Category Archives: *Ratings

‘Ancient Coins of Forgotten Kingdoms’ (Venue 605, until AUG 27th)

Posted in *Written Interviews, 3*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Nae Bad by

“A masterclass in infotainment done right.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Hands up. I picked this one. Hammered coins are beautiful and children should be supported to see their artistry and know something of their history. Few everyday objects have such capacity to give one chronological vertigo. Time bends around them. Lost voices. Lost stories. Lost lives. To hold one is to form one link in a chain of transactions that might have bought a horse in a steppe-side community long ago, been plundered from a burning city, lost on the Spanish Main or been used to illustrate a parable about what does (and does not) belong to Caesar.

Mark Saltveit is a stand-up comedian (of which there are many) and prominent palindromist (of which there are fewer). He’s also a collector of ancient coins. In this cute little show, performed in the Fringiest of Fringe venues, his enthusiasm is enthralling and (I’m so glad to say) contagious. His description of how the design of the tetradrachm of Philip of Macedon – with which Alexander the Great’s father paid his Celtic mercenaries – morphed and adapted down the centuries is a masterclass in infotainment done right.

Less successful is his reference to Celtic FC as an “English” club, which he almost compounded into a spontaneous lynching, “but surely when they get good enough they can get promoted to the premier league?” Also, don’t forget your laptop charger.

Daughter 1.0 (8 years) wrote this in her notebook, the one with a tetradrachm on which the obverse horse has morphed into a unicorn on the cover: “I went to The Roman coins show. When I whent in I saw lots of chairs and a man talking. He talked about Roman coins and what they had on the front. Then he made a place for children to make play-doue coins. And a place to look and hold the coins. I like the bit where we got to hold the coins.”

Saltveit did exactly what he promised on the tin and I could not be more grateful. He has planted a seed which an over-produced public museum event would never have germinated. Like a bag of recently minted silver Gloucester half pennies carefully buried in the fens to appropriately age, this production needs a little TLC to be shown off to best effect. But this is the real deal. Authenticity guaranteed. In what other show can children handle authentic pirate’s treasure?

Come for the open window into eons passed. Stay for passion as performance art. Get your coats on and go see this!

 

‘The Madwoman’ (Venue 29, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“One of the most visually exciting shows this EdFringe.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

We enter to be pleasantly surprised by the drapes. Oscar Wilde famously (and accurately quipped) that violence was endemic in America because the curtains were so ugly. These hand-painted, floor-to-ceiling, mini-mega masterpieces are a delight, exactly the kind of thing you would imagine a company funded by a mural painting day job would have on tap. I especially like how the statues shown seem to be stepping off their pedestals and at least one has (appropriately) been decapitated.

Centre stage, imprisoned in a world of her own is Théroigne de Méricourt. She has been held captive for twenty years, stepping out of the French Revolution and into an asylum. Thousands of other wide-eyed revolutionaries have lost their heads, she’s lost her mind. She ekes out an existence, meditating on the wheel of fortune which has taken her from the life of a provincial orphan to grand places in the company of grand people.

Born in Belgium, Théroigne de Méricourt became an opera star and orator. She was among the women who marched on Versailles in October 1789. Dressed in a man’s riding habit she attended key National Assembly meetings in the run up to the passing of the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’. She organised. She agitated. She was too pro-Girondin to survive the emptying of Marat’s bathwater. She became a problem. She became an inmate.

This is a production of supple strength and subtly. A family affair in which two Texan mural-painting sisters (with costumes by their mom, who also sewed the drapes) have brought together one of the most visually exciting shows this EdFringe. As Théroigne de Méricourt, Cara Johnston is intense like being stuck in an elevator with an angry swan is intense. A reference to the Hot Crazy Matrix would not go down well these days, so I won’t make it. But if I did, Johnston’s performance would be off the charts. The details of her performance are exquisite, from her browned-up teeth to her pitch-perfect vocal work. Nothing is out of place. Every stitch of canvas is set to keep this hell for leather script on course. Johnson turns our favourite bijou space in Edinburgh into a tardis – infinitely, impossibly bigger on the inside than on the out.

Come for the history lesson about a woman who must not be forgotten. Stay for one of the most interstellar, and yet movingly down-to-Earth, performances you’ll see. Get your tailcoats on and go see this!

Read the company’s #EdFringeTalk with us here!

 

‘The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria’ (Venue 23, until AUG 28th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“Quite simply the best historical writing to appear at the Fringe in years.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Vox Populi vox dei. The best thing about EdFringe is how each year one or two shows mysteriously break away from the hurly-burly and have a super successful run ft. packed houses and glowing reviews. The wisdom of crowds is rarely celebrated by the curators of our culture and politics. But democracy works. People power rights more wrongs, fights more injustices, and slays more dragons than the whole banal host of 2D cartoon superheroes. So it’s pleasing to me (and the high horse I ride around town) that the breakout success of EdFringe ‘23 is a play about how individuals working together can make good things happen, or rather make bad things slow to a stop.

Out of the Forest Theatre is the company that wide-eyed creative children should dream of running away to join. They blend live production elements like master champagne makers blend vintages. The results are sparkling.

Joseph Cullen & Sasha Wilson’s script is quite simply the best historical writing to appear at the Fringe in years. Eastern and Central Europe – past, present, and future – have been visited often by us Brits, but the full discovery is still someway off. Vikings yes. Columbus no. Ostentatiously reading the Daily Mail in Brooke’s Bar before the show, because I love the sound of tutting, I read that Albania is finally being recognised as the destination tourist hotspot such wonderful people and such a spectacular place deserve. The British horizon is widening beyond the channel and the Rhein, waltzing towards the Blue Danube. Similarly, Cullen & Wilson’s chronicle of Bulgarian 20th-century history plants a flag for many of us (oh how British) marking territory deserving of being less incognito. It’s witty. It’s intricate. It’s monumental. In the year Georgi Gospodinov became the first Bulgarian to win the Booker Prize, this drama is a landmark achievement.

And it’s upstaged by Hannah Hauer-King’s direction which is brisk without being busy, fun but never fussy. The staging is in turn upstaged by the performances which are as sharp and to the point as the original penmanship of the Pernik sword. As Boris, Cullen seduces the audience, portraying the monarch in a grayscale rainbow of loveable contradictions. There’s more than a little of Terry Jones’ in Cullen as he Chapmanesequly plays the one main character while the rest of the company twist and turn like a twisty turny thing, morphing into a host of supporting roles bold and subtle.

There’s much that is bold, little that is subtle, and nothing that is not tremendous about Lawrence Boothman’s performance as the king’s first minister. Neither is there anything banal about his evil, he is the iron-hearted fist in a bloodsoaked velvet glove on Ernst Röhm’s bedside table the morning after the night before. David Leopold is solid and unsparing kicking at the fourth wall like Luca Brasi told him to do some damage but not go too far. Leopold keeps the production pacy, like how a waterfall makes a river move faster. Sasha Wilson didn’t write herself a part as fun as Boris, but she delivers much of the piece’s range, nuance, and no-nonsense edge-of-your-seat delivery, the hallmark stamps that confirm the solid gold content. As the curtain falls it is Clare Fraenkel who wears the crown. She is the lynchpin, the beating moral compass which makes this production tick so, so many boxes.

Come for the faintly Marina Lewycka obscurity of the subject matter. Stay for the best writing, staging, and performances you will see at this (and many other) EdFringe vintages. Get your Bulgarian sheepskin coats on and go see this!

Read the company’s #EdFringeTalk with us here!

 

‘Olaf Falafel’s Super Stupid Show (20% More Stupider)’ (Venue 33, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“This show has pace like you’d feel on the inside of a barrel at the edge of a waterfall.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Olaf Falafel is an EdFringe favourite on course to become an EdFringe legend. Hugely admired for his adult stand-up, it’s the material tailored to kids which will win him immortality. We enter to find him on stage and filling the room with energy levels that put Krakatoa to shame. Many a true word is spoken in jest and his opening remark that “fun needs structure” hits the nail on the proverbial. “How does a laser cut?” I’m forever asking my girls. “With focus!” they (are supposed) to reply. Olaf’s genius is his structure and, like William Henry Barlow did with the roof of St Pancras station, he leaves his engineering in plain sight to the wonder and amazement of all. Without structure, there would be no pace and this show has pace like you’d feel on the inside of a barrel racing towards the top of a waterfall.

Daughter 1.0 (8yrs) wrote in her notebook (the one with a picture of William Henry Barlow bungee jumping off the Clifton Suspension bridge on the cover): “I went to Olaf fluffel’s Supa Stupid Show! when I walked in I saw lots of chairs and a big screen. In the Show We Sang Songs went fishing for insults, Played don’t look at the horse and we played can you get your sausage in my funny bag. He also told lots of jokes. I liked the bit were we drew bum-faced snails and when at the end I got a new book I had lots of fun.”

I’m not a super huge fan of the Sponge Bob Square Pants section, but maybe I’m more of a prude when my girls are in the room than when I’m flying solo at a late-night Adults Only Magic Show. The show was such a joy because the laughs were directly shared with Daughter 1.0. Oftentimes, producers put in two levels of comedy with some jokes and references saved for the grownups. By contrast, Olaf’s is a sprawling bungalow of blissful belly laughs delivered fast and furious. Come for the legend, stay for the perfection, get your bum-faced snail coats on and go see this.

 

‘Last Stand on Honey Hill’ (Venue 8, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Nae Bad by

“For a one-woman show, there’s a lively crowd on stage.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

We live at the low point of human stupidity. Our ancestors may have lived lives nasty brutish and short – but they didn’t own any plastic Harry Potter wands. No seriously. Think about it. What is a wand? It’s a stick. Where do sticks come from? Trees. Sticks literally grow on trees. Trees are everywhere. But we are so stupid that we part with our hard-earned cash (or as likely dip deeper into debt) in order to purchase plastic likenesses of sticks possessing none of the magical properties that transform a stick into a wand. All that expenditure. All that economic effort. All that tapping of petroleum-based science, and for what? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

In this context, the city of Cambridge is growing. We pretend that Cambridge is growing because of the booming biomedical science sector. But, in truth, a city that makes its living selling little pieces of paper certifying that the bearer is not stupid, cannot help but grow in times such as these. This exponential growth creates a problem. Cambridge has an international reputation as a rather nice place. Not quite Venice, but certainly not Houston. Stupidity will obviously spoil Cambridge. And, once spoiled by flagrant stupidity, it is unlikely that those locally-sourced little pieces of “I’m certifiably not stupid” paper will retain their global prestige and value. If you are reading this 50 or 100 years hence, chances are that the Cambridge bubble has long since burst and been forgotten. Cambridge, it will be recorded, was monumentally, uninspiringly slow to adapt, post-pandemic, to new and better economic models that regarded overconsumption as a failure not the purpose.

‘Last Stand on Honey Hill’ is one woman’s effort to narrate in real time the sound and feel of a changing landscape. Through songs, storytelling, and audio/visual accompaniment Liz Cotton walks us through proposals to relocate Cambridge’s main sewage treatment plant further downstream and into her backyard. As can be imagined, folks in the affected villages and lovers of the greenbelt are far from delighted at a prospect which seems to be one more aspect in the multifaceted, yet strangely faceless, overdevelopment of Cambridge.

According to the local paper, “The new facility is proposed to replace the existing plant in the north of Cambridge, in order to free up the land for the North East Cambridge development, which could see over 8,000 new homes and around 15,000 jobs created.” Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?

‘Last Stand on Honey Hill’ is also the story of an empty nest, a neglected mother, a marriage drifting into the sunset. It’s a conversation about life, the universe, and everything even as the Vogons Destructor Fleet looms over the horizon. Liz’s rapport with the audience is spontaneous while her playing is well-rehearsed and faultless. Her timing and delivery are perfect. Her staging is flamboyantly intentional yet stylishly minimal. Along the way, we are introduced to the many colourful local characters organising to resist. For a one-woman show, there’s a lively crowd on stage.

In the bar afterwards, I suggest that a better, more descriptive name for the show would be ‘Sweary Menopausal Woman Sings Songs’. There are shows at EdFringe which are timeless. This isn’t one of them. This is a show very much of a particular moment in the human story, a chronicle of the faulty transition into a bright future mostly undertaken by dim people with questionable motives. Come for the auld fashioned guitar-based protest singing. Stay for a lively and engaging protest singer. Get your green wellies, green hats, and green coats on and go see this.

FULL DISCLOSURE: The author, Dan Lentell, is an independent, opposition District Councillor at South Cambridgeshire.

 

‘Mr Sleepybum’ (Venue 8, until AUG 27th)

Posted in *Ratings, 4*, Assembly Hall, Comedy, EdFestivals, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Nae Bad by

“Just the sort of silly, puerile, crackers show that the Fringe needs for kids!”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

When you think about an act designed for children and their parents based around an adult who sleeps a lot is a truly brave move. People think the Fringe needs to be radical, brave, and boundary pushing. What could be braver than talking about sleep to a mother of a four-year-old? Parents know better than anyone why sleep deprivation was used at Guantanamo Bay.

I didn’t attend for the bravery. My girls picked. They are seasoned Fringe goers and they know there are three only three sure fire ways to pick a decent show: (a) by reading Get Your Coats On (b) by getting drunk in Abattoir and asking Clive Anderson (c) picking a show with a funny name.

Using the tried and tested (C) method we found ourselves queueing outside Assembly Box. To the surprise of no one I found they had also rechristened me as Mr Sleepybum.

And we were all glad we went along.

Assembly Box is one of the smaller venues in the area (it is a shipping container, after all) but we were all heartened to see a decent queue of kids and adults. Shows in wee venues really do need a crowd otherwise things can get awkward. This is doubly true if there is the possibility of audience participation. I still wake in cold sweats about last year’s three person audience where the act insisted on team-based audience participation.

Happily the Box was full.

We entered to see someone asleep under a duvet. Oddly none of the children poked at it. Or jumped on his head.

Over the course of the next 45 minutes (note to all every other performance aimed at 3-10 year olds: this is the perfect length of show. I think ten would be the upper limit) we were taken through a series of Mr Sleepybum’s dreams. Jody Kamali knows how to hold a crowd and knows how to make children and adults laugh. A rare skill and he mixed wit, physical comedy, wackiness and the odd adult allusion to great effect. It all came together rather nicely and my kids laughed throughout.  Sometimes little chuckles. Sometimes proper belly laughs.  My 6-year-old in particular loved it.

Each dream was unique, each funny in their own way, each with significant ad libbing and audience participation. The audience in the show I went to were marvellous and got into the manic, maniac bonkers nature of it. I suspect every show is different and depends on how wild the audience wishes to get.

There were bits I have no idea if they were scripted or not. Mr Sleepybum dressing up as a police inspector and putting his jacket on only one arm added to the relentless bonkersness of the show whilst the sound engineer seemingly getting the wrong song for the shark dream was either unintentional genius or astonishingly good acting. There was one moment that got every single child off their feet and rampaging round the stage was glorious… but I shan’t spoil the surprise. Admittedly, there were a couple of moments that didn’t quite land as well as others but overall this was a grand wee show that deserved the full house and deserved to be at a bigger audience. Just the sort of silly, puerile, crackers show that the Fringe needs for kids.

One thing I would say: it does get raucous (which my kids loved – they were shouting and running about etc) but some children particularly neurodivergent ones may get a fright with the noise or things being thrown to them.

Come for the rubber masks. Stay for the raucous interaction. Get your pyjamas on and join for a kip.

 

‘Abbey’s Box’ (Venue 236, until AUG 26th)

Posted in 4*, Comedy, EdFestivals 2023, Greenside, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Abbey Glover presents an up close and personal performance well suited to the intimacy of the Sprout Theatre”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

When trawling through the Fringe catalogue seeking interesting-looking theatre, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye out for what’s going on in some of the smaller venues. It’s in the nature of fringe drama that there are a lot of solo shows to choose from, but every now and again you stumble across the odd small gem hidden away in a small room in a large old building just off one of Edinburgh’s main thoroughfares.

Abbey’s Box is just such a gem: a one-woman show performed in a small black box studio theatre. This wryly humorous drama tells the first-person story of a young woman’s life from childhood, through school, to her first love affair. Abbey is a quirky, charming, introspective girl with big dreams who wants to love and be loved. Whilst not a laugh-out-loud comedy, the way in which the episodes of her life are enacted in this show raise many a chuckle of recognition, of sympathy, and of embarrassed familiarity from the audience. Using an engaging mixture of physical drama and storytelling, Abbey Glover presents an up close and personal performance well suited to the intimacy of the Sprout Theatre, one of the smaller venues in Greenside at Infirmary Street. As a 64 year-old man, I often found myself spellbound by her revelations concerning the (to me) hitherto mysterious workings of the female psyche during relationships, not only concerning what she was thinking, but her intuition about what he thought of her. The sympathetic reactions from the women in the audience suggested I was onto something here!

Abbey shows us the intimate details of her relationship with a young man, from an awkward first date as teenagers at a high school prom, through their developing life together in California and Vermont, to their first maladroit attempts at sex. There is much insightful observation of the private, unspoken expectations that lovers have of each other; wryly articulated aloud here to reveal the underlying absurdity of love – which does, indeed, as someone once said, make fools of us all. And the eponymous box? A metaphor, of course, for Abbey’s hang-ups, foibles, fears, and introspection. But, this being Fringe theatre, there is an actual box which has a supporting role, not as a character, but as a well-manipulated extension of the protagonist’s persona.

In a meta-theatrical moment, Abbey breaks the fourth wall to self-referentially mock herself using the familiar accusation that one-woman shows are really a form of therapy for the performer. I don’t know how much of this show was based on Abbey Glover’s actual life, but by the end I – along with the rest of the audience – strongly applauded the slice of life that we’d just been treated to. The late afternoon show runs until 26th August, so get your coats on and go see it! Go for the box – there really is one! Stay for the quirky insights into the female psyche. Leave armed with a few new ideas concerning what your partner might be thinking about you.

 

ALL our recent coverage? Click here!

‘Dom – The Play’ (Venue 20, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Fresh from a sell-out run in London, this Fringe transfer had the Assembly Ballroom on George Street packed out with an audience laughing from start to finish.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

If there’s one thing us Brits do well it’s political satire and this already critically acclaimed hit did not disappoint. Fresh from a sell-out run in London, this Fringe transfer had the Assembly Ballroom on George Street packed out with an audience laughing from start to finish. This slick production from Bill Kenwright and Turbine Creatives lifts the lid on the whirlwind political career of Dominic Cummings, leaving no stone unturned in the process.

Just for the record, the citizens of Barnard Castle and the employees at their local branch of Specsavers can rest easy; very early on in the show, Dom grudgingly acknowledges his infamous trip to the Teesdale town to get his eyes tested. With that safely out of the way, Dom narrates his rise to, and abrupt fall from, the Westminster merry-go-round. Chris Porter plays the title role with an assured, cynical ferocity. Cummings was never a likeable figure, but Porter raises laugh after laugh from the audience in the opening ten minutes as he reveals the dark arts of data-scraping that drove his campaigns for Vote Leave and the 2019 General Election. The scene well and truly set, there was soon a roar of recognition from the audience as Boris Johnson strode on in the shape of Tim Hudson – every inch the blustering nincompoop, from his mop of unkempt blonde hair to his flapping shirt tails. All other incidental roles were entertainingly played by Thom Tuck and Sarah Lawrie. Tuck’s mimicry of a moon-faced Michael Gove drew chuckles of recognition, whilst the mobile eyebrows of his John Prescott were an amusing reminder of what already seems like a prehistoric age in British politics. Lawrie was no less versatile, with her lightning vignettes as the late Queen and Theresa May, but the greatest howls of laughter from the Edinburgh audience came with her vivid evocation of a diminutive Nicola Sturgeon.

Over the next hour, the turbulent years of recent British political history are brilliantly portrayed as the Westminster farce they so often seemed back in the day. With a quickfire pasquinade of merciless caricatures, our political masters are lampooned and ridiculed. Like an oversized, Woosterish ringmaster, the buffoonish Johnson flails desperately to keep his government on track at the centre of things; whilst to one side of the stage, lurks Cummings, the Machiavellian puppet-master and the PM’s Svengali. It’s an amazing tradition in British political satire how much we can afterwards laugh at events that once seemed so traumatic. But laugh we did, though I can only agree with one lady behind me who chuckled to her partner over the rapturous applause at the end; “It didn’t seem quite as funny as that the time, did it?”

This show is running for the rest of the month, but I wouldn’t hang about if you want to go; I’d say it’s one of the hot tickets for this year’s Fringe. So, whether you’re from Barnard Castle or not, get your coats on and go see it! Go for the political satire. Stay to hear Cummings explain the dark arts of psephological data mining. Leave in the hope that the great British voting public will never allow itself to be fooled again.

 

‘Yoga with Jillian – A New Comedy’ (Venue 33, until AUG 28th Aug)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2023, Pleasance, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“…a screwball comedy that feels more like sitting in as a visitor at the yoga class from hell rather than watching a play.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

Described by producers Project Y and Richard Jordan Productions as a screwball comedy, this drama feels more like sitting in as a visitor at the yoga class from hell rather than watching a play. As the title suggests, this is quite a physical drama, not only on the part of the eponymous protagonist, but also from the seven volunteer audience members who joined her on stage to do their stuff on mats.

But Jillian is no carrot juice-drinking guru; Michole Biancosino plays her as a feisty, neurotic ex-lawyer, who uses yoga to cope (not always successfully) with her chaotic urban life. Whilst celebrity yogis like Gwyneth Paltrow may exude glamorous woo-woo tranquillity, at one with the world around her, Jillian sometimes struggles to find enough inner peace to even get along with her rival yogis. As the show progresses, the ancient Hindu fitness philosophy is used as a framework and metaphor for the ups, downs, stretches, and fine balances of Jillian’s life story. Whilst a none too perfect practitioner herself, she is a less than fully sympathetic teacher, as her passive-aggressive relationship with her “class” often shows to hilarious effect.

The seven audience members (two men, five women) who joined the class onstage lend a weirdly voyeuristic vibe to watching the show that is quite different from a normal audience experience in a theatre. At several stages, we found ourselves facing a row of seven backsides presented to us as the class bent over to touch their toes. From my front row seat, at one point I had a man’s right foot only two feet from my face as, at Jillian’s bidding, they adopted the downward-facing three-legged dog position. At the other end of the stage, a middle-aged woman in a calf-length dress had perhaps wisely turned herself to face the audience into order to more modestly point her leg upstage. It must be said that these volunteers were able to do what was asked for them without too much stress or embarrassment. (Though, if you’re going along and plan to volunteer – maybe wear leggings and have a pedicure beforehand?)

Whilst yoga itself may not be a pursuit to everyone’s taste, this show is nonetheless a quirky, ironic take on its subject, rather as I’d hoped it would be. Lia Romeo’s writing comically explores the conflict between the outwardly calm philosophy of its subject and the angst-ridden lives of some of its devotees. So, get your coats on and go see it. Go whether or not you’ve been to a yoga class before. Stay for the mat-based philosophical humour. Leave thinking about how all of that stretching and balancing helps to soothe some screwed-up lives.

 

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‘…And This Is My Friend Mr Laurel’ (Venue 33, until AUG 28th)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2023, Pleasance, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“There are laughs aplenty in this show, but the problems the two men faced in their personal and professional lives provide a strong undercurrent of tragedy and pathos. “

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

To draw a full house for a late morning show on the first Sunday of the Fringe bodes well for any show up here. Is it the pulling power of a performer with a successful TV career behind him, or the familiarity of the eponymous subject? Either way, ex-sitcom star Jeffrey Holland (Hi-De-Hi, You Rang, M’Lord) drew a round of applause upon his entrance as well as at the end of this entertaining one-man show in the Pleasance Courtyard Upstairs.

Set in the bedroom of a very ill and silent Oliver Hardy in the 1950s, this tragi-comic drama shows us Stan Laurel’s last visit to see his dying former screen partner. Perhaps wisely, Holland avoids a constant tribute-act impersonation of Laurel, preferring to rely for most of the performance on a more relaxed off-screen version of the legendary comedian’s persona. However, there are regular short episodes where, donning a bowler hat, Holland enacts memorable exchanges from their most successful films; and here we get a fine impression of Laurel’s absurd comic gravitas, along with Ollie’s frustratedly blustering replies.

There are laughs aplenty in this show, but the problems the two men faced in their personal and professional lives provide a strong undercurrent of tragedy and pathos. With Ollie struck dumb by a crippling stroke, it’s left to Stan to look back on the triumphs and frustrations of their Hollywood career. As anyone familiar with their work knows, those short films from their heyday in the 1930s usually portray the couple as a pair of bums down on their luck and trying to make a dime in the Depression-era USA. It’s sad to note that the reality of Hollywood at the time meant that, despite their huge success, the two actors received only comfortable salaries, rather than the mind-boggling fees that stars expect today. Laurel in particular should have been a millionaire as the scriptwriter of their immortal routines. At several points Holland breaks down to portray what must have been very a real frustration felt by Laurel upon realising how he’d been ruthlessly exploited and fleeced by the studio system of the day. As this play suggests, the familiar trope of the melancholy behind the comic mask is very real – Tears of a Clown, indeed.

As is also quite well known, both men had chequered personal lives involving multiple and often disastrous marriages. This introduces more light and shade, with Holland movingly contrasting happy memories of love and romance, soon clouded over by the dark shadows of some messy divorces. Was there even a hint of mutual resentment between the two? Though a passive stooge on screen, Laurel was the leader behind the scenes, slaving at his typewriter and thrashing out deals with the studios whilst “Babe” (Ollie) spent his days on the golf course.

This already popular how runs until the end of the month, so get your coats on and go see it! Go to see a telly star play a film star. Stay to laugh at the jokes then cry along with Stan’s tears. Leave with the thought that screen laughter is often dearly bought by those whose lives are devoted to entertaining us.