The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Edinburgh Fringe: Theatre highlights
Various venues, throughout August
Where the Edinburgh International Festival focuses on the most high-profile artists from around the world, the Fringe is its more democratic and accessible younger sibling.
It offers hundreds of live shows around Edinburgh in big theatres to church halls and community centres and anyone can put on a show, as long as they can find a venue.
But where the open-access nature of the Fringe gives anyone a chance, it can also be a minefield for audiences.
Pick a show at random from the weighty Fringe catalogue without doing due diligence and you’re more likely to have to sit through an hour of earnest am-dram than you are to find an undiscovered theatre hit of tomorrow.
For anyone who wants to enjoy nearguaranteed quality over as many cheap theatrical shots as possible, one easy way to tell the difference is to pick the correct venue. In the case of theatre on the Fringe that means going to either the Traverse or Summerhall. The Trav, as it’s known, offers plays that are intelligent but also commercially appealing, while Summerhall is known for more experimental and boundarybreaking work.
At the Traverse, near-certain hits include What Girls Are Made Of (Aug 3-26), highly-regarded Scots theatremaker Cora Bissett’s true tale of teen pop fame as a girl from Glenrothes; Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre’s The Greatest Play in the History of the World (Aug 2-26), which stars Coronation Street and Broadchurch’s Julie Hesmondhalgh; comedian and activist Mark Thomas’ Check-up: Our NHS at 70 (Jul 29-Aug 26), and Nigel Slater’s Toast (Aug 7-26), an adaptation of the famous chef’s autobiography.
At Summerhall, look out for Kieran Hurley and Gary Mcnair’s tale of schoolgate machismo Square Go (Aug 1-26); After the Cuts (Aug 1-26), Mcnair’s dark comedy about a future without the NHS; James Ley’s romantic comedy set in a famed Edinburgh lesbian and gay bookshop, Love Song to Lavender Menace (Aug 1-26), and First Snow/ Premiere Neige (Aug 1-26), a political co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and Canada’s Theatre Pap and Hotel-motel.
Other highlights include; My Left/ Right Foot (Assembly Roxy, Aug 1-27), Robert Softley Gale’s comedy about getting a disability musical wrong; It’s True, It’s True, It’s True (Underbelly, Aug 2-26), the story of the rape of 17th century baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, produced by the alwaysunmissable Breach Theatre; Volcano Theatre’s Century Song (Zoo Southside, Aug 3-18), about a century of black women’s art, and Caitlin Skinner’s Propeller (Pleasance Courtyard, Aug 1-27), which examines how to be happy.