Category Archives: Rated: Outstanding

Work that aims high and hits every mark.

‘Covid for Kids’ (Pleasance Courtyard, until AUG 16)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Tom became one of the faces on the news during the pandemic, an expert at communicating the complexities of the subject to a lay audience.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

It’s impossible to fully imagine, so we’re going to have to watch really carefully, the long-term impact the COVID19 pandemic is having on our young people. The disrupted schooling, the stretched social fabric, the pressures on families, the friendships put on hold, the fear, the anxiety. So it really matters that there’s a show which tries to help kids (and adults) make sense of the science behind such a scary time in all our lives.

We enter to find some comfortingly large cutouts – a mouth wide open, a vaccine and needle, as well as *boo hiss* a colourful picture of Corry the Coronavirus herself. We will learn that it would take a thousand coronaviruses to span the width of a human hair, so Corry’s cutout is quite a bit larger than its subject. Enter Professor Tom Solomon CBE, Chair of Neurology and Director of the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at the University of Liverpool.

Tom became one of the faces on the news during the pandemic, an expert at communicating the complexities of the subject to a lay audience. The section of the show dealing with the Reproduction ‘R’ number, with which we all became so familiar, is unsettlingly simple and hugely effective at demonstrating why that piece of information mattered so much in the darkest days of lockdown.

[Next slide please.]

What follows is a lecture, perhaps the first lecture many in the audience have ever attended. So Tom’s simple and effective language, the careful but lively pacing of his performance, the steady-as-she-goes-way the themes of his material emerge – these all produce a genuinely entertaining educational, and enlightening EdFringe event. John Reith, founder of the BBC, would no doubt approve high and mightily of this smart and sassy show coming to the land of his birth. Daughter 1.0 wrote this in her EdFringe journal, the one with Elsa on horseback on the cover:

“I went to covid for kids with my grandad because my grandad is a scientist and my Baba (Dan) When we walked in we saw a mouth board. Some medisen and a jab. I was the news presenter and I wore some funny glasses and a tie. I read out the headlines When I saw the glases simbol. We learnt that In the begining bats in china had covid but it didn’t harm them one day a human came into the cave and got the covid then he or she went to a market place and spred it all over china! In the UK we were woried We woald get it. But covid spread all over the wold. We played some games like pass the covid and we put on a show in a show. I will not tell you what I was because it is a bit Gross. It was also quite funny. We learned that in the jab there is a litle bit of the virus. My favourite bit was when I was the news presenter. I loved it!”

You’ll be amazed to learn that her Grandad and Baba both agree that Daughter 1.0’s turn reading the news was most definitely the best bit of the show. Grandad – Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, University of Edinburgh – has spent 30 years researching HIV, the forgotten pandemic that didn’t get a mention in today’s performance. There was nothing else to ruffle his feathers, which is the strongest possible endorsement any science-based Fringe show can hope for. If, like me, you’re not a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and have to rely on your wife’s credentials to spend the night at William Harvey House when down in that there London, then ‘Corona For Kids’ is an essential slice of EdFringe from the smorgasbord of silly and serious that is Edinburgh in August.

 

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‘Waiting for Hamlet’ (theSpaceTriplex, until AUG 26)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“A brilliant interpretive essay on the famous play, funny, insightful, and really rather exciting.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Clever people like Shakespeare. They like the intricacies, the plot twists, the infinite possible readings, the characters, the entrances, and the exits. Few entrances in Shakespeare are more celebrated than that of the ghost of Hamlet’s father on the battlements of Elsinore. In ‘Waiting for Hamlet’ writer David Visick – the International Kenneth Branagh New Drama Writing Award, 2018 – imagines what the shade of the murdered king was up to in the time before that biggest of big entrances.

We enter to find King Hamlet angry, bored, and listless, determined to posthumously intervene in the affairs of Denmark and right the wrong done to him by his treacherous brother. Hamlet sr. is in company with the ghost of his auld fool Yorick who isn’t entirely certain, but suspects he may have a role in what’s to come. What follows is a brilliant interpretive essay on the famous play, funny, insightful, and really rather exciting. It was the pace wot won it.

As King Hamlet and Yorick, Tim Marriott and Nicholas Collett respectively, deliver each crackling line of dialogue, each amazing twist of the family and political drama, with aplomb. Tim and Nicholas are star strikers in the EdFringe league. It’s a joyous thing to see them masterfully unravel, pack and repack, this soon-to-be classic of the Shakespearian homage genre (is that a thing yet?).

Some say that their idea of heaven is waking up to find a new Wodehouse story on the bedside table each and every day. My idea of paradise hereafter involves a daily dose of Fringe Theatre of this calibre and not just in August. Master of the eternal revels, take note. This is the show folk will be recommending when asked for their top EdFringe tips of 2022.

 

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‘The Actress’ (Underbelly Bristo Square – Dairy Room, until 29th AUG)

Posted in EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“…superbly captures the debauched revelry of Restoration London. “

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

In the London of 1660, the restoration of King Charles II heralds an arts renaissance, a keynote of which is the reopening of theatres and most controversially, women being allowed on an English stage for the very first time. The King’s Company of players invite two actresses to join them, but only one can be the first ever to play a major role: that of Desdemona in Othello. Who will it be?

Written and directed by Andrew Pearson-Wright, this production by the Long Lane Theatre Company (based on a true story) superbly captures the debauched revelry of Restoration London, and as the programme warnings of some occasional nudity and content of a sexual nature suggest, there is much roister-doistering afoot! Charlotte Price plays the hopeful outsider Anne Marshall, a provincial ingenue in search of her big break into acting. The competition comes in the shape of the glamorous Eve Pearson-Wright, playing the worldly and experienced front-runner Margaret Hughes. Naturally, we root for the virtuous Anne, sympathetically and convincingly played by Price, but Pearson-Wright as Margaret is very easy on the eye and easily wraps the two men on the stage – Matthew Hebden and Andrew Loudon as men about town and the theatre manager – around her manipulative fingers. A third actress in this five-piece cast is Hattie Chapman, who plays a number of smaller characters, including Anne’s best friend. Chapman is a highly effective foil to the main characters, her strikingly engaging facial expressions and electro-magnetic eyes enhancing the humour and emotion of every scene she was in.

As may be expected in a play about theatre, there is much wry self-referential humour about life on the stage: “Audiences? Since when have they been able to judge what’s good and what isn’t?”. But a dark counterpoint to this is shown in the portrayal of a time when men could pay to watch the actresses changing into their costumes backstage before a play, and female performers could be subject to vicious attacks by religious fundamentalists who saw them as little more than “devil’s whores”. The enduring feminine struggle to find one’s way in the world was reflected in a frisson of recognition from women around me in the audience when Margaret wearily remarks to the naïve Anne: “You’re a woman: adapt or die”.

Enacted on a small stage with a basic set in a plain black-box auditorium, the show drew well-deserved whoops of rapturous applause at the end from the near-capacity 100-plus audience. I left the building imagining how this magical little gem of theatre would make a good Netflix costume drama.

 

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‘Baxter vs The Bookies’ (Gilded Balloon Teviot – Wee Room, until AUG 28)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Through a superbly crafted hour of storytelling, we are privileged to see Andy deliver across the board in a masterclass of thoroughbred character acting.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Andy Linden has got one of those faces you’ve seen off the telly in everything from ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ to ‘Not Going Out’ via ‘Drop The Dead Donkey’ and ‘Count Arthur Strong’. He is perhaps best known as Mundungus Fletcher in the Harry Potter movies. Mundungus who, you will no doubt recall, was one of the original members of the Order of the Phoenix, is a wizard who dwells in the Wizarding underworld, dealing in controlled substances and stolen merchandise. It’s the sort of part Andy has got a knack for – a little bit shaddy, a wee bit shifty, probably up to something, possibly possessed of a heart of gold. It makes Andy the ideal fit for the stage incarnation of Roy Granville’s auld skool racing tipster.

Through a superbly crafted hour of storytelling, we are privileged to see Andy deliver across the board in a masterclass of thoroughbred character acting. His Baxter, his friends and associates, are up, they’re down, but never entirely out. In the fell clutch of circumstance Baxter occasionally winces and often cries aloud emerging into the final stretch bloody, but unbowed from the bludgeonings of chance. Baxter is rarely his own best friend, but he’s possessed of an instinctual, furtive, feral cunning combined with a genuine love and insight into the sport of kings which somehow always gets him placed. 

Not since John Mortimer put his doubts aside and let Leo McKern read for Rumpole of the Bailey (true story), has an actor seemed such a natural fit for a role. You’ll find yourself wanting to interrupt proceedings for Baxter’s tips for the 2:05 at Musselburgh next Thursday – will you win big or lose your shirt? You pays your money you make your choice. What impresses me most is Andy’s nimbleness and physicality. He’s earning his stabling fees, although he seems to have forgotten that only fools and horses work. Still, you definitely wouldn’t want to get in a boxing ring with him, especially after what you said about his beloved Spurs (the football team not the pointy cowboy accessories).

It’s standing room only, the word is out. Come for one of Britain’s best-known faces, stay for some of the best character acting anywhere this EdFringe. Exit having discovered yourself another Rumpole, another Wodehouseian gem. Get your coats on and go see this!

 

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‘Cirque Berserk!’ (Pleasance at EICC, until AUG 28)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Dos Santos’ is the nitrous oxide in the tank that sends ‘Cirque Berserk!’ into overdrive.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

They say that the second hit of something intoxicating has a far less profound effect than the first. Is this true of ‘Cirque Berserk!’, the single biggest thing to happen to Scotland’s capital since those enlightened types in powdered wigs stopped to wonder what life was all about? I’m not a circus reviewer, I do theatre, which is why I find the concept of a circus show curated to feel like a theatrical event so intriguing. When I saw the show in 2019 (also with Daughter 1.0, who is now 7yrs auld) it blew my tiny mind. After the longest 3 years in recorded history, is the rush of awesome to the head induced by ‘Cirque Berserk!’ still as potent the second time around? Spoiler alert! Most definitely, yes, possibly more so.

The lineup of acts is, as ever, electrically eclectic harmonised by professionalism and dedication to craft that must be seen to be believed. I am especially glad that the Timbuktu Tumblers are looking in such canny fettle in the wake of a global pandemic headlined by a serious respiratory infection. Their energy and skills makes the least use of props and the most use of their own physicality. If any group of performers was going to have been disrupted by COVID it might have been these lads but, of course, they are in superb condition – a testament to clean living and regular exercise which I’ll hear after I’ve got the next round in. Daughter 2.0 (4yrs) chuffing loves these guys. Above the excitement of the crowd, you can hear the cogs in her wee brain calculating that this is what she could achieve if only her Baba would let her climb on, and jump off, the furniture.

The Lucius Team, with their hair-brained, hell-raising stunt of driving motorbikes at speeds of up to 60mph inside The Globe of Death are beyond the power of words to describe. In the skies above our home in Englandshire, you frequently see Spitfires and other members of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight flitting about in a manner most serene and picturesque. For the post-war generations, the closest we’ll get to understanding those magnificent men and their comparatively primitive flying machines, the speed, the power, the excitement, the danger, the drama, technical know-how, and the nerves of steel is to watch the Lucius Team doing their thing. You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.

Elberel, the lady from the bottle, is back although her party piece of firing arrows with her feet is performed this year by Antonio and Connor, the amazing balancing act. They don’t hit the mark with Elberel’s surety, but spinning on your head and balancing on a stack of 5 chairs is more than enough to generate more excited gasps than Colin Firth coming out of a pond in the mid-1990s. Duo Garcia are from Spain and Ireland. I’d love to know how those guys met and how you even start a conversation about hanging by your teeth a mindboggling distance above the stage. Czech knife throwing act, Toni and Nikol, are an auld skool treat on target and on point.

If there’s a single star of the show it’s got to be Paulo Dos Santos, one of the most celebrated circus performers of our time. Combining incredible acrobatic power and grace with a true clown’s gift for connecting to the audience, Dos Santos is the nitrous oxide in the tank that sends ‘Cirque Berserk!’ into overdrive. His comedy partner, Whimmie, comes from a family of circus clowns. His great-great-grandfather performed at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria who must surely have been amused at least that one time.

In her Fringe notebook, the one with Moana on the cover, Daughter 1.0 wrote: “When I walked in toit there was a big sepher. And there was music. First there was men that made towers with them selves. And there was motor bikes in a Sepher. And a lady in it! the acrobats went so high and were very bendy I could tell they had been practising. They juggled with fire! They also shot bows and aros with there feet there were lots of acrobats. The clowns were so funny one of them went in a balloon. and jumped up and down. I loved every moment of it!”

‘Cirque Berserk!’ loses none of its power to enthral, entertain, and entrance the second time around. In fact, I find myself sitting further back in my seat, settling into the spectacle more easily, sharing the moment with two of my favourite people to share anything with. I feel closer to them in those moments because for 60 minutes I am one of them. Wide-eyed at the wonder of the world and what special people can do given half a chance. I find myself recalling that the Edinburgh International Conference Centre is built on the site of a public house of which my girls’ ancestor was the landlord. I’d love to know what he’d have made of the happening on the site of his gaff a century or so later. I suspect he’d think he’d been over-sampling his own stock because with ‘Cirque Berserk!’ seeing is never quite believing that such impossible things can happen.

 

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‘Our Teacher’s a Troll’ (theSpace on the Mile, until AUG 13)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Not a beat missed, not a line fluffed, every laughter line as crisp and straight as the hem on Miss Jean Brodie’s sensible tartan skirt.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

School’s in this EdFringe and there’s something not quite right about our new headteacher. We enter to find four coloured boxes, a mic stand, and no sign of an Ofsted inspector. The kids are pulling a prank led by a couple of naughty, but essentially nice, twins. They’re asking ‘why’ a lot, and it’s sent the previous head out of her mind. So we find ourselves at assembly, even though we’re at SpaceUK. The deputy head, nice chap but rather dim, announces the arrival and installation of the new boss who is most definitely NOT the same as the old boss.

What follows are 50 minutes of undiluted, knock-your-socks-off silliness which may (or may not) carry a serious message about listening to kids when they tell you something is wrong. Or about how we tolerate the intolerable greed and oppression of our tyranny-driven overlords. Or about how the good get eaten. Or about the need to understand those who are most different from us. Perhaps it’s a variation on the theme of auld king log, his frog subjects, and that heron – but I never read Aesop.

The young cast are masters of revelry. Their actual school, Emanuel in Battersea, is an award-winning shaper of bright young things and the things on show in Edinburgh this August are a credit to their peers, parents, and pedagogues. Not a beat missed, not a line fluffed, every laughter line as crisp and straight as the hem on Miss Jean Brodie’s sensible tartan skirt. This is a show for younger kids by slightly older kids who are, as the saying goes, neither grass nor hay. How did they get on enthralling (or should that be entrolling) Daughter 1.0 (7yrs)?

In her EdFringe notebook, the one with the sequined unicorn on the cover, she wrote: “In Our teacher’s a troll the head teacher was teaching a class and the terible twins kept on asking why. And then they found her eating sand and mooing like a cow And to replace her it was a troll. “Oh no it can’t be it’s not it is!” He made them work in a Gold mine. And all they coald eat was brusill sproutrs ip peanut butter! The terible twins put worm in sanwiches and the boy who ate worms Was eaten. a nother child and a grown up was eaten they told the prime minester there Mum the police and the school inspector but they woaldn’t lisen. They were almost eaten! All this made my teeth chata. I loved it!”

This is a show which makes a lot of good choices (like Daughter 2.0 on one of her better days). The best, in my not especially humble opinion, was to represent the troll via that mic stand, with the cast taking turns to have their voices amplified and distorted into a fearsome roar. Together with the studied use of a green spotlight, the truly menacing effect was not unlike what the Dr Who props boffins achieved with that plunger on Jacqueline Hill back in the day – you know it’s done on a budget, but it’s still pretty scary if you’re up to your lime green heels in the drama.

Dennis Kelly’s possibly poignant, definitely laugh-out-loud script is more than safe in the hands of these wunderkinds – you saw them here first.

 

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‘Three Women and Shakespeare’s Will’ (theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, until AUG 20)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Julia Munrow has one of the brightest smiles in the business, I wonder if they teach that at RADA.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)

It’s one of the most analysed documents in English history. It’s a source of fascination and mystery, one of the few tangible links to the life lived by our most celebrated writer. Joan Greening’s script brings together three of Shakespeare’s women – his wife, his lover, and his other lover. They’ve come to grieve in that most passionate and sincere way, by arguing over what’s to happen with the dead guy’s stuff.

There can be few women whose memory is harder done by than Anne Shakespeare, née Hathaway. She has been portrayed as a bumpkin, a conniving seducer manipulating her much younger mark into an unhappy marriage. Sarah Archer’s Anne is nobody’s fool. She’s the iron hand behind the man, the brains of the operation who invested wisely, taking care of the home front while her wordsmith husband did battle to populate the vasty fields of empty paper with mankind’s most magnificent turns of phrase. Sarah’s Anne is the backbone on which sits the family’s head for business. She is not pleased, but neither is she at all amazed, not even in the slightest, when two potential cuckoos land in her well-feathered nest.

Julia Munrow has one of the brightest smiles in the business, I wonder if they teach that at RADA. As the first of the rivals, Anne Whateley, she has, or rather had, much to smile about. Whateley, some scholars argue, was the true love of Shakespeare’s early life. The couple may even have been betrothed or married in some form or another. Our present author picks up on the theme of Whateley having been Shakespeare’s muse, or perhaps even the true author or the works attributed to him. Julia throws out familiar lines from the canon with all the pride of a mother hen leading a healthy brood of chicks about a farmyard.

The biographer John Aubrey, as well as the satirist Samuel Butler, tell us that in his regular travels Shakespeare spent much time at the Crown Tavern in Oxford. This establishment was owned by that city’s mayor, John Davenant. Shakespeare may have been the godfather, perhaps even the biological father, to the future poet laureate, William Davenant, the definite son of Jane, his landlord’s wife. As Jane, Lemon Squeeze Productions’ Creative Director Emma Hopkins, completes the trio. Jane’s ace up her sleeve is that her son William, is possibly the only surviving male heir to the Shakespeares’ fortune. The wrangling that follows is as delightful as the scheming is dastardly. Here is a comic-drama that any master bardian trainspotter will revel in.

There’s definite room for improvement, but of those minor sorts that come with the territory when a play is tested in the unforgiving crucible of EdFringe. The off-handed treatment of Hamnet Shakespeare’s death by the other women is out of character, discordant, and deeply unsympathetic. Grief is grief and none of these individuals is as the snake roll’d in a flowering bank, With shining chequer’d slough, [that] doth sting a child That for the beauty thinks it excellent. (If you’re reading this, Joan, you’re very welcome to this, my pet theory on how Hamnet died as told in the most private lines in Shakespeare.)

What is 100% on target is the dynamic between the three actors. These are women of the world played by women of the stage with the skill, talent, and craft to pull together the many coloured strings of a carefully woven tapestry. The norns beneath Yggdrasil must look and carry themselves in much the same way Sarah, Julia, and Emma snip at one another as well as the man they each loved in their own particular way.

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‘The Wonder Games with Maddie and Greg’ (Underbelly George Square, until AUG 13)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“My youngsters asked if they could recreate an experiment at home and watch more of Maddie and Greg’s videos. Result.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

If you don’t have children under the age of 10 you may never have heard of Maddie and Greg. They are though to the CBeebies generation rockstars. Their popular science videos on YouTube were enormous hits during lockdown and helped inspire a generation of youngsters to stay curious.

We arrived early at the big purple cow to see a queue already snaking off towards the Meadows. Many children (and some adults) in Maddie and Greg t-shirts. There was a genuine hubbub. Maybe even a hullaballoo.

And then Maddie and Greg bounded on stage. They explained the Wonder Games: a series of games – with full audience participation – which would bring science to life.

The duo are exceptionally skilled pros. Working with kids and parents wearing comedy Sou’Westers isn’t easy. Experiments can go wrong.

They make it look easy as they guide the audience through the science. Youngsters cheering, clapping and desperately hoping to be picked. From the first minute to the last they hold their young audience in the palm of their hands. Youngsters nearby shouted out for particular games or experiments they’d tried at home and wanted to see in the flesh (I suppose a bit like those middle aged dads shouting ‘’Do more Beatles’’ stuff when McCartney was playing Glastonbury)

Over the course of four games – all involving the audience, all built around learning about science in a fun way – Maddie and Greg compete with each other. We were resolutely Team Maddie. There’s vortexes, intros to gravity, Irn Bru, and a genuinely hilarious game called Fact Bombs. Our girls – and two friends they bumped into – thought this was hilarious and were properly belly laughing. Maddie was doing her best to corpse Greg but he was just about fly enough to get through it.

It is a highly polished, inventive, enjoyable show. It makes you want to learn more about science. My youngsters asked if they could recreate an experiment at home and watch more of Maddie and Greg’s videos. Result.

 

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‘Pip Utton as Dylan’ (Pleasance Courtyard – Beneath, until AUG 29)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“Only someone as crazy as the man who brings to the Fringe three separate shows at three separate venues would be unhinged enough to come to Scotch-land and promote an American rye.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Full disclosure. I’m a massive Pip Utton fan and have been since I saw him “As Dickens” at EdFringe 2011. Bob Dylan on the other hand, meh not so much, but then I don’t much care for that Hitler chap Pip’s currently playing either. Bob Dylan has been described as the voice of a generation and that generation is queuing round the block. Their combined ages would take us back to a time when Noah was thinking about growing a beard and Keith Richards was qualifying for a seniors’ bus pass.

We enter to find ourselves backstage at Dylan’s last live performance. He’s taking a few questions from the press, chronicling the past with a soft-spoken worldview that is anything but weary. There’s a bottle of Heavens Door Tennessee Bourbon, the whiskey owned and approved by Dylan, which incorporates into the design the gates to Dylan’s home which he welded himself. Only someone as crazy as the man who brings to the Fringe three separate shows at three separate venues would be unhinged enough to come to Scotch-land and promote an American rye.

Starting with Dylan’s whiskey is a smart and stylish opening by the play’s author, the magnificent multi Fringe First-winning John Clancy. The fruits of Dylan’s success as a songwriter have liberated him, materially-speaking, to concentrate on intellectual and spiritual pursuits. We are hearing the voice of an unwilling guru who prefers questions to answers, individuality to conformity. Yet Bob Dylan, we learn, is just as much a carefully curated brand as his spirituous liquor. There’s some great fourth wall smashing over Utton’s choice of attire for the upcoming final performance – should it be the dark or the light black shirt. Folk know what Bob Dylan is supposed to look like and they’re meant to.

Brand Bob Dylan is a single oak tree, grown of over 200 acorns – the memorized folk songs which became his early musical bedrock and turned Robert Allen Zimmerman’s stage persona into a household name. The Dylan on our stage has no desire to become an exhibit, a fossil on display like one of the pictures on those bucket lists of paintings one simply has to see this side of heaven’s door. And so he’s calling time, and what a time it was. A time of war in SouthEast Asia. Social and political discord in the West. Changing fashions and age old problems. What must have it been like to have seen all this from the personal and professional perspective of Bob Dylan?

I come away liking Utton’s soft-spoken, open-minded, big-hearted character. I’d like to buy a couple of t-shirts, or maybe some tea towels with some of John Clancy’s most ringing lines and phrases. But then, of course, they wouldn’t have the impact of Utton’s unique, transcendental delivery. I’m looking at Pip Utton, but I’m seeing Bob Dylan. How does he do that? Maybe we’d all look this good if we had David Calvitto directing us too. Calvitto is an actor’s actor. A firm Fringe favourite and the ideal choice to stage a show that walks so softly while carrying a big stick. Utton performing, Clancy writing, Calvitto directing. It’s like all our EdFringe Christmases have come at once. Just add Guy Masterson and Sir Ian McGandolph selling ice cream in the foyer and you’ve got yourself the perfect theatrical experience.

 

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‘Will Tell and the Big Bad Baron’ (Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose – Doonstairs, until AUG 26)

Posted in *Written Interviews, 5*, EdFestivals 2022, Rated: Outstanding by

“An August without Theatre Fideri Fidera would be like the Edinburgh Tattoo without bagpipes.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

For our family there’s one theatre company at EdFringe which is officially unmissable. For their 2022 offering the Brighton-based family firm are returning to themes inspired by their Anglo-Swiss heritage. I’m not sure I could have told you before now that the legend of William Tell, the archer famous for his apple-shot, was Swiss or that he used a crossbow. Like our own Robin Hood, Tell is remembered as a freedom fighter, a people’s champion loved by the good feared, by the bad.

We enter to find an upturned soapbox, that symbol of plain-speaking and fearless truth-telling of which ex-PM John Major was so fond. There’s also a sign informing the citizenry that from here on in they are to bow, genuflect, and kowtow to the feathery hat of Bad Baron Boris (I’ve heard it might just have easily been Bad Baron Donald but Boris is a funnier name) which is hanging on one of the sign’s corners. It is a very silly hat. Flanking the soapbox and sign are two stone towers. I spend more than a little time trying to figure out if these are made of real stone or if they are painted. Obviously it’s the latter, but this precision and attention to detail speak quiet volumes about Theatre Fideri Fidera’s approach to their craft.

Over a rachus, occasionally ridiculous, and always entertaining hour we meet young Will who must rescue her father and free the princess from Baron Boris’ castle. Natasha Granger and Jack Faires are reunited with that same spell binding on-stage partnership we saw in ‘Ogg ’n’ Ugg and the World’s First Dogg’. Natasha is the Portland Vase of playacting – so delicate, so intentional, so well defined, classic yet immediate. She has a lovely way of bringing groups of children onto the stage and weaving them into the magic and fun. Daughters 1.0 (7yrs) and 2.0 (4yrs) were brought up to help Will don his suit of armour from a collection of colanders, dustbin lids etc. and (obviously) that was the best bit of the show. Jack Faires is big, bold, and brilliant as both the baron and his beautiful (in her own special way) daughter. It’s a pleasure to boo him with all one’s might.

Daughter 1.0 had this to say in her notebook: “In Will Tell and the big bad baron Will’s Dad was toled (by the baron) to fire a arrow in to an apple on Will’s head. And he was traped and my sister helped her to get dressed. She rode on a donkey Rosina Who was made of a bike. She had a fight with the baron and saved his dauter Who was traped too! And then she found her Dad in a dundion. And afder that they all went home together. I loved it!”

An August without Theatre Fideri Fidera would be like the Edinburgh Tattoo without bagpipes. Their sets and puppetry are second to none. They’ve roared out of lockdown doing what they do best, making children laugh while they think – or should that be think while they laugh?

 

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