What’s worth watching: Brighton Fringe 2024

Skip to: Kemble’s Riot, Plastic and Chicken Bones, Blue Blood, The Ballad of Mulan, Coleridge-Taylor of Freetown, Gruoch: The Lady Macbeth, Terrible People, Richard III

Oh dear. Just when you thought it was safe to go outside … the infighting has got worse. Last year the big controversy was over Caravanserai, a venue run by Brighton Fringe that was supposed to function as a revenue-earner. Unfortunately for Caravanserai, apparently Brighton Fringe lost control of expenses and the venue made a loss, which defeated the object. However, one small consolation from this was the absence of Caravanserai 2024 settled all the arguments, right? Wrong. Spiegeltent and Sweet have chosen to go their own way and run their events at the same time but outside of the Brighton Fringe programme. It is not clear exactly what prompted this, but it is clear this is going to make fringe month very messy.

For the time being, I am going to be covering the two breakaway venues as if they were still part of Brighton Fringe. The Warren Outdoors holds the precedent, when they ran separately from Brighton Fringe in 2020 (albeit for very different reasons – long story). No fringe organisation from Edinburgh to Durham should feel entitled to designated weeks where they get a monopoly on performing arts, and we should certainly not sideline those who are excluded – even if the reason for exclusion is being unable to work with the fringe organisers. However, it is not healthy to have multiple festival umbrellas competing for attention, and after this year I will expect all parties to make reasonable attempts to settle their differences. It might be that they agree to an orderly divorce. But should an agreement not emerge soon, I will expect a good explanation from all parties on what the problem is, what measures you took (blaming the other side won’t be good enough), and why it hasn’t worked out.

But I don’t want to get too bogged down with that. This is supposed to be a recommendations article. I will get through this soon, as soon as I’ve got the headline out of the way. Oh, and I’m performing at Brighton Fringe this year, doing a comedy game show out of all things. As usual, I won’t spend much time talking about that here, but if you want to read about a parody of the board game Cluedo, here is my best attempt to explain how this works. In line with practice in previous years, this means that all reviews from the venue where I am performing (Rotunda) will be embargoed until after Brighton Fringe finishes.

Right, let’s get the rest of this out of the way:

The fragmenting fringe

First of all, an important disclaimer: I am going to go into a lot of speculation here. I don’t live in Brighton and don’t necessarily keep up with the gossip between fringes. But with neither side having chosen to be any more specific than “the decision was not taken lightly”, I have no option but to look at what I know and try to fill in the gaps. Probably not the right time to go into claims and counter-claims now that Brighton Fringe about to start, but the information I have (either directly or stated in public on the record), the less guesswork I’m going to have to make.

What’s worth watching: winter/spring 2024

Skip to: Oh What a Lovely War, The 39 Steps, A Song for Ella Grey, Limelight, Behold Ye Ramblers, Jarman, Thresholds, The Importance of Being … Earnest?, Morgan and West, The Mystery of Dracula, Dune the Musical, Disco Pigs, Modern Times

January is mostly a quiet month for theatre, but with February almost upon is it’s time to have a look at what’s coming up. Might be worth a reminder at this point that this is not a comprehensive guide to the best things coming up in the north east – much of this is steered by what I’ve seen before, and that largely comes down to luck. If you want to see the full rules, you can check out my Recommendations policy.

Before we begin, one small but notable absence from this list is a production from Live Theatre. For some reason, they’re not doing a mainstream production until May. I’m not sure what decide how many productions an NPO Theatre can support in a year, but what’s unusual is choosing May over March. The conventional wisdom is that you wind down theatre in the summer months, as business drops and more attention goes to the fringe season, and put your big productions in the colder months where you get more sales. Live Theatre, however, seems to think otherwise. Make of that what you will.

But apart from that curiosity, here’s what’s caught my eye.

Safe choice:

The top category. Nothing in my list is recommended for everyone – even the best play in the world appeals to a target audience. But if this sounds like your sort of thing, I’m confident you’ll enjoy this.Most are plays I’ve seen before, all of them have wide appeal. We have:

Oh What a Lovely War!

I don’t normally send a play straight to Safe Choice without me having seen it before, but Blackeyed Theatre gets a bye to the top spot because the standard of their back catalogue is excellent. Previous hits have included Dracula and Frankenstein with all sound done acoustic and on-stage, a series of adaptation by Nick Lane including the outstanding Jekyll and Hyde writing in a new female character (and making it look like she was part of the story all along), and straightforward productions of classic scripts including their touring version of Teechers not far behind those from John Godber himself. The writers and directors vary, but the one thing that ties these all together is Victoria Spearing, whose set designs over most of the plays gives Blackeyed Productions their own stamp.

This musical is set at the time of World War One – and in case you haven’t already guessed, the title is being sarcastic. No wars are particularly reputed for loveliness, but the war particularly so. However, unlike most World War One plays going straight into a trenches-based gloomfest, this is set in a music hall with a cast in Pierrot costimes. Such a concept would normally put this straight in the Bold Choice list, but with this musical having endured for decades combined with Blackeyed’s flawless track record it’s much more of a safe bet. It tours nationally, with the local stops being the Stephen Joseph Theatre on the 6th – 9th March, Leeds Playhouse on the 26th & 27th March and – most notably – Darlington Hippodrome on the 28th & 30th March. Big milestone for Blackeyed Theatre to have taken to one of the biggest theatres in the region.

What’s worth watching: autumn/winter 2023

Skip to: Gerry and Sewell, Sinatra Raw, Mr. Punch, Charles Dexter Ward, Alice Thornton, Frankenstein, A Room of One’s Own, Angela, The Cold Buffet, Wintry Tales, And Then Come the Nightjars

It’s the end of Edinburgh Fringe, which can only mean one thing. Yes, that’s right, I’ve accumulated a backlog of reviews that weren’t Edinburgh Fringe that I need to catch up with. I will do that soon. But first, let’s do the usual roundup on what’s coming up in the region before those come and go …

Safe choice:

The hardest category to get into, and usually for plays I’ve seen before and highly recommend. Nothing is a guaranteed success, and you’ll only enjoy something if the description of the play appeals to you. But these all have wide appeal, and if you like the sound of this from either my description or their description, that’s as confident as I get that you’ll enjoy this.

Gerry and Sewell

I confess, when I first heard of a new theatre setting up in Whitley Bay – much as like the idea of more theatre – I privately thought their ambitions for what they wanted to achieve, in the timescales they intended to achieve it, were wildly optimistic. And yet it’s only two years later, and they’ve already got their first transfer to a major Newcastle theatre: a new adaptation of the Tyneside-based football-based novel The Season Ticket (aka Purely Belter). True, plays that have football, politics or local references are favoured for being easy to sell, but Gerry and Sewell thoroughly earned its place in Live Theatre’s programme on its own merits, both for the source material and Jamie Eastlake’s adaptation.

Jonathan Tulloch’s novel was great because he was one of the first writers to notice the growing divide between a working class and a new underclass. Friends Gerry and Sewell are firmly in the the latter, (especially Gerry whose misfortunes mostly come down to his scumbag father). The great working-class tradition of going to Newcastle United is impossibly of reach, but they try anyone as to them this is being part of a better life. I loved Pilot Theatre’s adaptation in 2016, but The Laurels’ version is by far the most innovative with its cast of three: Gerry, Sewell, and a third actor of “Tyneside”: sometimes narrator, sometimes clown, sometimes supporting character.

What’s worth watching: Edinburgh Fringe 2023

Skip to: King Boris III, Bite-Size, Call Mr. Robeson, Casting the Runes, Groomed, Salamander, Watson, Wildcat’s Last Waltz, ADULTS, Bits’n’Pieces, The Good Dad, Havisham, The Madwoman, Mr. Fox, Nation, Please Love Me, Trainspotting, The Grandmothers Grimm, The Hunger, The Importance of Being … Earnest?, Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me, Police Cops: the Musical, 14-18 Cyrano de Bergerac, 24 23 22, Diana, the untold and untrue story, It’s a Motherfucking Pleasure, From the comedy

Welcome to Edinburgh Fringe 2023. There use to be a time when we could into a fringe without an update of all the changes that happened last year. 2022 was a wild ride, with celebrations over a swift recovery quickly sullied by numerous arguments over accommodation costs, media coverage, and controversial economisations such as the Fringe App and Fringe Central. And many of these argument rumbled on throughout the fringe and So I was expecting to be opening this with yet another long list of what’s changed in light of all of last year’s arguments.

In the end, however, 2023 seems to be steadying the ship. The problems over accommodation costs have not gone away, but fears this might spiral out of control as participant numbers spiral out of control have abated after registration numbers stayed reasonably level (give or take a margin for the effect of late registrations). Fringe Central and the app are back. That’s by no means all the arguments settled, but it’s not on the crisis levels of last year.

But … is this the calm before the storm? One thing that will be coming before next year’s Edinburgh Fringe is a ban on short term lets. That will have an unpredictable effect in 2024 and beyond – most people are expecting a substantial reduction in the size of Edinburgh fringe, but even within that parameter there are a lot of possibilities.

So let’s enjoy this one while we can. This is as calm as things are going to get.

Plays run the full fringe (at least Friday 4th to Saturday 26th) unless otherwise stated.

Safe choice:

We start with picks that I think are surefire as can be. Most of these plays I have seen before; those that I haven’t seen I have extremely good reason to hold high hopes for. The same caveat applies to all these categories: read the description (either mine or their publicity) so see if this is the sort of thing for you. But all of these have wide appeal, and if you like the sound of this, it’s my firm call you’ll like this.

The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria

I saw this in 2020 just before the ‘rona hit, and I praised it then, but if anything this play is even more relevant now than it was then. In the intervening years, one of the sillier battlegrounds has been over who gets to tell history. The typical argument is that history is told by one group of people pushing a simplistic narrative through an ideological lens, therefore we’re going to push our own simplistic narrative through our own ideological lens – and the reason to believe our version is usually that we REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO BELIEVE it’s true. This is, of course, all bollocks. Nobody has a right for their preferred interpretation of history to be accepted as fact – and in real life, history is usually messy, complicated, and morally ambiguous. And that’s certainly the case in the history of Bulgaria during World War Two. King Boris III stood in the way of the extermination of Jews in Bulgaria – but the price of their survival was high. Much higher than you think.

What’s worth watching: Buxton Fringe 2023

Skip to: The Unknown Soldier, The Glummer Twins, Final Girl, Caravan of Desire, Fugee, Revenant, Room, Fortheringhay, I was a Teenage Bisexual, Imaginary Porno Charades, A soiree of Black Liver, Harp-Guitar, A Problem with Clowns, Adventure Department

With Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe still in a massive state of flux, it’s quite refreshing to come to a fringe which has pretty much settled down after the drama of 2020. In 2022, Buxton Fringe was broadly back to how it was, with mostly the same venues and a similar size. There were some subtle changes between after time and before times – most notably, it did appear that some audience regulars were still reluctant to come back. This time, even for the ultra-cautious, Covid is far less of a scare than even 12 months ago, so hopefully audiences should recover further. Buxton has 190 registrations this time round, higher than any previous year except the extended fringe of 2019 – however, this includes a good number of outlying venues (some not even in Buxton), so in practice the fringe size is what we’re used to.

There is one small but important difference this year. Last year, for the first time, the Rotunda took two domes to Brighton Fringe (a plan brought forward by the unprecedented high demand from performers), and this year they’re doing the same for Buxton. But it’s the addition of their smaller venue, “squeak”, that’s notable. Since the closure of Pauper’s Pit and the Barrel Room in 2016, Buxton Fringe has been short of smaller spaces in managed venues* – and for entry-level acts this is important. The bigger spaces are costly to hire – if you manage to get a slot at all. I’m not sure I could have got started in Buxton had I begun four years later – hopefully Squeak can start to make Buxton more accessible again.

* And yes, I’m aware there are plenty of non-managed venues available where you can do perfectly decent shows without sound and lighting rigs, but few people take that up.

Annoyingly, however, the Rotunda (both bigger “Bubble” and smaller “Squeak”) is once again only around for half the fringe. Last time it was competition from Wells Festival – this time, however, I understand they wanted to do the whole fringe. But, for some reason, Buxton Carnival had already booked the Pavilion Gardens space, in spite of never having needed that before. So Buxton Fringe starts 5th July, but no Rotunda until the 14th. Maybe next year.

Anyway, for once I can do a short preamble. Now let’s look at what’s coming up.

Safe choice:

Safe choices are almost entirely plays I’ve seen before. Not all plays appeal to everybody, but these ones have wide appeal, and if you like the sound of this, I’m confident you won’t regret seeing it.

The Unknown Soldier

With Grist from the Mill running Buxton Fringe’s second biggest venue, their back catalogue has become a regular fixture. So, once again, their all-time smash hit The Unknown Soldier tops the bill. It’s just a small part of the programme this year thought, with all three of Ross Ericson’s solo plays under the single heading of “Grist to the Mill Presents”. I’ve already said enough about the play set in the no-so-heroic aftermath of World War One that I needn’t say again, but there is a reason why this got Grist to the Mill on the fringe map. You can see this on the 18th July at 6 p.m. at The Rotunda.

The other two plays are Moby Dick, a storytelling version of the famous showdown involving a captain who has a beef with one specific whale; and Gratiano, a retelling of The Merchant of Venice in Fascist Italy, which has just had a good run at Reykjavik Fringe. You can see these on the 17th and 19th July respectively, same time, same venue.

What’s worth watching: spring/summer 2023

Skip to: Nell Gwyn, The Red Lion, Sherlock Holmes, Quality Street, It’s all in your head, Ghosts of Metroland, A Room of One’s Own, The bit where I call out a major theatre for fawning over a Holocaust revisionist

Aarrghh. We’re into this season already and there’s a lots of things on my list about to start. Sorry, Brighton Fringe has kept me busy and there’s still north-east theatre going on. Better get to it.

Safe choice:

So the big surprise is that there’s nothing amongst the professional theatres in the north-east that I’m putting down as a safe choice. (There are plenty of touring productions going to the biggest theatres that are safe bets for their target audience who know what to expect, but I’m on the lookout for plays that appeal beyond a standard target audience.) There are, however, a couple of plays from amateur theatres that I’m confident will be done well.

Nell Gwyn

I’m bending the rules to allow this in my list, but the People’s Theatre’s production of Nell Gwyn looks like it’s going to be good. I only know snippets of the play, but what I’ve heard sounds really promising.

First, a catch-up on this bit of theatre history. The mind-17th century wasn’t a great time to be a theatre. Firstly they were all shut down by Oliver Cromwell because the Puritans decided this was a bit too much like fun; they they had to be shut down because of a plague. Before the plague, however, Charles II liked fun and insisted the theatre re-opened, and also insisted women should be allowed on stage. Huzzah, a great advancement for equality. Well, sort of. If you were a woman, the only real way of securing a career in theatre was to get you tits out on stage, or sleep with the theatre owner and/or major donor. In spite of this, Nell Gwyn played that game well and made herself a celebrity, with her and King Charles famously exchange flirting from stage to royal box, making the audience think “are they or aren’t they?” (Spoiler: they are).

What’s worth watching: Brighton Fringe 2023

Skip to: Blue Blood, The Unknown Soldier, Green Knight, Old Bones, Chemistry, Havisham, Who is No 1?, Renfield, My Esteemed Friend, Talking to the Dead, Jekyll and Hyde, This is Normal, Lulu, Fabulett 1933, Atalanta the Adventurer, Geoff Mead’s tours, Toy Stories, Lachlan Werner, A Guide to Therapy for Terrible People, Experiment Human, 10 Films with my Dad, Crime Scene Improvisation, Finlay and Joe, Biscuit Barrel, Notflix

So welcome to Fringe season 2023 – and it’s a bumpier road that we were expecting. In 2020 and 2021, there were a lot of nerves over whether arts organisations, fringe and otherwise, would survive financially. Help came, theatres reopened, and the fringes assumed it was back to business. Instead, we’re stumbling into new crises. Some are echoes of the pandemic, some am the re-emergence of old issues, and some are completely new problems.

Brighton has not been immune from this – but they’re having an easier time than the other big festivals. The Vault Festival (not a fringe but a big feeder to the fringe circuit) has just lost the venue it’s named after with know knowing if the festival will continue at all. Edinburgh, meanwhile, expanded too fast and hit a multitude of problems, with a biggest threat being the state of accommodation. I am taking better looks at both these crises elsewhere, but in both cases the worst-case scenarios are catastrophic. The one thing Brighton Fringe has that the other festivals don’t is stability.

It should not have been this way. The shock news to hit last year’s fringe was The Warren, by far the largest venue at Brighton Fringe, pulling out of the festival following complaints over unpaid earnings. The equivalent event in Edinburgh would be if all of the Big Four pulled out. Any yet Brighton Fringe 2022 went ahead with a respectable size two thirds of the 2019 peak. Brighton Fringe’s troubles are far from over and there have been further venue problems this year, but again we have a respectable size.

What does this show us? It shows us just how resilient the open festival model is. Brighton Fringe is more than a festival, it’s also a community. Dozens of venues and hundreds of performing arts organisations make a joint effort, and we now know that when the biggest player by far goes under, the rest of community reconfigures, reorganises, and carries on. Out of the big three festivals, Brighton Fringe now looks the most secure – not because its problems are over, but because how good Brighton Fringe is as a community responding to it. But if the worst comes to the worst for Edinburgh and Vault, Brighton Fringe’s role could become a lot more important.

What’s worth watching: winter/spring 2023

Skip to: Sherlock Holmes: the valley of fear; Morgan and West, Gulliver, Run, Rebel, Person Spec, Howerd’s End, Juggling, Tomatoes tried to kill me, Love it when we beat them, Vermin

It’s a late list of recommendations this time, which is partly because I’ve had a busy January but also also that the things that catch my eye and a bit end-loaded. Some of the things coming that I rate won’t be happing until May or later, and will go into the next list. This means that what I have left over is a shorter list than usual.

Safe choice:

My top tier is for plays where I think you can’t go wrong. Not everything is to everyone’s tastes, but if what I describe sounds like your sort of thing, I’m confident you won’t be disappointed.

With much of the interesting stuff happening late in the year though, and few plays that I recognise, this is going to be a short list.

Sherlock Holmes: the valley of fear

It’s rare for me to put plays I haven’t seen into safe choice, but if you want to be certain of a good night of theatre, this is about as safe a bet as can be. I have seen many Blackeyed Theatre productions with several different writers and directors, and there hasn’t been a single weak link amongst them. They are also one of only three theatre companies (the other two being Sparkle and Dark and Pilot Theatre) to have scooped an Ike Award, my equivalent to five stars, twice.

Whilst I haven’t seen this particular play, Nick Lane has previously adapted another Sherlock Holmes Story, The Sign of Four, which was done to a high standard, Holmes and Watson from that last play are reprised in this performance. The faults and prejudices of Victorian society were covered in the last play but didn’t stray into moralising for the sake of it. And Victoria Spearing, whose set design has been pretty much the defining feature of all Blackeyed productions, is in action once again. The bad news is that Blackeyed Theatre tour nationally and their north-east visits are a bit thin on the ground. In fact, the only stop is Middlesbrough Theatre on 10th & 11th February. There also later dates at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on the 18th – 20th May. Both of which clash with other commitments from me. Damn. Visit the north east more goddamnit.

What’s worth watching: Vault Festival 2023

Skip to: All Falls Down, Salamander, Experiment Human, Police Cops: Badass Be Thy Name, Finlay and Joe, Isobel Rogers, Lachlan Werner, Hide, Notflix, The Dark Room, Criminally Untrue

One year ago, the Vault Festival suffered what was surely the worst possible disaster: with days to go before opening night, the whole festival was cancelled. It was very very very bad news for two reasons. Firstly, with Vault 2021 also cancelled, there was a clear three years between Vault festivals, with no guarantee that the community built up over the 2010s would still exist by the end of it. Worse, however, was the timing. 2021 was at least a planned cancellation; 2022, however, was supposed to be the big relaunch. Financially speaking, the last thing you want to do is cancel a large-scale event after doing all the up-front expenses.

Very easy to say this in hindsight, but an underground festival in London in the winter of 2022 never struck me as a good idea. Had they played it safe and gone for March-May 2022, I reckon it would have survived – but I don’t see how they could have postponed everything at the last moment. In different circumstances we could have been talking about one error of judgement that brought down one of the best loved festival of fringe theatre in the country … But – we are not. Vault 2023 is going ahead, and from the sound of things, it’s going to be as if nothing’s happened. Either Vault has deeper pockets than we realise, have good cancellation insurance up their sleeve, or they have a generous backer come to rescue we don’t know about. Whatever the reason, it’s back to business.

So this means it’s back to business for me too. I’ll shortly be going into my list of recommendations, but first, a recap on what to expect.

What’s worth watching: autumn/winter 2022

Skip to: Noughts and Crosses, Brassed Off, Constellations, Watson: the Final Problem, Shakers, Terrifying Tales from Tyneside, Sugar Baby, Around the World in 80 Days, Howerd’s End, One Off, Wishes in the Wind, A Room of One’s Own, Alice in Wonderland, The Great Gatsby

I finally get round to writing up this overdue list of what’s coming up in the north-east that I recommend, and what happens? That thing. However, I have thought long and hard about this, and I have decided to continue writing this article. It is what the Queen would have wanted. However, I am writing this with my Union Jack flying at half mast and wearing a black armband. I hope you approve.

Fringe season is over, it’s time to look back at what’s happening locally.

Safe Choice:

You should all be refreshed on the rules by now, but to recap: safe choice is for plays where I think you can’t go wrong AND where the play has a wide audience appeal. Nothing appeals to everyone all the time, but if you like the sound of how I describe this, I’m confident you’ll like it for real.

Noughts and Crosses

The top of the must see list by far is from Pilot Theatre. There are two things notable about York-based Pilot Theatre. Firstly, they are one of the best theatre companies I’ve seen for staging, and it doesn’t necessarily means high-budget or flashy staging but staging that is creative and innovative, with every play being visually striking in a different way. Secondly, they are a super-diverse theatre company. That’s not the easiest of things to do; one pitfall is casting that looks contrived, and the other is endless plays about racism – in my opinion, neither of these do anybody any favours in the long run. Pilot Theatre, I think, gets it; and for any theatre company looking to diversify its programme but unsure how to go about doing it, I’d recommend Pilot Theatre for inspiration.