Author Archives: Dan Lentell

‘How a Jellyfish Saved the World’ (Venue 33, until AUG 18th)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“A wonderfully absorbing, visually compelling, always funny, and often thought-provoking piece of workshop work by a company I hope to see much much more of in the years to come.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Outstanding)

There is a lot of plastic in places it shouldn’t be. There is too much plastic in the sea. Something needs to be done to minimise and mitigate the impact on the creatures with which we share our homeworld. Clyde the orphaned jellyfish is not alone in the world. He is surrounded by weird and wonderful companions with whom he shares an ocean of possible adventures. But is there someone truly special for Clyde?

Jam Jar Theatre Company presents some of the most compelling, thoughtful, and entertaining puppetry to be seen anywhere this EdFringe. There’s plenty fewer fish and crabs in the sea since so many have turned up in Pleasance Courtyard to take part in this fine example of family-friendly programming.

We enter to discover an arched white screen on which some properly magical shadow puppetry will happen, flanked by two of the best-painted theatrescapes any of us have seen in an age. The art of backdrop painting for theatres has not exactly been lost, but it needs rediscovering in this age of big, cheap and cheap looking TV screens. This is a tech lite production until one of the songs which was disappointingly pre-recorded. Did someone miss their train to Waverly or their flight into Turnhouse. It’s a jarring note in a production that is otherwise lively and fluid performed by a cast of bright young things with a story to tell and a message to share.

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with Copenhagen’s statue of the little mermaid on the front cover, Daughter 1.0 (9yrs) wrote: “I went to How a jellyfish saved the world. In the show there was lots of shadow puppets as well as normal puppets to show the undersea characters apart from the two hilarious crabs who helped the young jellyfish make his friend happy. There was also a stylish crab who decorated himself with plastic witch was beaing thrown into the sea! The moral of the story is to look after the undersea creatures and their home.”

There are times when this script feels like an underwater camel, a seahorse designed by committee. The really rather fascinating asexual reproductive ability of jellyfish is touched on but bounces past the bouncy people in the front row with the speed of a Tiger on a trampoline on a jet ski. Clyde’s backstory and his romance are not as well connected as they might be. Still, this is a wonderfully absorbing, visually compelling, always funny, and often thought-provoking piece of workshop work by a company I hope to see much much more of in the years to come. With my school governor’s hat on this is a production I would urge colleagues to very seriously consider adding to any programme of live events.

Come for the wonder, stay for the delight, leave with a hopetomistic sense of what is possible. Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Rosie and Hugh’s Great Big Adventure’ (Venue 33, until AUG 18th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Every time you think, “There’s no way she’s got more to bring” Ellis steps it up a gear.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

The songs of Nick Cope saved my life. OK, they didn’t save my life, but they did really help me. By the time Lockdown finally ended our relationship with Daughter 1.0’s school had finally broken down. Parked on a hill is not an instantly easy concept for us Cambridgeshire folk to grasp, but the handbrake was failing, the SLT was flailing, and the hopes for a better tomorrow were fading. We took the decision to follow other village families in search of a better fit at the new primary in the new town over the parish boundary. There was the usual bureaucratic kerfuffle but it all came right in the end. She would make the switch after the half-term holidays. Nothing left to do but walk her down to the cafe, buy her an ice cream, and tell her the news. There were tears. Mostly mine. A day or so before a Bedford pal had told me about a Nick Cope song that might make things just a little bit easier. SPOILER ALERT! It really did. Thank you Nick. It’s fair to say we had high expectations going into ‘Rosie and Hugh’s Great Big Adventure’. SPOILER ALERT! We were none of us disappointed.

We enter to find it’s the morning of the last day of the holidays and Rosie wants to make it massive. Rosie needs a massive distraction from the thing she doesn’t want to think about. Rosie talks through the adventuresome options with her BHF (Best Hedgehog Forever), Hugh. There’s loads of possibilities but it is the end of the summer and they’ve done most of them already. Then a lightning bulb sparks, what if they could make it so that it was the last day of the holidays… forever!

That would take a powerful magic. You’d need a witch for something like that. Do Rosie and Hugh know of any witches? What would the witch need to hold back time forever? The parameters for a pacy, smart, and captivating adventure are programmed into the navicom before an interstellar cast sends this exquisite production into hyperdrive.

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with a rusty robot on the cover, Daughter 1.0 (9yrs) wrote: “I went to Rosie and Hugh’s great big Adventiar Adventiaur. Adventieur Adventure. I really liked the singing the witch, and the dragon. The dragon rode a teeny tiny bike and was called Keith. (Keith did tap dancing) The funniest bit was the bit where Hugh had to cross the A32 but was very scared about crossing (don’t worry he was fine.) I also liked the bits where they sang Nick Cope’s songs.”

As Rosie, Alice Vilanculo is.. is… pls insert your own words here if you can find any that suitably adjectivate the feelings and the excitement generated across this packed house by her perfectly poised performance. I am genuinely lost for words. In a cast of heavyweights giving the most delicate of performances, Vilanculo shines like the star she is. Scott Brooks’ professional information states that his hair colour is dark brown, that his voice character is “assured” and that his voice quality is “deep” – no crap Cumberbatch. As the timorous and occasionally tetchy Hugh, Brooks is pitch-perfect. He really does have a properly lovely voice which he deploys alongside the full broadside weight of his growing professional reputation like Nelson pointing canon before his battle with the Nile – take that! you troublesome tributaries. Vilanculo and Brooks do justice to the quality of this Nick Cope / Victoria Saxton collaboration like Batman and Spiderman wearing powdered wigs and drinking auld Baileys in a high court.

Offue Okegbe and Andy Owens are the pommel of the piece, bringing balance and brilliance. Daughter 3.0 (2yrs) is particularly taken with Owens’ dragon wings while I am an unashamed Okegbe fanboy. If you hate talented people being really good at what they do, then these guys are going to bring you out in hives.

If Mary Poppins’ overnight bag – the one in which she keeps her favourite standing lamps – was an actor it would be Katy Ellis. Every time you think, “There’s no way she’s got more to bring” Ellis steps it up a gear. As Rosie’s down to Earth mum and as the not-as-scary-as-we-first-thought witch, Ellis is the corresponding grip, tang, shoulder, and écusson that allows this production to chop, dice, slice, and mince 60 minutes of stage traffic into an hour’s worth of unforgettable children’s theatre. Ellis is one to watch and is as watchable as rainbow waves splashing against a starlight shore. To say Ellis is talented would be like saying UK elections are always held on a Thursday. It goes without saying.

Any one of these actors would command a stage and a big box office return. Together they bend time and space. This is a production with more value than the New York Stock Exchange in which you’ll see more heart than cardiologist specialising in Blue Whales.

Put your brave face on. Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Ironing Board Man’ (Venue 8, until AUG 17th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Kamali is to physical performance what Motörhead is to British rock.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Jody Kamali is a high-octane, high-impact, high does he make it sooooo funny? physical character comedian whose growing reputation as a Fringe favourite has been chronicled in glowing terms elsewhere in these pages. Mr Sleepybum’s other show of EdFringe24 is a straightforward telling of that auld chestnut – Man and Ironing Board find love at first sight. Man and Ironing Board are married. All is bliss. But Man is living with a crushing secret and an unavoidable destiny. Man and Ironing Board stumble on the way to true happiness but reconcile and start a family of little ironing boards only to have their lives steamrollered by Man’s arch nemesis, an authoritarian ironing board supervillain with blood on his hands and world domination in his sights. It’s Hollywood Jim, but not as we know it, or even as we knew we wanted it… until now.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” Those wanting to understand the power of man-made objects to ensnare our emotions and illicit our devotion need only witness the genuine distress felt by all of us at Ironing Board Man’s grief or the shared jubilation as justice is served. Kamali is to physical performance what Motörhead is to British rock. It’s grungy sophistication. This is a show with so much character development, action, and pathos I found myself wondering whether the Assembly Crate isn’t in fact a Tardis containing more on the inside than the external dimensions would suggest.

For all the meticulous planning of each exquisitely bizarre moment, Kamali is always a playful player. His audience work, and the way he makes his audience work, add a delicious spontaneity to proceedings. This is a buffet of boundaries pushed and genres redefined served up with more laughs than a laundry room full of nitrous oxide and easily-amused hyenas. It takes serious smarts to be this silly. It takes serious showmanship to win and keep a crowd with an ensemble of easily the least beloved articles in the home. Until now I thought of ironing boards as cumbersome, dull, time-consuming objects devoid of charm or possibility – a mundane and functional item, but for Kamali ze basis of an entire comic universe.

Come for a true genius, with a genius for storytelling who will change your notions of ironing boards forever… well maybe not. Next year perhaps Kamali will be back with a dehumidifier and a clothes rail.

In the meantime, get your best-pressed coats on and go see this!

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‘Chris Grace: Sardines (A Comedy About Death)’ (Venue 17, until AUG 26th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“To chronicle the high points of ‘Sardines (A Comedy About Death)’ would be to provide a complete script. It’s all amazing.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars ( Outstanding)

Chris Grace has been a part of my EdFringe landscape for over a decade. I was the first reviewer to critique him as Christian Grey in 50 Shades the Musical – “Be assured, Gizmo has been doused and this cultural gremlin has arrived.” There are one or two BIG beasts in the EdFringe wilderness and Chris Grace is one of them – admired by his colleagues, loved by his audiences, applauded and awarded with all the laurels the greatest arts festival in the world can bestow on a favourite son. Chris Grace is practically a venue in his own right. The list of productions in which he’s performing this year makes the mind boggle. Chris Grace gives so much pure joy to so many and yet in the past 10 years The Universe has been downwrong beastly to Edinburgh’s Beloved Bonnie Big Beastie snatching his nearest and dearest like the cyclopes having his tea with Odyseeus’ crew. ‘Sardines’ is our Chris’ reply.

Where some theatre makers would wish for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, Grace has o’erthrown all his charms and what strength he has is his own. Not only is he his own venue, he is his own tech – literally, there are no lighting changes, music, big screens, or projectors. Everything is conjured in the mind’s eye by this wizard of Wow, seriously how does he do that? What Chris has given up and left out in order to better tell the story of what he has lost leaves so much more on stage. Picasso could not have been more pleased with his animal sketches than Chris and his fanbase (me included) should be with the results to be seen on the most demanding and fringiest of stages in the Assembly stable. 

The absence effects is eerie, like a covered mirror during Shiva. Clad entirely in white (even his ring), Chris is wearing the colour primarily associated with mourning in Asian cultures but this is a far from sombre show. The next morning, over the breakfast table, Daughter 1.0 asks me how I enjoyed my shows yesterday. I explain that I saw a show about a dear man losing those dearest to him… and… that it was chuffing hilarious. Quick check by her that no legs are being pulled and her jaw drops in the direction of her kippers and marmalade. A scarcely believable thing has been made to happen.

To chronicle the high points of ‘Sardines (A Comedy About Death)’ would be to provide a complete script. It’s all amazing. In the Daoist sense, there are no high points since there are zero, none, nadda, corresponding low points. This is a tour de force by a master craftsman of the art, science, and magic of theatre. The biggest meta laugh is, fittingly, on Chris. The subject of one of his two ultra-dark jokes – the ones darker than the darker shades of a blackhole playing hide-and-seak under a blackout curtain, the gags so dark his family suggested he leave them out – Chris’ late mother, steps into the limelight in the only recorded AV accompaniment in the whole piece. The poem she recorded to music shortly before her passing is a show-stoppingly poignant and urgent message to humanity on the value of a good life well lived. It takes someone with the grace of Chris Grace to share centre stage in his own masterpiece solo show.

Chris never fully reconciled with his late father who could not (or would not) make peace with Chris’ coming out or chosen career path. If I had a son with so much love to give and talent to share, I would crawl over broken glass and rattlesnakes to spend an hour with him. Sadly, this is probably what you are going to have to do in order to get a ticket to this supernova of a show exploding out of the darkness with the biggest of BIG bangs. 

Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘The Listies ROFL’ (Venue 17, until AUG 18th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“Subtle their humour is not. In fact, it’s risquér than an uncertain fart on a first date while wearing a kilt and sitting on her favourite sheepskin rug.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

It’s bedtime but Matt isn’t sleepy. He’s going make the upward assent of the wooden hills to the Bedfordshire linen market as troublesome as possible for Rich who is doing his darndest not to lose his cool. Sound familiar?

Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Bert and Ernie. The list of male comedians sharing a bed is luminescent but Richard Higgins and Matthew Kelly outshine them all in this utterly brilliant, cheetah-paced, not-at-all-sensible, in every way perfect show that has our blended brood of chicks bouncing in their seats and screaming with laughter. Many British parents are unaware that the Disnified version of ‘Bluey’ served up by the BBC has had many of the most outrageous scenes and material bowdlerised. If they ever want to imagine what might have been left on the cutting room floor, they need to see The Listies keeping it unreal. Subtle their humour is not. In fact, it’s risquér than an uncertain fart on a first date while wearing a kilt and sitting on her favourite sheepskin rug. There is even a moment when The Current Mrs Dan’s bestie looks about to spew on her shoes (and she’s a homicide detective). The whole rest of the time, however, DI Deadeyes is laughing so hard, I’m wondering if her sides are about to split.

The Listies have been full-time kids entertainers for over a decade. For super-mega fans auld and new this latest instalment of carefully considered spontaneity, and precision mayhem is the perfect blend of performance, props, puns, and party-on. Higgins and Kelly’s bromantic onstage chemistry is hotter than dicyanoacetylene burning in ozone and shows no sign of flaming out anytime soon – touch a forest full of wood. Like any great couple, they are a joy to be around sparking off each other with a competitive symbiosis that gets the job done.

In her notebook, the one with a fluffy stuffed koala as the cover, Daughter 1.0 (9yrs) wrote:

“We went to The Listies with my friends. It was about two Austrailian comidiens who had to go to bed but can’t get to sleep! They sing songs tell stories and try to tick off everything on there To Do List. My favorite bit was the story Jack and the beans talk. It was like Jack and the beanstalk evept Jack eats the beans and farts to space where he touches a golden goose and gets attaked by … a shark! a dinosaur (or crocodile) and a unicorn! I really enjoyed it.”

Come for the low comedy. Stay for the high levels of talent and theatrical trickery that combine to make this one of the must-see shows of EdFringe24. Get your jim jam coats on and go see this!

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EdFringe Talk: Midnight Cowboy Radio

Posted in *Written Interviews, EdFestivals 2024 by

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“I’m constantly grappling with the state of reproductive rights in the US and what my role is in it.”

WHO: Ally Ibach

WHAT: “It’s Labor Day in Kentucky! Time for your favourite late-night-radio-talk-show host, to give you life advice on the air of Midnight Cowboy Radio, entertaining you for those long drives home. This show is written and performed by Ally Ibach and directed by Patricia Runcie-Rice. It has been awarded as a finalist at The Secret Theatre’s One-Act Festival (NYC, 2023), and has had shows at East 15 Acting School (UK, 2022), PBH Free Fringe (UK, 2022), Baltimore Center Stage’s Locally Grown Festival (Baltimore, 2023), Bread and Roses (London, 2023), Theatre Row (NYC 2023), and the Tank (NYC 2024).”

WHERE: theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall – Theatre 3 (Venue 53) 

WHEN: 22:15 (60 min)

MORE: Click Here!

Is this your first time to Edinburgh?

So, fun fact, I actually did perform a 10 minute set with PBH Free Fringe back in 2022 that a whopping 5 people saw, and boy did they get a show!

What are the big things you’ve learned since 2023 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?

This play (Midnight Cowboy Radio) has changed and evolved with as I and the political climate in the USA changes. I’m constantly grappling with the state of reproductive rights in the US and what my role is in it.

Tell us about your show.

Midnight Cowboy Radio is a play that follows a late-night conservative radio talk show host in Kentucky arranging an illegal abortion. I wrote it back in 2022 when Roe was overturned, and I was watching it happen from drama school in the UK. In 2023, I moved back to the US and found amazing creative collaborators including my director Patricia Runcie-Rice and who’s here with me! After Edinburgh, one of my goals is to get this play published so people can have access to this story all over the country!

What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?

You should see Katie Folger in GETTING IN BED WITH THE PIZZA MAN. We have to keep talking about reproductive rights in whatever way we can (including sexy fun stories about pizza men)!

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EdFringe Talk: Titi Lee: Good Girl Gone Baddie

Posted in *Written Interviews, EdFestivals 2024 by

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“Anytime I mention the festival to someone in America, they say “you’re going to love it, it’s beautiful” so there’s a lot of hype and I expect zero disappointment.”

WHO: Titi Lee

WHAT: “Lifelong goody-two-shoes Titi Lee is breaking all the rules, and you are invited. With heartfelt humor and incisive wit, they confront their experience growing up as a first-gen Taiwanese American in the heart of Silicon Valley during the tech boom including coming out to their immigrant parents as bisexual, and then non-binary, getting pandemic boobs, and renouncing their good girl ways. Good Girl Gone Baddie is an endearing take on trading in a desperate need to be good for the freedom of being yourself.”

WHERE: Just the Tonic at Cabaret Voltaire – Just the Liberty Room (Venue 338) 

WHEN: 12:30 (60 min)

MORE: Click Here!

Is this your first time to Edinburgh?

This is my first time coming to Edinburgh Fringe Festival AND Edinburgh in general.

I first found out about the festival in 2014 through Alex Edelman, who I had gone to school with and knew as a very hard-working and talented comedian. He won the Best Newcomer Award for Comedy for his show Millennial at the festival that year, and at the time I remember from stateside seeing his updates about the festival and being mesmerized by the energy and excitement of it all. And I remember there being a lot of fanfare around all of it, and I just thought ‘I have to go there’. I had only been doing standup for a year at that time, so it went on my list to revisit in ten years, and here we are.

Anytime I mention the festival to someone in America, they say “you’re going to love it, it’s beautiful” so there’s a lot of hype and I expect zero disappointment. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights where I wake up thinking ‘what have I gotten myself into’ and ‘why did I think doing all this on my own while in credit card debt was a good idea’ but I have a good sense of what’s to come in that I expect both nothing and also everything.

What are the big things you’ve learned since 2023 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?

The biggest thing I’ve learned in preparing for the show is that you’re always going to feel like you’re not doing enough, but that just means you’re running as fast as you can, and that’s a good sign. I’ve been preparing for the trip all year, but I still feel like I don’t know anything, and every day I get a new panic attack, and apparently that’s just part of the process. I had a good chat with another comedian who’s going this year (shoutout Catherine McCafferty) who told me “just remember you are a performer first and foremost” and that set me right.

In preparing for the show, I have had to sharpen my toolbelt in other arenas that I’m not typically used to doing. Since I’m coming all myself with no team members, I’m in charge of social media, promotion, budgeting, booking, tech, etc… and well, I have to say, I have so much respect for the publicity and marketing side of things. In May I received a grant from California Cultural Institute to take a digital marketing class at UCLA, and I used that to put together a social media campaign to promote the show. Sometimes I feel silly pushing myself so hard, but then I remember that even the most successful and well-known artists have to do the same. I mean, Ariana Grande’s been dong podcasts to promote Wicked… like, I already know who you are and I AM going to watch Wicked… but it’s all part of the process.

Tell us about your show.

My show is called Titi Lee: Good Girl Gone Baddie, and it’s a solo comedy show of mostly standup, some storytelling, a smidge of drag and Kpop dance. I am a standup comedian first and foremost, but I grew up doing musical theater and studio dance, so I’m taking elements of that and infusing it into the standup of it all. It’s a culmination of ten years of material and to be honest, of me figuring out how to be who I am, in all my forms.

The tagline for the show is “be yourself, all of them” and the reality is I feel like I’ve danced around my true self for years (no pun intended), and this is a moment I’m finally comfortable existing in all my extremes, unapologetically and authentically, while also being entertaining to the audience. I want the audience to feel the same joy as I do that I’ve gone through this journey, and I think it will come across by the end of the hour that it’s okay to start as one thing and end up another, but that doesn’t mean those early versions of “you” aren’t always part of who you really are.

Edinburgh will be the official premiere of the show, I’ve previewed it in Los Angeles at a couple theaters, and just came off doing it at Berlin Fringe (which is in its second year and I highly recommend for Fringe performers to apply to for next year! Lisa is the best!) and that was a really wonderful experience, so I’m pretty amped. In terms of where I’m taking this after… that will be for you all to decide! I would absolutely love to take it all over the world, so you tell me where you want this Baddie to go.

What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?

There are so many amazing comedians I know at the festival, but I’m going to shoutout out my gays… Ashley Gavin, Catherine McCafferty, Anna Akana, Bianca Cristovao is a killer that you may already know but if you don’t, you will.

Plus – Jay Light has a real fun game show called Wrong! That he’s bringing over from The Comedy Store, and Mark Vigeant has ‘Mark Pleases You’ which is phenomenal and he is one of the hardest working goofballs with an inimitable raw energy you’ll just fall in love with.

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‘The Ghost of Alexander Blackwood’ (Venue 498, Aug 16-18)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“As Blackwood, Connor Bryson is approachably authoritative. As everyone else, Amy Murray is really rather sensational.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

How do you do theatre without the spoken voice? It’s such a meta question and the question matters because many great minds cannot interact with others using their own voice or receive the spoken voices of others. One such great mind was possessed of Alexander Blackwood. Blackwood – of the silk traders rather than the publishing family – was an Edinburgh native who took his advocacy global. He was the founder of the world’s first Deaf and Dumb Benevolent Society, now known as Deaf Action and headquartered in Albany Street.

We enter the Blackwood bar via a staircase bedecked and festooned with the history of the organization, its people, and its personalities. It’s an immersive time warp taking us back to March 1805 and the birth of Blackwood who would gradually lose his ability to hear following an attack of scarlet fever aged 7. On the far wall of the bar, seven hand-painted posters chronicle Blackwood’s life and accomplishments. They will come in useful as playwright Nadia Nadarajah has structured this seance to move backwards and forward through time. The effect is slightly discombobulating, a reminder that Blackwood’s lived experience was less than plain sailing. 

What comes across so magnificently in the script are the figures who scaffolded Blackwood and who were in turn scaffolded and supported by him. Albany Street is the home, hub, and centre of one of the most thriving, diverse, life-affirming communities in Scotland’s capital. Nadarajah’s script is a fine wee dram blended of affection, attention, and acclamation for the man in whose shadow so much shines.

As Blackwood, Connor Bryson is approachably authoritative. Here was a great man doing great things for others. Bryson holds the drama together. The timeline bends around him. As everyone else, Amy Murray is really rather sensational. There’s humour, some superb horseplay, plenty of give, and just enough take to make this onstage partnership one of the best double-handers of EdFringe24. The staging is 3 dimensional, up down and all around. The lighting is clever and appropriate amplifying the two-in-one performances that make this production such a credit to its subject and to his living legacy.

If this show leaves a question unanswered it is this: Is it possible (or appropriate) to dramatically examine figures such as Gandhi or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. without considering their public and private religious life? Blackwood was a man of sincere, abiding, and not untested faith whose CV highlights include becoming a pastor at the world’s first deaf church. The performance is bookended by heavy-duty quotations from scripture, but what did these mean to Blackwood himself? In the longer running times afforded in theatrical life beyond the Fringe, I hope this vital spark will be kindled. Jamie Rea’s production deserves to be staged again and again. Visual applause was invented for successes like this one.

For now, get your tailcoats on and go see this!

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‘Back to Black: The Music of Amy Winehouse’ (Venue 53, Aug 13-24)

Posted in Theatre by

“John Gardner wrote more James Bond novels than Ian Fleming. Similarly, we can hope to see Beau performing as Winehouse for a longer duration than her subject,who was, unquestionably, one of the most expressive contralto singers since Marian Anderson.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

She was an icon. She was a legend. She was gone from us far too soon. It is all but impossible to stroll through the popup bars and cafes of EdFringe24 without encountering the music of Amy Jade Winehouse (1983 – 2011). Her legacy of sound and song bends the fabric of musical space and time. The Winehouse catalogue is among the most accessibly, unashamedly classical set of jazz numbers in the known universe and, like her life, fits all too easily into an EdFringe hour’s worth of stage traffic.

Brighton-based Reine Beau Anderson Dudley has been performing as Winehouse for almost five years. John Gardner wrote more James Bond novels than Ian Fleming. Similarly, we can hope to see Beau performing as Winehouse for a longer duration than her subject,who was, unquestionably, one of the most expressive contralto singers since Marian Anderson.

Night Owl Shows do exactly what is stated on the tin. Yes, there’s a formula. Yes, there’s an uncomplicated lightness of touch. BUT, most importantly, there’s an unabashed reverence for and unashamed deference towards the music showcased and those who created it. Night Owl staged over 239 appearances at EdFringe19, receiving 7 five-star reviews and 5 awards with over 100 sold-out shows during the run. There is no mystery to their success. They’re chuffing brilliant at what they do and what they do is pure entertainment done proper.

Reine as Winehouse is neither a fawning parody nor is it a lifeless caricature. It is a sincere love letter. It is a gem set in a glittering ensemble of heavyweight talent in her backing band. Reine breathes life into each number with pitch-perfect audience work as well as lively banter and badinage with her onstage colleagues. The only thing thing that’s missing is an atmospheric smoke machine to counterbalance the tear-jerkingly accurate mirror being held up to a lost legend.

Get your unvented double-breasted thrift store coats on, do try not to throw them on the floor, and go see this!

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‘The Expulsion of Exulansis’ (Venue 9, Aug 13-17)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Rated: Outstanding by

“They are talking about mental health and well-being with the authority of those who know of what they speak.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Outstanding)

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows lists ‘exulansis’ as “the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it – whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness – which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.”

Siyani Sheth truly is expelling exulansis proving that in the world of mental health and well-being, the skilled and dexterous pen can be as mighty as the surgeon’s scalpel. Every member of the cast has experienced mental illness personally or through loved ones. They have come together to help share Siyani’s story and amplify the messages contained in her gigantically human-scale drama featuring depression, anxiety, eating disorders and self-harm. There is light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it takes more than one pair of eyes to see it.

This is a game of two halves. First, there is Siyani persona personalmente, her contemporary self navigating the past and present, trying to imagine a future less burdened by diminished bandwidth, noisy static, and deafening dead air. Second, there is Zahira Kayrooz as her younger self. Kayrooz is one to watch and is extremely watchable as she glides, trips and stumbles on a journey into places no parent would want their child to go. There is acting and there is being. Kayrooz is a being.. be-er… beingor…? She inhabits the role with daring and deliberation. Her choices are bold and courageous. Where the script hangs heavy or where the timeline is slightly unclear is Kayrooz’s gravity which stops it all spinning off into space.

Amanda Coetzer as the super-helpful teacher and as the super-unhelpful psychiatrist delivers a double whammy of light and dark. A good character actor can make you absolutely love or resolutely loathe the onstage creature they inhabit. It is a great artistic achievement to do both in the same hour of Fringe stage traffic. Similarly, Sofía De Yermo as the friend on the outside as well as the friend from the inside presents two very different personalities vital to the fizz and pop of this often funny piece.⁠ Matthew Warburton and James Anite deliver a more mixed bag of personalities not all of which achieve the proud heights of Warburton and Kayrooz’s most memorable scene together.

Dan! Why are you using surnames for the actors but the writer’s first name? Because there is another Sheth on stage and he is doing something ultra-extraordinary. ⁠Mitesh Sheth is playing himself, his daughter’s father, the link between the play’s two halves of now and then. ⁠Mitesh might not have been at the eye of the storm as Siyani was, but he had a view and a role as close as makes no odds. The power of this piece, the importance of this peace is as living testimony that survival is possible and that hope is not a myth.

We saw a baby giraffe learning to walk. Soon this piece will learn to stride. This herd of graceful, diverse, and farseeing talent deserves a special place in the wild landscape of EdFringe24. This is a company doing something very special indeed. They are talking about mental health and well-being with the authority of those who know of what they speak. As importantly (actually… no this is a theatre festival) MORE importantly they know HOW to say what needs to be said so that it can be heard loud and proud by all.

Get your ties up at the back coats on and go see this!

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