Category Archives: 5*

‘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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‘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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‘Do This One Thing for Me’ (Venue 49, Aug 9-11, 13-18, 20-26)

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

“What we have here is a perfect combination of all the great elements necessary for a truly benchmark #EdFringe production against which all others will be measured.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

When we think of Greece we think of Santorini skylines, wrecked Clyde-built ships on stunning beaches, picturesque olive groves tinkling to the sound of goatbells. If you’d only watched the not-all-bad 2001 silver-screen adaptation of de Bernières’ overnight classic ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ you’d be forgiven for not knowing that the second half of the novel is a heartbreaking chronicle of Greece’s post-war civil war, one of too many chapters in which human folly and violent fragility are let slip in the cradle of Europe and paradiso descends into inferno.

As an Axis-occupied nation during the war, Greece suffered all the horrors and torments of industrial genocide. Over 80% of Greece’s prewar Jewish population was murdered. Of the 43,000 Jews in Salonika, Greece’s largest prewar Jewish community, over 40,000 perished. The numbers are similarly stark and savage in the hill town where Beni Elias and his family lived.

While attending high school in Long Beach, New York, Beni’s daughter, Jane, was assigned a 10-page, typed essay on World War II. That assignment blossomed into a nascent exploration of Beni’s journey through the war, an exploration that is currently taking #EdFringe24 by storm and with good reason. There are many great and necessary stories told in Scotland’s capital during any given August. There are many great storytellers blending their professional talent and personal insight. What we have here is a perfect combination of all the great elements necessary for a truly benchmark #EdFringe production against which all others will be measured.

Beni’s wartime story is uncomprehendable. The scale of his suffering, agonies, and terror. The continuous loss of friends and family sans dignity, sans pity, sans space to grieve in. The banality of evil. The ordinariness of suffering. The ultimate impossibility of recovering what was taken. This is a portrait of a patriarch and it is the landscape of a relationship between a regular little girl, a not atypical young woman, and her much-loved, much-admired father. Beni would have been a big figure to coexist with on whatever path life had taken him on. As a Survivor, he is lovingly painted as humanity’s human – a towering presence yes, and a toweringly infuriating figure to live with on those rare(ish) days which (occasionally) happen between us Babas and our κοριτσάκια when wires or opinions get crossed.

In this astonishingly candid, incredibly relatable tale of family drama and global catastrophe, Jane Elias has gifted something wonderful to the world. This is a script that will live forever as a testament to memories which must never be forgotten. Here is a portrait of a parent that does honour to those who went before as well as to those who were stolen before their time. Here is the best play, the best production of #EdFringe24. Here is something unmissable.

Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Achilles, Death of the Gods.’ (Venue 152, Aug 9-10, 12-17, 19-25)

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

“If you like the Ian McKellen reading of ‘The Odyssey’ you will love Jo Kelen’s telling of ‘The Illiad’.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”

To be honest, I had never expected to encounter the muse herself but here she is persona personalmente. Memory’s daughter is a dark-eyed classicist with a grip on her material tighter than how a Cyclops holds his dinner. We enter to discover nothing more complicated than a camping stool and a table, the latter dressed in red with three candles as well as jugs for water and wine. This is as close as many of us will get to the authentic experience of having a storyteller rock up to our mead hall, take the best seat by the fire, and sing a story for their supper.

And what a story we have tonight. The hugely ambiguous amorality tale of when the barbarians were at the gates. Women plundered like cattle. Men butchered like goats for the spit. The highest of high drama so familiar and yet… and this is the good bit… delivered so fresh. This is a story that lives in our cultural marrow, yet Jo Kelen tell it as fresh as the spring flowers which upsprang from the Earth on which Zeus and Hera were making the divinity with two backs. If you like the Ian McKellen reading of ‘The Odyssey’ you will love Jo Kelen’s telling of ‘The Illiad’. She is as poised and perfectly to the point as when Colin Firth beats up a pub full of yobos at the start of ‘The Kingsman’ franchise.

This is an EdFringe show and with only 45 minutes runtime so something had to be cut. Kelen has made the bold (and certainly definitely probably controversial) choice to leave out the gods – who have taken themselves off to lounge around in fruit baskets at the Paris Olympics. What is left is more. More of the bromance. More of the anger. More of the self-centeredness. More of the sacrifice. More of heroism and yes, more of the brutality and more of the suffering. This is an unapologetically bold and self-confident production which makes no effort to accommodate our Celtic predisposition towards swiftly flowing changes of rhythm and tone. This is the classics done classically and, if you are fortunate and sensible enough to secure a ticket, it will be recalled for time immemorial as a classic of EdFringe24.

Get your bronze armoured coats on and go see this!

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‘The Old Queen’s Head’ (Venue 8, Aug 9-22)

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

“David commands attention in the way that the Field Officer in Brigade Waiting commands the Trooping of the Colour.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the head of Queen Elizabeth II appeared on more coins, stamps, in more photos, on more film, sculptures, and paintings than any other human being in history. “We have to be seen to be believed” is a quotation often attributed to our late, much-lamented monarch. So it’s not at all surprising that many people feel a deep personal (spiritual even) bond with the longest-serving head of the Church of England.

David Patterson adopted Elizabeth as his spirit guide early in life. It was something he shared with his grandmother and carried with him through school and high school and on to the lofty heights of student politics at East Fife College. Elizabeth was there, in a sense, at every step of his journey as a closeted gay man. Coming out for David involved asking some deep and meaningful questions about his self-imposed, Elizabeth-inspired mantra to avoid being “’too much, too obvious, too different.”

This is a deeply personal story ringing with universal truths. David commands attention in the way that the Field Officer in Brigade Waiting commands the Trooping of the Colour. His material is mustered, drilled, rehearsed and regimented BUT it is never stiff or stilted. This is a lively performance sparkling with spontaneity like a tira sparkles on the head of a blushing newlywed. The set is precisely the right kind of minimal, reflecting each stage of this coming-out journey. Every detail of this production has been considered and curated so as to highlight and understate in all the right places. This is how storytelling at the Fringe should look and feel.

Come for the personal journey. Stay for the lively portraiture of the supporting characters in David’s life. Get your royal rainbow coats on and go see this!

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‘Chokeslam’ (Venue 8, Aug 9-10, 12-25)

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

“Tegan Verheul might not be doing any of the moves. She might not be that comfortable standing on a chair even, but she delivers an inspiringly fearless performance.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

I don’t know anything about professional wrestling except that it has something to do with ‘Moana’ and the greatest movie ever made – ‘The Scorpion King’. Tegan Verheul on the other hand fell head over heels in love with pro-wrestling even as she fell in and then out of love with her husband. It’s not hard to see why creative people would be drawn into the high-energy, high-stakes, high-cannot-believe they just did that world within a world of big muscles, big personalities, and even bigger rivalries.

Pro wrestling immediately captures the imagination in a way that only the very top six or seven Fringe productions about the impacts of climate change on inland colonies of kittiwakes during the prohibition era can. Is mass appeal crass appeal? Who chuffing cares if it makes people happy?!

Tegan Verheul might not be doing any of the moves. She might not be that comfortable standing on a chair even, but she delivers an inspiringly fearless performance that will leave you feeling like you too could just about pull off an Inverted Death Valley driver on the grandmother of whichever EBay bidder it was who jumped in at the last minute and stole that mint condition Saraya Jade Bevis action figure from under your nose.

Just like the megastars she’s describing, Verheul has a pedigree scaffolding her rise to greatness. I don’t know if The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama or the Guildhall School of Music and Drama offer programmes in pro wrestling, but maybe it’s time they did. It is a joy to hear one highly trained professional throw so much love and light on the work, dedication, struggles, and legacy of those working another cultural seam. This is a show that hits all the high notes (with a steel chair) even for an admittedly disinterested newbie. This is a show that simply crushes those same high notes (and makes them cry for their meemaw) with the wrestling super fans in the audience who are on the edge of their seats from the get-go and on their feet stomping like Rey Mysterio just slammed Silo Sam into the mat.

The show is structured with a double-helix. It’s a fan’s starstruck journey and it’s also a woman’s heartsick journey. There is a pretty hefty shovel in my garage and I would take it kindly if you would bash my brains out with it the very moment I ever turn down a woman like Tegan Verheul. But somebody did! Repeatedly! leaving Tegan feeling starved of love even as her cup of wrestling friendships overflowed.

If you have ever felt underappreciated, this is a show for you. If you have ever wondered what it takes to step back, re-evaluate, pick a new life course, abandon the disappointing but familiar present and take a chance on the possibility that you too deserve to be loved and happy, then this is a show for you. If you are totally unmoved by pro wrestling but simply love a cracking bit of storytelling delivered by a professional at the top of their game and loving it, then this a show for you.

Get your Wrestlemania coats on and go see this!

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Jess Carrivick: Attention Seeker (WIP) at Venue 236 until 24th AUG (not 11th or 18th)

Posted in 5*, Comedy, EdFestivals 2024, Greenside, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“…a must-see for anyone who loves comedy; it would also serve as a masterclass for those who hope to bring a one-hander show to the Fringe.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Regular readers of this site will know that I’ve got a bit of a thing about solo shows this year. They’ve been one of the mainstays of the Fringe for decades (especially one-woman shows) and are becoming a genre all of their own. The quality of such shows can be highly variable, but this one is the best I’ve seen this summer by a country mile.

Jess Carrivick is a self-confessed “almost” ex-child TV star nepo baby and in this show she tells the story of her life. In a whirlwind of character vignettes, multiple costume changes, bits, skits, and sketches, she whisks us on an absurdist journey which showreels her first ten years that peaked with BBC TV sitcom stardom in the noughties. Apart from one genuinely tearful episode this is a laugh-a-minute romp, see-sawing between hilarious observations on the mundanity of post-fame life and peeks behind the barbed wire curtain of celebrity telly.

As both performer and writer (2021 BAFTA Rockcliffe shortlist), Carrivick pulls off a tour de force in the small black-box Mint Studio, part of the Greenside @ George Street venue. An experienced improv and sketch comedienne, she’s one of those confident and engaging performers it’s impossible not to like. In several silent routines, she has the audience in stitches of laughter with her range of facial expressions and stares that speak a thousand words. A brilliant caricaturist, she evokes a number of showbiz and “civilian” stereotypes with mercilessly effective style and aplomb; regularly complemented by her own deprecating self-criticism. In some gently merciful and non-embarrassing audience participation, she effectively gives a little stage skill coaching to those punters keen to join in the fun. A skilled performer to her fingertips, Carrivick even manages to entertain whilst getting changed behind her costume rail.

At 45 minutes, this is an ideal piece of quickfire entertainment to squeeze in between other shows as you sample the delights of George Street. It’s a must-see for anyone who loves comedy; it would also serve as a masterclass for those who hope to bring a solo show to the Fringe.

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‘3 Chickens Confront Existence’ (Venue 139, Aug 8-11, 13-18, 20-26)

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

“Three superbly measured and talented performances.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Go see this. Seriously stop reading this review and go see this show. This. Is. It. This is THE show to see this EdFringe. Ludicrous premise. Superb chicken costumes (by the lady who made the hats for ‘Boardwalk Empire’). A genuinely thought-provoking script. Three superbly measured and talented performances.

Three chickens, each alike in indignity, in a battery farm awaiting the inevitable. Can they find meaning? Can they discover purpose? Can they be anything greater than their crappy situation? Over the course of 60 tightly caged minutes, we see ourselves as we are – trapped, vulnerable, pecking for a pellet of joy or comfort as the end draws near. Will it be a welcome release or simply a deeper form of darkness? You’ll laugh till you cry and then you’ll just cry.

Three beings are trapped in a world not of their making. They are confined as confined can get and yet so much of not a lot happens. There are rivalries and jealousies. There are quiet moments of reflection, sudden bursts of terror, and always the ever-present shadow of the inevitable end – gruesome, heartless, unstoppable.

If you aren’t triggered by the themes in this show, then there is something wrong with you. If you can walk away feeling the same after as you did before, then there is something wrong with you. Theatre is supposed to be triggering. Theatre is supposed to change how we look at the world. Theatre is an unkind mirror. Get your real feather coats on and go see what’s staring back at you!

 

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