Fest 2023 Issue 3 by The Skinny

Edinburgh Festival Guide

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Inside: Endea Owens Ed Byrne Lucy McCormick F-Bomb Tilda Cobham-Hervey Julia Masli NEHH Dan Tiernan Lucas O’Neil

A SOUND LEGACY Anoushka Shankar writes her next chapter Reviews

Features

Listings

23 - 28 Aug

Berk's Nest in association with United Agents presents

The three time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee tours the UK with his critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe sell-out show.

2023/24 • UK Tour

BerksNest.com/Kieran More dates to be announced

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Director George Sully Editor Arusa Qureshi

Deputy Editor Ben Venables

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Design Team Phoebe Willison Dalila D’Amico

2023 Writing Team Eilidh Akilade, Alvie, Anahit Behrooz, Evan Beswick, Deborah Chu, Rho Chung, Ashley Davies, Fringe Dog, Jamie Dunn, Emerald, Veronica Finlay, Katie Goh, Si Hawkins, Katie Hawthorne, Jack Howse, Becca Inglis, Laura Kressly, Eve Livingston, Tamara Mathias, Astrid McCarthy, Phoebe McCarthy, Francesca Peschier, David Pollock, mandla rae, Jay Richardson, Claire Sawers, Kirstyn Smith, Oran, Xuanlin Tham Cover Image Laura Lewis

Fringe Dog Illustration Lauren Hunter

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Published by Radge Media Limited., M9 Codebase, Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 9DR. Every effort has been made to check the accuracy of the information in this magazine, but we cannot accept liability for information which is inaccurate. Show times and prices are subject to changes – always check with the venue. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher. Printed by Think Solutions, Glasgow

Fest 2023 Issue 3

5 Contents

8 Sitar Hero Anoushka Shankar moves people through music

12 Stranger Things A chance meeting with Tilda Cobham-Hervey

15 All About That Bass Jazz star Endea Owens arrives at EIF

Comedy 18 Ed Byrne A tribute to Ed’s brother Paul

Theatre 31 Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz A smart look at Black masculinity

Music 49 Nothing Ever Happens Here Celebrating a decade of NEHH with departing founder Jamie Sutherland

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Image credits (top to bottom, left to right): Laura Lewis; Jess Shurte; courtesy of the artist; Roslyn Gaunt; Mihaela Bodlovic; Silken Weinberg; Stephen Dobbie

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F-Bomb Theatre's Perfect Day Rachel O’Regan, writer of returning Fringe hit The Beatles Were a Boyband and co-director of feminist theatre company F-Bomb, gives us the lowdown on her perfect day in Edinburgh 6

Perfect Day

Where do you like to relax in Edinburgh? At home, rewatching Grey’s Anatomy. Where’s the best place for a night out? Paradise Palms! It’s a veggie and vegan bar that also doubles as a creative community hangout – they genuinely support emerging artists in Edinburgh, champion diversity, and provide a safe space for LGBTQIA+ people. Plus, they have a cocktail with Buckfast in it, which I could never say no to.

The Beatles Were a Boyband

What is your favourite place to eat in Edinburgh? I live in Leith and there’s a little place on Great Junction Street called Peter’s Food Hub – it’s a cute family-owned business that does Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Greek. I know that sounds random, but who says you can’t have sushi and spring rolls and spaghetti in one meal? In the immortal words of Sharpay Evans, I want it all.

What shows are you most looking forward to seeing? Anything that’s in our FemiFringe Guide! I’m especially interested in the ones that get to the Fringe with very little funding or assistance. A recent study reported a 37% gender pay gap for theatre freelancers, so it’s more important than ever to go out and buy tickets for shows made by women and people of marginalised genders.

Where is the best place to smash the patriarchy? Probably Holyrood? But really the best place is WHERE YOU ARE. I don’t think there’s any best way to be a feminist, and What is the best show that living your life with joy and clashes with your own? authenticity is also an act I can’t wait to see Salamander, of protest.

Rachel O’Regan

Where would you go in Edinburgh to find some feminist solidarity? Nightclub bathrooms. What is your best Fringe memory? This might sound self-obsessed, but winning a Fringe First and the Sit-Up Award last year was the biggest thrill. Being a woman in theatre isn’t always easy and those memories get me through times when I feel like I’m knocking on closed doors. One of the best things about the Fringe is that we are able to carve out a space for feminist theatre, and audiences receive it with open arms. I’d love to see theatre programming take a leap and look a bit more like that outside of August. SHOW VENUE: TIME:

The Beatles Were a Boyband Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose 7:30pm – 8:30pm, 18–27 Aug

Perfect Day

which is produced by another Scottish feminist theatre company, Pretty Knickers. It’s inspired by true events that happened in Leith in 1980 and explores a lot of the same themes we are interested in – the humanity, dignity and solidarity of women.

Photo: Josie Morrison Young

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Photo: Laura Lewis

Sitar Hero The composer and activist Anoushka Shankar chats to Arusa Qureshi about the joy of collaboration, the beauty of simplicity and reshaping the sitar’s legacy 8

Cover Feature

9 here are certain sights and sounds that you naturally become accustomed to growing up in a South Asian household. The crackling and sizzling of spices hitting a hot pan, the image of Shah Rukh Khan’s face constantly on your TV; bright yellow turmeric stains on every surface and the beautiful and otherworldly melodies of Bollywood and Indian classical. If you grew up immersed in any way in the latter, it is likely that the sitar will hold a very special place in your heart. “I think it’s always had a deeply and very overtly emotive quality,” Anoushka Shankar says of the mediaeval instrument over a call from her home in London. “So on a piece of music, when you hear a sitar come in, it can kind of strike those chords in you in a very particular way.” Many of us first generation South Asian kids that grew up on a steady diet of Ravi Shankar – the virtuosic Indian sitarist, influencer of George Harrison and Anoushka’s father – will be all too familiar with this feeling. Though Anoushka has followed in her father’s musical footsteps as a composer and sitar player, she has done something exceptional with the stringed instrument. Immersing herself in a wide range of genres, she has taken the sitar out of a time period synonymous with the 60s, the Beatles and psychedelia. “One of the things I’ve really tried to do in my career is take it out of those notions in people’s subliminal listening experience,” she explains. “So when you put it in different sound worlds, different instrumentation, or when you mic it differently or play it, maybe in a less ornamental way, it changes people’s experience of the instrument. Then it’s kind of like the sitar that they know with its beautiful emotive sound, but not in that exotified way that they think of it. And I think that makes it really intriguing all over again.” Having begun her study of the sitar with her father as a child, Shankar made her professional debut at the age of 13 and was touring the world by the time she was an adult. Nine Grammy nominations, 10 studio albums and numerous accolades later, she returns

this year with a new mini-album titled Chapter I: Forever, For Now, which charts a development in her relationship to the sitar and to a new way of writing and releasing music. “I think I’ve been on a real journey of trying to find more and more simplicity over the last few years because I genuinely love very different forms of very complex layered music,” she says. “And sometimes I listen back to my own music and think, ‘Oh, that’s really busy’, or ‘there’s a lot going on’, or ‘I have so many ideas, I tried to cram them in’.” Featuring contributions from Nils Frahm, whose LEITER label is also releasing the record, and produced by previous ‘Udhero Na’ collaborator Arooj Aftab, Chapter I: Forever, For Now explores a newfound expression of colour and clarity. “With Arooj, I’m so drawn to her simplicity, and Nils as well. They are two people that I feel like when I listen to them, I drop into something because there’s enough space for me as a listener to be in that space with them.” No stranger to collaboration, Shankar’s work with internationally renowned musicians over the years has taken her into genres like electronica, jazz and pop, where she has always seamlessly found a natural home. “I think the reason I love collaboration is because I love the surprises that come from another human being,” she says. “I can certainly write a piece of music alone in my room. But if I’m coming up with ideas with someone else, their ideas are obviously distinct from mine and so the piece itself can become something greater than what I create on my own. It just lights up something and that excitement is very inspiring.” Ahead of the arrival of Chapter I: Forever, For Now in October and a tour that will support the release, Shankar will be making her way to the Edinburgh International Festival with a quintet that was formed largely out of this love of and affinity for collaboration. Towards the tail end of last year, the musician returned to India for the first time in a number of years for a mini-tour, taking with her a hand-picked group of musicians, for whom she has a huge amount of respect.

“I hope the music has lasting power and moves people”

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Photo: Vikram Kushwah

“I thought, these are the people I’d love to play with right now and it felt so exciting and wonderful to play with them that it’s turned into my whole next year and North American and European tours. They’re soloists in their own right, who release their own music: the incredible Sarathy Korwar, who is on percussion in the band; the great Arun Ghosh who plays and composes on clarinet. My long standing bassist Tom Farmer who toured worldwide with me on [2016 album] Land of Gold and on a few other projects. And then finally Pirashanna Thevarajah, who is playing South Indian Carnatic percussion instruments.” Shankar notes that she always likes to twin percussion so that there’s a natural balance between Western and Indian musical styles. Over the course of her career, this pairing and subversion of the sitar has created a fascinating base from which experimentation, crea10

Cover Feature

tivity and unexpected harmony has occurred. Though she is visibly bashful at the mention of her potential legacy and her pioneering status with the sitar, just like her father, she has undeniably done much to break new ground with the instrument and to bring it to new generations and contemporary audiences. “I hope the music has lasting power and moves people,” she says when asked about the future and legacy of the sitar. “I hope music like mine, including mine, that is about connection across boundaries, continues to be proof that that works. And that great things happen when we try to be greater than our parts individually and connect with others who are different from us. That would be incredible.” SHOW VENUE: TIME:

Anoushka Shankar Festival Theatre 8:00pm – 9:30pm, 27 Aug

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Stranger Things Australian artist and co-founder of Gravity & Other Myths Tilda Cobham-Hervey explores the concept of chance meetings in her intimate audio adventure Two Strangers Walk Into a Bar... Words: Katie Hawthorne

t might sound like a dad joke but Two Strangers Walk Into a Bar... is a journey. Created by Australian artist Tilda Cobham-Hervey, each performance is uniquely intimate: no audience, no actors, just two random punters on a quest for nothing less than the joy of unexpected human connection. “It’s that fantastic thing you can only get with a stranger,” Cobham-Hervey says, beaming. “There’s a different part of yourself that you can access when you have the freedom of thinking, ‘I’m never going to see this person again’. What does that bring out in you? Sometimes I think you can be more honest.” Photo: Jess Shurte

Theatre

Sign up for a timeslot and you’ll be emailed directions to a ‘Stranger Meeting Spot’. Once there, you’ll be given headphones, through which Cobham-Hervey’s disembodied voice will offer a series of instructions and suggestions. A little later, you’ll meet your fellow stranger. But it’s no dramatic 007-style mission, nor an elaborate prank. “It’s very gentle, and very private,” she assures us. “It’s silly and light-hearted, and built to try and make people feel good.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea for Two Strangers came to Cobham-Hervey during the first Covid lockdown. “I was really lonely,” she says, frankly. “Not just for my friends and family but also for strangers. Those day-today interactions that can change the way you think about something, or even just standing in a lift with someone, being physically close to someone you don’t know.” The show is built as an antidote to that loneliness, and even uses the audio-guide format as an homage to the podcasts which kept so many people company during those isolated months. “It’s about the intimacy of having someone inside your head,” she explains, “and how to use that to put you in a place to consider where you are, what you’re made of, what you’re doing here, and how to sit in front of someone and really ask them a question.” After making a first draft in a garden shed with a borrowed microphone (“it was so DIY, I’m so un-technical!”), Cobham-Hervey premiered Two Strangers at the Adelaide Fringe in 2021. She was surprised, and deeply moved, by the emotional response it received. “Because it’s all about how different people approach it, every show is incredibly different. As much as

I made it, I don’t really feel any ownership: you just get to witness the alchemy of people.” Although it’s her first solo production as a writer, Cobham-Hervey sees Two Strangers as a natural culmination of her career so far. She grew up performing circus, and co-founded the company Gravity & Other Myths when she was just 14: “I was probably the most annoying teenager,” she laughs apologetically. Devised forms of dance and physical theatre followed before she found fame as a film actor after starring in Hotel Mumbai (2018). “The show takes all the things I love; writing, creating, and the part about being an actor where you arrive on set and meet a stranger, and they’re going to play your husband! But I also wanted to make something that wasn’t just me on

stage, I wanted to give people the chance to be in the thing.” Two Strangers Walk Into a Bar... bottles the high-wire fizz that only a chance encounter with a stranger can bring – and without the pressure of a date, the stuffiness of a job interview, or the awkward moment when you fluff your coffee order. Embrace the unknown, Cobham-Hervey urges. And don’t cheat yourself by bringing a friend. “The magic is in getting to learn about someone, and I promise it’s not scary. Be brave!”

SHOW VENUE: TIME:

Two Strangers Walk Into a Bar... House of Oz times vary, 4–27 Aug, not 9, 14, 21

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Photo: Jess Shurte

“As much as I made it, I don’t really feel any ownership: you just get to witness the alchemy of people”

Barry Potter and the Magic of Wizardry

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The award-winning bassist and composer Endea Owens – one of jazz’s rising stars – discusses her two upcoming concerts at the International Festival Words: Eilidh Akilade

ndea Owens is full of joy. There’s a lot going on right now, it’s a lot to handle – but it’s great and she feels great. “One of my prayers for last year was to do this very thing – to take my band internationally and tour and help people, so it’s kind of a surreal experience,” she says and her eyes begin to water, just a bit. The Detroit-raised bassist and composer is one of jazz’s most exciting emerging talents. Mentored by the likes of Rodney Whittaker, she’s toured with names such as Diana Ross

and Solange, amongst others. This year, amid touring Canada and Europe, she’s also releasing her debut album, Feel Good Music. Watching her play – whether with her own band or in the house band on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – is quite remarkable. There’s something warm and open about it; Owens’ sound welcomes you to it. “The bass wasn’t my first choice,” she admits. Owens started with violin and piano, attending church four times a week and playing by ear.

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Image: courtesy of the artist

All About That Bass

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Image: courtesy of the artist

She first came to the bass through Mozart’s ‘Symphony No. 25’; having played it on violin, she tried the bass part entirely unread. “My orchestra teacher saw that and he said, ‘Play the bass or get an F,’” Owens smiles. “He always told me that I would thank him later for that.” That teacher was, of course, correct. After graduating from The Juilliard School in 2018, she formed her own band. Endea Owens and the Cookout is made up of musicians she’s met throughout her time in New York. She writes the music herself and offers it as a “roadmap” to the band, trusting them to take it in the right direction. “What I love about jazz is the freedom of it all,” she says. “It’s always different every time – it can’t be duplicated.” One of her two Edinburgh International Festival performances this year will be a piece commissioned by the festival and inspired by Martin Luther King’s ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech. In the past, she’s also written and performed a piece based on the life of Ida B Wells. For Owens, telling and retelling their stories is vital. “It’s important to uphold the great people in history,” she says. But she doesn’t want to create martyrs; rather, she wants to remind us of their humanity, allowing us to realise our own potential. “It’s going to sound 16

EIF

“What I love about jazz is the freedom of it all” big… But it’s also going to sound familiar and homey. And heavenly.” Certainly, Owens’ faith is central to her work. “I view my music as very spiritual, soulful music. And those are two things that you can’t really put a description on,” she says. Categorisation isn’t important – Owens is looking for something that transcends. This desire to connect comes into play outwith the music also. She often ends her performances with an affirmation, welcoming the audience to join her. “Some people don’t know how to speak well about themselves,” she says, voice heavy. She picked up this practice from her good friend and jazz singer Jazzmeia Horn, who she previously toured with. She continues: “When you feel good, you can take that out everywhere you go.” Owens wants to be, and is, part of a greater ripple effect – of connection and kindness. Love for herself and love for others is at the forefront. In summer 2020, Owens started the Community Cookout, providing free music and meals to under-served neighbourhoods in New York. For Owens, it’s about connecting folk while giving back, having grown up with charitable organisations herself. “It is one of my life’s greatest joys.” But this summer, Owens also wants a much-deserved moment for herself. “I want to sit down and take it all in,” she says. “That’s the takeaway: to just be proud. To keep going and keep striving.” Endea Owens will most certainly keep going and keep striving. There’s a brilliance about her, one that we’re lucky to witness – at the Edinburgh International Festival and beyond. SHOW VENUE: TIME: SHOW VENUE: TIME:

Endea Owens: New Work at The Hub The Hub 4:00pm – 5:15pm, 23 Aug Endea Owens: at The Hub The Hub 8:00pm – 9:45pm, 24 Aug

Little Wimmin Figs in Wigs Always Already Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects

Vital, genre-defying performances The Talent Action Hero & Deborah Pearson Birthmarked Brook Tate TOM BULLYACHE

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World The Javaad Alipoor Company FORGE Rachel Mars A Crash Course in Cloudspotting Raquel Meseguer Zafe/ Unchartered Collective BODIES Ray Young

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Always Already. Photo © Jemima Yong

20–27 AUGUST

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Photo: Roslyn Gaunt

Comedy Reviews Ed Byrne: Tragedy Plus Time HHHHH

VENUE: TIME:

Assembly Rooms 9:30pm – 10:30pm, 3–27 Aug, not 14

I saw no fewer than six standups paying tribute to the late comedy writer-director Paul Byrne in their Fringe shows last year. His brother Ed has taken slightly longer to offer this tremendously funny, thoughtful and fond reminisce, adhering to the maxim often attributed to Mark Twain that tragedy becomes comedy in time. This is the tale of the darkest joke Byrne ever told, in the show he never wanted to write. 18

Comedy

Chiefly, it’s an affecting account of a fraternal bond that was sorely tested but endured their clashing egos and Paul’s collapsing health. Besieged by a failing liver after a lifetime of partying, with his personal and professional life falling apart over lockdown, it was Covid that ultimately did for him. A central plank of the show is a seething Ed recalling, in typically incredulous pique, how he cut loose the conspiracy nut friend calling it a “plandemic”, because some relationships are not worth maintaining. Byrne doesn’t underplay his brother’s selfish, spikier side, noting the lack of time he put

in with the comic’s children. Their arguments were true ding-dongs, with resentment festering for months afterwards, though he accepts his own ADHD-influenced role in sparking them. Above all though, he sets huge store by Paul’s comedic insight, his ability to punch up a script and help younger comics realise their potential. They were closest ripping the piss out of each other. And naturally, he gives Paul many of the show’s best lines posthumously. Even as he retains the abiding, final vent of exasperated ultra-bastardy for himself. ✏︎ Jay Richardson

Julia Masli: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

HHHHH

TIME:

Monkey Barrel Comedy 1:30am – 2:30am, 16-27 Aug

Julia Masli first emerged at the Fringe as the versatile pins in clown sketch show Legs. Since then, the London-based Estonian has established a burgeoning reputation as a solo performer. And she uses a mannequin’s leg here to encourage audience members to open up to her, prodding it into faces and inquisitively enquiring: “Problem?” This disarming tactic, and her unlikely, mostly non-judgemental persona as an agony aunt, encourages really quite candid answers. Despite the

fact that she occasionally screams in faces, smashes up furniture or sweetly extorts money and offers next to nothing in the way of practical solutions or therapeutic help, the simplicity of the entreaty and perhaps the intimately sweaty, dimly lit confines of her basement room, encourage people to really open up, sharing malaises from the trivial to profound. All of these Masli takes onboard. Her help has an exploitative aspect, and various volunteers are really set to work on themselves and others’, scattered about her stage as she finds more marks to probe. On the night I caught it, comedian Glenn Moore was

one of those swept up in the chaos. And it’s perhaps indicative of this often uproariously entertaining, boundary over-stepping hour that his well-meaning attempts to help ended up becoming such an imposition upon him. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha seems to have effortlessly plugged into a new zeitgeist of therapy-influenced sharing of feelings. But it was interesting that ultimately, both he and another, otherwise equally game volunteer, refused to let Masli fully invade their personal limits, the irresistibly giddy force of bravura clowning such as this encountering modern, respectful consent. ✏︎ Jay Richardson

Review

VENUE:

Photo: Andy Hollingworth

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A TA L E O F I N D I A N M A G I C

“BEN HART IS A MASTER”

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& PURE MAGIC Sell Out Show 2017 - 2019

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18:00

02 - 27 AUG

PALAIS DU VARIÉTÉ

HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Pleasance Courtyard 6:20pm – 7:20pm, 2–25 Aug, not 14, 21

It has only been five years since Janine Harouni took up stand-up comedy, and four since her first solo hour at the Fringe. It’s taken her until now to return with a much-anticipated follow-up to the hit debut – Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Stay Seated) – which secured her a Best Newcomer nomination in 2019 but, to be fair, she has been busy. Newly married and eight

months pregnant, it makes sense that Harouni’s sophomore hour Man’oushe, named so after a childhood nickname coined by her Lebanese grandmother, revolves around themes of family, heritage and impending motherhood. It’s a polished and sophisticated show which betrays none of her relative newness, instead taking audiences on a well-structured and rewarding journey through Harouni’s family history and her own path to parenthood. Harouni’s comedy is warm but biting, with gags about

abortion limits and the brutality of maternity and labour packing an extra punch when delivered by such a heavily pregnant woman. While slick and serene to the end, Harouni is quick-witted and often cynical – but she is also unafraid of sentimentality and tenderness, lending Man’oushe a rich texture and a moving pay-off. She will reach full-term before the end of this Fringe run, she tells the crowd – potential audiences could do worse than rushing to see her first. ✏︎ Eve Livingston

Review

Photo: Matt Stronge

Janine Harouni: Man’oushe

HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Monkey Barrel Comedy 10:00pm – 11:00pm, 31 Jul – 27 Aug, not 14

The bloke next to me has been separated from his mates and man he needs a friend. He’s lost control of his body, laughter juddering him off his seat. He turns to me for support, his face half in hysteria, half in anguish – he whispers: “What’s happening?” Then the lights go out. Dan Tiernan’s debut is like being hit in the face by sheet lightning. It’s as if the genre of comedy has compressed inside him and become an unstable compound – and now all the comedy is exploding out of him. He talks about school days both as a child in special education and as an adult working as a dinner lady. He’s preoccupied with his mum’s boyfriend Nick and – perhaps the closest he gets to sincerity – coming to terms with what he can or can’t do for his sister Phoebe’s leukaemia. But every line, talking about his sexuality, living on his own for the first time, is undercut with a swerve into maniacal exaggeration and absurdity. He comes head first, turning with ferocity on the audience, before he’s crashing into the back wall. Tiernan needles us with uncomfortable, offensive slang – the kind he may have been on the receiving end of. Are we being led to ridicule, are we laughing at him? There’s no time to think as we’re hit with the next 22

Photo: Drew Forsyth

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Dan Tiernan: Going Under

Comedy

crashing wave his berserk, unpredictable delivery and punchlines bring. We’re drowning in our own giggles. When the lights fail it’s a genuine tech balls up (in a stand-up show with only the bare necessities of tech) – something to do with a hydrant getting knocked over and a hapless debate goes on behind us about finding a switch. Tiernan, now

lit by the audience’s phone torches, doesn’t fuck about and launches into an off-thecuff tirade against the techie, giving him an entire backstory and Tiernan’s fruitless attempts to sack him. Maybe it’s true; maybe the techie has Stockholm Syndrome. To be trapped in a room with Tiernan is like being aggressively tickled, a hostage to our own laughter. ✏︎ Ben Venables

Tadiwa Mahlunge: Inhibition Exhibition

HHHHH

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Pleasance Courtyard 9:25pm – 10:25pm, 2–27 Aug, not 14

Tadiwa Mahlunge talks fast. And talking is what Inhibition Exhibition is about, in many ways. Considering this is his debut hour at the Fringe, he’s remarkably confident, with a set as smooth as his shiny silk shirt. The way he talks (born and raised in Zimbabwe until he was eight before moving to Wales, his “posh” English idiolect now doesn’t sound “Black enough” to his London

barbers); the way his mum admonishes or congratulates him; the few things his absent biological dad has ever said to him – language makes for a smart framing of this breakneck autobiographical set. You might think the velocity of his delivery belies an underlying anxiety, until he ultimately confirms that, yes, like most stand-ups, he suffers a debilitating need for validation. Comedy can be a cult of personality after all, and Mahlunge wrestles with the psychological and financial volatility of doing something he really loves but probably

won’t pay the bills (“If tonight goes well, you’ll never see me again,” he says, perhaps only half joking). The show is obviously about him, but his experiences provide a lens through which to examine cultural dislocation, racial and sexual politics, family dynamics and all the intersections therein. And he gamely slingshots through these with precocious dexterity, hinting at a more considered structure that his speed might otherwise conceal, and commanding this sweaty Pleasance bunker like a pro. ✏︎ George Sully

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Photo: Jiksaw

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Photo: Dylan Woodley

Huge Davies: Whodunnit HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Pleasance Courtyard 9:40pm – 10:40pm, 2–27 Aug, not 16

Sometimes you don’t know something has been missing in your life until it’s right in front of you. And sometimes that thing is musical comedy but make it misanthropic. Huge Davies is possibly the most miserable man you’ll see at this year’s Fringe, and you’ll have a bloody brilliant time. Carrying his keyboard like a goth interval ice cream man from hell, Davies glares the 24

Comedy

audience down with the deadpan dryness that’s become his trademark. Whodunnit is a loosely set up murder mystery that allows Davies to sing a lot about death, punctuated with meanderings into strange places indeed. No spoilers, but if he invites you on a stag maybe don’t go. Leaning into such a dry persona would be risky in the hands of someone less funny. Davies’ purposeful alienation works because his dripping sarcasm rarely misses. It’s like being transported to a world where Robert Smith decided to do gags between songs

and started telling the audience to go fuck themselves. Rarely in comedy has anyone been as committed to a bit as Davies. His ridiculously long set-ups are meticulously crafted, delivered with his signature sardonic sneer. A healthy dose of observational absurdism keeps everything just on the right side of total nihilism. A trip to Nando's becomes an underworld side quest, while his campaign to expose the truth about cinema might just scramble your brain. This is the misery business that the Fringe has been missing. ✏︎ Francesca Peschier

HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Gilded Balloon Teviot 8:30pm – 9:30pm, 12–27 Aug, not 24

Heel kicking her way out from behind a curtain, Megan Stalter appears while twirling her long, long, hair with a stretched smile upon her face. From that first moment, it’s obvious we’re in for something absurd at An Evening of Mayhem with Megan Stalter. It is, indeed, mayhem. There is a dating show, a novel reading, and a musical opening that starts and restarts a healthy handful of times. There’s moments we’re not sure are intentional or not, and the glaring ambiguities are testament to Stalter’s utter commitment to the bit. It’s annoying and uncomfortable in the best possible way. Dripping with delusion, Stalter’s on-stage persona is truly exceptional. She’s quick, each joke cutting just right – usually, something inappropriate or airheaded. There’s not a sentimental second and it’s all the better for it: we never once see her performance falter. On opening night, Stalter’s interactions with writer Maddie Ballard – the on-stage guitarist and her alleged “exwife” – are hilarious. Maddie never really says anything but Stalter thinks everything she does is wrong. She laughs

along and it’s fun, so fun, to have someone remind us of the utter absurdity. At some points, something of a narrative would be nice, primarily for ease of enjoyment. But, of course, that’s

exactly the point. Between her reoccurring child-like screams, it is playful but not unchallenging. And a warning: the audience participation is incessant but completely worth it. ✏︎ Eilidh Akilade

Review

Photo: Alexa Viscius

An Evening of Mayhem with Megan Stalter

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Stuart Goldsmith: Spoilers HHHHH

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Monkey Barrel Comedy 3:20pm – 4:20pm, 3–27 Aug, not 16

There aren’t many ways for white, male, middle class comedians to credibly leave it all on the line, but Stuart Goldsmith has managed it. How so? By dedicating his latest show entirely to the climate crisis: a topic almost guaranteed to produce a full-body cringe. When two audience members walk out very early doors, he laughs gamely: “They’re the first ones of the festival!” he says, with a touch of pride. If they’d stayed on, they would’ve gotten what the rest of us had the privilege to experience: a warm, hilarious hour that pokes fun at our hypocrisies, while suggesting genuine pathways for change. When Goldsmith invites the audience to confess to their deepest, darkest acts of climate criminality, one woman all but wails: “I like cling film!” Such is the rapport he builds with his crowd that many are willing to lay our climate guilt at his feet. For who is Goldsmith – or any of us – to judge? By skewering his love of business class flights, and his fraught relationship with his future grandchildren, Goldsmith makes clear our tangled complicity in systems beyond our control without allowing us to languish there. Through his free-wheeling anecdotes 26

Comedy

Photo: Matt Crockett

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about famous tombstones, and those XR newsletters you’re never, ever going to read, he creates space to

breathe amidst the eco-anxiety; camaraderie amongst our failures; and, spoiler alert, reasons to hope. ✏︎ Deborah Chu

Lane Kwederis: Sex Job

HHHHH

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Underbelly, Bristo Square 2:25pm – 3:25pm, 2–28 Aug, not 14

In this entertaining, fastpaced and eye-opening show, charismatic American performer Lane Kwederis describes how she went from getting a BA in musical theatre to making money as a sex worker – specifically a financial dominatrix (that’s fin-dom to those in the know). It all started when she discovered that men would

pay to worship her feet and, deciding to apply the golden rule of improv – “yes and” – to this new revenue stream, she dived in. Thanks to her perky, witty openness about it all, any sense of judgement one might harbour quickly dissipates as she describes her journey, with stories, musical theatre-style songs, lip-syncing and a bit of multimedia (including a few clips of her work). She teaches us about fetishes, makes us gasp with a tale of an injury (to a client – crack – whoops), and reveals

the importance of having to act like you don’t need or care about money when extracting cash from men in the world of fin-dom. Complications regarding payments come up too, underlying one of the many barriers that sex workers have to navigate. Kwederis touches upon what happens when clients try to push boundaries, and there’s one harrowing story about maltreatment, but you might be surprised when you learn who the perpetrator is. What an education this show is. ✏︎ Ashley Davies

Review

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Image: courtesy of Impressive PR

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Photo: Mark Sherratt

Matt Hutchinson: Hostile HHHHH we know the state-sponsored hostility that met the hopes and dreams of these young TIME: men and women, some of them ex-servicemen; exciting, because look what Hutchinson If there’s a textbook way to is doing with that heritage gain audience trust at the top, right now. to say in big bold letters, “I’ve By and large, he honours got this,” then Matt Hutchinson that well-won trust. DJ might have found it. As we file Hutchinson gets good laughs in, he’s hunched over a set of from the contrast between decks, cutting beats like a pro. his appearance, the idea of The lights dim and his DJing him as “the voice of the street” becomes VJing, mixed-up and the reality, namely that Pathé footage showing West he’s an NHS doctor who went Indians arriving on the Empire to a good school, whose mum Windrush – British citizens drove him to and from DJ settling in Britain. It’s a moving gigs, and whose closest brush start: heartbreaking because with the law was fruit-based VENUE:

Assembly George Square Studios 2:30pm – 3:30pm, 2–27 Aug, not 15

Comedy

and thoroughly middle class. Unsurprisingly, Dr H’s bedside manner is top notch. He’s a total sweetie with a very cute baby and some great jokes. But it’s a fairly ragtag bunch of jokes, and his segues between them are as choppy as his beats. Phrases like “but...y’know,” work overtime to guide him through an hour that doesn’t quite have enough solid gear to fill it. A couple of musical jokes make for nice contrast but the fact that the vocals are recorded suggests he doesn’t have the confidence in them that they need to make them fly. ✏︎ Evan Beswick

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a dark rectangular room. May (Gabriella Munro), a young HHHHH photographer, is charged with taking photos of dissenters, rebelling against the organVENUE: Holden Street Theatres isation, as they are directed TIME: times vary, various towards a door, and their dates between 11 Feb impending doom. and 15 Mar What ensues is a tour-deTICKETS: $20 – $28 force about the adaptability of human beings within an Inspired by the horrific atrociauthoritarian dictatorship and ties committed in Cambodia’s the consequences of those S-21 prison, Feet First Collecadaptations. It’s a play that tive’s S-27 by Sarah Grochala has asks: just how far would you you in the brutal depths of a go to save yourself? Would you tyrannical regime before you’ve abandon a baby, kill your sister, found a seat in the theatre. sell your body? Guards aggressively ‘proThe answers to these quescess’ each audience member tions, and the complexities of before herding everyone into the sacrifices being made, are

shown through gut-wrenching vignettes throughout. These snippets are broken up by musical interludes with choreographed, repetitive body movements, allowing you further into these atrocities. At times, the dialogue leans towards cliché, but this doesn’t detract from an incredible performance from the entire cast. Lauren Beeton and Sally Clune give are particularly transfixing performances that delve into sheer fear, hopelessness and the intoxication of power. S-27 is a full submersion into a disturbing reality that leans a little too closely into our own. ✏︎ Edwina Sleigh

Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Roundabout @ Summerhall 8:20pm – 9:20pm, 2–27 Aug, not 3, 8, 15, 22

Nathaniel is full of love – for his barber, for techno, and for Birmingham. But he’s not yet found the one: he’s been ghosted and stood up, and he’s found every spark to be an absent one. It’s a tricky position for a romantic like him. Writer and performer Nathan Queeley-Dennis takes us through a series of Nathaniel’s dates with a joyful and

cheeky humour that unfurls into a rich, intelligent look at Black masculinity and knowing oneself. Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz is an utter delight and an utter triumph. Nathaniel is fully attentive to the world around him and such carefulness is often at the root of each comedic turn. The character is warm and forgiving, generous and trusting, qualities which make each romantic up and down tug that bit harder. And the play fills us up with all the sweet stuff, too: something of a Beyoncé-collage, an ever chaotic group chat, and the lasting glitters of a Lush bath bomb.

But Queeley-Dennis isn’t afraid of complex matters either. Nathaniel’s own issues – guarded with a rehearsed pretence and ever seeking himself in others – are unpacked slowly, with an almost shocking gentleness. As such, the play’s conclusion lands softly, restfully, while stirring us just so. Throughout all the heartbreak, Queeley-Dennis plays out the quarter-life with equal parts fun and wisdom – an arguably infallible combination. Carried with an endearing confidence, we fall for Nathaniel and, in doing so, we fall for everything else. ✏︎ Eilidh Akilade

Review

Theatre Reviews Tartuffe

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Photo: Raymond Davies

Lie Low HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Traverse Theatre times vary, 3–27 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

Faye can’t sleep, we learn at the outset of Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s dark and absurd comedy Lie Low. She’s not sure why, she insists to her ineffectual male GP, met here in celestial voiceover only – yes, a year ago she was the victim of a break-in where she awoke to a masked male standing over her and exposing himself, but she’s over that now. As we quickly learn, though, it’s difficult to get over such experiences so easily or indeed to make sense of them at all amidst contested narratives and the fallibility of memory. These are the themes at the heart of Lie Low, which pitches itself as a play about a woman undergoing exposure therapy but in fact plays out as an exploration of sexual assault, trauma, consent and the grey areas between and around each. This is brave subject matter, and it is handled confidently in both Smyth’s writing and the performances of lead actors Charlotte McCurry and Michael Patrick. McCurry in particular displays impressive range, her character careering between high-energy fantastical dance sequences, bloody-minded denial and heart-wrenching desperation. Patrick’s portrayal of Faye’s brother Naoise, grappling, as the audience comes to learn, with his own ruinous secret, is skilful in its nuance – is he to be believed? 32

Theatre

Does he believe what he is saying? The result is that Lie Low is at the same time funny, surreal and deeply unsettling. Una-

fraid to sit with ambiguity and uncertainty, this gripping play will stay with audiences long beyond its 65 minute run time. ✏︎ Eve Livingston

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HHHHH from an artist known for using her body as a confronting TIME: site for performance. But there’s something we’re not warned of: actually, this is really, really fun. Does any show at the Fringe Lucy and Friends is, in fact, have a more extensive conLucy McCormick’s first solo tent warning list than Lucy show – the setup for the joke and Friends? Walking into being a) that she didn’t get the Pleasance Forth we’re the Arts Council funding to advised about, here goes, involve pals, and, b) as we get loud music, scenes of a sexual to know her better, that in fact nature and nudity, strobe and she’s a bit of a loner. So we haze, audience participation, are her friends and, though plus allergen warnings for we don’t get our hands or our hummus, tomato puree, wine bodies quite as dirty as does and carrot. I can assure, all are McCormick, we’re involved, ticked off. And, sure enough, corralled into various bits of this is appropriately challeng- performance by this sassy, ing, uncomfortable stuff chaotic, messy perversion of VENUE:

Pleasance Courtyard 5:20pm – 6:20pm, 2–23 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

a Saturday night TV host only with twice the charisma. McCormick methodically works through a catalogue of dramatic and comedic techniques, careening between spectacle and bathos, song and dance, wordless act outs (of a cat, no less), and fierce monologues (with heavily ironised scene-chewing justifications of her art), all the while dropping one-liners. But what emerges through the fun and the flesh and the chaos are the shadows of loneliness and alienation, and the dramatisation – or perhaps the reality – of a community brought into existence before our eyes. ✏︎ Evan Beswick

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Photo: Holly Revell

Lucy McCormick: Lucy and Friends

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Photo: Steve Tanner

Help! I Think I’m a Nationalist HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh 2:30pm – 3:45pm, 8–27 Aug, not 14, 21

Any show promoted as this one has been, with that title and a picture of a kilted, conflicted looking man on the promotional posters, is bound to inspire a heated response in Edinburgh. Yet the subject of podcaster and performer Seamas Carey’s one-man Help! I Think I’m a Nationalist isn’t the only area where he confounds expectations; it’s about Cornish independence, which those outside the south-west of England might not think greatly about, but a live subject to many in the area. Carey’s piece is part theatrical presentation, part series of lightly interactive elements designed to spur thoughts of nationalism and national identity. At one point all are asked to stand, then to sit down if they don’t fit the local criteria he calls out. These include Scottish birth, parentage, descent… and finally, willingness to shed blood and die for Scotland. A handful of people remain standing. Little portions of Cornish cream tea are served, and the never-ending Cornwall/Devon stand-off as to whether jam or clotted cream goes on first is used to demonstrate the ways in which local difference can be reduced down to 36

Theatre

trivialities. Always engaging, always in motion, Carey isn’t blind to historical and current issues imposed on Cornwall from outside, from the systematic destruction of the Cornish language by English influence, to the effect on communities of second home owners in the present. Yet he

resists words like ‘swarm’ in describing the latter, because the connotation is ugly. It’s hard to disagree with the conclusion he appears to be drawing throughout – that a sense of patriotism and local pride is good, but not when it’s expressed as hatred for the outsider. ✏︎ David Pollock

HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Assembly Rooms 7:15pm – 8:45pm, 3–27 Aug, not 8, 14, 20

A tale of queer consciousness-raising and coming out with a difference – with several differences, in fact. Birthmarked follows in the footsteps of author Ali Millar’s recent memoir The Last Days in discussing the fallout from, and the effect on, an individual’s decision to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In this case, the person who left is Brook Tate, a young singer and artist from Bristol.

The title of the show refers both to the birthmark on Tate’s forehead, and to the way in which he comes to terms with what may have once been seen as flaws, but which are now indelible parts of his sense of identity. Discovering his sexuality with another young male Witness while on a missionary trip to China, Tate was subsequently reported to church authorities and ‘disfellowshipped’; essentially excommunication, but with adding social as well as religious banning.

Tate has since moved to Bristol and built a new life for himself, and in addition to partially reuniting his family, he’s also met the members of the band for this show, who join him in creating a piece which is joyous, melodically interesting and increasingly disco, as he heads towards a full-costume reveal of his new self at the end. A lot of fun is had in the discussion of a serious subject, yet the show is almost stolen by the talking Gail the Whale, a large Biblical puppet wielded by Tate’s drummer. ✏︎ David Pollock

Review

Photo: Paul Blakemore

Horizon Showcase: Birthmarked

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Photo: Ans Brys

Funeral HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

Zoo Southside times vary, 4–27 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

A spectacle of mourning and memorial, experimental theatre company Ontroerend Goed’s latest show is here to help us acknowledge the inevitable ending of everything. We are an event that will eventually disperse, just as rocks will one day be ground back to dust, and someone you love will become someone 38

Theatre

you miss. As the audience files into the darkened theatre, we practise the rituals only too familiar to us, like the funeral receiving line; but so too do we experience new ways of celebrating the brevity of life, its brief flash of brilliance before we return to darkness. Its undoubted lyricism aside, there’s a certain hollowness in Funeral’s gestures. Part of that is deliberate, of course: culturally, funereal rituals are designed to facilitate the purging of emotion. These rituals are the empty box into which we’re encouraged to place our memories and

experiences, so that we may move on. If, however, someone were unwilling, or unable, to conjure up the necessary feeling at this production, Funeral’s procession of acts may simply pass them by. For in its desire for universality, the show elides any sense of context or specificity – and aren’t these so often the things that enrich a life, that make it worth grieving over when it’s done? Even in its act of gathering us together, however, Funeral is a moving reminder that mourning those we love is an experience best shared. ✏︎ Deborah Chu

Thrown HHHHH TIME:

Traverse Theatre times vary, 3–27 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

It’s hard not to be charmed by Thrown, an energetic rumination on Scottish identity via the appropriately Scottish, refreshingly niche sport of backhold wrestling (it’s more or less what it sounds like). In particular, the generational-spanning, mixed-heritage cast demonstrate real chemistry. To a woman, Efè Agwele, Maureen Carr, Lesley Hart, Chloe-Ann Tylor and Adiza Shardow give the impression of having a genuine dog in the

and tension of the characters’ identities, across heritage, age, birth, wealth, gender, feels mechanistic rather than dramatic – like the methodical working of each face of a Rubik’s cube. Tonally, it’s a bit confused too. It’s never clear, for instance, if the chavvy Glaswegian Chantelle is a character or a caricature, or if the wrestling is played as dance, or if we’re meant to feel real physical jeopardy. Coupled with some ropey dialogue (“I will not have this hateful talk and mean words!”) and irregular breaking of the fourth wall, this feels at times like a piece on the curriculum for excellence rather than the National Theatre. ✏︎ Evan Beswick

Review

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fight of what it means to be Scottish – testament, of course, to their skilful ensemble work. But it’s hard to really love the script and the direction they’re lumbered with. Backhold wrestling at highland games is a nice leaping-off point, but starts to feel like a tight hold in which everything is squeezed until it screams ‘metaphor’: the micro-tears in a muscle – the accumulation of small injuries which, in fact, breeds strength; the thudding final reveal of a bespoke tartan which weaves their identities together into something greater than the sum of the individual warps and wefts. Moreover, the working through of each permutation

Photo: Julie Howden

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Photo: Morgan McDowell

What If They Ate The Baby? HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

theSpace on the Mile 9:15pm – 10:05pm, 21–26 Aug

All is not well behind the net curtains of this 50s Americana-dream house. The spaghetti casserole looks a bit green and the domestic goddesses seem rather more interested in consuming each other, romantically and literally. Dotty hasn’t even the manners to bring a pie round to Shirley’s before titillating her with a little cannibal role play. Whatever happened to hospitality… What If They Ate the Baby? purposefully leaves gaps for the audience to insert their own narrative interpretation of what on earth is going on. Trapped in an endless simulated loop of pie dishes and prejudice, the two women battle, flirt and navigate around each other as if to some unspoken code of behaviour neither dare transgress. Creators and performers Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland won a 2022 Fringe First for their top-notch clowning in And Then The Rodeo Burned Down. This again showcases their exemplary physicality, their haunted doll-like jerkiness punctuated with dance and moments of intimacy. There is a constant, strong interplay between natural movement and artificiality, emphasised by Rice’s use of a transparent mannequin mask. Atop the already exaggerated 40

Theatre

makeup, frozen and emotionless, it serves to flatten their face further into a terrifying forced rictus. An other-worldly darkness pervades here. There is a constant underscore of threat; noises in the attic, neighbours being disappeared, discus-

sions of bodies that may or may not be lurking under the floorboards. The lack of specificity does not detract from the inherent creepiness, yet there is the sense of waiting for a hatchet through the door that never quite comes. ✏︎ Francesca Peschier

PRESENTS

P M A W S E H T G N I DRAIN By D.R. HILL

Is fascism once again on the march? Does the legacy of Sir Oswald Mosley continue to feed populist, right wing movements? This provocative new play explores Mosley’s controversial life and activities, with a chilling contemporary punch. From the perspective of the 1960’s, and the emergence of the European Union, Sir Oswald Mosley looks back on his experiences in the 1930’s. The play brings to life the meteoric political rise of Mosley as a potential Labour Prime Minister, and the subsequent founding and development of the British Union of Fascists. We see Mosley and Diana Mitford on their wedding day at Joseph Goebbels’s house in Berlin, and witness the events leading up to the infamous Battle of Cable Street, before the Mosley’s are incarcerated in Holloway Prison, during the war. Mosley ponders on his legacy and the opportunities for future political leaders to communicate with and stir the masses. It ends with his legacy in 2019. #drainingtheswampplay CAST INCLUDES: ROWLAND D. HILL AS SIR OSWALD MOSLEY, TINA THOMAS AS LADY DIANA MOSLEY, PLUS GEORGIA WINTERS, SIMON POLO-CLARKE AND DAWSON JAMES. DIRECTED BY SU GILROY

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Photo: Brian Hartley

Dance, Physical Theatre & Circus Reviews

Stuntman HHHHH effects and cheesy one liners just before brutal massacres. TIME: Things rise to a whole new level though with the addition of backstory from both performers about their relationOn one level this is two lads ship with violence. playfully uppercutting, smackQueer actor-acrobat ing, legsweeping, stabbing Sadiq Ali and performance and shooting each other artist-parkour coach David relentlessly. There’s plenty Banks take turns to describe mock-punch and shoot-ups personal run-ins with assault; as they work though every the fear and fantasy of it, the action movie trope going supposed sense of control (with nods to all the famous that physical force can bring ‘Johns’, definitely some Arnie, a man. But their memories Bond and Sly too). We see sloturn sour with flashes of mo brawls and a Matrix-style homophobic abuse and racist long coat, hear kung fu sound slurs, plus the physical and VENUE:

Summerhall 5:50pm – 6:50pm, 2–25 Aug, not 7, 14, 21

Dance, Physical Theatre & Circus

emotional damage that violence often leaves behind. Ali’s beautifully lithe and tender dance solo brings a welcome burst of vulnerability and softness to the onslaught of macho bravado, while Banks’ realisations about his fetishising of fighting feel like very casual but necessary insights into toxic masculinity. Might isn’t always right but clearly neither is bottling or bluffing either. A sweet awakening between two boy friends and a gentle provocation about dangerous cis het culture in the midst of many cartoon kick ins. ✏︎ Claire Sawers

The (Hong) Kong Girls

HHHHH Summerhall run ended

Dance is the art of control: it generates meaning and feeling through the control of one’s body. In The (Hong) Kong Girls, we witness three choreographers paint anarchic narratives about grappling with the idea of bodily control itself. In PK Wong’s ‘Bird-watching’, the objectification of a faceless, naked form is troubled by her monstrous movements: her claw-like fingertips; her shuddering, rippling flesh. We are estranged from the eroticism of the vulva-ed body and are made to behold its corporeal weight, its terror and presence. Justyne Li’s ‘Bleed-through’ presents a body caught between opposing forces like a marionette, where every agential movement meets an even more powerful counter-force – a quotidian portrait of the structural violence of feminine life. Alice Ma’s ‘Wu’ sees the jagged disintegration of a life-sized music box dancer – a Black Swan-esque fracturing of body and psyche that builds to a genuinely unsettling final image. Stylistically varied though they are, each of the three dance pieces asks: Who owns my body? Who decides the nature and conditions of its movement? What is an acceptable way for my body to behave? ‘Kong Girl’ originated as a derogatory term in Hong

Kong to describe non-normative women, but has been reclaimed for new liberatory purposes – like those illuminated by these dancers. The bodies of the marginalised have always been the terrain where authority most violently

wrestles for control; always strange and never beautiful, The (Hong) Kong Girls uses those very same bodies to carve out narratives of resistance, to make flesh both powerful and strange again. ✏︎ Xuanlin Tham

Review

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Photo: Cheung Wai Lok

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What Does Stuff Do?

HHHHH

TIME:

ZOO Playground 3:15pm – 4:10pm, 4–27 Aug

Much like throwing and catching a juggling ball, a great deal of precision is needed for a show like this to land. Robin Boon Dale is, unquestionably, a talented juggler – not just on a purely technical level, but also in terms of both the creative potential of the discipline, and its broader philosophical ramifications. He is also a charming and knowledgeable spokesperson, something the format of What Does Stuff Do?

requires, delivered as it is in the style of a TED talk. But it’s on this tricky midpoint between entertaining circus and thought-provoking seminar that the show wobbles slightly off balance. In exploring the metaphysical underpinnings of objects, manipulators, movements and systems, Dale packs his script with heady jargon and stodgy academese. And while he often punctures the resulting tension with a winking acknowledgement that sorry, this is all a bit technical – usually with a brilliantly unique routine that even seasoned jugglers

(and fans) will find fresh – he doesn’t quite do that enough to keep us fully engaged. This audience is head over heels whenever Dale switches to his stunts – particularly when he juggles water (!) and gets into an altercation with his flip chart. But they are noticeably restless during his longer, wordier passages, which is a shame as that’s where he seems most passionate. There are the makings of a truly excellent show here, but Dale’s musings on the nature of reality are currently quite hard to catch. ✏︎ George Sully

Review

VENUE:

Image: courtesy of the artist

Photo: Jess Shurte

Cabaret Review

Leather Lungs: Higher Love HHHHH VENUE: TIME:

House of Oz 9:30pm – 10:20pm, 4–27 Aug, not 9, 14, 21

Kiwi-Australian drag queen Jason Chasland, aka Leather Lungs, brings a set of powerhouse anthems to the House of Oz, in a colourful explosion of music and comedy. Higher Love is a celebration of survival and self-love, by a performer who tackles adversity with humour. The average male singing voice has the range of two 46

Cabaret

octaves. With a voice spanning four, Chasland, self-proclaimed ‘master of falsetto and stiletto’, knows they can sing and have created a show that relies heavily on their voice. Higher Love sees them belt out renditions of songs by ABBA, Whitney Houston and Queen, using them to illustrate significant events and relationships in their life. They tell the audience in brief snippets about an abusive relationship they eventually got out of, but they prefer to let the music do the talking and they don’t want your pity. They’re here to

reclaim their life through song and invite us all to sing along. Chasland successfully connects with the audience, creating an inclusive atmosphere with banter and jokes, and they seem genuinely moved by the response they get, despite their voice not being the best tonight. This is possibly due to the jet lag they mention more than once and it results in the show being somewhat lacklustre at points, but it’s fun and uplifting nonetheless, and Chasland’s voice is still twice as good as the average male’s. ✏ Veronica Finlay

August 2 – 27 danishedfringe DANISHedfringe danishedfringe.com

Review

SHOWS FROM DENMARK THAT OPEN YOUR MIND AND IGNITE YOUR CURIOSITY

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endless sunset oblivion a story on the state of the world

03 - 27 AUGUST 2023 (except 14th)

VENUE 301D

0330 220 1212

boxoffice@justthetonic.com

Nothing But The Best

49 Long-form Review

As Nothing Ever Happens Here’s founder Jamie Sutherland departs, we reflect on a decade of resonance and rebellion – including this year’s gigs at Summerhall Words: David Pollock

ager, now CEO, into giving NEHH a try. “I liked the idea of adding creative, contemporary music into the world of visual arts and contemporary theatre. That’s where we wanted it to sit, there are clear lines between this building and the

Barbican and Southbank Centre in London. It operates on a smaller scale, but I wanted to have the same ambition.” What’s been seen of this year’s programme so far has shown the breadth of NEHH’s remit. As is now tradition, Photo: Ellie Koepke

early a decade ago, Summerhall’s year-round series of contemporary rock, indie and electronica gigs Nothing Ever Happens Here began; also known as NEHH, its name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to complaints that Edinburgh’s music scene is too quiet. NEHH’s festival bill has become a major constant of the city’s contemporary music provision in August for a decade, booking artists including Pussy Riot, Cate Le Bon, Grandaddy and the Sun Ra Arkestra. Now, after a decade, NEHH’s founder Jamie Sutherland – who also plays in the band Broken Records, which releases a new album this autumn – is leaving to take up the post of creative director at SEALL on the Isle of Skye, and an era of great live music on the Fringe may be ending. “When I came to Summerhall, there was some really good work happening, but no real musical provision,” says Sutherland now. “There were a few bits and pieces, but it was all quite scattershot. As a musician working in the city, Edinburgh was missing a 450-capacity space, and there was room for it here.” He talked Sam Gough, then general man-

Rebecca Vasmant Ensemble

festmag.com

Photo: John Mackie Maranta

“I liked the idea of adding creative, contemporary music into the world of visual arts and contemporary theatre” Glasgow’s Optimo (Espacio) hosted the opening party (4 Aug), an evergreen blend of techno and post-punk attitude, with a live set from Eyes of Others, aka Heavenly-signed Edinburgh musician and producer John Bryden, whose two-person analogue set was rich and dub-fuelled, a perfect accompaniment to the music being played on the dancefloor. Sutherland himself played a support set for Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band (11 Aug), whose set of measured indie-rock was infused with an occasional country edge. The 61-year-old Liverpudlian Head made jokes about needing his eyes checked, but the presence of old Shack classics like 'Pull Together' and 'Meant To Be' inspired a youthful, passionate reaction among a crowd of his contemporaries. 50

Music

The flip side of the coin arrived with Los Angeles’ burst of funk-rock silliness Thumpasaurus (13 Aug). On record, the overall-wearing six-piece’s music is a featherlight, frat boy riff on Prince, but in person it’s considerably elevated, with raw live power coursing through the dense basslines and ‘80s keyboard riffs of 'Lipstick Makeup', and a fierce saxophone solo accompanying the menacing grind of 'Evil'. Before this phase of Summerhall’s music journey – and maybe NEHH itself, it’s uncertain – comes to an end, shows by the Rebecca Vasmant Ensemble, Breabach and Maranta’s closing party happen this month. “We’ve put through some amazing shows,” says Sutherland. “Ticket sales have gone up in Edinburgh across the board, and while I take

some credit for that, other people have been doing the same kind of thing. Through that collective will, more shows come to Edinburgh than they did eight years ago, and that’s been real, tangible success in my eyes.”

SHOW VENUE: TIME: SHOW VENUE: TIME: SHOW

VENUE: TIME:

NEHH and Made in Scotland Present... Breabach Summerhall times vary, 22–23 Aug NEHH Presents... Withered Hand Summerhall 7:00pm – 10:00pm, 24 Aug Summerhall’s Closing Party: Maranta Present... Microsteria Summerhall 10:00pm – 3:00am, 27–28 Aug

#EdIntFest

Book Now eif.co.uk

 ‘A triumph’

JOHN CALE

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND VISIONARY

26 AUGUST | FESTIVAL THEATRE

John Cale © Madeline McManus | Charity No SC004694

Uncut

53 Review

Kids Critics The Lost Lending Library Oran, five, infiltrates Punchdrunk’s immersive library What happens in the show? We did the show. No one else did the show, we did the show. We were the performers. I just walked around. Other people found things but I didn’t find anything at all. It wasn’t a show place. It was just a library. The show didn’t have a name. It wasn’t a show, anyway.

Was there anything you didn’t like? No. Well, I didn’t like that they didn’t get my attention whenever I put my hand up. [This version of events is disputed by other witnesses.] What did your grown-up think? A trainee librarian welcomes the children, introducing a magical lending library that travels the world with all of human knowledge, reconfiguring each time… But the lending library is lost! The children must choose a book and weave a story using their collective imaginations. There’s some sleight of hand, a bit of

Would you tell your friends to go? Which friends? [Specific examples provided] Yes I’d tell all of them.

SHOW VENUE:

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The Lost Lending Library Church Hill Theatre Studio times vary, 3–27 Aug, not 8, 14, 20, 22 Photo: Paul Cochrane

What did you like most about the show? Everything. At the end somebody tells us a story about a spider and the spider got washed down the plughole and he found himself in Spiderville. But I really do not want to hear it again.

a treasure hunt, some guided exploration of the magical set. Oran enjoyed it, particularly getting to make false claims about Charles Dickens being his favourite author. Engaging, immersive, explorative, imaginative storytelling.

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Comedy 09:30

A Political Breakfast PBH’s Free Fringe @ Burrito ‘n’ Shake, 23–27 Aug