Category Archives: *Ratings

‘Holy Sh*t I Lived: A Solo Show’ (Venue 29, until AUG 25th)

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

“Those little rubber duckies have significance, they are the cute lynchpin that holds the show together in an hour that rushes on by like a very fast thing going very fast.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars ( Outstanding)

Billed as “comedy (storytelling, improv)” here’s a cracking wee show that might better be described as “comedy (storytelling, sketch)”. Sketch comedy can be hit and miss. It’s unusual, especially later in a run, for all the performers to be firing on all cylinders and it’s not usual for one or two skits in a set always to fall short of the mark. So here’s a cracking wee show where our one comedian is most definitely fired up and ready to go and where every scene is a winner.

George C. Owens was born in Tulsa, attended Loyola University, Chicago and recently moved to L.A. His material is smart, funny, self-deprecating, and what you might call accessible high-brow. What makes this show stand-out from the EdFringe crowds of standups are his superbly contrived audience work at the bookends as well as the storytelling and life insights dotted throughout the show. Those little rubber duckies have significance, they are the cute lynchpin that holds the show together in an hour that rushes on by like a very fast thing going very fast. There’s this one bit with no spoons and no bells that has to be seen to be believed. 

From the moment Owens takes the stage his mastery of his craft is evident. What’s really chuffing impressive is that the data points from his improvised audience work stick in his little grey cells all the way to the end. Reflections on neurodivergence, idiosyncrasy, grief, follies, flaws and foibles are batted out of the park with that confident humility which is the mark of a solid left footing in Jesuit training.

A couple of centuries ago a bloke like Owens was probably to be found hiding out in a piteously uncomfortable priest hole in what’s now a stately National Trust country house. England’s Elizabeth I warned her northern neighbour, James VI, “suffer not such vipers as the Jesuits to inhabit your land”. Far be it from me to argue with Gloriana, but Scotland (and the world) needs comedy of the quality of Owens and that ain’t going to happen without a solid education, a talent for people, a disciplined memory, a message to share, and a passion to share it.

This show is a masterclass of live performance expertly scaffolded from the tech board by Sara Stock, moonlighting from her day job at Chicago’s prestigious Second City, as well as direction by Andel Sudik who has been performing and teaching sketch comedy plus improvisation for the last 10 years. There is no mystery as to why this show is so good. There is no better bang for your comedy buck this EdFringe. This show is quality.

Get your coats on and go see this!

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‘Under Milk Wood’ (Venue 150, only AUG 14th)

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

“Who but Guy Masterson could do unabridged justice to the 69 ebullient inhabitants of Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece?”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Fringe history was made tonight. A milestone in the journey of the world’s greatest arts festival has been passed. There is a new towering landmark on the past horizon. Since 1947 creative people have been telling stories in venues big and small. The EICC is not a small venue and I have been on transoceanic flights with less comfortable seats. My date tells me that her ancestors’ ancestors owned a wine merchants on the site – perhaps they might have used the Victorian-era postbox on the street outside when its first coat of red paint was fresh. I wonder what those distant denizens of Edinburgh would make of EdFringe. Would they feel any sense of pride or ownership? Yes, I think they would have, if they could have seen the history that was made tonight.

Guy Masterson’s first landmark production was his 2003 smash hit ‘Twelve Angry Men’. It created ripples in the fabric of space-time, tugging at the cultural consciousness with a fresh reminder that EdFringe is a place where rising stars can go supernova. Even more importantly, Masterson’s 2019 success, ‘The Shark is Broken’, was possessed of sufficient momentum to escape the blackhole that was Lockdown and burst out over Broadway – raining down oodles of boxoffice cashish and critical acclaim in a then all-too-needed reminder that the arts are not peripheral, but essential to a good life on earth.

‘Under Milk Wood’ is a more personal, but no less monumental achievement. Who but Guy Masterson could do unabridged justice to the 69 ebullient inhabitants of Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece? First performed at EdFringe94, this epic recital has been performed over 2,000 times globally. Tonight the crowds have gathered to hear Captain Cat, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Mr Pugh and Mrs Pugh and all the rest as they go about their extraordinarily ordinary day. Who but Guy Masterson could bring so much depth of feeling, so much animation, so much vim and vigour to the party? SPOILER ALERT: No one else could do this, it’s why the crowds have gathered in such numbers to witness this bardic quality swansong.

This performance was not without a lighting error and Farmer Watkins missed his cue, but these served the purpose of those deliberate tiny flaws in the pattern of a Persian carpet, which remind the viewer that total perfection is totally preserved to divinity. For all that Masterson is a big performer, he is too proud a Welshman ever once tp step into that limelight which properly belongs to Dylan Thomas alone. The poet is the star. Without scruples or diffidence, the artist on the stage is but a supporting artificer.

Here is a performance that could fit into any venue large or small from the backroom of an auld Edinburgh wine shop to a (slightly soulless) mega-venue in the same location. A chair, a set of pyjamas, some carefully choreographed lighting changes and a storied titan of storytelling who might have sat at the feet of blind Homer or his Brythonic counterparts. 

At EdFringe each line spoken, each show performed, each production staged is, in reality, as ephemeral as a summer sea mist. But a few, a very few, live on in our collective memory setting the standard for art and artistry for all time to come. Scotland’s cultural capital and the world capital of Fringe theatre are richer for the work of Guy Masterson a genuine legend in his own day.

Get your coats on and hold onto your hats. There’s even greater things to come.

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

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

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

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Outstanding)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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‘The Kids Always Win’ (Venue 24, until AUG 25th)

Posted in 4*, EdFestivals 2024, Gilded Balloon, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

“Strong stage presences, very funny and excellent with kids”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

We arrived at The Patter House early and I had time to witness a crime against humanity. £6.80 of His Majesty’s Pounds for one of the worst pints of Guinness I’ve ever had in my life served in a plastic cup. This was not the fault of the lads behind ‘The Kids Always Win’. I had to suffer that pint. It is only fair readers understand the things I suffer for my art.

But what of the show? The concept is simple. A game show – spinning around deep audience participation – where, you’ve guessed it, the kids always win.

Tom and Max are strong stage presences, very funny and excellent with kids. Numerous kids get up on stage and they are all made to feel at home.

The games are gleefully funny (I was thrashed by my eight-year old). There are switcheroos, goalposts are shifted and adults are thrown curveball after curveball. There are a nice few running gags throughout. My two are experienced Fringe goers now and they enjoyed this show both commenting on how fun it was and how much they laughed. The show was also about 50 minutes long rather than an hour. This is not a criticism. For kids from 4-8 this is probably the ideal length – other performers who aim their work at children really should know this.

The kids loved the result and I won’t spoil a small surprise every kid will love towards the end. Admittedly, there were a couple of moments that didn’t quite land as well but that is to be expected in any show that relies entirely on audience participation. 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. No, it isn’t massively deep. No, it doesn’t really have a core message to connect with our core. It was a good old fashioned kids show that had them laughing throughout. And there is nothing wrong with that. Quite the opposite.

Come for the gameshow. Stay for the raucous interaction. Get your coats on and go see this.

 

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

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

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

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Outstanding)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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