Ewan Spence is joined by theatre producer Fin Ross Russell (The Collie’s Shed) to look back at this year’s Fringe, the preparation required, what happens next, and plans for 2024.
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Cat Shit Crazy, with either an exclamation mark replacing the eye or a censored graphic over the title, caught a lot of attention as the Fringe started, in part due to the aforementioned ‘we can’t have that sort of thing on display at the Fringe’. Sometimes the best publicity comes as a surprise. But the show is about much more than that.
Hollywood-based Cindy D’Andrea’s autobiographical show is much more than that. At one of the darkest moments in her life, her best friend suggested she should get a cat. Moving from I hate cats, to countless feline friends over the last fourteen years, this is a story about a woman, a cat, and unconditional love.
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What happens when you decide to make your own magic from whatever you can find around you? What happens when you add a dash of robotics to the magic? And then an old tomato soup can from the bin to be your next robot assistant.
That’s the world of Mario The Maker Magician. It’s a family show packed with slapstick humour, handmade robots, and a lot of skill. THere’s a mix of science, creativity, showmanship, and laughter that is incredibly hard to balance. Mario makes it look easy.
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One part of the Edinburgh Fringe for every performer is being judged; by the audiences, by the industry, by the reviewers, and pretty much every part of the business. Which makes it all the more interesting that Colleen Lavin has not only built a robot to judge her, but it’s doing it live, every day, in from of an audience.
In ‘’Do The Robots Think I’m Funny’, Colleen asks what it means to be insecure in the modern world, how comedy and improv mix, and the differences between a room in Chicago and a room in Edinburgh. Underneath it all is the nagging question of the moment… will we all be replaced by robots?
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Featuring cameos from Columbo and The Eiffel Tower, here’s my chat with Sid Singh. His Fringe show for 2023 is “Table for One”, where Sing talks about his dual career as a stand-up comic and human rights advocate – careers that see him taking on the US Government over human rights before dealing with deportation from India while staying in Germany.
The show, which is supporting and raising money for the Centre for Gender and Refugee Studies, asks how you can fight the good fight while you are far away from home.
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Emily Walsh brings her show ‘Dad Girl’ from the clubs of New York to the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. Emily does not know if she wants kids, but she would like to be a dad. It’s a show about making decisions in a world where others believe the decision has already been made for you by society.
The Fringe offers something that many comics, including Emily, rarely get. A chance to spend an hour with an audience. That allows more complex topics to be addressed, to go into much greater depth, but also a chance to look at a wider picture. It’s an offer that Emily luxuriates in.
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Sikisa’s Hear Me Out is her second hour-long show at the Edinburgh Fringe. During last year’s debut, after reading a passage of text an audience member wondered if she might be dyslexic. To cut a long story short (and not give away any spoilers), Sikisa was diagnosed, and this year’s show is about that journey.
Sikisa and I talk about her performance and how it rarely reflects how she is away from the comedy stage, the importance of music, and how her 2023 show can be summed up in a single question… “why is it so hard to say the right things?”
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‘Bed The Musical’ is centred around the titular piece of furniture. The show examines a twenty-year-long marriage through the presence of the bed that Alice and Ben bought instead of going on a honeymoon. If beds could tell their own stories, this bed has a tale to tell, and it’s all put to song.
Written by Tim Anfilogoff and Alan Whittaker Bed is a musical about a place we spend a third of our life in, and much more of our life around it, making it, and thinking up new things to do in it.,
Ahead of the show making its worldwide premiere at this year’s Fringe, I spoke to writer Tim Anfilogoff and director Matthew Gould about the devilish divan that can be found at the Gilded Balloon.
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Patrick Susmilch has spent time looking back over all the messages, memes, and moments with his friends on social media. Many are still around, yet some have died. Through those older messages, he feels connected to those who have passed on.
Through the medium of PowerPoint presentations, Susmilch introduces us to his dead friends, their impact on his life, the bursts of joy and laughter as well as darker moments. Think Twilight Zone and Black Mirror mixed with Who’s Line Is It Anyway.
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