Category Archives: *Ratings

‘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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‘Elon Musk: Lost in Space’ (Venue 53, until AUG 23rd)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 3*, Rated: Nae Bad by

“The word ‘populist’ is today deployed with the same offhanded disdain as many (if not most) 18th and 19th-century scholars used when discussing ‘democracy’.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad)

Alexander Hamilton (of musical fame) once (allegedly) wrote, “Your people, sir, is a great beast.” At the heart of the Great American Republic is a great experiment in democratic self-rule, untried anywhere else in the human story. For obvious reasons, those at the top, the cultural, economic, and social elites, have had one or six problems with the notion that everybody gets a say. The word ‘populist’ is today deployed with the same offhanded disdain as many (if not most) 18th and 19th-century scholars used when discussing ‘democracy’.

The people should collectively decide things. The things they decide should have broad, popular support. It’s amazing how many intelligent people down the years have struggled (and are struggling) to get their heads around these notions.

The first great (but was he good?) populist leader of a democracy was Cleon of 5th-century Athens. We know as much about him as we do thanks to the fierce criticism of him by the playwright Aristophanes. Arstophanes’ loathing of Cleon is a recurring theme in his comedies – in ‘The Acharnians’ (425 BC, written soon after Cleon sued Aristophanes for his satiric portrait in a previous work); in ‘The Knights’ (424 BC, in which Aristophanes acted the part of Cleon because no one else dared to); in ‘The Wasps’ (422 BC); and in ‘Peace’ (421 BC, written after Cleon was dead). 10 years later Athens’ democracy would be interrupted in the first of the several stallings that would lead to its final falling. 

Will David Morley’s satire of Donald Trump and Elon Musk have the same impact or legacy? Glass coffin / remains to be seen. At 70 minutes long, it fatally breaks one of the taboos of Edinburgh’s own August Lenaia by flabbily overrunning. Morley is perhaps best known as the writer of radio plays, and frankly, it is impossible to pretend that there is much of anything visual to see on stage in the course of his occasionally comic drama.

We enter to find ourselves aboard the ‘Heart of Gold’ – Morley co-produced ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’ national tour, 2010-13 and spotting the Adamsages is one recommended way to pass the time. Celebrated voice actor Ben Whitehead (as Elon Musk) is jockishly playing a video game on a large screen while Sarah Lawrie (as his matriarchal robot pal who’s fun to be with) preps for the flight to Mars. As things go up and then come crashing down, there’s some ego jousting with Donald Trump in the White House, a slightly peculiar section with a woke AI Sir Patrick Moore, some not very illuminating interjections by Professor Brian Cox, and that’s about it. There is a really interesting bit with AI Arthur C. Clarke that never quite lassos the wormhole.

The scifi content of this show is so light it would struggle to stay put on the surface of Kepler-10c. It is unfair to compare and contrast relatively low-budget apples and multi-million dollar pears, but let’s do it anyway. This show is not Apple TV’s ‘For All Mankind’ not because of a lack of cashish, but because it’s so unabitious. This isn’t a deep-dive into the science of spaceflight or meditation on what becoming a multi-planetary species might mean for humanity’s humanity. Neither is it an especially strong piece of psycho-portraiture. Musk is written as a caricature of a caricature. It’s not biting satire of its subject, more sucking very hard on it, nibbling it in an unaffectionate kind of a way.

This is a show title and a poster all but guaranteed to get the bums of a very particular section of society into seats. If the aim was to satirise the audience, this show is a triumph. As a take-down of the powerful egos (mis)managing our chaotic present, it’s about as successful as Aristophanes, who could successfully heckle Cleon but never unshackle Athens from his sway.

There is a good play in there. What’s on stage right now is just too long and says too little. It panders like a bear eating bamboo all day. Come for two excellent performances. Stay for the air conditioning. Get your flight suits on and go see this if you have time and space.

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‘Dream Space’ (Venue 8, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 3*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Director Jin-young Son has lost nothing in translation. This is the show that a mummy babel fish would take her fry to.”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Outstanding)

Three stories. A young wizard dreaming of greater powers. Two castaways dreaming of release. A young girl dreaming of swimming with whales and experiencing the world from their perspective. Three stories, each told with dynamic precision by a company of puppeteers who genuinely conjure a truly immersive experience… so long as you aren’t in the wrong seat.

It’s not often that I see the same show in the space of 24hrs in two such very different venues. The day before, I had seen the third half performed in the Ballroom at the Assembly Rooms as part of the Korean Season showcase. It’s fair to say that something of the nuance was lost in the grand unintimacy of John Henderson’s 342m² space. The Crate George Sq., by contrast, is too constricted. The performers are too far forward for punters in the far edge seats of the semi-circle to actually see what is happening. EdFringe tickets are not getting any cheaper, and with children’s tickets being discounted by just £1, producers and promoters urgently need to consider family value for money alongside artistic excellence – which this exquisite production has by the undeniable bucketload.

In three unrelated but totally relatable stories, director Jin-young Son has lost nothing in translation. This is the show that a mummy babel fish would take her fry to. There is a prop gag in the Castaways chapter which flies over the heads of the little ones like a standard size 5 leather indoor volleyball, but which definitely lands with us oldies of a certain vintage. Any show that starts with bubbles is going to be a winner. A show that can go on to be so very chuffing poignant that it has your (not especially) humble correspondent in floods of tears deserves to be lauded with every laurel. There are deep moral lessons in each of the stories, reflections on wants and needs, maturity and growth, loss and discovery.

I’m not going to lie, I was worried about Daughter 2.0 (7yrs)’s reaction. She’s not the best at sitting still in every circumstance, but Dream Space had her truly enchanted right up until the end. She likes logic, and the internal logic of the Dream Space vision had her attention hooked all the way through. The show is promoted to ages 5+, which, for British kids, is too big a stretch. In a better-fitting space, with wiggle room for those whose grip on concentration is prone to lapse, this show would be perfection itself. It might also be kinder to allow the kinder space to rest and draw breath between the intensity of each marvelously meticulous monograph. Shows for kids need to be designed in every detail for kids. The creative content was astounding, the framing… not so much.

Like Goldilocks, this production needs – this production deserves – a venue space that is neither too big nor too small but one that is just right with space and permission for young minds and little bodies to dip in and out, especially if it is being sold to the very young.

Come for an all-star team delivering touchdown after touchdown. Stay if you’re in a good seat. Get your Joseon-era gwanboks 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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‘Ginger’s Problem Area’ (Venue 17, until AUG 24th)

Posted in *EdFestivals 2025, 4*, Rated: Nae Bad, Stand-Up, Theatre by

“Aunty Ginger is a deadpan whirlwind of good auld-fashioned filth and innuendo – in your endo.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

What is there left to say about Aunty Ginger that hasn’t already been splashed across the red tops, scrawled on bathroom walls, or said through tears in a witness impact statement?

Manchester’s leading pansexual Dragony Aunt takes to the stage like a pack of boozehounds takes to a vodka fountain and with all the caution of a cockapoodle on a trampoline. This is a no-holds-barred experience not recommended for the coy or nervous. Aunty Ginger is a deadpan whirlwind of good auld-fashioned filth and innuendo – in your endo.

From a confident blend of audience work and audiovisual, sixty minutes of laugh-out-loud funny entertainment emerge, spotlighting a performer with a rising reputation – or is she just pleased to see me? Ginger is lightning fast. Already naturally well endowed, Ginger’s mind is as quick as her tongue is sharp. She is professionally trained, well-honed by just enough years in drag not to be a drag, and so obviously enjoys doing what she loves being great at. Those rather odd men who love to feel uncomfortable around drag and have got something to prove without having anything to say are swatted away as flies to wanton boys. Ginger is the boss and don’t forget it.

The trouble is that this show, in its current format, can only ever be as good as its audience. Good crowd? Good craic. Surly gobshite crowd? Less fun to be had. The format needs tweaking so that some content can be whipped out and milked without relying so much on the crowd if they turn up flaccid. Still, Ginger is gracefully maturing into an EdFringe stalwart, a reliable source of satisfaction for when you need your funny bone rubbed in just the right way.

Come for the solid standup. Stay for the sparkling wit and repartee. Get your glittery gladrags on and go see this!

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‘Wodehouse in Wonderland’ (Venue 17, until AUG 24th)

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

“There is a dramatic pivot in this piece delivered with such sudden, callous, earth-shatteringly precise cruelty that afterwards, for the first time ever, I find myself waiting by the stagedoor determined to shake the hand of the horribly talented actor who has just sucker punched us all in the gut.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

We enter to find ourselves in the study of one of the most celebrated writers of English since Chaucer’s pilgrims first set out to Canterbury. The seemingly uncomplicated genius of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 – 1975) conjoured into being such immortals as Jeeves and Wooster, Ukridge, Mr Mulliner, as well as some of the most popular, zeitgeisty smash hits of the interwar years. Gershwin, Porter, Kern and Novello all knew him as an equal. He was big in America at a time when America itself was getting big.

Stage left there’s a home bar. Scotch and soda, martinis and the requisite stemware. In the centre, behind the writing desk, a picture window looks out over the Suffolk County landscape – Suffolk County, Long Island, not the East of England for reasons which will become obvious as the plot thickens. A red leather chesterfield armchair completes the scene. It’s the familiar haunt of someone whose literary oeuvre and immortal reputation became established in his own lifetime in the way that an auld oak tree or a gothic catheral might seem established only after the passage of centuries.

Robert Daws completely captures the chronological vertigo of this seemingly very ordinary Englishman towards the close of an extraordinary life. Daws is one of those faces familiar off the telly from ‘Midsummer Murders’, ‘Roger Roger’, ‘Robin of Sherwood’, and of course Fry and Laurie’s masterpiece ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ series. Daws is delivering one of the finnest bits of character work to be seen this EdFringe – this is the other show that us mega Pip Utton fans MUST SEE this year.

With a glove-like fitting, Daws inhabits the persona, personality, and personal space of Wodehouse, a familiar figure yet also an ultra private individual, a charmingly befuddled auld stick in the mud who came to public notice during the roaring exuberance of the 1920s. Wodehouse scaled the highest heights of celebratory fame and success. He became a legend in his own lifetime only to suffer one of those excrutiating moments of irrefutable British tabloid unfairness to rank alongside Michael Foot’s donkey jacket or Prince Harry’s entire adult life. The folk who love to loathe Wodehouse will never let us forget his ill-advised broadcasts from internment during WWII but this was not the only dark cloud that lour’d upon our Wodehouse. There is a dramatic pivot in this piece delivered with such sudden, callous, earth-shatteringly precise cruelty that afterwards, for the first time ever, I find myself waiting by the stagedoor determined to shake the hand of the horribly talented actor who has just sucker punched us all in the gut.

Here is a masterful performance to rank alongside Christopher Lee’s Saruman and for precisely the same reason. Lee was famously the only member of the LOTR cast to have actually met Tolkein. Similar magic has rubbed off on Robert Daws who has known, worked and collaborated with some of the very greatest Wodehousians – Carmichael, Fry, Laurie, Spall, Horden, Jarvis, and Mangan. Daws received the personal blessing and benediction for this production from Sir Edward Cazalet, the son of Wodehouse’s beloved daughter Leonora. Daws is himself of course the definitive Hildebrand “Tuppy” Glossop resoncibile for some of the most joyously side splitting moments of the 90s TV series. My only criticism of this show is that there isn’t a tie-in album of the seven or so Broadway songs written by Wodehouse which Daws merrily belts out with the calm, luxurious, powerful assurance of a 1932 Lagonda 3-litre Weymann.

Come for the candid yet reverential insight into a true great of English letters. Stay for simply one of the best solo performances you’ll see at this or any Fringe. Get your a trifle too exotic Sir white mess jackets on and go see this!

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‘Not Another Quiz Night’ (Venue 8, until AUG 23rd)

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

“This show is rowdy like an invasion of Mongolian horsearchers is rowdy.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

On balance, and after careful consideration, I can confidently say this is the best show I have seen at any EdFringe. A good review is a balance of the informative, the objective, and the subjective. For your information, this show is a Daliesque acid trip of a pub quiz with all the traditional elements done massive and then some. Objectively, the crowd is huge, mad for it, loving it, and kept thoroughly entertained throughout 90 minutes of brilliantly bonkers boisterousosity. Subjectively, how could I not love a show featuring popadom frisbee (Queensbury Rules)? There’s celebrity appearances, fat cupid, Liam and/or Noel Gallagher, as well as the single greatest Alan Rickman impersonation this side of Hogwarts.

Our host, Jake Bhardwaj, is a one-man Disaster Area – the plutonium rock band from ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ said to be the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, and also the loudest noise of any kind at all. Bhardwaj’s stagecraft is exceptional. Watching him is like having a front row seat at a supernova or seeing Usain Bolt run an egg spoon race against a kangaroo. Supported by a host of chaotic, colourful misfits, what Bhardwaj conjures into existence is definitely maybe the purest of pure doses of explosively lowbrow highbrow comedy delivered directly into the bloodstream. This show is rowdy like an invasion of Mongolian horsearchers is rowdy.

If you’re afraid of audience participation, look away now. There’s Biggest Crisp, Baywatch Beach Parade, and a piss-your-pants-laughing plethora of properly funny parts for everyone, front seats and back. There is also the pub quiz itself, which is a solid mix of pop culture and no-holds-barred tricky brain teasers. From the concept, through planning, and into delivery, this is a phenomenal EdFringe success story that needs to be added to every August calendar and spreadsheet. Come for the greatest and best bar trivia night in the known universe, stay for a brilliant piece of live theatre, get your coats on and go see this!

 

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‘Homo(sapien)’ (Venue 139, until AUG 24th)

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

“Here is a journey of self-discovery told with a fierce and memorable candour.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

There’s nothing in the world that’s better than a bit of good auld-fashioned Irish storytelling. The pace, the charm, the wit, the insight of honest-to-goodness craic done right cannot be beat. In Conor O’Dwyer’s debut play we meet Joey a neurotic mess of Catholic guilt and internalised homophobia. Joey is a Bad Gay™ (or so he thinks) because he’s never had sex with a dude and that’s the most important thing about being gay (right?).

Here is a journey of self-discovery told with a fierce and memorable candour. We enter to find a cross bedecked with flowers. Religion and religiousity are at the heart of this story about the Emerald Isle’s struggle for a modern rainbow identity and the seeming irreconcilability of traditional values and the universal truth that love is love. We grow-up with Joey. We experience his profound uncertainty and fear even in the midst of a largely supportive and loving community more at ease with who Joey is than he is.

As Saint John of Lennon wrote, “Life’s what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Joey’s life story is a hodgepodge of misadventures and missed adventures. For all that not a lot actually happens the pace of this piece is second to none. This is a small tall tale that will resonate with anyone who has been left wondering if they spend too much time wondering. It’s an affirmation of the good in all of us, especially when we find the confidence to unclentch and be our trueselves.

O’Dwyer’s performance is brilliant. From the second he races onto the stage through to the final moments in which the clouds of existential crisis part. Each comic twist and dramatic turn of this cleverly crafted monodramatic melodrama is a masterclass in audience engagement. Come for the fabulousness, stay for the fabulous universality, get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Samia Rida: Kidnap’ (Venue 24, until AUG 10th)

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

“A deeply personal piece of storytelling, a superb storyteller, and a story that deserves to be heard and heard again.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Samia Rida is possibly, probably, almost certainly the most important voice you’ll hear this EdFringe. The youngest of four siblings, it became obvious early on that Samia had a knack for caring for her seriously disabled aulder brother. From a very early age, Samia was taking charge at bath and bedtime and all the rest. Like so many unseen little ones, Samia’s own childhood was profoundly impacted by the needs of another. Caring is really hard. It’s relentless. The other person’s needs are always the priority, catered to day and night, rain or shine, under the unforgiving, uncomprehending, and too often unsympathetic gaze of folks without a Scooby Doo of the daily reality as it is really lived.

To add complexity to chaos, Samia is the unquietly proud possessor of a lifelong identity crisis brought on by the clashing of parental cultures. With a Welsh mother and a Saudi father, Samia has skin in the game when it comes to the big questions of multiculturalism as it is lived from within rather than judged from without.

The former River City actress takes to the stage like a hurricane takes to a shanty town. Here is an uncompromising, deeply personal perspective which blows away the preconceptions and peculiarities of today’s mainstream focus on the actualisation of individuality as the summit of human achievement. The story centres on the messy separation of Samia’s parents, in particular her being kidnapped to Saudi Arabia by her father – a chain of events which received quite the flurry of press attention back in the day.

Having felt alienated in West London, Samia tells of being entirely all at sea in the gilded luxury of the much more traditional society. Again, Samia is uncompromising with her truth, but speaks fondly of the hosts of uncles, aunts, staff and retainers who populated this strange chapter in her life. The three most definitely not GIPers spookily assessing the show’s political messaging for Riyadh seem content with Samia’s largely positive picture of well-to-do family life in The Kingdom. The hacksaws won’t be needed tonight.

Here is a great wee EdFringe find. A deeply personal piece of storytelling, a superb storyteller, and a story that deserves to be heard and heard again. The message is one that will resonate with anyone who has put (or is putting) their life on hold for another, anyone who has been caught up in the breakdown of their parents’ relationship, anyone with a taste for the potent and profound. Here is a unique voice telling truths that are not heard nearly enough. Come for the all-too-human drama, stay for the belly laughs, get your leak and dragon patterned bishts on and go see this!

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