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MickeyJoTheatre
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 Day 1 REVIEWS (Ohio, Laura Benanti, Footballer's Wives, Club NVRLND, and more)
00:09:14
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Theatre Reviewer
Hello.
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James Richardson
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Theatre Reviewer
Oh my God. Hey, it is Mickey Jo Theatre here at the Edinburgh Fringe for day one of seeing dozens of plays and musicals. I just saw my first show of the day and of 2025 and it was the uncrackable case at Pleasance Courtyard behind me, which was sort of hoodwinked. The animated film into the Woods Goes to Court. It was nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters implicated in a court case because Humpty Dumpty has died. That's not a spoiler. We've all heard the nursery rhyme and it was a lot of fun. It was very charming. It was not egg scrutiating. It also wasn't necessarily egg strawdinary, but it was very sweet. I have. I have no pun for that one whatsoever. It felt a little bit like the best musical that's ever been written for like a year six school production. It fell for me somewhere in between like adult fairy tale nursery rhyme parody and like an actual show for kids. But it's very family friendly. I liked that the whole thing was captioned. The design was very whimsical. I think they could have done a little bit more with costumes because were it not for the captions, I wouldn't have been able to infer who every fairy tale character was like the Bo Peep of it all. And the Goldilocks shout out also to the adaptive multi rolling. There were four performers in this cast playing a whole handful of different colorful characters and they kind of swapped and shared characters between them. How else could you cross examine 3 little pigs with 4 people if it didn't quite reach 4? Full blown hilarity and raucous laughter. It was probably because we needed just a little bit more wit in the lyrics or a little bit more of that sense of comic timing. But it was performed with a lot of animated enthusiasm and it was very sweet. And it's a nice enough show to come and see at the Edinburgh Fringe. I had a nice time and there was some really tickling moments. Best thing I've heard so far is let us not forget an egg has died. Anyway, that has been show number one. I am heading on immediately to show number two. Stay tuned for for more reviews coming very soon. Show number two at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2025 was Ohio from the Bengsons, who are this amazing New York based husband and wife who do this brilliant musical storytelling. They're playing instruments. They are crafting these very honest autobiographical stories told through music. I said that it was part campfire, part sermon, part gig, part lecture, talking in this one a lot about their own lives, talking about disability, talking about faith, talking about religion, talking about finding God in family, finding God in music, finding God in tinnitus, and rejecting those ideas and coming to terms with those ideas through life. It was instantly captivating. These are familiar of like the most charismatic, fascinating people you've ever met at a really great party. Something they did that I absolutely loved about the show was the community building that they did in the audience. That was really beautiful and there was such joy in that as well. What this show does in general is to hold an extraordinary amount of joy in one hand and hold this necessary despair in the other, and then find a way of wringing those hands together in music with the aid of a slightly twisted sense of humor. The whole thing was also beautifully accessible. It was captioned, which also provided our lines at one point as an audience when we were engaged to participate in the storytelling. But it was also emotionally accessible. It was also told with such clarity of intention. Where we were going was explained beautifully and delicately to us, and it was just so extraordinarily well put together. The dramaturgy of the thing, the way that this was crafted, the way that we were gliding elegantly and gracefully in and out of music on a bed of musical support created via loop pedals. It was really wonderful, hugely atmospheric. We may actually have peaked really early in the Fringe with this magical theatrical experience. Show number three at the Edinburgh Fringe. 2020 was one I have been looking forward to very much. It was Laura Benanti, Nobody Cares at Underbelly, her solo show with original songs co written with Todd Almond, whose show I loved last year. She's done it before in New York and this is her very first Fringe. And it's not true that nobody cares. I care very much because she is a Tony Award winning Broadway star. And one of the things I loved about this show is that it takes that version of her and subverts it. Because she's always been delightful as someone who has this very classic vocal tone and style and perhaps even aesthetic. Very familiar of like golden age Broadway and classic Hollywood. And those are the roles that she's played as well. She talks about that a lot in the show, about being a recovering ingenue and a recovering people pleaser and playing these earnest, wistful women in this. The songs that she is singing are a little bit more like early 2000s Britney, if she was politically astute. But she's always been incredibly funny. She's always had this brilliant, masterful sarcasm, which is deployed so brilliantly here as she talks about perimenopause and she sings songs about lying to children. And while this is not necessarily her at the height of her glorious soprano vocal powers, she's getting to, in doing something autobiographical, convey a far more dimensional, far more rounded and thorough portrait of a human than she's perhaps had the chance to do before. And talking about real things that have affected her and come to be very powerful as well. But it is, for the most part hysterically funny, deeply charming and an utterly delightful music comedy cabaret recommendation from me at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. So the show I just saw was trashy, racy, melodramatic, and it was perfect because it was a musical version of the TV show Footballers Wives. That was show number four at the Edinburgh Fringe. And I never actually saw the TV show, but I feel like you get a pretty great sense of it. I don't think you need to have seen it to enjoy the musical adaptation that is playing right now, but it will probably help. What I wish is that it could figure out whether it's parodying the thing or doing it with sincerity. And I think a lot of the sense of parody comes from how quickly they have to get through this utterly bonkers, wild plot. But it was a lot of fun the score was dynamic. These were some really witty lyrics. There were some moments that I really enjoyed. They rhymed prostrate with prostrate. Don't ask me about the circumstances of the song that required that, but it all made sense. And despite the fact that TV shows into musical adaptations never really work because there is just objectively too much material to cram into that kind of a structure. Especially at Frince, where everything runs generally for one act, a lot of the notion of Footballers Wives kind of works in a musical theatre context. You know, you have this world and this culture that we're finding out about. There's a structure to it. There's a season they're getting ready for the first match of the season. There are power structures, there are existing dynamics, but there are also newcomers. There was the new signing, the new player coming in, who is the disruptor to the harmony of it all. There is the veteran footballer's wife, who is the wife of the captain and who is running the show. There is also the newcomer who is finding out about all of it. Fantastic performances, particularly by Kayleigh o', Connor, who was serving formidable diva energy as Tanya Turner. Really satisfying. Like I said, just trashy, ridiculous, over the top and a lot of fun. And P.S. the title song. Who wouldn't want to be a footballer's wife? Best banger I've heard so far at the Fringe. That's gonna haunt me for weeks. So Peter Pan is anxious about his twink death. Wendy Darling is Rachel Green from episode one of Friends, and Captain Hook is a sexy leather daddy. This is what's happening at Club Neverland, my fifth show of the Edinburgh Fringe 2025, and my final show of my first day. This is here at assembly checkpoint, where I've seen a couple of other shows previously that try and do this immersive nightclub thing. And I think this one may finally have cracked the code. Don't get me wrong, I think enjoying it is still conditional on the same kind of factors as a normal club night. Are you going in a group? Are the vibes good? Are you having a drink? Are you there to dance? And I would suggest setting your expectations more in proximity to a great nightclub experience than a traditional narrative show. But there is a plot running through this that bears some resemblance to the one from Peter Pan. They are running a nightclub called Neverland, and they have to have enough money to pay the Crocodile. And Wendy has returned after some prior encounter with Peter, and she's questioning this moment in her life. And he is about to turn 30 and he is not dealing with it well, which was surprisingly relatable because that's happening to me next month. But the reason why this one works, I think, where so many have failed before, is because they use a jukebox score of early 2000s Y2K era hits. And honestly, Y2K not, because what that means is the audience excitement and enthusiasm gets built into the show. From early on, we are singing along, we are anticipating each song. It owes a lot of that formula to shows like and Juliet, I think. But there's also recognizable characters, so when someone enters wearing a lot of red, we know that it's Captain Hook. When they tell Peter to lay off the pixie dust, we all know what that's implying and it works. And what the brilliant Jack Holden has really managed to do here is capture the magic and the thrill of the greatest nights out you've ever had in a club. I, you know, in spite of myself, enjoyed this. And don't get me wrong, they're also trying to do a Guys and Dolls at the Bridge, kind of a staging and learning how challenging that is to do. I think there's factors of it that need to be a little more risk assessed. But if you're looking for a slightly wild musical night out at the fringe, look no further than Club Neverland.
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