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Edinburgh Fringe Reviewer (0:42)

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Edinburgh Fringe Reviewer (1:28)

Here is the line that jumped out to me and is still ringing in my ears after the show that I just saw. I would rather be bullied than be invisible. Oh my God. Hey. It is day three for me at the Edinburgh Fringe and I have braved storm florists for a 9:45am show here at the Space at Surgeons Hall. And it was Sped Kit. This is a show about a 12 year old boy in Boston, Massachusetts who is transitioning for time into special education because he is becoming increasingly visually impaired. And it's a one person show made so endearingly brilliant by his unique perspective on his circumstances and the friends that he's finally getting to make on the bus that now drives him to school and the contradiction between the acceptance that he now feels in that community and the sense of being othered that he is simultaneously perceiving from the other students at the school. This is a hugely heartwarming and innocent account of a young man coming to terms with disability. Mesmerisingly performed an incredibly special piece of theatre. I spent some time with students with special educational needs and I thought the writing really faithfully captured that particular voice. If this is going to speak to you at all personally, I urge you to come and see this at the space at Surgeons Hall. I thought this was really touching. Sometimes the Edinburgh Fringe can surprise You. And when Storm Florist closed the Pleasants courtyard for the day, I ran from the queue that I was in to another show that I'd been desperate to see, but didn't think I was going to get the chance to. It is Much Ado about Pirates at the Space at Nidri street from Westcliffe Boys Theatre. This, I believe, is a school theatre group. Very talented young performers, in particularly the one who was playing Jonathan. Fantastic actor, my gosh. And the show itself was an ingenious mash up of Gilbert and Sullivan's the Pirates Of Penzance and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The concept being that Jonathan is leaving the pirates to whom he has been apprenticed, to go and become an actor. And when they reveal to him that they have discovered a paradox, meaning that he's not allowed to leave until his 21st birth and he's not going to have one of those for several decades, he points out that he, unlike Frederick, has no sense of duty and so this doesn't really faze him. This was a really fantastic piece of theatre, actually. Very smartly written, very charmingly performed. Occasionally someone will walk completely the wrong direction during group choreography. Sometimes a hat will fall off, but that is absolutely part of its charm. You love to see the dedication and the passion and the genuine enjoyment from young performers on stage. That's what makes this so fun to watch. And the way that they were exporting replicating Shakespeare was genuinely fantastic and better than a lot of professional productions that I've seen. It's a remarkably smart fusion of the material performed giddily by this jolly ensemble. Go and check it out. Until 9 August only at the space at Nidri Street. Show number 17 at the Edinburgh Fringe was set in space. And while these two female astronauts were navigating workplace tensions as well as space debris, the audience was navigating fascinating tonal shifts. This was alone in the box. You're basically seeing a play inside a shipping container, which was so brilliantly atmospheric for this increasingly tense piece of theatre. It begins with just funny workplace interactions. One of them is playing music too loudly. These are two female astronauts. One of them is the pilot, the other is a very dedicated scientist. Much of the increasingly existential conversation that they have is about how they are treated in these roles as women. Because even though this is set in the future and Earth and its atmosphere are dying, misogyny lives on. There is also some really interesting dialogue about the dichotomy of a love of science and religion. Simultaneously, this only becomes more pertinent as they discover that something is wrong with the ship that they are on. We experience the somersaulting power dynamics between the two of them, as well as the men who they are corresponding with, who are giving them instructions that they are not allowed to contradict back on Earth. It's a fascinating, increasingly gripping piece of theatre. Go and check it out. At assembly show number 18 at the Edinburgh Fringe was Alter, an Australian trans led play about queer regret. This is set in the midst of a wedding day and many awkward conversations can arise at wedding, but few can compete with the uncomfortable reunion between two childhood friends who became adolescent queer lovers and are now meeting for the first time in years at very different points in their life, trying to recall the relationship that they had from the vantage point of one of them now committing to a more heteronormative life, having just got married, and they share a sort of loaded proximity as they sit together or chase each other around a church pew that is practically vast with romantic tension and resentment, each trying to come to terms with the people who they are now, the extent to which they've changed, the extent to which they haven't. And it made for a lot of really interesting conversation, parts of which felt regressive when we were talking once again about the intersection between religion and science and queer identity, which also happened to be a topic which arose in the last play that I saw just before this one. Ultimately, although there was a lot of fantastic character study, this did perhaps feel like a scene that was extended, descended into an entire play and didn't necessarily have the scope to last for as long as it did. Perhaps if there was some sort of a ticking clock, a sense of stakes, a justification even, for the bride having spent so much time away from her own wedding reception. I do appreciate that one of the most nuanced trans characters I have ever seen portrayed on stage, brilliantly performed. If you want to see it for yourself, you can find Alter at Underbelly George Square. If your childhood looked anything like mine, you may remember a lot of teen high school comedy films which Adapted Shakespearean plots. 10 Things I Hate about yout Being an Example, she's the Man Being Another. And that, I assumed, is what Lady Macbeth played wing defence was trying to do in transplanting the story of Macbeth to an Australian high school girls basketball team. Except the thing that all of those have in common is that they tend to be fairly zany comedies, and this, although it had all of the opportunity to be and all of the ingredients, ultimately just wasn't and despite a couple of colourful characters, there seemed to be this dedication to taking us back to a place of utter seriousness. We had a handful of Shakespearean asides that felt really out of place, and a score that was neither funny enough nor articulate enough to stand anywhere in proximity to Shakespeare. And sadly, as well, as much as I love the idea of the concept, I think we had a storytelling problem because we can't connect to this complicated protagonist character if we have no insight into why. Since Year seven, all she has wanted to do is be the captain of the girls basketball team in year 12, and there's so many options as to what that could be. It could be something sincere, like trying to earn the respect of a parent. It could be something ridiculous, like coming from a long line of year 12 basketball team captains. Sadly, I just feel there was so much more that this show could have done to take us to, if not an outrageous, then at least a slightly funny place. And while we're at it, we can do better for a gender flipped name than first name Max. Second name Beth for one thing. How about Beth? That was show number 19. Lady Macbeth played wing defence at the Assembly George Square Studios. I have reached my 20th show at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe and that was the Monkeypox Gospel at Underbelly Cowgate. I have been so excited about this one, an autobiographical solo show using truthful pre recorded interviews and real world sound bites, all about the earliest cases of monkeypox in New York City in 2022 and the lack of a thorough response. The piece was full of references to and rooted in a perspective from the intersection of being Congolese and being gay, but also grappling with a religious upbringing and contending with the realization that writing about Monkeypox for the New Yorker is an admission of existing not just as a homosexual, but coming out truly as a proud sexually active homosexual. Now we are forewarned that it's going to be slightly structurally cacophonous. And he's not kidding. Ultimately, I'm not sure that it builds to a cohesive point as much as it conveys a portrait of one man challenged by these different facets of his identity, but there's something incredibly powerful about conveying one's soul so personally and so vulnerably on stage. I also loved these insights that were shared about viruses as a reflection of society and the direct through line connecting early Belgian colonialism in the Congo with the lack of early treatment of HIV and the global consequences of that. I enjoyed all of the use of audio. I so wish that it had been captions just projected onto the wall, maybe even alongside a graphic of the waveform. The whole opens with a discussion of waveforms and conversation and what it means to really listen to each other, so I think that could have been a brilliant way of giving it a visual identity. At the same time, if any or all of this sounds as interesting to you as it was to me, go and check out the Monkeypox Gospel at Underbelly Cowgate for a very moving and thoughtful piece of theatre.