Beckham and Cantona explored at Fringe
Tennis legend jimmy connors, football icons David Beckham and Eric Cantona, country music trailblazer June Carter Cash, and the perils of Tiktok and Instagram are to inspire shows at one of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s biggest venues this summer.
Summerhall’s line-up will also feature “undead” drag queen incarnations of rival monarchs Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, a celebration of the punk scene in 1970s Washington, and a stage illusion show promising “seances, spirit-possession and live levitation”.
Work from Belarus, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Palestine, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Ukraine will be showcased at the venue.
Comics from around the world have shows in the theatre programme at Summerhall, which will be one of the main venues used for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Louis Orwin’s show Famehungry, developed with social media star Jaxon Valentine, is billed as “a one woman nosedive into the helter-skelter world of Tiktok, the attention economy and what it’s like to live your life online”.
Comic and actress Anna Morris’s show Son of a Bitch focuses on an Instagrammer who goes viral after being filmed swearing at her child on a plane.
Bryony Byrne’s 1990s-set show Fan/girl will recall a long-forgotten obsession with football, including stars like Beckham and Cantona, and explore why so many girls stopped play the game in their teens.
Leading Scottish playwrights Kieran Hurley and Gary Mcnair will launch a new comedy focusing on two boys trying to young boys “trying to navigate peer pressures, sexual anxieties, and social status in the chaotic hormonal pressure cooker of a small-town school”.
Edinburgh will provide the setting for The Bookies, a betting shop-set black comedy bringing together a narcissist bookmaker, a young cashier, an area manager and a degenerate gambler hooked on gaming machines.
Glasgow actress and singer Charlene Boyd will play tribute to the country music legend June Carter Cash in a show which will explore her own experiences as a performer and working mother.
Glasgow-based poet and performer Sean Wai Keung will explore the history of fortune cookies and his own mixedrace identity in his one-man show, while actor, comedian and writer Saul Boyer’s show In Defiance of Gravity will explore séance, levitation and telekinesis.
The exhibition Hart Art will showcase the work of photographer Lucian Perkins to capture the birth of the punk scene in Washington in the 1970s.
Former Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Adam Riches will step into the shoes of American tennis legend Jimmy Connors to recall his remarkable comeback in the US Open at the age of 39.
Summerhall chief executive Sam Gough said: “Our programme has new collaborations with incredible companies, new artists as well as many returning friends bringing exceptional work.”