Magnificent seven shows ride away with the honours
◆ On the 50th anniversary of our awards, the quality of new work on the Fringe is impressively high, reflected in the fact this week has seven winners, writes Andrew Eaton-lewis
It’s week two of this year’s Scotsman Fringe Firsts, and we are giving out SEVEN awards in recognition of outstanding new writing premiered at the festival.
It is the 50th anniversary of the prizes, established in 1973 by late Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright to encourage theatre companies to premiere new work at the Edinburgh Fringe. Half a century, on the Fringe Firsts remain the most prestigious theatre awards at the festival and are recognised all over the world.
The Fringe Firsts – now proudly sponsored by the University of Edinburgh – are awarded once a week throughout each year’s festival; there is no set number each week. Our judging panel is chaired by The Scotsman’s chief theatre critic, Joyce Mcmillan, and consists of Mark Fisher, Susan Mansfield, Sally Stott, Fiona Shepherd, David Pollock and Jackie Mcglone.
Our Fringe First winners of 2023 will receive their awards today at the Pleasance Courtyard, at a ceremony featuring special guest presenter Cora Bissett, a former Fringe First winner who is currently performing her acclaimed autobiographical show, What Girls Are Made Of at the Assembly Rooms Music Hall. We would like to thank the University of Edinburgh for continuing to support the awards, and the Pleasance for hosting our awards ceremonies. We will announce our final group of winners on Friday 25 August. This week’s winners are:
Blue
Assembly George Square until 28 August
What we said: “Sergeant Boyd Sully (John Colella) is being investigated by Detective Larhonda Parker (June Carryl, the play’s writer), whose father and husband were respectively an old friend and the street partner of Sully … Sully is being questioned as to why he shot dead a driver who pulled away from a routine traffic stop; the perp/victim was a black man and a decorated US Army veteran suffering from PTSD … Carryl’s writing and Michael Matthews’ direction of it crackles like Twelve Angry Men condensed into the form of one woman who’s had enough.” (David Pollock)
Choo Choo! (Or... Have You Ever Thought About ******
**** ***** ? (Cos I Have)) Pleasance Dome, until 28 August What we said: “High-energy ‘best friends’ Nye (Nye Russell Thompson) and Duncan (Duncan Hallis) are joined by their pal Laura, doing BSL in the corner, and a radio that is more a member of the family than a household object … ‘Everything’s alright,’ they say, but you may not be so sure. It cleverly reveals its purpose: an exploration of the kind of intrusive thoughts we might all have at some point, but which affect some more than others. With the laughter slipping away, Nye and Duncan embrace fear, risk and a more real kind of friendship.” (Sally Stott)
Club Life
Summerhall, until 27 August What we said: “Although Fred Deakin has been retired as a club promoter for two decades, the years fall away as he gives us his personal tour of clubland as he experienced it … It’s part autobiographical monologue, part dance show, part performance art, and at its core even a very odd jukebox musical … Deakin describes his encounter with leukaemia a quarter of a century ago and his realisation of mortality in the present, and time folds around the youthful dancers and this welltravelled nostalgic … Few Fringe shows this year will be more inspiring or perfectly executed.” (DP)
Everything Under The Sun Army@thefringe until 27 August What we said: “In this play by Scottish writer/director Jack Macgregor, Ibrahim (the excellent Thierry Mabonga) is a Malian translator paired with Scottish UN officer Kelly (Rebecca Wilkie) to investigate the loss of communication from a remote military base on the edge of the Sahara. On the way, he educates her about his country … As the text points out, the Malian conflict is not the one in Afghanistan, and we need to think differently about it – and about Africa – if we’re to predict the future direction of global politics. (DP)
Gunter
Summerhall until 27 August What we said: “It’s 1605, and in an Oxfordshire village, a wealthy man named Gunter has casually killed two young brothers whose noisy football game was annoying him. He escapes conviction for murder; and when the boys’ mother protests, he accuses her of being a witch. This true story forms the basis for Dirty Hare’s Gunter, a thrilling piece about the patriarchal bullying, social inequality, and lies that underpinned the witch-hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries … the brilliant cast … never allow us to believe for a moment the attitudes that shaped the story of Gunter are not still present 400 years on.” (Joyce Mcmillan)
The Last Of The Soviets
Zoo Playground, until 27 August What we said: “Inspired by the works of Belarusian dissident writer and Nobel Prize
laureate Svetlana Alexievich, the words performed with grim determination by Russian exiles Inga Mikshina-zotova and Roman Mikshin-zotov span the glory years of the Soviet Union as a pre-eminent global superpower to the dark days of the Chernobyl disaster in what is now Ukraine … If it all sounds grim and harrowing, the stark and relentlessly uncompromising sense of humour permeates everything happening on stage, creating a striking, moody piece of work which is as captivating as a disaster happening in real time.” (DP)
Square Peg
Paradise in Augustines until tomorrow
What we said: “Originally a leatherworker, who makes and sells designer accessories in his home city of Norwich, Simeon Morris is a recent acting graduate, and he brings the two strands of his professional life together here. He works at the sewing machine onstage, and demonstrates the simplicity of the bias cut skirt and dress by designer Janice Wainwright, who he knew and worked with. The tenderness and delicacy of these passages is captivating. Then he takes us through his difficult relationship with his father and relationship break-ups … It’s a frank and perfectly rich and involving piece.” (DP)
See the full reviews of Square Peg on p8, Gunter on p11 and Last Of The Soviets on p14. Choo Choo! will be reviewed in full tomorrow.