Claim OwnershipThe Edinburgh Fringe Show, with Ewan Spence
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© Ewan Spence, The Podcast Corner, 2022
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Ewan Spence brings you an exciting guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with news, interviews, and reviews, from behind the scenes and on the stages around Scotland’s Capital City.
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Reviews play a critical part in the Arts world, especially during the Edinburgh Festival. Who is reviewing you, did it read like a five-star, why is nobody turning up, and what can you do with them in September?
In this podcast, I'm joined by Scott Matthewman. He has been working as a theatre critic for nearly twenty years, sometimes as a part-time freelancer and at other times as a fully employed staff writer. We talk about the importance of reviews and reviewers in the Arts, how reviewing has changed over the years, and what can be done to improve the review landscape at Edinburgh and other Fringes around the world.
Ewan Spence is joined by theatre producer Fin Ross Russell (The Collie’s Shed) to look back at this year’s Fringe, the preparation required, what happens next, and plans for 2024.
What does it mean to bring a legend back into the light? That’s the challenge faced by Two Halves Productions in the delightful tongue-twisty Never Trouble Trouble, Until Trouble Troubles You.
Writer and performer Paul Beeson joins the podcast to talk about the life of Bobby Walker, and portraying the legend at the Edinburgh Fringe. Joining Heart of Midlothian Football Club in 1896, Walker became one of the first footballing superstars; before fading from the public eye. What responsibilities are there with a biography, how do you find the voice of someone born in the 19th century, and what is it like to perform in a museum full of the memories of the legend?
Cat Shit Crazy, with either an exclamation mark replacing the eye or a censored graphic over the title, caught a lot of attention as the Fringe started, in part due to the aforementioned ‘we can’t have that sort of thing on display at the Fringe’. Sometimes the best publicity comes as a surprise. But the show is about much more than that.
Hollywood-based Cindy D’Andrea’s autobiographical show is much more than that. At one of the darkest moments in her life, her best friend suggested she should get a cat. Moving from I hate cats, to countless feline friends over the last fourteen years, this is a story about a woman, a cat, and unconditional love.
What happens when you decide to make your own magic from whatever you can find around you? What happens when you add a dash of robotics to the magic? And then an old tomato soup can from the bin to be your next robot assistant.
That’s the world of Mario The Maker Magician. It’s a family show packed with slapstick humour, handmade robots, and a lot of skill. THere’s a mix of science, creativity, showmanship, and laughter that is incredibly hard to balance. Mario makes it look easy.
When you do comedy, there’s always a message - the old adage of only punching up is born from many a hard-earned lesson on the stage. You can do that powerfully with force and aggression, but if you prefer a milder comedian, then why not ask Tom Mayhew.
Tom’s show for 2023 is ‘This Time Next Year, We'll Be Millionaires!’ and beyond the well-timed nod to something the audience may be more familiar with to catch their attention, Mayhew has much to say on capitalism, on hopes, and dreams, in a whimsically sweet hour that delivers some sharp satire on the United Kingdom when you least expect it.
The Fringe is not static. Neither are board games, and the classic Monopoly is a perfect example. It’s not a great game, it’s poorly designed, and it ruins friendships and families. Benjamin Alborough not only has the arguments on the dangers of Monopoly, but is also going to reinvent the game with the help of the audience.
Absolute Monopoly is an interactive yet rather chaotic gameshow; from going through the rules through becoming the board to play the game, to deciding the winner. If there’s going to be one.
Rebecca McGlynn’s musical ‘Asexuality’ asks what it means to be a man in the 21st century and how toxic masculinity affects those of us assigned male at birth. It’s an autobiographical musical comedy about Rebecca’s life before transitioning.
Sitting down with Rebecca in a brief moment of sun, we talk about the power of Sondheim and choosing to do a musical for a show about queer identity; and why life never fits in a nice three-act structure.
One part of the Edinburgh Fringe for every performer is being judged; by the audiences, by the industry, by the reviewers, and pretty much every part of the business. Which makes it all the more interesting that Colleen Lavin has not only built a robot to judge her, but it’s doing it live, every day, in from of an audience.
In ‘’Do The Robots Think I’m Funny’, Colleen asks what it means to be insecure in the modern world, how comedy and improv mix, and the differences between a room in Chicago and a room in Edinburgh. Underneath it all is the nagging question of the moment… will we all be replaced by robots?
Featuring cameos from Columbo and The Eiffel Tower, here’s my chat with Sid Singh. His Fringe show for 2023 is “Table for One”, where Sing talks about his dual career as a stand-up comic and human rights advocate - careers that see him taking on the US Government over human rights before dealing with deportation from India while staying in Germany.
The show, which is supporting and raising money for the Centre for Gender and Refugee Studies, asks how you can fight the good fight while you are far away from home.
Emily Walsh brings her show ‘Dad Girl’ from the clubs of New York to the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. Emily does not know if she wants kids, but she would like to be a dad. It’s a show about making decisions in a world where others believe the decision has already been made for you by society.
The Fringe offers something that many comics, including Emily, rarely get. A chance to spend an hour with an audience. That allows more complex topics to be addressed, to go into much greater depth, but also a chance to look at a wider picture. It’s an offer that Emily luxuriates in.
‘Bed The Musical’ is centred around the titular piece of furniture. The show examines a twenty-year-long marriage through the presence of the bed that Alice and Ben bought instead of going on a honeymoon. If beds could tell their own stories, this bed has a tale to tell, and it’s all put to song.
Written by Tim Anfilogoff and Alan Whittaker Bed is a musical about a place we spend a third of our life in, and much more of our life around it, making it, and thinking up new things to do in it.,
Ahead of the show making its worldwide premiere at this year’s Fringe, I spoke to writer Tim Anfilogoff and director Matthew Gould about the devilish divan that can be found at the Gilded Balloon.
Patrick Susmilch has spent time looking back over all the messages, memes, and moments with his friends on social media. Many are still around, yet some have died. Through those older messages, he feels connected to those who have passed on.
Through the medium of PowerPoint presentations, Susmilch introduces us to his dead friends, their impact on his life, the bursts of joy and laughter as well as darker moments. Think Twilight Zone and Black Mirror mixed with Who’s Line Is It Anyway.
If the world is becoming more used to shades of grey, why is infidelity still a black-and-white conflict with a clear villain?
Chloe Radcliffe is one of many comics who has made the trip from the US to Edinburgh this year (something, something. exchange rate, half-price trip, something). Her show. ‘Cheat’ is in the classic fringe style of examining the human condition first through the eyes of the comic and their lived experience, before moving that out to the wider world and finding something intriguing to explore over the hour.
Kuan-wen Huang’s Fringe show for 2023 is ‘Ilha Formosa’, (which means ‘beautiful island’ in Portuguese, a nod towards the sailors who landed on the islands in the 16th century). In it, he talks about how he traded his beloved Taiwan for the rainy British Isles, what it means to be Taiwanese and what it symbolises through generations of migration and shifting identities.
The show does have some autobiographical elements, how could it not given its subject, but it does offer that time-honoured use of comedy to take a sideways look at both politics and the human condition through a medium that makes it easy to talk about complicated issues.
The Edinburgh Fringe is a mix of every genre and emotion; from stand-up and dance, through music, to cabaret and theatre, and beyond, the Fringe swings from light and fluffy to hard-hitting and heavy themes and emotions. It’s the latter that we’re going to talk about in this episode.
Emily Carding is one of the performers in Let The Bodies Pile, the other performer, Henry Naylor, is also the writer. This is an intensely political piece that looks at the reaction to Covid here in the United Kingdom, primarily in nursing homes and how society comes to terms with the decisions made by politicians.
Bedlam Theatre is home to the Edinburgh University Theatre Company… and when August comes around Bedlam Fringe comes around with an eclectic and varied programme of shows. Except it’s not been at the Fringe since 2019.
That changes this year, as the gothic 90-seat theatre opens its doors once more. Ewan sat down with venue manager Marie Rimolsrønning to find out what it takes to return to the Fringe, what Bedlam represents, and some of the shows we can expect.
In today's Fringe 2023 preview, Ewan is joined by long-time friend of the parish Marc Burrows. He’s bringing three shows to Edinburgh this year… a classic stand-up, a second show that talks about what happened in his third show, and a third show that takes us through the life and work of Sir Terry Pratchett.
When did Marc decide to bring Sir Terry to the Fringe, why the footnotes that Pratchett loved are part of the experience, and what was he thinking when he added a third show to his already busy Fringe schedule?
The Edinburgh Fringe is drawing closer, so let's continue our previews, talking to some of the artists who will be arriving in August.
In our second preview ahead of Fringe 2023, Ewan chats with Anu Vaidyanathan about her show 'Blimp', and her busy creative life. She is a comedian, filmmaker, director, and triathlete; Anu brings her show to the Fringe, exploring her nomadic and creative life with the audience.
Our first full preview of the Edinburgh Fringe 2023, and Ewan meets jD Shapiro to talk about his second Edinburgh show “Stories From The Hood To Hollywood”. How does stand-up fit into his career as a writer and director, what did he learn at the Fringe last year, and why has he come back to Edinburgh?
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