Pick of Fringe benefits
WE are just six weeks away from the return of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
With over 3000 Fringe shows to choose from, art lovers will be making up for lost time after the event was cancelled in 2020 and diluted last year.
We can now celebrate its 75th anniversary from August 5-29. To start our countdown to this year’s Fringe we showcase some of what’s on offer that has caught our eye.
● Rebel (Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, August 6-14, 16-21, 23-27)
HE may have died six years ago, but David Bowie is still in the headlines. Making its Fringe debut and its first foray out of Australia comes Rebel, a Bowie-inspired circus.
Headlined by multi award-winner Stewart Reeve, this is not a show where each band member is also a circus performer and it’s their acts that provide the action. This includes aerial acts to the sound of Space Oddity, Let’s Dance and Lazarus.
Elena Kirschbaum, the show’s director, said: “Rock ’n’ roll circus is perfect for Bowie, with its glamour, fantasy and spectacle.”
● Frank Skinner: 30 Years of Dirt (Assembly, Roxy Central, August 4-28, excluding Wednesdays)
EVEN having a hand in England’s song of empty hope – Three Lions – hasn’t tarnished Frank’s reputation in Scotland, and he is back once again at the Fringe for a new hour of stand-up.
Last here in 2019, he has been coming to the Fringe since the late 80s when it could have all gone wrong. Realising his act wouldn’t survive the tough crowd giving the guy on before him hell, he got tough, locked horns with the crowd and has never looked back.
“Having been truly terrified, that was the night I found my voice on stage,” he said. “That could’ve easily gone the other way and finished me off.”
● Cassie Workman: Aberdeen (Just the Tonic Nucleus, Atomic Room, August 4-28)
PERFORMED entirely in rhyming couplets, Aberdeen is a homage to Kurt Cobain. Cassie journeyed across Washington State, including the Nirvana frontman’s hometown of Aberdeen, for inspiration.
She said: “I visited the places he lived, and where he died, and I was particularly struck by his hometown, Aberdeen, Washington.
“Whilst there, I made the highly unorthodox decision to turn everything I had gathered into an epic poem and name it Aberdeen.”
● Tickets for these and any other Fringe show from: https://tickets.edfringe.com