Claim OwnershipThe Edinburgh Fringe Show, with Ewan Spence
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© Ewan Spence, The Podcast Corner, 2022
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Explore the world-renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Ewan Spence through a mix of reviews, news, and interviews.
120 Episodes
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Ten years ago, a single-hander show turned up at the Fringe… Rebecca Perry with ‘Confessions Of A Redheaded Coffeshop Girl’, which starts as “what if a coffeeshop with David Attenborough?” A hook that brought you in, before the performance and the piece delightfully dragged you further… a further that included an interview on this podcast.
Ten years later, Rebecca is back at the Fringe, and ten years later, Rebecca is back on the podcast.
What is the impact of a critically acclaimed show at the Fringe on a career? Why bring a show back? And how much of a personal show can remain the same after a decade of growth and performance?
One of the delights of the Fringe is learning something new. Theatre is the great educator, hiding it within music, within moments, and sometimes even with mime.
For me, the life and work of Sutara Gayle is one of those moments. She was a pioneering female deejay on London’s infamous reggae scene in the 1980s, which earned her a first record contract; she lived through personal tragedy that sparked the Brixton Uprising, and her work with the LGBTQAI+ community, especially within the Afro-Caribbean community, is rightly celebrated.
She is bringing some of her life to the Fringe in The Legends of Them, a unique theatrical, shared spiritual experience. An ethralling force, I spoke to her ahead of the show arriving in Edinburgh.
One of the key returns for many acts and troupes from the Fringe is to come away with an award. There’s an insane amount of competition to win one, but they can set the tone of your career for the following years.
But what does it take to manage and run one of the awards?
The ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards started in the years after Covid-19, and brought a fresh look at the comedy scene across the Fringe. With over 700 shows to see, it’s a vast undertaking to see, to judge, and to decide. On the four awards - best show, best newcomer, best tech, and panel prize
I decided to find out more, and spoke to ISH’s Sarah Bowles.
There are so many puns available to me from today's show. “The World’s Greatest Lover” is a new musical debuting at the Fringe, but with international ambitions beyond Pleasance One.
Writers Julien Salvia and Ludovic-Alexandre Vidal bring the titular lovers from the annals of history. Romeo, Casanova, Cyrano de Bergerac, the Marquis de Sade and MC Saint Valentine to the Fringe stage. Not only is this a closer look at five different types of love, it’s also a chance for some great new pop standards.
Julien and Ludo, on a rather long-distance call from Australia, talk about how they cho
Kinder is an excellent example of a show taking risks at the Fringe, both for the production and the audience.
There are hints on what to expect on paper - a story of a Drag Queen preparing a “comedy roast” but finding out with an hour to go, it’s actually a booking for a children’s story time show. In that short liminal space, there is some theatrical magic that lifts the story to something powerful, reflective, and vitally important.
It’s the Fringe at its best. I caught up with the team behind the show - producer and performer Ryan Stewart and director Tiah Bullock to find out more.
Accomplished jazz trumpeter Jay Phelps debuts at the Fringe this year with Miles. It’s a look back on the life of Jazz virtuoso Miles Davis in general, and the creation of the album “Kind Of Blue” in particular.
It mixes in many disciplines, including the acting talents of Benjamin Akintuyos as Davis, the music of the album, and Phelps’ music talents on the trumpet. Not only that, but Phelps has 20 years of music and performance in his CV, but this is his first move into acting.
I caught up with Jay earlier today to talk about the impact and relevance of Kind of Blue, the influence it has had on his life, and what it’s like to meet your hero on stage.
Jay Saunders and Nick Cheng are from Project Comedy; a part of Project Recce, which helps Military Veterans and Service Leavers to move from military service to civilian employment.
As they describe it, “military humour is more than just entertainment—it’s a survival tool. It forges camaraderie, boosts morale, and keeps teams strong in the toughest conditions. Now, through Project COMEDY, veterans can harness that same power of humour to improve their well-being, master new skills, and stand out in civilian careers.”
This is the first year that the Project Comedy team has brought shows to Edinburgh. The Fringe can offer more, so I listen to Jay and Nick as they talk about the power of healing that the Fringe can offer, how the Fringe can help introduce the Project to a broader audience, and how this will help build the project for the future.
As week 2 starts here in Edinburgh, let’s welcome Narin Oz to the pod. Returning to the Fringe with her fourth show, Inner Child(ish) sees Oz looking to reconnect with her titular inner child … through the medium of the Tom Hanks motion picture Castaway.
Her inner child misbehaves, breaks rules, and flips reality around. Behind all this is Narin learning to live in a world of neurotypical people surrounding her neurodiversity. Why live in reality when you can skip over, under, around, and through it?
Today, we listen to Annie Lareau talk about her life, which she is bringing to the Fringe in the show Fuselage.
Annie was meant to be flying home from the UK with 35 university classmates for Christmas in 1988. They changed to an earlier flight, and Anie, who couldn’t afford the fee, stayed behind, as her friend boarded Pan Am 103. A flight where a bomb exploded, crashing the aircraft into the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
This ensemble piece threads Annie’s life with that of the people of Lockerbie and the scrutiny of the terrorist incident, how Annie faced debilitating grief, panic attacks, and nightmares in the decades afterwards.
It’s also a look at treasuring moments and relationships in an unpredictable and sometimes cruel world.
1984 is a story that has been told countless times and becomes more relevant every time it is told.
Box Tale Soup brings their version of the classic warning to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. I caught up with Noel Byrne to talk about the challenge involved in bringing a classic to the stage. Box Tale Soup has established itself as one of the leading puppetry companies coming to the Fringe over the last few years, and I explore how the company came to that part of the arts world and how they learned their skills.
With that, what can this stylised approach bring to 1984? What different techniques can be taken, and when was the decision on the puppet roles and the human roles made?
What if Cabaret, disaster movie, philosophy, and Geri Halliwell? You get Apocalypse Cabaret: Songs for the End of the World!
To learn more about this one-woman cabaret show, I talk with Scout Durwood as she brings this dark delight to the Edinburgh Fringe. With a mix of original songs, standards and a dash of existentialism, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.
This is Durwood’s first play, which means balancing between sticking to the page and performing for a live audience, and why cabaret thrives with restricted budgets. There’s also the small matter of some of the comparisons in the press release… why Bette Midler?
One of the delights of the Edinburgh Fringe is finding something that’s just a single step to the side of your average show. It’s in those little side streets where you can find something spectacular.
Kit Loyd is on one of those side streets. He’s brought Frenzy to the Fringe, a delightful and engaging mix of comedy, physical theatre, and mime. It’s also his first full hour at the Fringe.
I sat down with Kit to talk about bringing a debut show to Edinburgh, his expectations, and how he discovered that his forte is mime and physicality.
Today’s guest is Saaniya Abbas. From the UAE comedy scene, she is the first local comic to officially debut a solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe this August.
How do you go from a sheltered upbringing in New Delhi to a sometimes controversial comedy career? We talk about Sanniya’s background and her first steps in comedy, before finding wider acclaim and turning a hobby into a profession.
Some will know him from the dim and distant past as Barry Ferns. Edinburgh Fringe historians will know him as Lionel Ritchie. Others in the comedy scene of 2025 will know him, once more, as Barry Ferns.
And there you have the premise for his Fringe show, My Seven Years As Lionel Ritchie. This strong narrative hour charts the highs and lows of being a professional comic at the Fringe, the lead up to the shows, the many years of “this year is the one”, the debt, the bankruptcy, and the return to the scene.
We touch on many of these subjects in today’s interview to give you a flavour of what all performers face at the Fringe, as well as putting Barry's work at Angel Comedy and The Bill Murray into context.
This week's Fringe preview takes in not only a Fringe show, but the evolution of social media storytelling itself.
Grace Helbig and I start by talking about he early days of content creation on the internet... I started podcasting with the Fringe Show in 2005 while Grace started during the first flush of YouTube in 2006.
That starts us down a path of online personae, presenting yourself, and the grind of content… which was then disrupted with Grace’s diagnosis of breast cancer. Her Fringe show, “Let Me Get This Off My Chest,” is about the journey from that point, and taking it while in the public eye.
As we head through July, we'll be bringing you preview interviews that help set the scene for Fringe 2025. That could be the history of the Fringe, how traditional and online media impact the arts, the future of the Festival in Edinburgh, and the impact it can have.
In our first preview, Ewan Spence meets Henry Naylor to talk about his new solo show 'Monstering The Rocketman,' a timely drama about press values through the lens of Elton John and his libel case against The Sun in the 1980s.
The Edinburgh Fringe Show started in 2005, and as Fringe 2025 appears on the horizon, we're going to get started on our 21st season covering the largest arts festival in the world.
We have a few traditions in these parts. One of those is our prologue podcast—a chance to ensure the website, podcast feed, and all the other digital components are ready to go. We'll have weekly preview interviews through July to help set the scene, before a rush of recordings in August.
As always, we have the music of Daniel Cainer to remind us what it's like to be in Edinburgh at this time of year.
And with that, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024 comes to an end. Trying to capture everything that happened is a task worthy of Hercules, so I hope that I've brought you a flavour of the Fringe during August.
The Fringe has always faced challenges from its first days to this year and beyond. Instead of an interview to close out August, I wanted to talk a little about our Fringe community and my hope that over the next year, we can all listen to everyone's concerns and work on solutions that benefit everyone.
Let's ensure that when we all return to Edinburgh in 2025, the Edinburgh Fringe is the best it can be.
As we come to the end of week three, we sit down with Anthony Alderson, director of The Pleaseance Theatre Trust.
We touch on several critical issues running one of the largest venues at the Edinburgh Fringe, including the continuing impact of COVID and the importance of government funding to the Fringe community and The Pleasance. Given the cost of the Fringe is on everyone's minds, we talk about turnover, tickets, and artistic risk.
We also talk about the work of The Plesance to support and promote the arts at Edinburgh in August and throughout the rest of the year, including various Pleasance Futures projects and the ambition of creating sustainable touring for theatre in the UK.
Tim Benzie joins us on the show today to talk about his two Fringe shows, "It's A Mystery" and "Solve Along A Murder She Wrote". Yes, he loves his cosy crime shows, but doesn't everyone secretly love a mystery?
We start with the rules of detective fiction before our talk turns to Agatha Christie and Dame Angela Lansbury, how you can do a solve-along-a with a murder, and the advantages of having two shows at the Fringe where one is guaranteed to get the ticket sales.
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