Category Archives: 5*

‘King Lear’ (Venue 33, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“An uncondescending condensing of the immortal classic by the acknowledged king of festive Fringe storytelling.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Pip Utton is the Edinburgh Fringe. His productions are insightful, playful, joyful, and memorable. He’s the most respected player among his fellow professionals and the most beloved among his devoted followers from across the footlights (me included). Getting out of a Pip Utton performance takes several ages of man. You go from mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms to second childishness and mere oblivion in the time it takes for everyone ahead of you in the exit line to gush their appreciation to the master. Utton is best known for his candid biopics. Churchill, Hitler, Dickens, Bacon, Thatcher, and Bob Dylan walk into a pub and the barman asks, “What will you have, Mr Utton?  This year we have simply Lear in an uncondescending condensing of the immortal classic by the acknowledged king of festive Fringe storytelling.

We enter to find no king, just Lear. Bereft of the trappings and dignity of power, here is a man who has learned the hard way that it is folly to grow auld without having first grown wise. In the depths of depression, with all his charms o’erthrown, Lear ponders on the cruel reversal of his fortune. Across town, at the National Portrait Gallery, nestled among the artistic jewels of Shakespeare’s great royal patron, James VI and I, are early sketches for the proposed flag of the newly reunited kingdoms of England and Scotland. This was one part of the Jacobean undoing of what, at the time, was seen as the historic Lear’s legacy – the disunion of the island of Britain. Lear is written as a deliberate contrast to James, the author, scholar, and father of sons, although, fun fact alert, it is through James’ only surviving daughter, married to the winter king of Bohemia, that we owe our present royal family.

Lear is Shakespeare’s other Shylock, a publicly bad character to whom bad things publicly happen. Utton’s instinctive feel for the humanity of the great and the good characters he uncannily inhabits downplays the madcap Toby Belchery of the recent retiree. Instead, Utton emphasises the subsequent family drama and ensuing unvirtuous betrayal. Although Catholic missionaries had begun arriving in China from the 1580s, precise knowledge of Confucianism and its emphasis on filial piety, moral governance, family and hierarchy was limited to a few pioneering Jesuits with whom Shakespeare could have had no correspondence. Yet there are uncanny parallels, not undisimilar to the Swan of Avon’s synthesis of the Florentine Machiavelli, who would not be translated into English until the 1640s. Truly, Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. Utton’s minimalist edition of Lear reopens the text like a scythe to an overgrown, weedy meadow.

Truth be told, I haven’t liked Lear since I first saw the play. It was that 1997 staging at the Leicester Haymarket, the one in which Kathryn Hunter became the first woman to play the title role professionally (I’m still amazed anyone could get paid for a performance that bad). Ponderous, maudlin, a script written for achktors to perform more than for audiences to be entertained by. Lear can bring out the worst kind of feet-apart shouty overemphasis when done to death. By stark contrast, EdFringe’s quiet legend, Pip Utton, brings the play and the role to life as never before or not in a long time. “Walk softly, and carry a big stick”, advised Theodore Roosevelt. Among his properties Utton has just such a big stick. His performance is as soft and rich as an ostrich egg boiled for an hour and is best enjoyed in the cheerful company of friends who know they are in for a big treat.

Come for the familiar megastar doing something a bit different. Stay for an intelligent, gentle performance. Get your magisterial cloaks on and go see this!

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‘Evelyn’ (Venue 39, until AUG 23rd)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding by

“Elena Guitti (as Evelyn) brings an extraordinary depth and clarity to the ordinary humdrum in this satire of daily life and routine.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Daily life sucks. So many things to wipe, dust, dry, and so forth. Too little time to do it all in. Plus, there’s the whole… you know… finding meaning in a seemingly vast and incomprehensible universe to be getting on with. Our protagonist, Evelyn, emerges onto the stage from inside of a washing machine. Cramped, hot, bothered, she is relentlessly bombarded by external noise which confuses without comforting.

Elena Guitti (as Evelyn) brings an extraordinary depth and clarity to the ordinary humdrum in this satire of daily life and routine. Guitti is the Artistic Director of Piccolo Teatro Libero, in Brescia, Lombardy. There she is at the centre of a vibrant cultural community space and respected theatre school which give this (undeniably) out there production a rooted and grounded feeling.

The show is written and directed by the storied and storytelling Giacomo Gamba, the versatile Italian actor, director, playwright, and teacher whose work blends movement, storytelling, and visual theatre. Gamba has created several award-winning productions such as ‘Petrol’ (2012) which won First Prize at the Valleyfield International Festival in Montreal, Canada, before landing at EdFringe16. This year’s show showcases movement and physicality that looks and feels like how humans look and feel. There is none of the uniform, artificial camp which dominates the mainstream. By the time Evelyn gets back in her washing machine, we have been on a journey into ourselves and back again.

Here is Fringe theatre doing what it is supposed to do. Challenging yet always engaging. Visual by visibly pushing ordinary boundaries. Here is a confident stride down a highend catwalk to who can tell exactly where. Here is a paced and pacy production that is as tight a use of the time as I am guessing Guitti finds the fit inside her domestic appliance. Come for a piece of physical theatre that is not afraid to be entertaining. Stay for a masterclass from some of the best and the brightest in the sector. Get your tabàros on and go see this!

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‘The Listies: Make Some Noise’ (Venue 17, until AUG 25th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding by

“Australia’s other great kids’ entertainment export.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Is it even EdFringe if you haven’t seen The Listies? Richard Higgins and Matt Kelly are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis before the bromance soured. Their formula is part The Goons, part Python, with a triple unfiltered shot of classic Roald Dahl added to the mix. If you’ve ever rewatched clips of Dahl performing to a crowd, then you have some idea of agitation and excitement charging through The Listies’ audience of 4-400 year aulds before, during, and after the magic and mayhem.

This year’s edition hasn’t got the same narrative arc, and I kind of wish it did, but I’m guessing I’m the only one. This show runs like a W.A.W.I.P. (Wacky Arm Waving Inflatable Person), it’s light but durable material through which so much energy is being pumped that it just stands up and does its thing. Even without a plot – have they lost it? – the onstage chemistry between the sardonic Higgins and the effervescent Kelly is what makes this the standout show of the moment – Australia’s other great kids’ entertainment export.

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with Lano and Woodley on the cover, Daughter 1.0 (10yrs) wrote: “I thought that the Listies was really funny. It had me constantly laughing really hard for a long time. I especially liked the part where the baby (which was accidentally bought on Amazon) sand a song while being sent to sleep. In the end, Baby would have to go to Space! It seemed the right place for him to go though. I also liked their adience Interactions like the orchestra they created. THe orchestra included: A squeaky crab, a triangle (played with a spoon) and burping. The worst part of the show was the end though, I could happily watch the Listies all day! I highly recommend this show.”

This show is a burptastic fartathon with off-colour jokes aplenty of which my sainted grandmothers would not have approved. Still, it takes intelligence and class to be this consistent. This is a silly show for smart people as well as for people who haven’t tried being smart yet. Life is short and childhood especially so. Parents and carers can rely on The Listies to make memories worth remembering. Come for the best comic pairing since Whoopee met Cushion. Stay for unarguably the best kids’ comedy show in town. Get your ripstop nylon coats on and go see this!

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‘Murder She Didn’t Write’ (Venue 8, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“This show has energy like a tower full of bells in a fenland flood has energy.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Let’s do something that never happens in a whodunit and cut to the chase. Does this show live up to the hype? Yes. Yes, it really, Really, REALLY does. How so? Because this cast could improv the phonebook (are those still a thing?) and make it funny. Besides which not one of them would look out of place in shot next to Carmichael as Wimsey or Suchet as Poirot. This show looks like this show should look. It’s as if Chris Van Allsburg had the idea of being trapped in a board game but stuck with Cluedo instead of pointlessly inventing Jumanji. 

We enter to find it’s Peter Baker in the detective’s hot seat today. Baker once played Trigger in ‘Only Fools And Horses The Musical’ at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, but today he’s in more Reg Rexis from ‘Health and Efficiency’ mode. He’s swave. He’s sexy. He’s a know-it-all who doesn’t quite remember to remember the corpse’s name.

Rachel Procter-Lane, Catlin Campbell (as Morag, the one what it was done to), Stephen Clements, Mathew Whittle, as well as Oh Bugger Chat GPT Can’t / Won’t Tell Me (as the one what done it) are an eclectic range of uniformly smart, sassy, and sophisticated improvers who fill the 70 minutes with stage traffic that’s as pacy as the Orient Express in summer. Campbell, the co-founder and Artistic Director of the Bristol Improv Theatre, has a properly lovely voice, more of that, please, especially since Sara Garrard is at the piano – seriously, Chat GPT I don’t think that’s the dude’s name (maybe their website needs updating?).

This show has energy like a tower full of bells in a fenland flood has energy. Sometimes it misses the really clever things I would have said. Today Campbell died with a caber up her backside – “It was alimentary, my Dear Watson.” Yet, this show is a witty and worthy annual presence in the city that’s home to both Conan-Doyle’s letter to his auld medical school lecturer crediting Joseph Bell as the inspiration for Holmes, as well as Doyle’s PhD thesis on syphilis – both written in a hand so neat as to unmask him instantly as a total bam.

Improv either works or it doesn’t. This format really works as stagecraft and light entertainment. It’s a crowd pleaser because the crowd is pleased, as well they should be. Come for the current cult classic. Stay for Christiean sumptuousity. Get your Burberry trench coats on and go see this!

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‘Biff to the Future’ (Venue 3, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Butt-head-ressed by a pedantic depth of knowledge of and nerdish insight into the immortally classic original material.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Nae Bad)

Blockbuster (yet cult) movie franchise PLUS double Olivier Award-nominated direction PLUS writing and performance by a Reduced Shakespeare Company alumn EQUALS theatre so sensational it might have been routed through a flux capacitor. “Tell me, Future Boy, who’s President of the United States in 1985?” There’s a charm and an innocence to the movies, none of which is generated by one of the greatest movie villains of all time, the bozo bully Biff Tannen – the possibly probably love child of Shooter McGavin and Dr Evil.

Here are elements of the trilogy mixed, mashed, and lovingly upcycled into a homage worthy of the great Thomas F. Wilson himself. The stories are told from Biff’s perplexed and (rather unpolysyllabic) perspective. As all of the parts, Joseph Maudsley, hits all the notes, from Marty McFly on C6 (≈ 1046.5 Hz) down to the irascible Mr. Strickland on C2 (≈ 65.4 Hz). It’s like Maudsley’s playing an 80s electric keytar – which he is at one point. There’s prop gags, word play, surrealist riffs and improv, plus some properly totes hilar audience interaction, all butt-head-ressed by a pedantic depth of knowledge of and nerdish insight into the immortally classic original material.

Biff in the movies is a rather two-dimensional character – more Gilray than Hogarth. The genius of Maudsley’s approach is to add on existential dimensions that have you feeling pangs of sympathy for Hill Valley’s gobbiest gobshite like he’s sitting in his tent the night before Bosworth Field feeling sorry for himself.

I properly love Piccolo Tent at Assembly George Square Gardens, but it’s not quite the perfect stage for this staggeringly affectionate tribute. There’s one prop gag which is impossible to see from the back, which is a shame because it’s one of the funniest. Maudsley fills the space like he’s filling a 1946 Ford Super DeLuxe with manure. The comedy piles on and on, for the first and only time this Fringe, I am wishing the running time was longer.

Come for the nostalgia. Stay for the freshness. Put your custom-made red quilted puffer vests on and go see this!

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‘The Bubble Show®’ (Venue 3, until AUG 17th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Mr Bubbles has toured the world with this show and every step on his journey has made it faster, higher, stronger.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Happiness is very much like bubbles, and bubbles are very much like happiness. The potential for both is everywhere. Coming in every shape and in size, it just needs someone special to make the magic happen right there before our eyes. Beloved EdFringe fixture Mr Bubbles is that someone special. Over the years, his deceptively simple act has enchanted audiences young and auld, including some who were young and are now a wee bit aulder.

We enter Piccolo Tent at Assembly George Square Gardens to find the instantly recognisable and some less familiar tricks of Mr Bubble’s trade, as well as the costumes and props which make this show a game of two halves. First, there’s the science section. Helium bubbles. Square bubbles. Bubbles within bubbles. Bubbles with children inside. Bubbles filled with smoke, every bubble a wonder and delight. Second, there’s the sensory, super-chilled section. Finally, there are the supermassive (no, seriously, they’re chuffing ginormous) bubbles.

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with a woodcut of Agnes Pockels doing the dishes on the cover, Daughter 1.0 (10yrs) wrote: “I really enjoyed the bubble Man. I really liked how he created all kinds of Interesting bubbles. I also liked his adience Interactions and how he was bubbly and exiting. I also liked going Inside a bubble. I also enjoyed his bubble animals and his beautiful bubble art.”

A lifetime ago, in 2019, I wrote of Mr Bubbles, “He is young and his show feels like it will ripen with age.” Six years on, and that prediction has been fulfilled and then some. The same beautiful, delightful, twinkling energy is here. The same pace, precision, and purpose is here, but there’s that same powerful difference as between a photo taken with The Bubble Space Telescope versus one snapped by James Webb. The depth, the contrasts, the overall impact is lightyears ahead of where we were.

Mr Bubbles has toured the world with this show and every step on his journey has made it citius, altius, fortius. It is an Olympian feat, and rediscovering The Bubble Show® feels akin to a beachcomber finding blue seaglass or a narwhale’s tusk. In the delightful setting of Piccolo Tent, this show is fast approaching utter perfection.

Come for the bubbles. Stay for the bubbles. Get your Dolce & Gabbana 1990s Bubble Wrap Jackets on and go see this!

 

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‘Knightclub’ (Venue 53, until AUG 23rd)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“A pun-tastic crowd pleaser that’s as smart as it is sensationally funny.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Spruce Moose Comedy build on their growing reputation for zany antics and playful performances in this latest comedy rocking our EdFringe world. This year, it’s monks getting into bad habits. Tamothy and Brother Jack are dreaming of life beyond the cloister and the cloying smugosity of their Abbot. Tamothy dreams of being a touring tournament knight and with the beefy and by no means adverse to bending an already broken taboo Brother Jack by his side, who’s to stop him… except a scheming rival and a pack of dastardly Frenchmen determined to wreak havoc, wreck the peace of Europe, and capture the King.

Here is that most glorious thing, a pun-tastic crowd pleaser that’s as smart as it is sensationally funny. This is the most fun cast you are likely to find. Horribly young, horribly cocky, horribly talented, having a horribly lovely time. It’s enough to make you stick Spruce Moose Comedy in your must-see column year after year. Their justifiable confidence in the work and in each other keeps the momentum steady as we hurtle through scene after scene packed with mirthful mayhem.

There’s slapstick, wordplay, character comedy, history jokes, farce and an (almost) deep and meaningful meditation on the value of friendship and the dangers of temptation. At 50 minutes, the show is razor sharp and packed to the gunwales. This is a cast you’ll be boasting of having seen back when. Come for the silliness. Stay for the feeling of being in on something at the beginning. Get your chainmail coats on and go see this!

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‘I’m Not Saying We Should, But What If We Did?’ (Venue 16, until AUG 16th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“As Maud and Agnes, Harriet Pringle and Lizzie White are sensational.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Nae Bad)

38%. That’s how much domestic violence rates increase when England loses a match. Between the fallen angel and the rising ape, few other statistics lay quite so bare the glaring awfulness of men’s behaviour towards women. In so many contexts. Across class and creed, culture and class something is wrong and it isn’t getting right by itself.

We enter to find ourselves about to go live. The TV studio is abuzz as aspiring leaders Maud and Agnes get ready to be grilled about their clickbait policy options – no men allowed out of the house without written permission, no men in gynaecology, no men allowed to drive. It’s crazy because these things are being suggested for men. Then again, go next door to The Surgeons’ Hall exhibition on ‘Women in Surgery’ and you can see how things once were in the city now so proud to have produced pioneers like Sophia Jex-Blake and Elsie Inglis.

This production asks some pointed, impertinent, and ultra-provocative questions. Are we trying to solve our problems, or are certain clownish performative politicians surfing the tides of frustration and despondency simply for effect? If a man can be elected to the White House or to Downing Street by playing a bafoonish persona for all it is worth, why not two women literally Pagliaccing themselves before the cameras? 

As Maud and Agnes, Harriet Pringle and Lizzie White are sensational. For all the comic exaggeration and effect, these are two highly nuanced performances which also deliver the counterbalancing expressions of anger, loss, and betrayal with heart-string-tugging urgency. Surely scaffolded by exceptionally strong supporting performances by Liz McKenna, Abbie Want and Mukuka Jumah, I have a feeling we will be hearing great things from Pringle and White in the not-too-distant future when this caustic and challenging (but bang on the money) piece of juvenilia (with its unaccountably clumsy ending) has been chalked up to experience.

Here is a show taking risks and winning. Here is a company (Minotaur of the University of East Anglia) living up to its reputation while refusing to rest on past laurels. If the plan was for ‘I’m Not Saying We Should, But What If We Did?’ to showcase talent, push boundaries, and challenge prevailing approaches and orthodoxies, then… job done. Top marks.

Come for the absurdly urgent premise. Stay because you’re going to want to tell folks you saw these performers back when. Get your coats on and go see this! (Chaps, please remember to ask permission of the relevant matriarch before leaving the house.)

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‘Paris in a Jazz Age: The Memoirs of Eloise Defleur’ (Venue 43, until AUG 16th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Cabaret, Musical Theatre, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“As Eloise, Airlie Scott, sparkles like a coupe of champagne at one of Gatsby’s shindigs.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

There are moments in human history which excite the potential time-travelling tourist more than others. Shakespeare’s London and Edo-era Tokyo have to be pretty high on the list, but Paris in a Jazz Age might well top the itinerary. The Hot Jazz Vagabonds have hit upon a genius way to conjure the glitz and the glamour, the triumph and the tragedy of that sparkling moment of bold artistic achievement. They have created a spoken word memoir, a parade of memories recalled to us by a charming central character, Eloise DeFleur. Eloise is a British upper-crust vocalist who arrived on the scene to get down and flirty in the nightclubs and cafes of the French capital at its most intoxicating. On these pacy vignettes is hung a string of familiar jazz hits played as well as they have ever been played by anyone, anywhere, anywhen.

As Eloise, Airlie Scott, sparkles like a coupe of champagne at one of Gatsby’s shindigs. Best known for her Doris Day Show, Scott looks the part in a trés chic red sequin number that leaves plenty of room for fancy footwork. Eloise’s story is told with a passion so intense that it lifts us from our (really rather comfortable) Space Amphitheatre seats and onto rickety auld wooden numbers in a smokey backroom off the Rue Reine d’Écosse. Scott’s audience interactions are lively and elegant, her voice strong yet supple, owning each phrase and lyric like they were especially written for her. The band she’s leading are simply magnifique. Not a note not in place, not a beat missed, every swing a sensation. 

This show was originally twice the length, and I would crawl over broken glass or maybe even use a French public toilet (if I really had to), to see the full version. As it is, distilled into its most essential, most vivacious, and most memorable triple-shot espresso form, it is a triumphal blend of music, theatre, comedy, and romance – the must-see late-night musical marvel of the moment. Come for the jazz. Stay for the sass. Get your cream double-breasted overcoats on and go see this!

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‘Doktor Kaboom: Under Pressure!’ (Venue 33, until AUG 25th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 5*, Rated: Outstanding by

“I really recommend this show and I hope to see it next EdFringe.”

Editorial Rating: 7 Stars (Outstanding)

In the (hopefully) unlikely event that Doktor Kaboom decides he’s not going to come to Edinburgh in August anymore, I would genuinely be left wondering if there would be any point in EdFringe continuing. If only one of the thousands of shows on offer could be beamed out into the universe to tell alien life something about ourselves, I’d want it to be this one. This is a deeply sensitive show for young people about the pressures of the world we let ourselves build for them. It’s also a crazy, madcap science show that has our little ones bouncing in their seats with the unfiltered joy of knowing they were right to be soooooo excited about seeing this again.

We enter to discover a stage covered in scientific apparatus. There’s the table tennis vacuum cannon. There’s a smiling balloon on a Zimmer Frame walker, the latex of which keeps popping from the chill of a nearby beaker of dry ice – much to the comic annoyance of the stagehand. There’s something behind laboratory-grade shatter-proof perspex. And, is that, yes, I think it is the latest edition of the poker table hovercraft peaking from out the back? The demonstrations we are about to witness explain the scientific process. They amplify even the most latent interest in how and why the material world works. They create a soulful bedrock on which parents and carers can build the scaffolds which will support, guide, and nurture the young hearts and minds entrusted to our care.

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with Dame Katherine Grainger DBE on the cover, Daughter 1.0 (10yrs) wrote: “I really enjoyed Doktor Kabom under pressure. I thought how he got the audience to interact was amazing. He was funny and clever and made sure he (and everyone else) was safe. My favourite bit was when he got someone to ride his home-made hovercraft, made out of a plastic garden table-top and a shower curtain with three holes in it. I really recommend this show and I hope to see it next EdFringe.”

There is a moment on stage with one of the young audience members which best explains just how Doktor Kaboom has earned 21 stars from us in just 3 years. It’s got a little too much for the wee volunteer, and she wants out. Doktor Kaboom validates and celebrates her choice to stop. No fuss. No recriminations. No cheap laughs. The whole point of this show is to tell and retell kids that they have agency, they get to make choices about themselves and their space. It’s a powerful lesson not lost amid the mayhem and fun. In the lower half of Auld Father Time’s hourglass, Grandad, the Edinburgh University professor who would certainly open an airlock and vent the Fringe into space if he could, is delighted. He’s never seen liquid Carbon Dioxide before – apparently that is very cool.

Come for the rehearsed spontaneity of a show and persona that keep getting better and better. Stay for the crowd, it’s the best audience in the city. Get your Jeeves-unapproved orange tux jackets on and go see this!

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