Pollyfilla seals weird slot

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) JJ Mention musical theatre and Irvine Welsh is not the first name to come to mind. Mention pop music, however, and recall the Trainspotting author as a well-known aficionado of the underground line that links Iggy Pop to punk to acid house. It’s for this reason, you suspect, that the most dominant theme in Creatives, Welsh’s musical collaboration with Don de Grazia and composer Laurence Mark Wythe, is the conflict between authenticity and selling out.

Should you, like songwriter Sean (Tyler Fayose), go for broke with easy-on-the-ear hip hop, cashing in the dollars even if it means plagiarising young artists to do so? Or should you, like long-in-thetooth teacher Paul (Michael Mckell), stick to your punk principles and speak the political truth even at the risk of obscurity?

There could be mileage in such a head-versus-heart clash, but having it played out among the pupils of a songwriting class – that has the form of a conventional Broadway musical with a touch of the X Factor about it – means the show hits a wall. Taken in isolation, Wythe’s songs are an attractive mix of genres from the Taylor Swiftstyle pop of Insta-famous to the mainstream rap of On the South-side. Yet, taken together, they rarely make it clear whether we should accept them at face value or treat them as satirical pastiches.

Indeed, the whole tone of Tom Mullen’s production, originally staged by Chicago Theatre Workshop, is uncertain. The knob jokes are unfunny, the student bickering unconvincing, the tensions described but not dramatised.

It’s a musical with a structure – the students perform each other’s songs anonymously in a $5,000 competition – but little in the way of a story. That is why when a gun comes out, it feels like an act of writerly desperation that is not rooted in the action. The post-shooting fallout is no more credible.

The nine-strong company performs with brio (Martina Isibor’s soulful Game On is a particular treat), but Creatives is too unevenly plotted to work either as send-up or celebration. MARK FISHER Paradise Palms (Venue 411) JJJJ Everyone has their own idea of transgressive fun. For some people, it’s running through fields of wheat. For others, it’s dressing up as Theresa May to host a rerun of the general election involving airborne Weetabix, crowdsurfing and political emblems secreted around and within various parts of the body.

If you think you might lean

0 Every day is dress-down day for drag artist Pollyfilla, who hosts late-night queer cabaret Pollyanna thespace on North Bridge (Venue 36) JJJ In an upmarket hotel room, rent boy Sam (Edd Smith) steels himself for a final meeting with his former client, a disgraced MP named Marcus Thwaites (Adam Spencer). Sam is young – just turned 21 and looking forward to starting university in September – and Marcus, while not exactly old (42), has psoriasis, heart problems and a failing marriage to deal with. Oh, and Brexit, but that’s neither here nor there.

The relationship between the two is compelling enough to keep you engaged for the tight, 45-minute running time.

However, there are a few more towards the latter, then you could do a lot worse than swing by Pollyanna, the latenight queer cabaret showcase that runs Sundays to Thursdays.

Now in its third year, Pollyanna is hosted by alternative drag act Pollyfilla – alternative, in this case, taking the sartorial form of ratty fake fur jacket, rattier, faker wig, fishnets, jockstrap and bovver boots. In addition to giving her best Theresa May, Pollyfilla introduces the night’s acts, including Pollyanna regular Desert Storm, channelling a lovelorn 80s faults: the relatively youthful Spencer never really convinces as an older man, and Sam’s superior knowledge of old black-and-white tearjerkers such as Brief Encounter and An Affair to Remember rings false when he upstages the supposedly fusty old Marcus.

Still, Smith is an engaging and sympathetic actor, and supporting cast members Hannah Ritchie and Sarah Chamberlain get to introduce a welcome note of comedy with their intrusive cutaways.

As for the Brexit subtext, Elliot Douglas’s script flirts with some analogous material – the selfishness of Marcus and his party is flagged up in one particularly unsubtle scene – but for the most part, it’s simply a backdrop which allows for a few neat punchlines. NIKI BOYLE vibe with the help of romantic self-help advice, sharplyshoulder-padded red leather, geometric dance moves and Kylie Minogue. Other acts on the night I attended included Georgia Tasda (geddit?) performing as an absurd mix of cosmic club kid and northern stand-up, looking like a cross between Leigh Bowery and Pinhead from Hellraiser while delivering groanworthy intergalactic gags: “For my holidays I went to Orion’s belt. It’s a three-star resort.”

Each night also showcases guest acts from suitably offbeat shows around Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) JJJ Ross Brierley and Josh Sadler’s Fringe debut is a decent one, its flaws not suppressing the feeling that this surreality-tinged duo could develop a cult following. Channelling Vic & Bob for the video game, grime generation, their Big Night Out-style chatshow is a lot of fun that nevertheless takes a while to warm up, with Brierley as host bantering to little effect with bandleader Baby John, a moustachioed doll with a child’s keyboard. Only when Sadler arrives as the first guest, the T-rex from Jurassic Park, do they get into their stride, the ludicrousness of him sharing showbusiness the Fringe, such as the grotesque escapades of Natalie Palmides’s cod-victorian urchin family and the roofraising disco stylings of character chanteuse Diane Chorley. It’s packed and noisy, rowdy and messy, queerly experimental and reassuringly different – a welcome reminder that the Fringe is not only the place to catch a hot ticket or see a famous face but also to take a chance on the weird, the wild and the Weetabix, and then keep on dancing. BEN WALTERS anecdotes while his unwieldy, ballooning costume flops and deflates around him a sight to see.

Interspersed with polished video inserts, including adverts for Malcolm Gladwell’s crude new philosophical teaser and Alan Bennett’s album of nu-metal classics, Sadler reappears as Super Mario, reflecting on his career with an unexpected Glaswegian accent, and as John Michael Jars, a jam jar playing tribute act to the Oyxgène composer. Chiefly the straight man, Brierley does get to play Bruce Foresight, an exaggeratedly gurning take on the television presenter who wades into the crowd to tell people the manner of their future death, a highpoint in a mixed introduction. JAY RICHARDSON Pleasance (Venue 33) JJJ There is a good story at the heart of this show. Kiri Pritchard Mclean has spent the last year mentoring a troubled teen – which means she had to be a responsible or appropriate adult.

It is a neat device to explore her own adulthood – as a thirty-something millennial who doesn’t want children of her own.

Pritchard-mclean is good with money, and knows how to look after herself.

She has just split with her boyfriend and lost a ton of weight – which is an opportunity to share some pertinent and intelligent observations about body image, dating and discotheques.

She’s a confident performer, whose straight talking wit delivers lots of laughs. What she says is clever, interesting, original and funny.

It’s a shame she has picked up the irritating habit of discussing the structure of her Edinburgh show while performing her Edinburgh show, which is a plague at this year’s Fringe.

No one wants to know about the 40-minute lull and I wish comics would shut up about it.

Ignoring the self-conscious “I’m comedian” stuff, Pritchard-mclean’s pace and delivery are great, and her question of what it means to be an appropriate adult makes for an interesting hour. CLAIRE SMITH Sweet Holyrood (Venue 94) JJ The real crime in this lecture delivered by fictional Victorian Inspector Albert Thorne is how dull it is. Written and – mostly – decently performed by Steven Langley, it manages to turn the mean streets of late 19th century London into a dry recitation of various cases from the veteran Peelers with no overarching narrative – so much so, that he forgets where we are in the script occasionally. Langley proves a personable performer with a fine belllike voice, but his character is devoid of personality (the good inspector has a peptic ulcer and, ahem, that’s it). RORY FORD