The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a kaleidoscope of human experience, invites you to immerse yourself in a world of untold stories, where laughter, tears, and everything in between collide on stage. Part Two, Part One here
Paul Sellar:
Across a Love Locked Bridge
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Beneath
Date: 31 July – 26 August (not 14)
Time: 11.05 (12:00)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/across-a-love-locked-bridge
A celebration of love and how it eventually triumphs over grief, writer Paul Sellar’s collection of new poems takes the audience on a theatrical journey based on his experiences of various forms of love and loss, reflecting on how resilience and hope can come from the darkest times. Combining poetry readings with playful audience engagement using direct address and meta-theatrical narration, Across A Love Locked Bridge blends humour with contemplation and melancholy and invites the audience to reminisce on their own experiences, aiming to leave them feeling revived, uplifted and inspired.
Ragamala Dance Company:
Ananta, The Eternal
Venue: Assembly @ Dance Base, Dance Base 3
Date: 13 – 25 Aug 2024 (not 19)
Time: 13.00 (14:00)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/ananta-the-eternal-by-aparna-ramaswamy
Exploring the relationship between the deity and devotee, Ananta, The Eternal weaves together threads of body, memory, desire and devotion through the 2000-year-old classical South Indian dance form Bharatanatyam. A highly spiritual and emotional dance practice, Ananta combines original South Indian classical music and costumes with distinctive movements, gestures and expressions to create a unique form of storytelling that has become an integral part of India’s cultural heritage. Performed by acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancers and choreographers Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy, who helm Ragamala Dance Company alongside their mother, Ranee, this is the company’s first Fringe show in five years.
Eleven Foot Productions
Barbies and Drillas
Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter House, Blether
Dates: 31 Jul – 26 Aug 2024 (not 13)
Time: 13.40 (14.40)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/barbies-and-drillas
‘Hey, we’re not students anymore – who the f*ck stole my avocado?!’ A comedy about five housemates gloriously wasting their youth as they try to avoid the hell of growing up. They bicker, wail, dance and endlessly mock. They reluctantly go to their terrible jobs. They fall furiously in and out of love. They fail to write their masterpieces. But will they learn to appreciate that the connection between them is lifelong?
Andrea Maciel and Gabriela Flarys
Deluge
Venue: Summerhall, Tech Cube 0
Dates: 1 – 26 Aug (not 12 & 19)
Time: 18:15 (19:15)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/deluge
Inspired by a break-up and over 40 interviews from a social media call out, Deluge delves into the different stages of mourning, and puts a magic realist spin on dealing with grief. Asking questions about how we deal with loss and who we are in the wake of loss, it’s set in the magical realism world of a leaky house; as a woman tries to contain the overflow of her thoughts in the wake of her relationship ending, the leaks grow bigger and the water around her rises. A ‘dramedy’ which fuses theatre and comedy with physicality, text, clowning, original music and projection, this one-woman show reflects on grief, loss and letting go to fully embrace the future.
Olly Hawes
F**king Legend
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Bunker Two
Dates: 31 July – 25 Aug (not 12)
Time: 12:20 (13:20)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/f-king-legend
In an experimental storytelling show blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction, a man playing a part or making a confession, Olly Hawes picks apart the consequences of modern masculinity. F**king Legend is played in three distinct acts, opening with the story of a stag do before disintegrating into a dystopian action movie set amid full climate breakdown during a refugee crisis, and then closing on a dramatic monologue. The show draws a parallel between the state of men and the state of the world, critiquing the everyday white, middle-class cis man and the consequences of late capitalism in an absurdist, yet thought-provoking, dark comedy.
Sarah Lawrie
Good Boy
Venue: theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, Theatre 2
Dates: 12 – 24 Aug, (not 18)
Time: 20:55 (21:45)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/good-boy
Based on writer and actor James Farley’s own experiences which he transformed from his university dissertation into his debut play, this dark comedy drama follows Boy who is in the throes of first love with his first, older boyfriend. But in the midst of discovering the joys of sex, love and relationships, a darker side emerges of pre-negotiated conditions, submission and control. When Boy finds child pornography on his boyfriend’s iPad, his world is ripped apart and his life spirals out of control. Good Boy looks at the effect of patriarchal power dynamics and the social politics of Grindr and Twink culture.
Anu Vaidyanathan
Menagerie
Venue: Gilded Balloon Patter House, The Penny
Dates: 1 – 17 Aug (not 15)
Time: 17.00 (18.00)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/anu-vaidyanathan-menagerie
The debut theatre show from comedian Anu Vaidyanathan is her story of being a south Indian immigrant who has lost her co-ordinates and her language, and of finally learning it’s time to ask for help. Menagerie talks about modern motherhood, being a migrant, and being a south Indian married to a north Indian, her diametric opposite in waistline, temper and sageliness. Like Noah’s Ark taking the best pair of every species, Menagerie unpicks the best of each season of life: of work, of marriage, of having kids, and sets the creation of an individual value system in context. A woman who never stops, Anu has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, was the first Asian to finish an Ultraman (10km swim, 420km bike ride, 84.4km run), has published a book, made her first film 6 months post-partum, and debuted her comedy hour BC:AD – Before Children, After Diapers in 2022. As she tries to unite head and heart, her engineer with her artist, whilst also dealing with an endless schedule of her children’s dandruff treatment and her own, she faces up to a traumatic moment that made her realise that mental health is not, as she has been brought up to believe, something to dismiss or make light of.
Brendan Bradley in partnership with Imaginex at YOTEL Edinburgh
Non-Player Character: A Virtual Reality Musical
Venue: Imaginex at YOTEL Edinburgh (Site Specific) in association with ZOO Venues
Dates: 2 – 26 Aug 2024
Time: 21.00 (22:00), Digital live stream tickets available for every performance
In person tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/non-player-character-live-virtual-reality-musical
Digital tickets: http://watch.npcmusical.live
A boundary pushing fusion of immersive, improvised theatre and video games where no two performances are the same; this virtual reality musical invites the audience to influence the narrative through on stage and spectator participation. Award-winning actor and creator Brendan Bradley portrays a non-playable character (NPC) of a fictitious videogame who is joined on-stage by four ‘Players’ wearing VR headsets, along with seated spectators and audiences watching from home through a livestream who assist in creating the story via a mobile web app. After the hero dies, participants travel through the five levels of the game’s open-world setting that represent the five stages of processing grief, set to a soundtrack of original songs inspired by hit Broadway numbers, pop music, and the chiptune musical style found in video games, along with improvised music reflecting the evolving narrative from an onstage musician.
Bettina Paris
Sisyphean Quick Fix
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Below
Dates: 31 Jul – 26 Aug 2024 (not 14)
Time: 11.05 (12.00)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sisyphean-quick-fix
Based on lived experience, writer and performer Bettina Paris explores how the complexities of alcoholism can affect families and family relationships. Sisyphean Quick Fix follows two sisters – Krista in London, and Pip in Malta – as they realise the severity of their father’s drinking problem. As the pressures of caring for a person struggling with addiction, both from afar and in person in Malta, puts a strain on their lives, it tests their close relationship with each other, with their careers, and with their connections with others. Taking place over two months, Sisyphean Quick Fix is a heartfelt comedy drama that takes in the peaks and troughs of caring for a loved one, and the pull of responsibility for migrants when there are complications back at home.
Covered in Jam
That’s Not My Name
Venue: Zoo Southside, Studio
Dates: 2 – 25 Aug (not 12 & 19)
Time: 20:00 (21:15)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/that-s-not-my-name
Rooted in writer and performer Sammy Trotman’s experience of a personality disorder diagnosis, That’s Not My Name is an unflinching interrogation of the mental health system and the effect rigid labels have on those in treatment and wider society. Having begun writing the show in rehab following a burst of creativity during hospitalisation with minimal arts training, Sammy plays multiple characters from nurses, doctors and their own father, as they look back over their journey with brutal honesty. A melting pot of theatre, physical performance and comedy with some original and parody songs, the show aims to rip up the disorder classification system along with the social construct of sanity, and challenges the audience to do the same.
Kimberly Prentice and A/Park Productions
Unseen
Venue: Zoo Playground, Playground 1
Dates: 2 – 26 Aug 2024 (not 12 & 19)
Time: 15:15 (16:10)
Tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/unseen
Inspired by Kimberly Prentice’s 25 years of experience as a dresser on Broadway, Unseen is an intimate and inside look at the politics of Broadway’s backstage and how being in the background affects your self-perception and worth. The show follows Broadway dresser Pam, garbed all in black, as she works her magic through complex costume changes, confrontations, and quirky actor demands, while playing over 30 distinctive characters in the space of an hour. From stagehand allies to antagonistic actors, Kimberly uses quick changes, comedy and audience interaction to explore Pam’s journey from working in the dark, unseen to rallying up and finding her voice with the help of behind-the-scenes comrades.
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