It’s hard to believe that another Edinburgh Fringe will soon be upon us. I’ll be in Edinburgh for the first ten days of the festival before heading home for a few days and then returning for another ten day stint through to the penultimate day.
In previous years a similar amount of time has allowed me to see around 115-120 shows and this year's total is likely to be a similar number once again.
Musicals
As mentioned in an earlier post, you can’t go wrong with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland so their production of
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a must-see. The cast of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels will also be split between the two RCS actor-musician productions exploring family connections,
Legacy: The Book of Names and
Legacy: A Mother’s Song.
Durham University Light Opera Group, Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group and Manchester Musical Revue are student groups who consistently bring impressive work to the Fringe so their respective productions of
Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens,
The Drowsy Chaperone and an original musical
The Fear were always going to be high on my priority list. Napier University Drama Society parodied Frozen last year while this time they've ditched Disney and are taking inspiration from Hamilton.
...And Peggy tells the story of the third Schuyler sister.
The two stand-out musicals from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe return, namely
Buried and
Six, telling the unconventional love story of romantically entwined serial killers and transforming the wives of Henry VIII into the sassiest girl group in town!
Other musical highlights from young professional companies or university groups look to be
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,
89 Nights,
Dogfight,
Geek,
The House of Edgar,
The Last Five Years,
Little Shop of Horrors,
Lucky (from the student society who premiered Six last summer),
Pippin,
Prom Kween,
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and
You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
A group of Mountview graduates are also presenting
Spring Awakening, though its 70-minute running time suggests an abridged version of the show.
I loved Loserville in Leeds and at the Garrick so I should be delighted to see it resurfacing in Edinburgh. Sadly, however, the amateur group behind it, Car Crash Productions, have lived up to their name in previous years so I'll reluctantly be giving their take on James Bourne's work a miss!
Comedy
I tend to see more in the way of sketch shows rather than stand-up comedy at the Fringe and am beyond excited that Lazy Susan make their return to Edinburgh this summer with their new show
Forgive Me, Mother! "Sorta sketch comedy but sorta in a cool way". Any fans of The Windsors on Channel 4, you may recognise Celeste Dring, one half of Lazy Susan, as Princess Eugenie! Turning the surreal-o-meter up to the max will be
Beard and
Siblings, while Stiff and Kitsch return for a shorter run of last year’s hour of optimistic frustration and musical comedy,
Adele Is Younger Than Us.
The Durham Revue scooped a much-deserved award last year and I’ll be checking out the new hour of comedy from them as well as
The Leeds Tealights, the
St Andrews Revue and the iconic
Cambridge Footlights. There are always Footlights alumni returning to the Fringe and this year is no exception, with the sketch shows
Big Shop and
Manhunt both sounding promising, while
The Man Presents: Women sees a group of Cambridge's finest female comics stick it to the writers who’ve written female characters as cast-offs, sidekicks and non-specific love interests.
Speechless is another Footlights-laden show where comic speech is banned so the cast will rely on physicality, mime, projections and sound (as well as the audience themselves) to provide the laughs. Finally,
Spoiler Alert juggles romance and prophetic visions and arrives in Edinburgh with this year's Cambridge Footlights' Harry Porter Prize in the bag.
Other comedy highlights see Kill The Beast premiere their fourth production,
Director's Cut, described as Carrie meets Noises Off,
News Revue throws the biggest stories of the year under its satirical spotlight, while Frank Skinner makes his playwriting-debut with
Nina’s Got News.
The C Bomb and
The Last Sesh have also caught my eye - after all, it wouldn’t be the Fringe without catching a student production or two about student life!
Improv
For improv, it’s hard to look beyond the always brilliant
Showstopper but, as a big fan of the hit Netflix series, I’m also full of anticipation for
A Series of Improvable Events by the Cambridge Impronauts. As the marketing blurb says, "if you are in chipper mood, or even just mildly content, I fear there would be nothing more dampening to your happy life than to see this show." Count me in!
CSI Crime Scene Improvisation also looks great fun, Degrees of Error can always be relied upon with their improvised murder mystery,
Murder She Didn’t Write, while I’ll be making a second appointment with
Notflix, the all-female improvised movie musical, which was an Edinburgh highlight in 2017.
For an hour of puns that Tim Vine would be proud of, I’ll also be flocking to
Adele Cliff: Sheep to see if she can scoop the funniest joke at the Fringe for the third year running.
Circus
Flip Fabrique bring their
Attrape Moi acrobatic spectacular back to the Fringe – I won’t be catching this in Edinburgh but did see it earlier this year at The Lowry and can definitely recommend it! Prepare for the solitary female member of the six-strong troupe to steal the show with a spectacular hula-hooping routine.
Cirque Berserk make their Fringe debut fresh from a UK tour with their motorbike-riders-in-a-cage stunt providing the iconic moment in an otherwise fairly traditional/slightly dated feeling show. I've got higher expectations for
7 Fingers' Réversible,
Cirque Alfonse's Tabarnak and the vibrant, Latin-infused
Circolombia. I'm also considering
Gandini’s 8 Songs, out of curiosity as much as anything else to see how they fill an hour with juggling and rock & roll, as well as
Circus Abyssinia: Ethopian Dreams.
Theatre
The starting point for my Fringe planning was professional theatre companies whose work I’ve enjoyed before. I can highly recommend Viscera Theatre's double header of new two-handers on that basis, with
You Only Live Forever (an exploration of ever-lasting consequences) and
Timmy (about avoiding decisions at all costs) both heading to Assembly in George Square this summer.
ThisEgg's eccentricity is always a delight and they follow-up Goggles and Me & My Bee with
Dressed, featuring live sewing and looking at how clothes can define, hide and liberate us (based on a true story of a sexual assault), and
Unconditional, exploring the relationship between a mother and her grown-up daughter. Theatre Re's The Nature of Forgetting was the stand-out production for me at last year’s festival and their co-production
The Woman and The Canvas with Fourth Monkey has the potential to be something very special. A close second to The Nature of Forgetting last summer was Middle Child’s stunning piece of gig theatre,
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, which returns to Summerhall for a second look at what happens when dreams don't become reality, alongside a new piece
One Life Stand which explores loneliness in modern relationships.
Spies Like Us had a sell-out hit last year with the riotous
Our Man In Havana and the spies and enemy agents return for the final week of this year's Fringe, aided and abetted by the company bringing their explosive physical style to a new production of
Woyzeck which runs for the whole festival. Zoo Co took a break from the Fringe last year but brought arguably the highlight of both the 2015 and 2016 festivals to Edinburgh with their previous productions The Girl Who Fell in Love with the Moon and Giant. Seeing the latter in Chester earlier this year certainly whetted my appetite for their return with
Sirens, as three cursed Greek demi-goddesses find themselves unexpectedly washed up on Brighton Rock. Expect visual storytelling and electro-folk music at its best! Another favourite company of mine, Haste Theatre, are asking
Where The Hell is Bernard?, while Some Riot Theatre follow up Glitter Punch by taking a look at obsessive compulsive disorder in
Weird.
Pepperdine Scotland, Minotaur Theatre Company, York DramaSoc and the Italia Conti Ensemble are student companies who always deliver so the five works that they’re bringing between them will all be in my schedule –
Abode,
Loyalty,
Bad Dog,
The Dark Philosophers and
Tipping the Velvet.
As far as companies I haven’t seen before are concerned, other professional productions which have caught my eye in this year's programme and I'll be seeing include
The Cat's Mother,
A Clown Show About Rain,
Dracula,
Electrolyte,
Elsie Thatchwick,
The Fun Club Presents...,
Heather and Harry,
Hymns for Robots,
The Journey,
Just William’s Luck,
Kit Finnie: Mabel and Mickey,
Ladykiller,
Lights Over Tesco Car Park,
Loop,
Neverwant,
Outside,
Propeller,
Signals,
The Sisters of Castleknock House,
Songlines,
Sticks and Stones,
Tobacco Road and
Violet. The Young Pleasance are always outstanding so I have high hopes for their take on
The Red Shoes.
As for Holly and Ted’s
Polaris, plugged in a previous post by
QueerTheatre , I can vouch that their previous work Pond Wife was a joy, so Polaris is a definite for me.
I’ve also heard great things about Happenings Theatre Company’s
10 Steps to Happiness from Brighton Fringe so expect a chirpier, more chipper me post-festival!
My main tip for the Fringe is to just spend some time wandering the Royal Mile. It's where I'll always head when time allows in between shows to soak up the atmosphere, watch some of the street entertainers and see the performance excerpts on the various stages. There's also a great atmosphere around Assembly George Square Gardens and Pleasance Courtyard while I guess Underbelly on Cowgate has a unique charm all of its own! There's really nowhere on the planet quite like Edinburgh during festival season. Roll on August!
