Blimey. It’s a news-heavy month this Feburary. Better get right to it because I run out of March to write this up in.
Stuff that happened in February
Oh, my aching hands. Here’s what you’ve kept me busy writing up:
More woes at Brighton Fringe
It turns out I wasn’t connected to all the Brighton Fringe rumour mills. I’d known for some time Caravanserai wasn’t coming back, probably because Brighton Fringe couldn’t run a venue without letting costs go out of control. Now it’s gone public that Spiegeltent and Sweet aren’t being part of Brighton Fringe either. They are still running at the same time in May and June, but they are not registering with Brighton Fringe. (I admit, I did hear rumours of Spiegeltent doing this, but I’ve heard things like this touted so many times I didn’t pay much attention. I’d assumed that with Caravanserai being the focus of so many grievances, the main source of aggro was now resolved. But apparently not.)
This means that Brighton Fringe 2024 is going to be very messy. At close of registrations for programme launch, we have 556 Brighton Fringe registrations. That’s low. This could be an artificially low number, because with no paper programme to meet a deadline for, it’s not such a big deal to register late, but it would have to a big last-moment surge to turn things round. At the time of writing, Spiegeltent have launched their own not-Fringe programme, but I haven’t had time to analyse this yet. I will be analysing this a lot more as Brighton Fringe coverage ramps up, because the implications are too complex to go ito here.
A lot of this is going to ride on how the fringe media chooses to cover a fragmented Brighton Fringe. Will Sweet and Spiegeltent still get the coverage, or will they be sidelined? For my part, my own decision is that, for now, I will treat Spiegeltent and Sweet the same way as if they’d been part of Brighton Fringe proper (a bit like I did with Warren Outdoors in 2020, albeit under different circumstances). However, after this, I expect all parties to make reasonable efforts to resolve their differences. I’m not interested in blaming the other side as an excuse to not make a reason effort yourself – I want to know what you are doing. But we can start having that debate in July onwards. For now, I expect a truce. Get through this, don’t get in each other’s way, and any blame games can wait.
I try to keep news about me or this blog to a minimum. I’ve never wanted to make this about me, I want it to be about the theatre I see. However, this is a rare occasion where I need to write about what I’m doing. The main reason I have persisted with the reviewing for so long as that I do get a lot of appreciation for this, and consider myself as doing a service. But I must never lose sight of whether I am really doing people a favour, and one question that must be addressed in Edinburgh Fringe.
Before you get too excited about any earth-shattering bombshells: I intend to carry on reviewing at Edinburgh Fringe. Although Brighton is a close second, Edinburgh Fringe offers by far the great variety of theatre in one place, made possible to a large part by the culture that all are welcome. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the crisis of expense. It’s always been a problem, 2022 and 2023 were particularly bad, but the ban on short term lets now in place could well push up costs even more. However, I will defend to the death the rights of individual artists to decide for themselves what’s best for them. For many artists, my advice is that Edinburgh Fringe is not the right festival for you and you’re better off doing something else – but it must be your own choice. I am streadfastly opposed to imposing this choice on people, nor will I penalise people for making a different choice to what I recommend.
However, what concerns me about Edinburgh Fringe is that people are taking part not by choice. As I have said before, we have a big problem with many arts organisations going talent scouting at Edinburgh Fringe and nowhere else. This means – and I have observed this myself – many artists who cannot comfortably afford Edinburgh and are gambling with more money they can afford to lose still do this Fringe because the think they have no option but to go there if they want a hope of making it. Until now, I have been challenging the arts industry on this, and especially challenging those who complain about the unfairness and expense of Edinburgh whilst refusing to gives artists a fair chance by any other route. But I’m wondering whether we are reaching the point where even the availability of reviews in Edinburgh – compared to a perceived dearth of reviews at other fringes – is doing more harm than good.
The other issue I’m facing is that I am increasingly struggling to accommodate all the review requests I get. I’ve been fully accredited press since 2021 – and I am grateful to Edinburgh Fringe for this, I could not be sustaining this coverage without – but the volume of review requests I’ve been getting is going up and up and up. And I’m honestly not sure how to filter this. I give priority to acts I’ve seen before and liked, but should I prioritise other acts on how good other reviews are? Probably not, I want to give a break to acts without reviews, not just big up already successful ones. Make choices on how good the press release sounds? I could, but I like to be go into most productions not knowing what to expect. But I can’t say yes to everything. I’m reaching the point where I’m missing stuff I want to see (not on review request lists) because I’m squeezing in too many reviews.
So here’s a new rule I’m introducing to both make it easier for me to choose what to review and (in my opinion) be a bit more responsible with what I encourage:
From 2024, priority for Edinburgh Fringe reviews will go to acts that have already performed at smaller festivals (for acts based in England and Wales).
Now let’s catch up with Buxton Fringe. And apologies for anyone waiting. Unlike Brighton and Edinburgh, I don’t do live coverage of Buxton, meaning that anyone wondering what I thought of Buxton fringe plays has to wait for the roundup. You also need to wait for any news of what went on in Buxton, although this time the news is quite straightforward.
Whilst Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe still have ongoing controversies/shitshows, Buxton Fringe has been pretty much free to get on with business as usual. There has been on ongoing issue over lack of small spaces – this year the addition of the Rotunda Squeak seems to have resolved that. The main problem in 2022, however, was audience numbers not recovering as fast as audience numbers. I haven’t seen any official figures, but based on partial figures from some individual venues, my own observations, and the general mood, it looks like audience numbers have made a proper recovery now.
The other thing notable about Buxton 2023 was lot of rain. Which make a change of lots of heat from last year. Never mind, nothing we can do about that.
For once, we can go straight through the preamble, say all is well, and get on to the reviews.
Pick of the fringe:
This is a bit different from normal picks. Normally, I restrict pick of the fringe to theatre – and if there’s anything I love in comedy or elsewhere, it goes into honourable mention. However, this time round, most of my favourites weren’t theatre. (Some might have been counted as theatre in the programme, but I have a long-standing rule of reviewing based on what I think counts as theatre.) So, for once, I’m relaxing the rules and here’s a pick of the fringe of Buxton Fringe theatre and theatrish.
Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales
P J Vickers took two productions to Buxton Fringe this year. Only one of them was going to the Edinburgh Fringe, with this one being the side project. It does what it says on the tin: reciting the words of two of Oscar Wilde’s short stories to a piano accompaniment; and it was lovely. Both stories – indeed the overall collection published in 1888 – are fantasy stories with an over-arching theme of kindness. But there’s a cynical streak too. The Happy Prince, the best known tale of the collection, is about a gold/jewel-laden sentient statue over an extravagant Palace where the rest of the city lives in poverty. The Nightingale and the Rose has the extreme sacrifice a nightingale makes to get a red rose for a youth to win the heart of the professor’s daughter – but the moral of the story turns out to be that if the love of your life is demanding an extremely specific gift that you have no realistic chance of acquiring in the short time available, you should probably cut your losses and find somebody less petty and materialistic instead.
Storytelling Oscar Wilde is a pretty straightforward thing to do: good delivery of words, and condensing the story to keep up the pace without causing it to stop making sense – do those two things well and you can’t really go wrong. This is done here. But it’s the musical touch which makes this stand out. Played by David Collins, it is only played in brief passages, usually subtle. In fact, between the understated music and the strength of both the test and the delivery, you don’t consciously notice when the music has begun and stopped – but that adds to the experience.
Even with the unusual touch of the live accompaniment, this was one of the safest bets at Buxton Fringe, but it deliver exactly what it promises.
Screech
Tuh, when are Three’s Company ever going to get their act together with their podcast? Every time I sit down and listen to an episode, they can’t make it more than two minutes in before being interrupted by an adventure. Now they do an episode to a live audience, and surely they’re not going to be distracted this time? But, no, somebody in a mask has to keep making phone calls threatening to crop them all into tiny pieces. You know what, I don’t think they’re ever going to get round to their advice on funding.
Seriously, Three’s Company Adventure Department is a project than began in 2020 when there wasn’t much else to do. Tom Crawshaw and Yaz Al-Shaater were joined by semi-retired founder-member Michael Grady-Hall for a set of comedy audio plays, where their serious podcast about making fringe theatre keeps getting interrupted by an adventure. Every episode is a different genre and basically parodies every story in that genre. This rare edition is an episode before a live audience, and is a parody of every slasher flick, featuring guest star Rob Rouse. Expect called of “Let’s play a game” to be answered with enthusiastic suggestions for Twister and/or Trivial Pursuit and confusion over Saw and See-Saw. Plus of course an urgent clarification that the trope of mental patients escaping hospitals is misleading, and whilst some people are a danger to others is it is irresponsible to make a generalisation that all neurodivergent people are mass murders. But, hey, it’s not irresponsible if it’s true. [Ominous theme, close in on my sinister eyes.]
Rob Rouse plays the guest star in this for whoever the equivalent of Ghostface/Jigsaw/Kurger/Vorhees is. I believe this was a raffle prize, but if the audience could have picked anybody, he’d surely have been first choice, because Rob Rouse was an absolute superstar in the role.
One small snag over this performance is that the skit is over in about 30 minutes – the remainder of the time was the slightly more tedious process of re-recording the bits that didn’t pick up the first this round whilst trying to reproduce the audience laughs. But this really a gathering/celebration of the fanbase first and a comedy act second. And it was great to finally get us all together. Much of the online theatre created in the infamous fringe season of 2020 never got an audience, and it’s great that this one did.
Fugee
Now, this is a big blast from the past. It’s rare for a play I’ve seen before to slip past my radar, but this one rang a bell and I had to look up when it last play at Buxton: 2011, the year before I started doing reviews. But you’d be forgiven for assuming it was written for 2023. Anti-immigrant sentiment certain existed twelve years ago, but a panic leading to solutions as extreme as Rwanda was unimaginable. This, I assume, is why Shadow Syndicate has chosen to revive this from their back catalogue.
Fugee was written as part of National Theatre Connections, to be performed in youth theatre groups all over the country. One obvious challenge about a play set in a centre for teenage refugees over all nationalities is a heavily multi-racial which most youth groups are mostly white, but Abi Morgan’s script does have an unconventionally direct solution to this that works quite well. The key character in this is Kojo, who is fleeing from a militia that enrolled him as a child soldier. The centre itself is a lifeline, both camaraderie of other refugees and supportive managers. The laws, on paper, seem reasonable. But Kojo’s enemies are the jobworths form outside, looking for any opportunity they can to make someone else’s life worse. (Former Home Office employee here, I can attest these people exist.)
For obvious reasons, this is a different cast from twelve years ago, but Shadow Syndicate has been consistently good with its production values and this is no exception. In fact, now is a good time to credit Shadow Syndicate for avoiding something many youth groups fall foul of: becoming the playground of the youth group leader. Across most theatre there are checks and balances one way or another. Directors in adult amateur theatre who make poor decisions will eventually fall foul of walkouts or mutinies. That might not apply in professional theatre where you are paid to do what the director says – but a bad professional director will still be punished at the box office. Neither of those failsafes apply to youth theatre. I’m not saying there are a many bad youth theatre directors, but I’ve seen numerous cases of otherwise decent directors putting on weak scripts of their own, or making weird directorial decisions in otherwise solid productions. They can do this because the kids aren’t experienced enough to talk back; and the audience is mostly friends and family, there for the support first and decent directing a long way second.
That does not apply to Buxton Fringe though. All groups (especially non-local groups) have to earn their audience. Perhaps this is the incentive Shadow Syndicate needed, or maybe they’re just the gropu who never settle for “Didn’t they all try hard”. Either way, Fugee is another production with high production values that the rest of the fringe a run for its money.
St. George and other stories
A small liberty with the title here. A more accurate title would be “other story” as a singular. It’s two stories from Dylan Howells and Joe Sellman-Leava, both true (or truish) stories they there were a part of.
We open with Dylan’s story. Dylan is the tech lead at Underground Venues, and this story started off as a more rehearsed version of what I believe was previously a popular anecdote told at the bar. This involves a dinner party with a rare visit from an brother – notorious for outlandish boasts – making an even bigger boast than usual on his visit to Amsterdam. (And, as you have already guess, this visit did not involve museums or galleries.) As any well-crafted anecdote does, it crescendos to a climax of the lengths he takes to prove his latest outlandish story true.
It’s fair to say that Dylan’s short story functions in part as a prelude to Joe’s longer story which, on its own, wouldn’t have filled up the usual hour slot. This, however, was a longer and deeper story. Now, this one, Joe admits, takes a few liberties on the details – the real story took place over a longer timeframe and not on April 23rd in various years. But the key part is his friendship with another boy at school, both of them semi-outsiders in one way or another. His idolises the mythical version of St. George; but as they approach school leaving a rift comes between in the form of an army career visit. Joe hasn’t forgiven them for Iraq and sees these recruitment drives as exploitative; his friend, however, sees the army as his chance to do something with his life he can be proud of.
There’s no shortage of plays on the fringe circuit which are essentially artists talking about themselves – and I swear in 2023 there’s been a lot more. Sometimes it’s justified, because some people have amazing stories to share; others are textbook offenders of literal “main character syndrome” who consider their ordinary lives to be uniquely deep and profound. But it’s not often you see one fo these stories give so much weight to someone other then yourself. And there’s no battle of self-justification here. Joe respects the decision of his friend that he would never have made himself, and does not shy away from depicting is friend’s outlook as strongly as his own. Not all stories actors tell about themselves can work this way, but a lot more could and should. I applaud Joe Sellman-Leava for doing it this way.
Honourable mention:
Now for the rest of the review. One small housekeeping announcement is that Dirty Scrabble is not eligible for a review, because I ended up being in dictionary corner for that – and, as far as I can tell, this is a role in the show specifically created for my when I’m around. We’ll just have to wait for someone else to critique my toilet humour. Also, in common with previous years, I don’t review stand-up comedy – I wouldn’t know where to start.
Those disclaimers established, we have:
97+
The title might not mean much to some people; for anyone affected by the issue, it certainly does. 97 is the number of deaths from the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, but for those who lived the trauma goes on. Tom Cain produced this play in collaboration with the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance, and it shows. If the title seems familiar, there was a very successful verbatim play done a few years back called The 56, which covered a similar story of the Bradford City Stadium fire. The obvious difference between the two, of course, is that nobody tried to shift the blame for that disaster. For Hillsborough, the cover-up and victim-blaming is just as big a deal as the disaster itself.
Unlike The 56, this play is set decades later, for two good reasons. Firstly, this play has a heavy emphasis on the long-term trauma of the survivors entering middle age. Secondly, it is 2012, the start of the enquiry that will eventually exonerate the Liverpool fans. Although for John, it may as well still be 1989. His whole life is still dominated by Hillsborough. He was in the middle of the crush and still has nightmares about it. When he’s not doing that, he’s seething about the subsequently vilification by The Sun. Nothing his wife can do can calm this, but instead he meets Steve, another survivor (in his case one who saw the whole thing from the other end of the stadium). With someone like himself to talk to, Steve persuades him to give his story to the upcoming enquiry.
Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance should be pleased with this, because if does a good job of concisely depicting both the terrible events of the day, and the trauma and anger felt decades later. What the play lacks, however, is any real feel of a narrative structure. The 56 did this by structuring the story into the party atmosphere of Bradford’s final game, the slow dawning something was wrong, through the worst of the fire, and then the recovery of survivors on the other side. The wouldn’t necessarily be the right approach here – after all, this intentionally has a big focus on later years. But it feels like it needs something. Is this the story of John finally opening up? If so, we need to begin the story when John has kept his memories to himself for decades. Or might this be a redemption story? John could be one of many people who lives for a day the Prime Minister officially apologises in the Commons – if that’s where the play ends. Or might you do both strands? Or both strands plus the strand of the day of the disaster? (This would be tricky but I reckon doable.)
I get the impression that a lot of plays based on the testimony of real people struggle with narrative structure because the author wants to pack is as much as possible from real testimonies. That is understandable, but this usually comes at the expense of a story. You cover all the testimonies you like in a seminar, but a play is an opportunity to understand what an individual goes through. In doing so, you might not be able to get as many survivors’ voices on stage, but that’s okay, because you are using a play to do what a seminar can’t. That’s a human face, and Tom Cain, who clearly knows his stuff, shouldn’t be afraid of pulling all the stops for that.
Dark Horse
In common with an earlier review, this act has the challenge of doing a play that’s a little too short for a fringe time-slot. The Yellow Bird is a short Tennessee Williams story; it is preceded by their original play Dark Horse.
First, Dark Horse. This is a clever concept where a woman at a group therapy meeting. It’s not quiet clear whether this is alcoholics anonymous or some other behavioural problem. When she opens up and goes into her story, it first seems like she was in a Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship – until the story gets familiar. It is, in fact, a retelling of Delilah’s story from Samson and Delilah. The narrative does have echoes of Tennessee Williams’s style, and I did like the way this was slowly build up to let the penny drop in your own time. However, I do feel this needed a decision on what sort of Delilah is in this story. Is this a scheming and manipulative Delilah as depicted in the Bible? Or is she misunderstood and her own side of the story is different from the Old Testament would have you believe?
The Yellow Bird is the more polished of the two. This is the story of Alma, the the daughter of a strict Reverend. She horrifies her parents by being unmarried at 25, not getting together with nice young men at church picnics, and instead finding comfort as a wallflower. It’s only after an outburst in church that she discovers that the real Alma is not what her father wants her to be, and she’s prepared to tear up her life to become her own liberated self.
The text of the prose translates well into the narration of Alma. I hadn’t realised, but unlike most of Tennessee Williams’s best known works, this is a short story rather than play. The prose translates to monologues very well, and the fact I assumed it was directly his script is credit to Karran Collings’s adaptation. In fact, the production as a whole was decent, with one exception: the set was far too congested for a fringe-scale stage. I sometimes saw the actors struggle to navigate the set. In addition, there were a fair number of scene changes, and the gaps the create added up and broke the flow. It is almost always better to keep things basic. Use no more set than you need, and if you must have scene changes, make them as fast and slick as you can.
Other than that, I good start from a group who I believe are new to Buxton Fringe. Hopefully this first foray will show what worked and what didn’t, and any group who learns from this can build on it and keep coming back better.
Bibby Dinosaur
Dave Bibby’s comedy routine can best be summarised as what was supposed to have been a meticulously performed one-man Jurassic Park – but then along came a kid and Dave didn’t have time to plan that sort of show any more. But don’t worry – maybe with the help of the audience we can complete this after all.
It’s a very interactive show – no-one gets shown up, but there’s a clipboard passed round with lines that may or may not have been in the original Spielberg film. Interspersed with this, however, are accounts of being a comedian also bringing up a baby son, soon to be a toddler son. As with most comedy giving real-life events, some caution should be paid and anecdotes may have been embellished. However, a strong contender for wholesome moment of the year is Bibby’s dinosaur-obsessed child playing the part of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Also, if your first teenage crush was Ellie Satler but you’re now married, Dave Bibby might have the solution for you.)
However, you might notice as we approach the end of the hour that we’re not even halfway through the film yet. Without giving too much of a spoiler, there’s one thing worse for your arts career than bring up one kid, and you don’t need to be Sherlock to guess what it is. It looks like Dave Bibby’s one-man Jurassic Park will never be finished, unless …well, it’ll make sense when you need it.
This is in the comedy category for both Buxton and Edinburgh, and firmly belongs there, so don’t expect any tightly-directed re-enactment, but that’s not the point. It’s ultimately a celebration of how losing your creative time to family time is worth it. For a show based on a film where dinosaurs eat people, it’s one of the loveliest shows out there.
Start Warts! A new hip!
Locally based REC Youth Theatre are regulars at Buxton Fringe (and even once had a Tom Crawshaw script written for them), but we do occasionally get REC Adults taking part. ReZolution thetre company, I understand, is an off-shoot of former REC Youths doing their own thing. And we go to St. Biddulph’s Amateur Dramatic Society’s bold reimagining of Star Wars, a New Hope. Wait a second, just got a letter from George Lucas’s solicitor. Apparently you can’t do that. Never mind, apparently it’s okay if you do no more than 10% of each scene. And change the title a bit. You have probably already guessed what follows, but St. Biddulph’s ability to put on a play roughly matches their ability to understand intellectual property law.
The challenge? Plays about putting on plays is one of the most over-used tropes in theatre. The market is currently sewn up by a whole The Play That Goes Wrong franchise; before then it was dominated by the legendary Noises Off. It’s all very well writing in collapsing scenery and forgotten lines, but farces are always more memorable if you have believable characters in these ridiculous situations. I admit Noises Off and The Play That Goes Wrong are both repeat offenders for sacrificing plausible characterisation for a few laughs (and, let’s be honest, either of them wave an Oliver/Tony in my face and go “This chap says I’m right”), but I maintain that if you want to stand out, you needed something more.
Start Warts! does move some moves in this section, but could go further. One way of marking your individuality is by making the characters in the play fundamental to how the play-within-a-play goes. One of my favourite moments was one of the lads who’s hoping the grant they’ve just received can be used to cast professionals, specifically Margot Robbie (notable as, in his words “the one who takes her clothes off in The Wolf of Wall Street”). Surely this is begging for a sub-plot where he tries and fails to pull every female in the society. Not saying the whole play should revolve around this, but the more character traits to drive the story, the better. Another thing I really liked was the use of the window at the back of the hall going through into a green room, where chaos on state was matches with chaos backstage. But that was only used a little towards the end – lots could have been done with this.
But – let’s keep things in proportion. This is trying to be the next Noises Off, it’s meant to be a fun piece for both the performers and the people watching, and on that front I’ve no complaints. And, credit where it is due, any kind of farce is hard to sustain. It takes a lot of planning and or-ordination to organise all the chaos, and you need a cost with a lot of energy to keep up the pace, and both of those were delivered in spades. Not a bad start from these alumni of a local youth group, but more focus on characterisation pays off – even for this kind of comedy.
Seven and a Half Years
This was one of the most ambitious performance I saw at Buxton Fringe. Not because it’s a heavy multimedia play including numerous bit of live music – after all, Mark Glentworth is a professional musician – but because the subject material is not an easy thing to make work as a story. This is a personal story of his own live: following a breakdown (in spite of having a very successfu musical career), he spent seven and a half years holed up in his home, leaving only once a day to go to the same corner shop to buy a daily sandwich.
Having previously lauded Joe Sellman-Leava for making a story he was in not about himself, you might be wondering if this is an example of main character syndrome I’ve frequently complained about. Is this is one the those trivial incidents over-analysed and made more important than it really is? The answer here is an unequivocal no. Something that causes you to be a recluse to the extreme for three quarters of a decade is about as big a deal as you can get. And to have progressed in real life from a recluse to someone about to talk so frankly about this past now is a big personal milestone.
The other challenge, however, is how to make a story out of this. Real life rarely gives you a convenient narrative structure, and here we got an obvious problem. By its very nature, in the seven and a half years Glentworth stays at home … not a lot happens. Actually explaining why a mental breakdown makes you do what you is very difficult, and very abstract. But what I though would have been a good point of reference was the other people in his life over this time. In particular: what was happening with his wife and kids over this time? We didn’t hear much about that. There’s always two stories with any kind of mental breakdown: one is the effect on you directly, the other is the effect on the people who care for you. But that could have been a good point of reference with the outside world. How much did they try to help? Or did they realise there was nothing they could do? Was there rent or mortgage for this home, and if so who was paying it?
There’s one difficulty to doing it this way – when you’re writing about real life, writing about the personal feelings of those you know as opposed to yourself is a sensitive subject. Without knowing the details, I can’t say how viable this would be. But my feeling is that if possible, bite the bullet and do it – even if it means some tricky conversations on what to include and what to leave out. The musical setting is fitting though, and fits the moods swings required of the story; the observations of recovering physical health after all this time is also a good sign off. A lot of credit for having the courage to tell this story – good luck if you want to include the stories of those around you.
Nation
Now for the other performance from P J Vickers. The Oscar Wilde stories were well executed but worked to a tried and tested format. This is a an original play, and one of the biggest gambles taken with new writing. But he won the Buxton Fringe new Writing award last year, so he’s well placed to take this on.
This is more storytelling than a conventional play – you could listen to this as an audio piece and have almost the same experience. Nevertheless, the story creates an in-depth portrait of the fringes of Parisian society. The narrator has left Britain, having needed to make himself scarce after some unspecified messy business, and proceeds to get himself into equally messy business in France. Not because he’s looking for trouble, as such – if anything, he’s getting into trouble for being a stickler for the rules. Especially traffic rules. His first job delivering leaflets falls through because he insists on following parking regulations, and he also gets into numerous scrapes through dogged insistence of rights of way at pedestrian crossings (something that French drivers are famously ambivalent over). On other rules, he’s seemingly more relaxed.
The narrator’s adventures, however, are only half of the story. The other half is life in a semi-underworld of France. Numerous characters come and go with little impact on the main story, but adding up to portray the society he’s wound up in. The setting for this is the aftermath of the 2015 Paris attacks, although to be honest it doesn’t make much difference – this is France, riots happen all the time, with perhaps the only difference is the Police being more paranoid and trigger-happy than normal, as befalls the fate of one associate. Other than that, there’s an air of chaotic normality, such as the local businesses boarding up their windows in advance of a protect they already know will be kicking off later.
I am obliged to mention that on the performance I was at, a bit of the story was skipped that apparently caused a key event later to not make sense. I know from experience it’s hard to avoid skipping your own text in hour-long monologues. However, there is a rule that if something happens in a play that’s important, you should make sure it’s mentioned twice (unless it’s obvious at the time it’s important). Otherwise, people who missed that bit get lost later. As such, I must advise that even when the script is delivered perfectly (and it should be it will be in time for Edinburgh), you do need to concentrate on this. So make sure you have a full-charged brain. Other than that, it’s a good piece of storytelling, where the real story isn’t the narrator’s story, but the numerous stories going on around him.
Things are Looking Up!
And finally, a musical production on the life of Cicely Courtneidge. Robert Hazle and Helena Northcote did two pieces, with the other one being about Noel Coward. Cicely Courtneidge is less well known today, but she was one of the longest-running performers on the stage and screen, starting off in her father’s music hall, landing her first West End role ages 16, and her total career spanned seventy-five years. Much of it was a partnership with her husband Jack Hulbert – the career also spanned screapes from the mob in America the touring with the armed forces during the war.
The majority of the show is the songs of Cicely Courtneidge. As a result, I do wonder whether theatre was the right category for this. Certainly as a musical tribute I have nothing to fault with the performance, and the talking between the performances was a lot more telling us about moments in her life rather than anything theatrical. And there’s a perfectly good reason to do it that way: when a performance is 80%+ devoted to musical numbers of a singer, it’s reasonable to decide there’s not enough time left in the spoken word part to do any acting.
But … this can be done. The performance I have in mind is My Friend Lester from back in 2015. Even though most of the performance was Billie Holliday and Lester Young’s greatest hits, the few bits of dialogue between the songs packed it a lot of emotion. I reckon the same could have been pulled off here if they’d been bold enough. One of the most memorable bits of her story was performing Take Me Back to Dear Old Blightly in 1945 where, mid-show, the new broke that Nazi Germany had finally surrendered, and she was draped in a Union Jack to finish the song. A touching story – but imagine how much more impact this would have had if a dramatisation had been put into the song.
Still, it’s fair to judge this on its own terms, and as a music tribute it does the job it set out to do, even if it was categorised as theatre. Should Hazle and Northcote wish to go down the theatre route, however, there’s a lot that could be done.
And that’s Buxton Fringe caught up on. Just three more articles to go and we’ve caught up.
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.
Apologies for those of you I saw at Buxton still waiting for a review. There is an anomaly in my coverage, as whilst I do live updates on Edinburgh and Brighton Fringe and get most reviews out within days, for various reasons I save Buxton reviews for the roundups. As usual, I meant to get roundups out of the way by September at the latest but didn’t. Maybe next year. Anyway, let’s go.
The most notable thing about this roundup is that I don’t have much to say in the way of a preamble. Which, in this case, is a good thing. I had a lot to write about the various shitstorms going on in Brighton Fringe, and I’ve got another load of shitstorms to summarise for Edinburgh. Buxton, by contrast, seems to be largely back to normal. The registrations seems to have made it back to the 170-mark, which was the typical size for most of the last decade. And you could look around Buxton in July and see something that looks similar to any July from before times. However, when you look under the surface, it’s not quite back to business as usual. There are two things I noticed that were different, that aren’t immediately clear from looking at the listings.
Firstly, it’s the same root problem that’s affecting Brighton and Edinburgh Fringes: participation numbers are recovering well, audience numbers not so much. The ‘rona is the obvious thing to blame, and anecdotally I’ve heard of some people who used to loads of events who are still not going out because they’re worried about catching the damn thing again. In that respect, Buxton is particularly vulnerable because of its older-than-average audience age. However, there are other possible factors in play too, not least a cost of living crisis that was putting the willies up people even before this winter closed in.
If 2021 was the big party for festival fringes getting back on the road, 2022 is the big hangover. Just when Brighton Fringe looked like it was set to get back to full size, its biggest venue imploded with a knock-on effect for the whole fringe. Edinburgh Fringe is making progress back to normal, but is currently facing headaches over working conditions and accommodation expenses. Which means the prize for first fringe back to full size goes to Buxton. With 169 entries going into the programme, and a typical size of 170-180 for most of the last decade, it is generally regarded as back to normal and back to business.
However, when you look a bit closer at the numbers, there are some notable shifts within these figures. The most prominent change – which might not be obvious now but certainly will be noticed in weeks 1 and 2 – is that the Rotunda is only going to be present for the second half of the fringe. Not because the Rotunda is struggling; on the contrary, they’re having an excellent 2022, taking on a second dome, emerging as the big winners of Brighton Fringe, and earning fixtures at other festivals. Unfortunately, this has not entirely worked in Buxton’s favour, because one of those festivals in Wells Theatre Festival, which clashes with the first half of Buxton Fringe. The other change – more subtle but just as important – is that there is hardly any availability of the Arts Centre Studio this year. I don’t know the story here, but it’s most likely the Buxton Festival wants it – and, let’s face it, a 352-seater event from Buxton Festival is always going to win over the 91-seater studio configuration used by Buxton Fringe.
So far the first time since 2019, we have preparations underway for all the main fringes. Last year was cause for celebration when, against all odds and so much stacked against them, the two biggest fringes put on great comeback festivals. Now, however, it seems we’re into the hangover. Oh dear, here’s what’s been going on.
Brighton Fringe loses The Warren
How could this possibly go so wrong? Brighton Fringe 2021 was, by all accounts, a roaring success, with custom for both ticket sales and ancillary income (i.e. drinking) vastly outperforming every expectation. But then, last October, signs emerged that perhaps all was not well after all, specifically with The Warren. Complaints started emerging online from performers and staff about not being paid that year, both from the Fringe and the subsequent Warren on the Beach (although some are going further and claiming the problem goes back years). It did seem strange that such difficulties were happening after such a lucrative summer, but apparently it’s perfectly possible for this to happen simply because of inadequate financial management. The absence of anyone from The Warren at registration launch also seemed strange. Then the news died down and the registration for Brighton Fringe approached and I assumed that The Warren must have got a grip on events and settled it quietly.
And then, days before announcement of the full programme, the bombshell was announced by Brighton Fringe: The Warren will not take part in 2022 whilst it sorts out its finances. The announcement came from Brighton fringe rather than the venue, but it sounds like they’ve admitted they screwed up. The problem with the timing is a lot of artists were already programmed to perform there. There is currently a scramble to find alternatives, but off-hand it doesn’t look like there’s enough spare capacity at the other venues to absorb this. At the time of writing, Brighton Fringe doesn’t seem to be budging on its 7th March deadline to get in the printed daily guide. It also dashes the (previously quite high) hopes that Brighton Fringe would be back to full strength for 2022.
Phew. A lot of catching up to do when you have four fringes in three months, but I’m finally on to Buxton Fringe. In 2020, Buxton Fringe raised a few eyebrows by opting to stick with a July fringe, even if it all had to be done online. However, in line with pretty much everywhere else, the mood by July 2021 was that online was all very well as a stop-gap, but nothing beats the real thing.
Buxton’s fortunes broadly followed the same as Brighton. In theory, Buxton Fringe was down for the first full month of no social distancing, but the venues worked against social distancing anyway – quite wisely, as it turned out. Like Brighton, it wasn’t back to full strength just yet: the Rotunda opted to give 2021 a miss, and the Arts Centre was out of action as Buxton Festival needed the space as part of its own socially distanced plans. This plus reduced participation from groups dented the numbers, but not too badly, with the Fringe managing about 60% of its normal size.
There was just one subtle difference I picked up on the effects on Buxton compared to Brighton. Audience numbers were also down, but roughly down by the same amount as registrations, and the two cancelled out to give audience numbers that were roughly the same, similar to Brighton. But within those figures, there’s a skew with age. Anecdotally, I was hearing that a lot of older Buxton Fringe regulars were choosing to play it safe and give it a miss; if that was the case, it would seem that the younger regulars were more eager to get back to fringing.
Anyway, hopefully those details won’t matter by Fringe 2022. In spite of Omnicrom putting the willies up us this winter, I still think Brighton and Buxton will be in a good position to be back to near-normal by next July. Let’s see what caught my eye this year that might be around next year.
Pick of the fringe:
Firstly, let’s address the same question as Brighton Fringe: am I lowering the bar this year? It is true that my choosiness for Pick of the Fringe varies based on what I have to choose from, but in the end the standard was about the same as years before, even though there were fewer acts to choose from. Two plays made it to the top flight.
Naughty Boy
There are many thing a fringe is ideal for, but responding to current events is rarely one of them. Most plays need a lead-in of least six months if you’re lucky, and by the time you’ve got it in front of an audience the news has long since ceased to be in people’s minds. There’s really only one way to make a fringe event “timely”, and that’s if the topic you’re talking about crops up anyway, and that bit of luck counted in Eddy Brimson’s favour. It was only the month before that football hooligans made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Joe, however, is not your average football hooligan. For some reason, he is in a psychiatric hospital even though he appears perfectly sane. He is also a lot smarter than your average football hooligan, whose silver tongue gets him out of all sorts of scrapes. These two events are connected, but it’s only towards the end what we’ll see how.
The main thrust of the play, however, is an exploration of why people end up this way. Being articulate, Joe has little problem portraying the alienation of people like him in societies than have been written off. This, plus his cynical observations of the society around him, is the easy bit. The hard bit is explaining why you’d consider the solution joining a group of your mates to clout a bunch of strangers who simply support a different team – and he portrays quite a convincing reason. Why take your anger out on another bunch of downtrodden down-and-outs? The reason, the play suggests, is a mutual understanding. Clouting any of the random strangers Joe cynically observes has consequences when the Police get involved, but a rival gang of hooligans are in the same boat as you. Until it escalates.
The backstory of how Joe got where he was is handled well too. The full-journey from innocent childhood to violent embittered adults is not shown in its entirety, but one moment that sticks out is when two wannabe hooligans get set upon by his gang of veteran hooligans – to which Joe observes “Now you have the same anger we do.” The only weak point I’d pick out is the account of the inevitable fight at the end where things tip over to boiling point, which get quite complicated and was narrated through so quickly I lost track of who was fighting who and who suffered what injuries. Other than that, a good all-rounder making a good start to my relaunched fringe viewing.
Jekyll and Hyde: a one woman-show
Now for the big name. I was interested in this one for two reasons. Firstly, this play got going in Brighton Fringe last year and earned overwhelming critical acclaim. Heather Rose-Andrews is rising to be of the most respected names on the Brighton Fringe circuit, but how would she fare away from home turf. The other thing I was interested in is how a gender-swapped Jekyll and Hyde would work. This has been tried a lot with classic stories, and not always successfully. Blackeyed Theatre is currently touring a superb retelling of Jekyll and Hyde which adds in a prominent female character made to look like she was part of the original all along. But this one changes the gender of Dr. Jekyll himself. How much difference does this make to the story?
Well, the answer is the opposite of what I expected: not that much difference at all. To some extent, this is a perfectly plausible treatment of the story – whilst women were certainly treated very differently to men in Victorian society, with Dr. Jekyll already operating outside of society’s conventions it needn’t spell much change. Instead, what’s notable is how much stays the same. Nothing stops a Ms. Hyde being as violent and destructive as a Mr. Hyde. Even the bit from the original where Hyde savages a prostitute – surely there can be no act of violence more misogynistic than that one? – is swapped very convincingly. And Rose-Andrews’ transformation scene from Jekyll in pain to a swaggering Hyde is an astounding moment of theatre.
According to my Buxton radar, this didn’t enjoy the same universal level of praise that this did in Brighton. Gauging reaction from Buxton is harder because there isn’t a range of reviews to go on, but I gather opinion was more divided, and I suspect the weak point was accessibility. Heather Rose-Andrews knows her horror and classic literature inside out, but I suspect she’s assumed a lot of background knowledge of her audience and left some with a lot of catching up to do. It was only quite late in to the play that I realised the tapes she was playing were Jekyll’s instructions recorded for Hyde. One theme of the play is hypocrisy, and as fans of the original will know, Dr. Jekyll overstepped the line long before his alter ego came along – but I fear amongst the confusion of working out what was happening when, I missed whatever the moral of that was supposed to be.
The praise for her performance, however, was unanimous, and deservedly so. In other Sweet Productions play I saw this year, There’s a Ghost in my House, I was convinced that Emily Carding had best individual performance in the bag, but it looks like we have a contest on our hands after all. It is difficult to know if this script could be made more accessible without making it into a different play; it may well be that this will be enjoyed the best by those who know the literature the best. What it does show is that Heather Rose-Andrews, already a fine actor in other people’s plays, is at her strongest when she writes for herself. A lot to look forward to here I think.
Honourable mention:
As there were fewer plays to choose from, I saw more comedy than usual. I’ve left this out as I don’t really know where to start with sketch and stand-up. Again, my bar for honourable mention is about the same as before, and three plays (or two plays plus a character comedy) made it to the list:
For I have Sinned
In Qweerdog Theatre’s play, a man meets a priest in a confession box. As per the protocol he is asked to disclose how long it has been since his last confession, and the answer is decades. What is less clear is what he’s actually making a confession over. He spent a long time as a recluse in Tibet, so we can safely assume he has something more on his conscience that an impure thought whilst watching an Ann Summers advert. Instead, the priest goes for small-talk as a way to delve into the truth. Eventually, the story comes out of a younger boy who thought the world of this man when they were both teenagers. We can already guess this did not end well.
What I really liked about the opening half of the writing is the pace at which the truth comes out. Whenever you think you’ve got to the bottom of his cross to bear, something else comes out, then something else, then something else. But the last piece of the jigsaw to fall into place is the priest’s part in this. An early clue is the man making a quip about seeing if “you’re the right priest for me”, and a more blatant clue is the priest offering full absolution in order to end the confession. I’ll refrain from giving all the details, but there is a reason why it’s this particular priest.
And then comes the frustrating bit: after the first half of the play reveals the back story so well, very little unexpected happens in the second. I fear this script played all its best cards by the half-way point, and the rest of the play is mostly admonishment for the priests past that he continues to deny. Something extra, I feel, is needed to keep up the interest. For what it’s worth, I would have explored the priest’s own intersection between his faith and his morals. Is his lifetime of servitude to the Catholic Church his method of atonement for a past wrong he can never forgive himself for? Or is he one of these completely amoral characters who think it’s okay to hurt and betray whoever you like because you can repent and be absolved later?
Not bad for a Buxton fringe debut though. The strength of the exposition is that is keeps the audience interested, and keeps them guessing. Keep this up in the rest of the play and you’ll have something special.
Mike Raffone’s Great Green Gameshow Giveaway
This is under comedy rather than theatre, but it’s character comedy that has an overlap. Mike Raffone has been carving himself a niche with interactive comedy in the last few years. There are high stakes in interactive comedy – in a conventional play an audience can be unresponsive and still find the story hilarious or moving, but when a performance depends on audience interaction, it dies on its arse if you can’t get them going. I’ve only seen his performances on busy days, but apparently he’s achieved the same on quiet days. Anyway, the thing he’s started this year is a spoof game show.
The game shows it parodies, are the 1970s ones. Apart from the outfits, there are two things that distinguish the game shows of this era. Firstly, all 1970s game shows are required to have a female assistant, who in turn is required to do nothing but announce the scores and pretend to find the sleazy-looking middle-age male host attractive. And certainly not play the flute that Charlotti worked so hard on over lockdown. Secondly, the long-standing in-joke is that all the prizes were worthless, with limit on prizes being £500 and a Skoda or something like that.
Mike Raffone and Charlotti are actually a great double act, and if I didn’t know better I’d have sworn they must have must have performed for years together. The games are far sillier than the games from the game shows (I think they would even give Banzai a run for its money), and the prizes are even more worthless – indeed, one highlight was, when there was a dispute over who won a round, he pointed to an example prize of a slightly broken USB cable to show how little this matters. And the final round, in case you haven’t guessed, is like the conveyor belt from the generation game, but with far cheaper prizes, slightly broken USB cable included. This is such a ideal thing for Raffone it’s a wonder no-one thought of it before, but now that we’ve seen it I hope it this will be back.
The Virtuous Burglar
And finally, one from Buxton regulars Sudden Impulse. They advertise themselves an an amateur company but their standard is so good it’s hard to tell them apart from the pros. I caught one of their two productions this time, and it’s a Dario Fo farce. The description of “farce” is often over-used for plays that were never meant to work as farces, and indeed Dario Fo himself has a strong political strand in most of his farces, but this one is the full-blown farce. A burglar is busy burgling a wealthy house when his wife rings him (this is pre-mobile phones so she is ringing the phone on the house she’s burgling tonight) asking for a present to steal for her. Then the owner of the house returns with a woman who’s not his wife. I don’t need to explain the rest of the plot but basically everybody mistakes everybody’s identity, everybody’s having an affair with everyone, and there’s lots of doors (and inside of clocks) to hide in. The only thing that’s missing is the trousers falling down as the vicar walks in.
Some people say amateur companies shouldn’t do farces. The reason, they argue, is that farces only work if they’re done quickly. Run a farce at a speed the actors are comfortable with and the jokes fall flat, but run it at the required speed beyond the actors’ ability and the production falls apart completely. Sudden Impulse has shown that’s far from the truth. They zip through the lines at the warp speed it was written for, and the movement is choreographed well. In a farce, you only really notice the acting and directing if it goes pear-shaped, so getting through without incident is a bigger achievement that most people realise.
The was, however, one annoying artistic decision, and that was hamming up the characters. No matter how ridiculous the situations are that everybody finds themselves in, farce works best when the characters are believable. It’s never quite as funny if the characters do contrived things to set up the jokes, and better if that’s what they would plausibly have done anyway – but it’s hard to achieve the latter if you present all the characters and caricatures of themselves. And that’s a shame, because straight acting is something Sudden Impulse does well. I say have the courage to apply straight acting to the giddiest farce – you may be pleased with the result.
Postscript: Keith Savage
As I have already mentioned, circumstances have forced me to write late roundups of the fringes. Since Buxton Fringe happened, there is one notable bit of news, and it’s a sad one. Keith Savage, who was Chair in Buxton Fringe from 2014 to 2019, died unexpectedly this month, and it would be write to close this roundup without a fitting tribute.
Many people have given there own tributes of how supportive Keith Savage was at previous fringes, and my experience was no exception. As both a performer and a theatre blogger he was constantly encouraging what I was doing. This matter a lot. There’s no shortage of arts leaders who fall over themselves to encourage the biggest and best names to their theatres and there festivals, but sadly too few who welcome the people starting off. I cannot begin to describe how much of a difference it makes from my experience back home when you can put so much in without even an acknowledgement of what you’ve done.
Buxton Fringe prides itself on being the friendly fringe, and I even know of performers who’ve decided top give Buxton a go based on my description of what it’s like. I am confident that the Fringe committee will carry on giving the welcome to future performers staring off, but there’s sure no better embodiment of it than Keith Savage, who carried on supporting the fringe and everyone taking part after stepping down.
Well, here’s a snag over a late start to the fringe season. You’ve only finished covering one fringe and the next one’s about the start. But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. It’s July, and that means it’s time for Buxton Fringe.
The news from Buxton isn’t nearly as sensational as the news from Brighton or Edinburgh. (That’s sensational in a good way and a bad way respectively.) Brighton’s comeback was noteworthy because it was not clear whether an event taking place one week after performances were allowed could work that scale, but it did – the sharp contrast to Edinburgh’s misfortunes only heightening it more. But although Buxton Fringe is a lot more low-key, they are following a similar recovery to Brighton. They go into opening night with 109 registrations, about half of pre-pandemic levels (give or take depending on whether you use 2018 or 2019 as the baseline) – that’s similar to Brighton.
Many other changes noticed at Brighton apply to Buxton too. Like Brighton, the paper programme was dropped allowing registrations to come in up to the start of the fringe (with “official” deadlines meaning little in the end). Most of the regular venues are taking part, the most notable exceptions being the Rotunda and the Arts Centre (the latter in operation for the festival but not the fringe this time). The one thing that might have been a spanner in the works was that social distancing for weeks 1 and 2 were put in place unexpectedly, but few acts have been deterred by that. One might have though Buxton would take a hit with no (meaningful) Edinburgh Fringe to be a stepping stone to, but plenty of would-be Edinburgh acts seem quite happy to go without. (That’s not unique to Buxton – Carlisle and Durham Fringes also seem to be managing fine with Edinburgh.)
At this stage, Buxton Fringe has good reasons to be quietly confident. If their fortunes carry on running in line with Brighton’s, they should expect good ticket sales and patronage if Brighton’s precedent is remotely anything to go by. The worst-case scenario I can think of is if the mostly older audience at Buxton are more reluctant to return than their Brighton counterparts, but we should find out in the next few days if this is the case.
It’s time for another interview. This was something I’d been planning to do for months: ask the new chair of Buxton Fringe about his plans for the future. But in those said months, more event happened than anyone could have thought possible. But that’s okay, because this made an interview all the more interesting.
It’s a much longer interview than usual, but we did have a lot to get through. I bring you an inside account of the most extraordinary year from the festival fringes.
I have with me Stephen Walker, the chair of Buxton Fringe. This is an interview in his capacity as chair, although we will be digressing into his past role as a reviewer.
Good to see you Chris.
If we can cast our minds back to a period in the dim and distant past called November 2019, when Buxton Fringe helds its AGM. What were your original plans back then?
When I took over as chair, I didn’t feel the need for massive changes. I’ve never been a fan of the management style that says “I’m new, I need to change everything” just for the sake of it. The fringe work pretty well, I felt it was more just getting my feet under the table.
We’ve a few new people on the committee, so I thought we’d have a steady year – we’ve had our 40th anniversary, so it would be really nice to make sure everything works and that I know what I’m doing. It’s keeping the show on the road, more like being a custodian of the Fringe. The fringe runs itself to a large extent; because we don’t select or censor, the fringe will be whatever it’s going to be.
The last couple of weeks in June there were just so many entries coming in … and other people were putting stuff together specifically for us, which was fantastic.
It turns out I wasn’t connected to all the Brighton Fringe rumour mills. I’d known for some time Caravanserai wasn’t coming back, probably because Brighton Fringe couldn’t run a venue without letting costs go out of control. Now it’s gone public that Spiegeltent and Sweet aren’t being part of Brighton Fringe either. They are still running at the same time in May and June, but they are not registering with Brighton Fringe. (I admit, I did hear rumours of Spiegeltent doing this, but I’ve heard things like this touted so many times I didn’t pay much attention. I’d assumed that with Caravanserai being the focus of so many grievances, the main source of aggro was now resolved. But apparently not.)
Seriously, Three’s Company Adventure Department is a project than began in 2020 when there wasn’t much else to do. Tom Crawshaw and Yaz Al-Shaater were joined by semi-retired founder-member Michael Grady-Hall for a set of comedy audio plays, where their serious podcast about making fringe theatre keeps getting interrupted by an adventure. Every episode is a different genre and basically parodies every story in that genre. This rare edition is an episode before a live audience, and is a parody of every slasher flick, featuring guest star Rob Rouse. Expect called of “Let’s play a game” to be answered with enthusiastic suggestions for Twister and/or Trivial Pursuit and confusion over Saw and See-Saw. Plus of course an urgent clarification that the trope of mental patients escaping hospitals is misleading, and whilst some people are a danger to others is it is irresponsible to make a generalisation that all neurodivergent people are mass murders. But, hey, it’s not irresponsible if it’s true. [Ominous theme, close in on my sinister eyes.]
It’s a very interactive show – no-one gets shown up, but there’s a clipboard passed round with lines that may or may not have been in the original Spielberg film. Interspersed with this, however, are accounts of being a comedian also bringing up a baby son, soon to be a toddler son. As with most comedy giving real-life events, some caution should be paid and anecdotes may have been embellished. However, a strong contender for wholesome moment of the year is Bibby’s dinosaur-obsessed child playing the part of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Also, if your first teenage crush was Ellie Satler but you’re now married, Dave Bibby might have the solution for you.)
he other people in his life over this time. In particular: what was happening with his wife and kids over this time? We didn’t hear much about that. There’s always two stories with any kind of mental breakdown: one is the effect on you directly, the other is the effect on the people who care for you. But that could have been a good point of reference with the outside world. How much did they try to help? Or did they realise there was nothing they could do? Was there rent or mortgage for this home, and if so who was paying it?
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.
How could this possibly go so wrong? Brighton Fringe 2021 was, by all accounts, a roaring success, with custom for both ticket sales and ancillary income (i.e. drinking) vastly outperforming every expectation. But then, last October, signs emerged that perhaps all was not well after all, specifically with The Warren. Complaints started emerging online from performers and staff about not being paid that year, both from the Fringe and the subsequent Warren on the Beach (although some are going further and claiming the problem goes back years). It did seem strange that such difficulties were happening after such a lucrative summer, but apparently it’s perfectly possible for this to happen simply because of inadequate financial management. The absence of anyone from The Warren at registration launch also seemed strange. Then the news died down and the registration for Brighton Fringe approached and I assumed that The Warren must have got a grip on events and settled it quietly.
There are many thing a fringe is ideal for, but responding to current events is rarely one of them. Most plays need a lead-in of least six months if you’re lucky, and by the time you’ve got it in front of an audience the news has long since ceased to be in people’s minds. There’s really only one way to make a fringe event “timely”, and that’s if the topic you’re talking about crops up anyway, and that bit of luck counted in Eddy Brimson’s favour. It was only the month before that football hooligans made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Joe, however, is not your average football hooligan. For some reason, he is in a psychiatric hospital even though he appears perfectly sane. He is also a lot smarter than your average football hooligan, whose silver tongue gets him out of all sorts of scrapes. These two events are connected, but it’s only towards the end what we’ll see how.
Now for the big name. I was interested in this one for two reasons. Firstly, this play got going in Brighton Fringe last year and earned overwhelming critical acclaim. Heather Rose-Andrews is rising to be of the most respected names on the Brighton Fringe circuit, but how would she fare away from home turf. The other thing I was interested in is how a gender-swapped Jekyll and Hyde would work. This has been tried a lot with classic stories, and 
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