Edinburgh Fringe 2023

Bit of advice please, experts!

We're on our way up now. When a show says on the official website "no allocation, contact the venue" what's the best thing to do?

Try phoning? (Is that even possible?!)
Just turn up early and hope to buy tickets at the venue?

Or is it just a polite way of telling you it's "sold out"?!

Thanks

Last day! I wish I could live my entire life like this.....

And This Is My Friend Mr Laurel

Jeffrey Holland reprises his role in this one-man show by Gail Louw as Stan Laurel, reminiscing about his life and career whilst visiting his terminally ill buddy, Oliver Hardy. Very well acted although the hysterical laughs from one member of the audience seemed rather OTT to the point where Jeffrey had to stop the show and wait for it to die down and actually joked "can you come back tomorrow?"

Violets and Vinegar

Hilarious but also at times poignant play with three different (unrelated) stories told by three women - a cancer survivor whose husband is probably cheating on her, a mature virgin who decides to go for it and a young Scouser on holiday in Magaluf looking for sex and booze. Really packed with laughs, one o them had a slight accident in the performance I attended - fell off the back of her seat - but got right back and stuck into her part. A real trooper. Very highly recommended.

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel

A triumph. This needs to tour and be seen in London. Part rom-com, part play with music with an aesthetic reminiscent of Wes Anderson's "Grand Budapest Hotel" movie, the cast rollicks its way through a bunch of scenes with influences from Carry On to Saint Saens and delivers some of opera's greatest hits into the bargain - adding some new "operatic" dialogue to move the story along. Marvellous.

Colonel Anne

Amdram with interesting tale from the '45 about a Scottish aristo's wife who calls her clans to action in the face of her hubby's vacillation. Did feel some of the cast were a little overripe for their parts but it was an entertaining watch.

Ay Up Hitler

Bad taste play about Hitler and his chums surviving the war and moving to Yorkshire which is saved by the fact it has plenty of laughs, even if it is overlong. Interesting to see what one can laugh at these days, given there are increasingly things one is not even allowed to talk about let alone use for a laugh. Punters will be reassured to hear though that at the end Hitler and Goebbels are joined on stage by usual suspects Johnson and Trump, no sacred cows are used for mirth.

Day 13.

Chasing Butterflies at Pleasance Dome.

Tink at Underbelly Bristo Square.

The Half Moon at Pleasance Dome.

2020 the Musical at Underbelly Bristo Square.

Potty the Plant at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose.

A Good Panto Die Hard at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose.

Gunter at Summerhall.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Potty the Plant but I loved the zany humour of the show. Described in one review as "an unholy fusion of Sesame Street and a B-movie horror film", Potty is a talking plant on Dr Acula's desk in a hospital setting where blood-sucked kids seem to be disappearing. That premise sets the tone for an hour filled with zany characters, upbeat and catchy songs, and plenty of laugh out loud comedy! There's some great one liners but I also enjoyed some of the humour in the set that's never referenced by the characters, with signage around the hospital including "More than 50% of our staff are properly qualified" and "Are you worried you're turning into a gorilla?" Sarah Oakland as Miss Lacey gets some of the best lines and has a beautiful singing voice. The mock earnestness of Miss Lacey contrasts well with the over-the-top characters, not to mention the singing pot plant, all around her. I'm still humming one of her solo numbers, Unhappy, as well as the earworm title song, the following morning! Subversive, crazy, full of knowing humour, Potty the Plant is a wickedly funny slice of Fringe fayre.

A Good Panto Die Hard is also a blast. This reworking of the film sees Die Hard get The 39 Steps treatment, with a cast of four where one plays John McClane and the other three multirole to hilarious effect. Throw in some songs from the era, like Something Happened on the Way to Heaven and several Duran Duran numbers, then add many of the essential ingredients of a panto (minus a dame) and some inspired sight gags and you have an idea of what to expect! The concept is executed quite brilliantly by a cast of all the talents. Meanwhile, the audience gets into the spirit of things from the off with shouts of "He's behind you" and "oh no it isn't". Frankly, this is a show that is so much better than it has any right to be. Die Hard is crunched into a 75-minute format that can be enjoyed by fans and those unfamiliar with the movie alike, but it also seamlessly weaves in panto tropes and delivers some brilliant musical numbers. The singalong finale of Fairytale of New York is somehow quite moving. This is a work of genius that belongs on the Fringe, while also settling the age old debate of whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie!

I ended the day with Gunter at Summerhall, where Dirty Hare are retelling a true story of deception, magic and torture from 1605. Two boys have been murdered and their mum wants justice. This precipitates a feud between two families and when the murderer's daughter falls ill, there’s only one thing that could evidently have happened - she must have been bewitched. This was one of the most powerful pieces of drama I've ever seen, heightened by its musical storytelling style and in-your-face exposition. A chaotic reimagining of the most notorious bewitchment case you've never heard of in a vibrant fusion of drama, physical theatre, music, and history. The immersive setting of the anatomy lecture theatre at Summerhall only heightens the atmosphere and tension. This is an hour like no other at the festival. A triumph for all involved.

Was back out again today.

Started with Best of the Fest Day Time- a mixed bill of magic, comedy, circus and cabaret. I'm hoping to be able to fit in the full length shows for What Does Stuff Do?- a very talented juggler with an edge of physics, and Tom Crosbie- Actions Speak Louder Than Nerds.

I then saw Home. As others have said, this was really impressive theatre and the use of lighting, set pieces and movement was exceptional. I was a bit unsure of the story at times but I think that might be the intention. I did leave feeling completely overstimulated but I think that says more about the intensity of the experience.

After This Plane Has Landed- a musical about the experiences of John McCarthy (news producer taken hostage in Lebanon) and Jill Morrell. I found this really quite disappointing. Benedict Powell and Claire Russell are both hugely talented and acted and sang well but there were so many songs that just felt pedestrian. It felt a bit confused about whether it was a serious piece or trying to be light- lots of chat about "We're in a musical" at the start. There could be something in the idea as it's an interesting story, highlighted by the delightful audience member who spent most of the show reading about the story on Wikipedia on their phone....

Ended with The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria. An enjoyable play with excellent use of music. Some slightly distracting overacting from one cast member (I know it's supposed to be over the top but I felt it was maybe just a bit much) and an audience member who laughed so loudly and so often that it drew the attention of the cast. This made me want to read more about the real events, although not on Wikipedia on my phone during the show...

Oooh, what did you think? I'm a big fan of Voloz Collective. I saw this in one of the first previews in London a couple of months ago and really liked it. At the time they were quite open about still working on and I suspect it will have ended up a bit tighter by now, slightly under an hour running?

Day 16.

The Grand Old Opera House Hotel at Traverse Theatre.

In Everglade Studio at Assembly George Square.

Salty Irina at Summerhall.

Help Yourself at Summerhall.

Strategic Love Play at Summerhall.

Quitting Comedy at PBH's Free Fringe at Legends.

1 Tent, 4 Girls at Greenside Infirmary Street.

The St Andrews Revue: Here Come The Worms at Just the Tonic at the Caves.

Three brilliant plays back to back at Summerhall were among the highlights of yesterday. Salty Irina is a romantic thriller about two girls falling in love and fighting fascists. Strategic Love Play follows the cat-and-mouse play of an awkward first date. In between those two productions in the Roundabout tent, I saw Help Yourself, a spoof wellness seminar with a five-step plan to eliminate sadness from your life. This was a reflection on grief, disguised in comic form, and the sort of unique show that you can only experience at the Fringe. Well worth a watch if you're looking for something completely different!

I also really enjoyed Malia Simon and Caroline Haynes' comedy play within a play, which places their standup routines, both as themselves and in character, in a narrative about why they're (not really) quitting comedy. Malia Simon in particular is absolutely hilarious.

Special mention from yesterday has to go to The Grand Opera House Hotel. This is 90 minutes of inspired writing from Isabel McCarthur that morphs a comedy into a full-on opera with triumphant results. The faceless modern hotel of the title, of the type where every room is identical, is built on the grounds of an old opera house which was destroyed by fire. Nowadays, the hotel is a health and safety nightmare, with fusing electrics and doors that jam shut. The play begins with a new member of staff, Aaron, arriving for training ahead of his first day. While trying to locate the training room, he hears the haunting voice of what he presumes to be a ghost, perhaps an opera singer who perished in the flames all those years ago? In fact, it’s another staff member, opera loving Amy, singing along to her Walkman, and Aaron sets out to track her down.

As the two would-be lovers pursue each other from floor to anonymous floor, the play steadily evolves into a thrilling, unique fusion of art forms. The closer Ali Watt’s Aaron and Karen Fishwick’s Amy get to meeting, the more the bedroom farce becomes an opera and the arias come sweeping in. Wild, romantic gestures take the place of overworked staff dealing with awkward, oversexed guests. The first hour is full of humour and laughter, but when the production fully gives in to what it wants to become, it soars even higher. The end result is a thrilling combination of farce and opera that, like Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of) with Austen, somehow manages to both send up and celebrate the conventions of opera.

The cast are outstanding, from the central pairing to the ensemble multiroling as a variety of hotel staff, guests and the ghosts of former opera singers. The set is ingenious with some great visual gags and the many doors every good farce requires. Surely this play will have a life beyond the festival? Certainly, it proves that Isabel McArthur's successful debut was no fluke. The Grand Old Opera House Hotel sees one of our most exciting writers hit new heights. From its array of eccentric characters and the love story at its heart, to the hilariously re-worded sections of celebrated opera melodies, The Grand Old Opera House Hotel is a complete joy and a masterpiece of slapstick and operatic invention.

Day 17.

Cooked at Bedlam Theatre.

Dugsi Dayz at Underbelly Cowgate.

It's a Motherf**king Pleasure at Underbelly Bristo Square.

One's a Musical Comedian and One Isn't at Just the Tonic at Grassmarket Centre.

Troll at Underbelly Cowgate.

Lies All The Way Down at theSpace at Niddry Street.

How to Rob a Millionaire (in Five Easy Steps) at Greenside Infirmary Street.

Day 18.

After the Act at Traverse Theatre.

Lena at Assembly George Square.

Shoot the Cameraman at Assembly Roxy.

Palindrome at theSpace at Niddry Street.

Lost and Found at Just the Tonic at the Caves.

Puppets at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose.

Oscar at The Crown at Assembly George Square.

I really enjoyed the chamber musical Lies All The Way Down, a two-hander plus four-piece band, with its exploration of friendship and lies.

The Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society's new offering, Palindrome, has a gorgeous score and top notch performances.

Shoot the Cameraman fuses media and live performance with its sinister exploration of an abusive relationship. The two performers on stage are followed throughout by two camera operators. The impact of the live filming, so every moment can be seen from multiple angles, is quite fascinating. The camera operators are an integral part of the performance and contribute to an epic piece of physical theatre that's breathtaking to watch. The sound design is equally spectacular. As one review on the Fringe website puts it, "I don't know what on earth we just saw, but it was incredible!"

A late contender for my standout show of the festival is Lena, a play with music by Tim Whitnall. The play commemorates child star Lena Zavaroni who appeared on Opportunity Knocks and won the show for a record five weeks. Charting how Lena was whisked away from her family aged 10 to appear on the show, we see her become a singing sensation, only for the pressures of fame to have tragic consequences.

Leading a cast which includes Jon Culshaw as host Hughie Green, Erin Armstrong is sensational as Lena. From the young enthusiastic child to the broken adult, Erin captures the pressures of a world that Lena just wasn't ready to face on her own quite exquisitely. If there's an award for best performance at the Fringe, Erin would be a deserving recipient.

Making this particular performance of Lena especially poignant, the visibly emotional cast announced at the end that Lena's father was in the audience this afternoon.

Back home from Edinburgh after a busy last two days at the Fringe.

Day 19

Beats on Pointe at Assembly George Square.

Silly Little Things at Just the Tonic at the Caves.

Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars at Pleasance Dome.

We'll Have Nun of It at Underbelly Cowgate (return visit).

Without at Underbelly Cowgate.

Paved with Gold and Ashes at Greenside Infirmary Street.

Winging It at theSpace on the Mile.

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please at Laughing Horse @ The Three Sisters.

Day 20

Polko at Summerhall.

Chance at Paradise in the Vault.

Party Ghost at Assembly Checkpoint.

Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show at Pleasance Courtyard.

The Cambridge Footlights: The Search Continues at Pleasance Dome.

Highlights include the retelling of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911 through spoken word and acapella singing in Paved With Gold and Ashes.

It was great to catch the dance spectacular that is Beats on Pointe again after first seeing it last year. It's an exhilarating hour of almost non-stop dancing from a talented ensemble.

There were shades of Once in Without, a new musical about two strangers finding a connection through music. The score is really strong in this, as we meet the two central characters at different stages of their lives who find solace in helping each other.

Silly Little Things is a charming solo show about life's ups and downs and the power of friendship. Laura Knaggs holds the audience in the palm of her hands for an hour sharing a joyful and relatable story full of laughter and heartwarming moments. She struggled to get to her "thanks for coming and spread the word" speech at the end because the audience wouldn't stop cheering and applauding her, so she ended up taking another bow!

Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars is a play that uses multimedia in a similar vein to Shoot the Cameraman with the live action on stage being filmed by camera operators and shown on a screen above the stage. Some of the close-ups here were particularly clever in their execution. It's an interesting story too, based on the first African American female astronaut going into space, as well as the first woman to go into space with her husband, and how the media responded to, and interrogated, these two pioneers.

And that was it for Edinburgh Fringe 2023. There's a few other shows in this year's lineup I've either seen before or am seeing elsewhere.

These include:

Julia Masli: Choosh (seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022 and at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool in July 2023).

Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder (seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022 and seeing the new version at HOME in Manchester in October 2023).

Police Cops: The Musical (seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022).

Almost Adult (seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022).

Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera (seeing this at The Lowry in October 2023).

Murder, She Didn't Write (seen at Edinburgh Fringe 2022, previous festivals and on tour).

It's been a great festival. It will be interesting to see the ticket sales announced by the Fringe Society this afternoon. This year has felt like a full resurgence for the Fringe after a strong comeback given the circumstances of 2022. The second half of the festival last year felt noticeably quieter than usual, whereas Edinburgh has felt busy throughout this time around, both on the crowded streets and in the packed venues.

The existential threats to the festival are still there, none more so than the availability of affordable accommodation. The Keep it Fringe fund was a step in the right direction this year but it's a drop in the ocean when so many more companies and artists require financial support to bring their work to Edinburgh.

With the short term lets legislation being introduced in Edinburgh this autumn, along with the ongoing cost of living crisis, those challenges aren't going away. There are also additional hurdles facing some of the leading venues ahead of the Fringe 2024. Assembly is £1.5m out of pocket from the collapse of the Coventry City of Culture Trust. Gilded Balloon's Teviot House hub will be unavailable next summer due to an 18-month refurbishment of the building starting later this year. Meanwhile, Greenside are losing their Infirmary Street site to the Fringe Society. If today's ticket sales show the remarkable resilience of the festival, that certainly shouldn't be cause for complacency.

One of the things I love about the Fringe is that, despite the vast size of the festival, word of mouth is still a real, tangible thing rather than a nebulous concept. People going to see Isabel Klein's Showstopper from a recommendation in this thread is proof of that! I'm chuffed other forum members have been to see her and enjoyed it! Seeing Julia Masli scoop a best show award, and The Rejects, a debut play by an Edinburgh Napier University graduate, win a best comedy award, on the back of a sellout run and a string of rave reviews, is a reminder of the springboard the Fringe can provide. And, of course, it's exciting to see what's next for festival hits like Public the Musical, Lena, and The Grand Old Opera House Hotel.

As an audience member, seeing so many shows across three and a half weeks is such a thrill. It's undoubtedly the time of year I look forward to the most. The many hours (make that days!) of planning are so worth it. As much as I'm ready for a break from the chaos of it all, as I took a last look round Bristo Square yesterday, I felt quite emotional that it's all coming to an end for another year too. There's nowhere with the same atmosphere, vibrancy and explosion of creativity as Edinburgh in August. I can't wait to 'fill my boots' again next summer.

Is that figure for app downloads correct? Maybe missing a zero, given the numbers attending?

The google app store has it as 10k plus downloads so probably correct. It wasn't that good and anyway I suspect many, many more people use the fringe website or venue websites and there will still be a fair few people doing in person sales.