Welcome back to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre by Fergus Morgan.
For the rest of August, The Crush Bar will focus on the Edinburgh Fringe, with twice-weekly issues, each featuring five show recommendations, plus round-ups of festival news. If you know someone heading to the Fringe, please do forward.
In case you missed it, here is Tuesday’s issue, containing five more recommendations…
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The first batch of Fringe Firsts were awarded at a ceremony at Pleasance Courtyard this morning. They went to: The Bridge at Assembly Roxy, Supposing and The Singer at the Traverse, Toast and Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It at Summerhall, and Mayflies down in Leith. More soon in The Stage.
I went on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row on Wednesday evening, chatting with Kirsty Wark about the Sauna Theatre, Mayflies, A Trial, and more, including whether an ATG-backed musical has a place at the festival, the ongoing tourist tax debate, and the introduction of dynamic pricing. You can listen here and here…
At 2pm today, 154 years after he died, Greyfriars Bobby will finally get the funeral he deserves when a whole bunch of clowns gather at his much-bothered statue to commemorate him. You are welcome to join them. More from Bruce Dessau here.
Tomorrow, at 11.30pm, Awkward Productions and Xhloe and Natasha will fight to the death and maybe kiss in Awkward Productions and Xhloe and Natasha Fight To The Death (and maybe kiss) at Underbelly Bristo Square, in aid of Queer Was Always Here.
Fifteen Fringe shows are offering free tickets to striking workers at the National Galleries of Scotland. More from Katie Chambers in The Stage here.
There was drama at a council meeting yesterday morning, when a debate over tourist tax funding for the festivals was abruptly postponed, much to the dismay of the festival bosses present. It is too complicated to explain here, but Katie Chambers get into the details in The Stage. The Scotsman’s leader today covers the situation, too.
Chambers has also reported on a war of words between Underbelly boss Ed Bartlam and Fringe Society chief executive Tony Lankester. Bartlam said the Fringe Society was “bloated.” Lankester responsded it operated “one of the lowest-cost ticketing operations in the world, despite its scale and complexity.” Really, this is a battle over the box office. You can read more on that here.
Emma Brünjes has replaced Nica Burns as executive director of the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Read more in Chortle here.
Hey! Thanks to everyone who came along to The Crush Bar Live yesterday morning. Thanks, too, to Pleasance for giving us the room for free, and to my panellists Tim Bano, Holly Williams and Mickey-Jo Boucher for a fun, wonderful, wide-ranging conversation featuring loads of observations, insights and show recommendations.
We managed to record the discussion. I’ve not had a moment to edit it at all, but I thought you might be interested to hear it sooner rather than later, so here you go…
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Have a listen to find out our opinions on the Sauna Theatre, clowning, Amanda Knox, and more. And let me know what you think. What worked? What didn’t? Should we do it again next year? Should I never go near a microphone again?
Francis is an older man, a widower, who lives with his pregnant daughter. When he is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he begins to consider committing suicide to spare her the burden of looking after him. This idea manifests anthropomorphically as a savage seagull that pecks and squawks at him as his body and his relationship with his daughter suffer.
That is the concept of this quirky, compelling and deeply moving drama from writer Peter McCormick, director Ben Standish and their new company Trolley Problem, which previously produced an acclaimed Scots adaptation of Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo in Glasgow earlier this year.
It is a stylish and strange take on a tricky topic, and it features two astonishing physical performances from Scottish theatre legend Billy Mack as the deteriorating Francis, and from Michael Guest as the nasty, nipping bird that bothers his conscience. It is at Summerhall all festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
Alaa Shehada’s show The Horse Of Jenin was one of the big hits of last year’s festival. A funny and moving story about growing up under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, it was heaped with acclaim and awards, and transferred to the Bush Theatre in December.
Now, alongside a return run of The Horse Of Jenin, the charismatic Palestinian performer is premiering a new storytelling show, The Bridge, which retells a torturous journey of enormous queues, unbearable heat and Israeli checkpoints he went on to deliver a prized bottle of olive oil from his home in the West Bank, across the Allenby Bridge, to his aunt in Jordan.
It is an amusing, infuriating, but ultimately hopeful portrait of the sheer frustration of living as a Palestinian under Israeli occupation, when the simplest tasks take forever to complete. It just won a Fringe First Award this morning and runs at Assembly Roxy for the rest of the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
This uncanny solo experience casts participants as employees at a company called MirrorMind. After being handed a pass and ushered to a computer, you meet a coder via Zoom. They have developed a powerful tool that can create avatars of anyone with perfect precision. The potential uses - and potential gains for the company - are vast. So, too, are the dangers. In five minutes, you have a meeting with your boss, and you have to decide whether to press ahead with the project or press pause on it.
Created by Minh-Anh Day and Grace Goheen of NYC-based collective 404 Theater, the experience last just fifteen minutes, but still manages to raise profound questions about artificial intelligence, commercial imperatives, individual autonomy and more. It is also quite fun. Depending on your sensibility, you can either play along with proceedings or push the boundaries. With alarming ease, I reinvented myself as an unethical corporate stooge, recently returned from a holiday in Vietnam.
The festival is full of imaginative, provocative experiences like this. It is well worth including a few in your schedule alongside more traditionally staged stuff. You can often squeeze them into gaps between other shows. This one runs at Underbelly Cowgate throughout the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
What do you think of when you think of Afghanistan? Cycles of conflict stretching back decades? The US-led NATO occupation that lasted twenty years and ended with a chaotic withdrawal in 2021? The oppressive Taliban regime that withdrawal resulted in? Berin-based actor Mariann Yar is familiar with these perceptions, but she also knows another Afghanistan: an Afghanistan rich with music and movement, culture and community, life and love.
Landsfrau is a multi-disciplinary show that skips through time, memory and myth to explore the tension between those polarised perceptions of Afghanistan. Inspired by Yar’s own experiences, it incorporates Afghan folk music, electronic beats, traditional dance, audience interaction and more, revolving around Ariana, a German woman with Afghan ancestry.
Devised by Doris Crea Collective – a German company that includes Yar, Leonard Dick, Andrzej Agranovski and Alessa Maria Karešin – the show premiered in Berlin in 2023 and has subsequently toured Germany to acclaim. Now, it arrives in Edinburgh under the aegis of Berlin-based agency Aurora Nova and BOW Production, hoping to connect with Afghan audiences in Britain and beyond. It runs at Summerhall throughout the festival and you can get tickets via the button below.
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What would Van Gogh think were he to be magically transplanted from nineteenth-century Provence to the present day? What would he make of the veneration of his work? Would he be pleased with the proliferation of his paintings on postcards and tote bags? What would he say about the immersive installations – and countless Fringe shows – inspired by his art?
That ripe premise provides the inspiration for The Van Gogh Shogh, a highly interactive and wildly imaginative clown show from Philadelphia-based performer Donna Oblongata, which incorporates painting lessons, karaoke sessions and more to ask profound questions about the commodification of art and the value of creativity in contemporary society.
First performed at Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2023, the show has toured extensively across the US, and first arrived in Edinburgh for a short run last summer. Now, following dates at Camden People’s Theatre and the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London and Mezrab in Amsterdam, it returns to Scotland for a full Fringe run at Assembly Rooms, one of several shows hailing from Philadelphia at the festival. You can get tickets via the button below.
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Thanks to all 5182 subscribers, to all 150+ paid supporters, and particularly to The Crush Bar’s champion supporters, whose contributions make all this possible.
The Royal Court Theatre, Francesca Moody Productions, Raw Material Arts, Jermyn Street Theatre; Hampstead Theatre; Storytelling PR; Premier Scotland; Ellie Keel Productions; The Women’s Prize For Playwriting
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That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all - just reply to this newsletter.
Fergus
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