly club nights, a beautifully clear sound system, and an ever-present crowd of the city’s most discerning and nicest clubbers make Sneaky’s a great shout every night of the week.

Wee Red Bar

74 Lauriston Pl

The Wee Red Bar may be located on ECA territory, but this isn’t your average student disco. A near-constant stream of grassroots gigs take up the evenings, and the wide range of club nights keep things interesting until the early hours.

Phil Nichol

Too Much, Monkey Barrel Comedy, 1–25 Aug, not 12, 9pm

I’m a fan of Cult Coffee on Buccleuch Street. Lovely staff and great coffee. Mr Kim’s for fantastic and reasonably priced food although it’s so popular that you’ll have to queue as it’s only open for a few hours a day after 5.30pm. Or journey out of town to North Berwick and find The Lobster Shack on the dock. Sit outside and watch the Forth pour in to the sea while eating some delicious seafood. Have a glass of wine and be back in Edinburgh in time to see my show.

Tips from the tops

Credit: Samara Clifford

Credit: Steve Ullathorne

Paradise Palms