Love in the modern world

Underbellycowgate (Venue61) JJJ Presented by Scotland’s leading women’s theatre company, directed by its artistic director Jemima Levick, and dealing directly with one of the key themes of this year’s Fringe, the legacy of colonialism, The Last Queen Of Scotland has all the makings of a hugely successful show. Thewriter,jaimini Jethwa, is a Scottish Ugandan Asian, whose family settled in Dundee after their abrupt expulsion from Uganda in the 1970s by the brutal dictator Idi Amin; and the main character is a 21st-century girl from a similar Dundee family, who suddenly finds – as she reaches her twenties – that she needs to understand the trauma her family suffered, and how they survived it.

In the end, this solo drama – with live music and strong accompanying stage presence from musician/composer Patricia Panther – seems almost unable to handle the extreme emotions unleashed by the heroine’s journey to Kampala and beyond, in search of her roots; the storyline becomes hard to follow, as Rehanna Macdonald’s performance reaches a shrieking, traumatised breaking-point.

Yet there’s a wonderful background richness to this show, both in Panther’s music, and in some beautiful, bright design by Anna Orton, lit by Ian Dow. And if it slightly loses its thread in the end, it still tells a story well worth telling, from a powerful Dundee angle that adds another layer of meaning to this year’s Fringe narrative of migration, exile, and all the physical and emotional borders that must be crossed, in order to make a new life. JOYCE MCMILLAN Summerhall (Venue 26) JJJJ Summerhall (Venue 26) JJJJ Playing in rotation with one another, these new plays by Dublin-based theatre company Malaprop each explore the human impact of new technologies in a manner that is as entertaining as it is in tune with the way in which our understanding of love is changing in the 21st century. Both are insightful, although the pick of the pair for those stretched for time is Blackcatfishmusketeer,

0 Blackcatfishmusketeer gives an insight into what love means in our modern, inter-connected world describe the activities at an intimacy workshop involving naked flesh and yoni massage with such sweet enthusiasm. He saw nipples. And his excitement is palpable.

He takes us through the problems of the play-dough yoni, and the surprising difficulty of eye-contact etiquette. It is a delightful hour. In it we also learn about Luca’s exploration of his ethnic heritage (disappointingly, Luca turns out not to be Native American), his £35 conversation with a Welsh psychic and his disappointing nude photoshoot. Oh yes, the shy Italian has really blossomed since winning So You Think You’re Funny. He is still not Pope, despite a great name and an a courtship revealed entirely through the interactions of a couple online.

Adam and Zadie meet on an online dating site after a whirl of bad matches are swiped past, and they go through every stage of a classic love story, from chance courtship, to identification and possible love, to breaking off their relationship through a bout of existential fear, before finally, tentatively approaching a reunion when they realise that no-one quite understands like one another. What’s interesting in this case, however, is that Dylan Coburn Gray’s play never allows the pair to meet; instead, they interact solely through the internet and snatched glimpses during awesome motto, but he is at least exploring options now. Do not,on any account, leave without fingering his cushion. It is just gorgeous. KATE COPSTICK Just the Tonic at The Caves (Venue 88) JJJJ It is wonderful when comedy surprises you, and this show certainly does that. I don’t know why I enjoy watching Harriet K quite so much, I just do. You can feel the funny bubbling up inside her and nervous, abortive attempts at meeting in real life.

Catherine Russell and Ste Murray are a tender and relatable central pair, with Aoife Spratt playing the winningly eccentric third part of the internet itself, enacting every dense Wikipedia page, head-exploding gif and hedgehog in shades image the pair use as shorthand for communication, in what is a striking and memorable comic turn. It’s simply a great fun hour, but within this traditional story format, the piece weaves new and very insightful ideas of what love, trust and romance mean in the hyper-connected modern age.

It’s a trick which Love+ also pulls to great effect, although then sort of escaping in a frequently messy, uncoordinated way. And it is joyful. Neurotic and squeaky and a little bit crazy but most definitely joyful.

This year Kemsley got married but she thoughtfully gallops us through some lowlights of her singledom before it becomes too much of a dim memory: morning after pills and her inability to say goodbye politely lead to her humanitarian work and thence to the main topic of the show. Kemsley has dyspraxia – dyslexia’s less attractive elder sister. When she got her diagnosis everything became clear: her clumsiness, lack of co-ordination, the oceans of spilt drinks and this piece – devised by Gray and Maeve O’mahony – has planed off some of the bravura comedy in favour of a more blackly humorous subversion of the love story. Russell appears again, this time as a woman who has bought an aesthetically realistic female robot, which she uses as a companion, housemaid and glorified sex toy.

It’s another funny piece, but more subtly so than Blackcatfishmusketeer, and the loneliness of Russell’s character, cut off by the fake connection technology provides, is expressed in more poignant and haunting fashion. DAVID POLLOCK the inadequate line dancing. She is also a vegetarian who is allergic to raw fruit, vegetables and nuts. It is almost unbelievable that she doesn’t qualify for a free parking space. She takes us through a catalogue of disasters, shares her hope that her new husband will have an affair and, in an intimate moment towards the end of her hour, uses one of my favourite words – riddled.

Go along and find out why. Kemsley is one of those comics who just make me smile and giggle. And that is, I feel, a good thing. Don’t sit in the front row, she is liable to drop something. KATE COPSTICK Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) JJJJ Twisted renegades The Death Hilarious are a macabre, late-night delight. This darkly impressive debut is packed with countless elements rich, strange and deviantly chilling.

Aggressively forward from the first, a pair of hellfireevoking, American Deep South demonologists, a preacher and possessed somnambulist, assert themselves into the audience’s faces as they seek the devil to drive from an unfortunate soul.

A demented, full-throttle nightmare of an opening, the pair suddenly snap out of it and into the room. Introducing themselves as a Welsh double-act, there’s still something rather off about them: Darren J Coles, the seemingly volatile, expressive crossdresser, alongside the more buttoned-up Glenn Wade in his tight, prim suit, his outward respectability harbouring a grim secret.

Combining death, depraved desire, the trappings of B-movie science-fiction and the poetic, rural wistfulness of their homeland, the follow-up skit, featuring Coles as a home-made sex robot is arguably the most definitive of their style, crudely graphic, cartoonish horror that’s riotously funny.

Elsewhere, they present a man masochistically living as a dog to reclaim his masculinity; a couple of manly New York stevedores delivering an “ass baby”, inspiring a bizarre, Broadway-style number; militant nostalgics arriving at heated arguments over misremembered pasts and a motivational speaker balancing his scheme to profit from laughter with ill-disguised family issues.

Recurring scenes with the Elephant Man in unlikely contemporary situations don’t escalate into anything as promising as they might. But the duo’s ideas are consistently out there, their performances intuitively in step with one another, while the script glistens with sadistic eloquence.

The Death Hilarious’s appeal is more obvious than the vague early description they offer of their act suggests. Seemingly set for greater things, they successfully stoke anticipation for whatever they do next. JAY RICHARDSON