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MickeyJoTheatre
Edinburgh Fringe 2025 Day 7 REVIEWS (Nerds, Level Up, I'm Ready to Talk Now, Ghost Light, and more)
00:06:55
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- [00:03]
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- [00:32]
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- [00:44]
James Richardson
Hello everyone, I'm James Richardson and I host the Totally Football show four times a week. If you're not familiar with it, perhaps you care to give it a listen in the season ahead because we cover all the big stuff Premier League, Champions League, in depth, European League coverage, Football League and more. We've got insights and analysis from the best reporters in the industry and we've got quizzes and nostalgia too. Plus, we're going to be bigger and broader than ever for the season ahead, so check out the Totally Football show wherever you get your podcast. The rest is not as good as the Totally Football Show. Unbelievable. This.
- [01:21]
Acast Advertiser
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com oh my God. Hey. On my seventh and final day at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I was the only person in the audience for my very first show. And that was deliberate because I'm ready to talk now. A piece created and performed by Australian performer Oliver Ayers here at the Traverse Theatre, is designed for one performer and one audience member at a time. This solo experience, which begins with a very open and warm 15 minute consultation outlining all of the different ways in which the performance can be adapted to sensory and access requirements and desires, is a hybrid between a traditional theatrical pre recorded monologue of text which you hear via noise cancelling headphones, and a physical theatre performance in the space incorporating use of projections incorporating soundscapes. You also have the option to watch the whole thing from the vantage point of a very comfy hospital bed, which is both extraordinarily atmospheric as Oliver recounts the experience of being hospitalized with what would become a chronic condition only a few months after starting testosterone, as well as the most comfortable seat you're going to get for any Edinburgh Fringe show. Now obviously this is an unconventional theatrical experience. It is also singularly powerful and uniquely affecting. But moments after I've just experienced it, the lasting legacy of the piece, perhaps by design, is this pervasive humanity and this brilliantly well conveyed sense of the isolation and the fear and the despair of this situation with obviously limited capacity. Tickets are wildly sold out, but if you get the opportunity to buy a return or see a future mounting of I'm ready to talk now, go and check it out. In A Gambler's Guide to Dying at the Traverse Theatre, written and Performed by Gary McNair, a man remembers his relationship with his late grandfather, whom he notes could be accurately described as a father, a mate, a cheat, an addict, a hero and a liar. In an inspiring and perhaps even cinematic story, we find out about how his grandfather taught him about gambling, taught him about the excitement of it. It's sort of a fond perspective on this divisive concept, but the real story is in fact one about grief. As his grandfather is diagnosed with cancer and bets his life savings that he will survive. There is an ensuing media fascination. It provokes strong reactions in the immediate family, but for the boy and his grandfather, it's a shared understanding of the metaphorical importance of hope and belief and determination. This is some big hearted storytelling that amounts to a pretty sweet eulogy. It's perhaps a little shallow, it's probably slightly longer than it ought to be, and we circle the same ideas a few times before concluding with anything really meaty. But it is also very uplifting. Go and check it out for yourselves at the Traverse Theatre. Okay, let's talk about nerds. First of all, it's wild that it's even here at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe because this show was previously set to go to Broadway before the production was ultimately cancelled. And it's difficult now to imagine what that production might have been like, because I don't think the show has fully discerned its own identity. It's not yet fully realized, which is a shame. There are flashes of absolute genius. It depicts the rise of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates simultaneously sort of satirizing the early years of the tech industry boom, punctuated by a handful of really brilliant songs. There is a fantastic duet between two female characters called who Wrote this Crazy Code called Love? In which one of them belts in binary. Bill Gates has a great I Want song. Steve Jobs has a fantastic number where he emails God at his emotional low point. Regrettably, each of these fantastic songs are followed almost immediately by ones you could cut in a heartbeat. The script has created a musical theatre ready plot in which Bill Gates is the initial nerdy underdog and Steve Jobs is the cool one and Bill becomes a villain without realizing. But there's sections of dialogue that just don't work and there's something about the Material that isn't booting properly on startup. And it's despite the fantastic performances, Kay and Oliver Parry is inspired. Dan Buckley is giving you some of the best vocals at the Edinburgh Fringe. I think for one thing, the direction could use a little bit more whimsy. I think the whole thing could benefit from a stronger framing device, perhaps even a narrator character to walk us through the many years that have passed in between subsequent scenes as they go from being these young aspiring tech geniuses to hugely successful businessmen, and by the time we devolve into an epic rap battles of history style, hip hop confrontation between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the whole thing makes sense. It just takes us a little too long to get there. My 49th and penultimate show at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was Level Up, a musical in which three friends who play video games together are transported inside of a video game called Life. And it's an allegory for growing up and the things that you have to do. One of them is an activist trying to save the world, another is an entrepreneur inventing his own version of Bitcoin, while the third has the explorer Pathway trying to find his place in the world, becoming a conceptual artist. The concept is not in and of itself a bad idea. I think there are greater issues, sadly, with the execution. As a video game enthusiast myself, as a theatre critic and as a human being with ears, I struggled with this one a little bit. I'm sad to say that it was a little painful at times, and the composition of the score was not bad. The performances certainly weren't. Some of the lyrics were a little worse for wear. The book definitely had bigger problems, but the direction of the whole thing was was perhaps the most lacking. It was weirdly low energy. One of my favourite parts of it was the orchestrations of the music, which had a retro, nostalgic video game feel. And I think they just needed underscore to run through the entire thing so there weren't such prolonged moments of silence and quiet. I also think for a show called Level up, there was room for them to lean way further into the video game tropes of it all, instead of giving us three separate songs about cryptocurrency. That was a weird choice and it didn't really create compelling enough characters for this Jumanji style scenario that sees them falling out of friendship and then becoming friends again. Sadly, when it came to turning this video game into a musical, the difficulty level proved a little too high. And just like that, I have seen my 50th and final show at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. And it was Ghost Light from the Young Pleasant Theatre Company at the Pleasant Courtyard. I love a young, pleasant show because the company of young performers are always so brilliantly talented, so inspiring. These ones in particular had such a great sense of comic timing and such dramatic, such vivid characterization. The concept behind this show, which is something of a love letter to the world of theatre and to the people who make theatre happen, particularly backstage as well as the rich history of theatre, followed a young girl called Izzy who was joining the wardrobe team at Theatre Royal Drury Lane as they were getting ready to perform a review celebrating the theatre's rich history. But of course, as we know, the history of Theatre Royal Drury Lane is reflected not only in the productions which have played on its stages, but in the many ghosts which are believed to haunt the theatre. And we got to meet many of those precocious and spooky ghosts in this play. It's a little familiar of the TV show ghosts because they have these big theatrical personalities. They are from different centuries and Izzy initially is the only one who is able to perceive them. But through the great theatrical tradition of collaboration, she is able to solve a backstage mystery and find out more about what's going on at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. This was a really charming show. I loved that it celebrated theatre history and particularly staged the whole things from the wings and from backstage stage. And we had characters who were wardrobe mistresses and stage doorkeepers. How perfect for me to end my week at this world leading arts festival with a love letter to theater. You can see it for yourself this month at the Pleasants Courtyard. I have been Mickey Jo Theatre here at the fringe.
- [08:29]
James Richardson
Morning.
- [08:29]
Acast Advertiser
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- [08:31]
McDonald's Employee
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- [08:33]
James Richardson
Wait. Let's negotiate.
- [08:34]
Acast Advertiser
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- [08:38]
McDonald's Employee
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