It’s now almost a month since the end of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and I still haven’t posted a couple of the things I planned to. This one was a reader suggestion, after my call for suggestions back in July: if I wasn’t comfortable posting reviews because I didn’t want to be mean, I could just post some of the highlights. I decided to take this particular ball and run with it in a direction that (unfortunately) Edward De Bono would have been proud of: I decided to get some random adjectives from a word generator, and to give out “awards” for the shows that were the superlative in each of them.1 So here are the inaugural “Fringies” (we’ll workshop the name).
The most knowledgeable: Depths of Wikipedia
This was the first show I saw this year, presenting highlights from Wikipedia in a comedy PowerPoint presentation that I can only describe as “intense”. It was performed by Annie Rauwerda, who runs the popular social media accounts of the same name. The delivery wasn’t the most polished, but her passion for her subject was infectious. In the show, Annie directly encouraged me to go back and update a Wikipedia article I wrote in 2019, which I then went and did.
The most enchanted: Night of the Fox
Seeing this one came out of a classic Fringe experience: turning up for a free and non-ticketed show only to find a queue that’s already too long for you to get in. This is often a frustrating experience, but this shows why it’s sometimes a blessing in disguise: while the show we missed was pretty good,2 we would never have seen this if we hadn’t been turned away. Night of the Fox was a play about a mysterious fox boy in the woods, and also about the forthcoming social media ban for under-16s. It was performed by a youth theatre group from the Home Counties, who put a lot of the adult actors we saw in other plays to shame. I don’t think the teenagers wrote the script themselves, but it was brilliantly written, in a refreshingly nuanced way given the issues it was discussing.
The most juicy: Play Dead
This word was the one that convinced me that the random approach was how I wanted to do this. The show in question was a queer retelling of a story from Greek mythology, as our narrator Echo told us about his messy breakup with his, well, narcissistic boyfriend. There are a lot of ways one could interpret the word for this one, but when a play’s social media ads repeatedly emphasises how the play contains seventeen grapefruits—which, to be fair, worked as a marketing ploy—I don’t think I can give this award to anything else. This was a deeply weird play in a lot of ways, but that’s exactly what the Fringe is for.
The most informal: Comedians Play Video Games
In this show, three of my favourite comedians—one of whom, Steffan Alun, I discovered through last year’s iteration of the same show—aimed to create the atmosphere of playing games in your living room. (The stage had a patterned rug on the floor which helped with this, although that was there all day and I think it mainly served as soundproofing.) We went four times, and it was a shame we only made it to one performance where all three of the team were there, because they perfectly balance each other. But it was still excellent vibes even when it was just the two, and at 11pm it was a wonderfully chill end to the day.
The most internal: Bedlam Lates (“The Review Review Revue”)
Bedlam Lates is a series of one-off alternative comedy shows that (I believe) runs every year; the name refers to the Bedlam Theatre where they take place. This particular one, was a revue (comedy show) about a review (statistical analysis) of reviews (professionally opinions on comedy shows). It was probably the most “inside baseball” of all the shows we saw, and indeed a decent chunk of the audience were other comedians, based on the show of hands at the start. But it was still very enjoyable for a statistically minded and Fringe-obsessed viewer like me, as presented by Cerys Bradley (one of the Comedians who Play Video Games) and Ella Catherall (self-identified as not a comedian, but should be).
The most rustic: Friendliest
Maybe “rustic” isn’t quite the right word for this show, but it was certainly the most rural, being set in Fargo, North Dakota – which, apparently, considers itself the “friendliest city in America” (or something to that effect). Maybe it maybe wasn’t the friendliest, though, if you were growing up gay, as the actor in this one-man (and semi-autobiographical) play was. It was a perfect mix of hilarious and heartfelt—until the script connected the dots of various things that had been hinted at but left unsaid, and the darker undertones revealed themselves.
The most axiomatic: Boxticker
Maybe not quite the right word, but it’s a decent enough one to describe a show involving a whiteboard with boxes that the comedian progressively ticks off. Becky Price was the comedian, whose show was based around the idea that she “ticks a lot of boxes” that (supposedly) are catnip to Fringe audiences. This was another show I decided to go to minutes before it started, and I was very glad I did (and not just for the handmade sparkly ticked box I got to take home as a souvenir). She had a really sharp wit, and I really want to see her perform again—which I will, this very afternoon, when she’s part of a mixed-bill show being run by a friend of the blog.3
The most energetic: The Past
This was a two-man sketch show, billed as “immersive” (which, in this case, meant that almost every sketch had some element of audience interaction). It followed on from a similarly immersive show about the Trojan Horse, featuring a larger cast, which I enjoyed but felt wasn’t well-served by trying to maintain a plot. A sketch show, on the other hand, suited the performers perfectly, and the theme of history gave them plenty to work with. I don’t know how they kept the energy levels up for a full hour when it was their second back-to-back show.
The most necessary: Linus Karp Was Hit With An Umbrella
Ugh, I don’t like describing shows as “necessary”: it’s pretentious. But the random word generator did, not me. And I think it has to be this show that takes the title, which was by Awkward Prods: Fringe legends at this point, especially after they got married (actually married) on stage at last year’s festival. Their shows are normally the height of silliness, so I wasn’t sure a show about one of them being attacked in a real-life hate crime would work—especially since it was billed as still being a comedy. I don’t know how they pulled it off, but they did, and I think it was probably their best show to date.
The most confident: John-Luke Roberts: What I Talk About When I Run About, Talking
It feels a bit patronising to say any of these professionals on stage was “the most confident”, but again I’m going to blame the random word generator. This was the first time I’d seen John-Luke Roberts, and my understanding is that his shows are normally high in concept. This show, on the other hand, was an hour of “straight” stand-up from a comedian clearly at the top of his game, even as he does something that’s mixing it up from his usual style.
The most harmonious: A Brief History of Musical Theatre
I checked, and you can take a literal definition of “harmonious”, so I obviously had to give it to a ninety-minute-long tour through the history of stage musicals, featuring a show-stopping performance of “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” among other things. Although I do have to give an honourable mention to the play Down To Chance, in which the two actors performed a hauntingly beautiful a cappella rendition of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream”.
The most gentle: Jake Baker: The Gentle Men’s Club
Well, that one was easy.
- A note: all of these are shows I enjoyed, but there are lots of other shows I loved that just didn’t come up on the generator. If you know I was at a show, but it’s not mentioned here, you shouldn’t draw any inference from that. ↩︎
- I went back and tried again during my lunch break, assuming correctly that the queue would be shorter on a weekday. Still reached capacity, though. ↩︎
- And, to be clear, of me. ↩︎
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