Three different true-life stories, three very different styles of storytelling, as witnessed by Dorothy Max Prior at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025

Shows in storytelling mode are very much a thing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is awash with one-person performances of one sort or another. Here, I’m sticking to three shows that tell true-life stories – albeit with very different subjects, and told in very different ways.

First up, Victory Melody with Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak, which has been directed by Mark Thomas. Victoria’s modus operandi is to immerse herself fully in something or-other – in the past, it’s been pigeon-fanciers, beauty pageants, Cruft’s dog show, funeral directors, wig-makers, stand-up comedians and maybe others I’ve forgotten – and after a long phase of deep research to then create installations or theatre pieces that result from that research. But it’s crucial to note that she doesn’t just observe the thing – she gets in there and does it. The resulting shows are always a charming mix of investigation into the subject at hand and autobiographical confession.

When she got divorced, she tells us, she Googled ‘the world turned upside down’ expecting a bit of cosy self-help advice. Instead, her search brought up the Christopher Hill book of the same name, and she found herself immersed in the 17th century world of radical movements such as The Levellers and The Diggers. From here – with perfect Vic logic – this led to her joining an English Civil War re-enactment society, finding herself kitted out in an authentic red wool suit and shoes that have neither a right nor a left foot, but point straight ahead. Perfect for my long toes, says Vic. She then twigged that she’d accidentally joined the wrong side, becoming a Royalist rather than a Roundhead. Never mind!

Settling in to her research, The Diggers become the anti-Royalist movement she most admires – thus called because of their insistence on the right to farm on common land.  Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak takes us on a dizzying journey that draws parallels between the Diggers and contemporary land protectors, ecologists, and food bank heroes; and relays how she became involved in a community centre called The Crew on a deprived council estate in Whitehawk, in which she joined forces with the locals in turning a neglected area overgrown with brambles in to a community vegetable garden. 

Victoria is performing alone – although she has a set of life-sized cardboard cut-outs of her heroes with her to keep her company. There’s Diggers co-founder Gerrard Winstanley (whose mantra was ‘the earth is a shared treasure’); Brighton local legend Dave (a naturalist, not a naturist – Vic says she keeps getting it wrong) who has discovered a new type of insect, the soldier beetle, on Whitehawk Hill; Brian who runs the food bank and manages to access £50,000 worth of cheese to distribute; and Lacey, the lady who runs the Crew Club, and welcomes Vic into the fold. When Vic first moots the idea of the locals playing the Diggers in a re-enactment battle with the Royalists, they are at first sceptical but eventually rally round, and a great time is had by all – including the off-piste battle victory for the Diggers (‘Er, this isn’t historically correct,’ says one of the re-enactment chaps – but never mind, it happens!) – plus, the consumption of vast vats of genuine-recipe 17th century stew. And unlike those busy-bodies from arts orgs who descend on Whitehawk with their ‘pushy, unwanted origami’, Vic is in it for long haul. The current phase of her project ends with Brighton Council turning a blind eye to the JCB used illegally to dig up the brambles, and grants them a 25-year lease on the new community garden… Another victory for our Vic. Who knows who she’ll next embrace! 

A very lovely show, full of tenderness, feisty political suss, and fabulous comic moments.

Also based on historical data comes The Burns Project, in which writer and actor James Clements gives us the story of Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns, a production directed by Cora Bissett that uses Burns’ private letters, papers and other recently-archived documents as its source material.   

The piece is set in a room in The Georgian House, a Robert Adam-designed townhouse run by the National Trust for Scotland. One of the bonuses of going to see the show is the chance to look round this grand house if you arrive early, which is a fabulous treat. When it is time, a group of twenty of us are led upstairs and seated around a table. We are told not to touch anything! All is a creamy white: the calico-covered tabletop, which has a winding gash carved in to it; the platters and goblets; the cutlery and condiments; the ornaments, which include farm animals, trinket boxes and flowers.  

At one end of the room, a musician sits – this is Lisa Rigby, who gives us re-workings of Burns’ songs on acoustic guitar and a beautiful drone-y shruti box. James Clements, in character as Robert Burns, bright eyed and bushy tailed, enters at the other end of the room, and we’re away. 

The following hour is a clever mix of fictional first-person storytelling – ‘Rabbie’ charming us with his own version of his life – interspersed with contemporary commentary delivered through hidden speakers on the table that give us short reflections on the man and his life; and the additionally live commentary through song delivered by the musician. Then, there’s

the fabulous visual storytelling enacted through that long table (designed by Jenny Booth) and those various objects: The gash in the table is lit up with red light as lightning strikes, and with blue as a tiny ship sails along it, on its way to the West Indies. Rabbie’s head appears on a platter, full of remorse, appealing for understanding. The tiny animals tell the tale of the farmer’s son turned poet. Cruets or tiny boxes reveal rings and coins that play a part in the story.

Clements as Burns weaves around the audience, serenading and appealing for love and appreciation – mostly targeting the women in the audience. He holds hands, locks eyes, passes tiny notes, and smiles that beguiling smile. It is very easy to believe that here is Burns, brought back to life to delight and charm us.

But it’s not all red, red roses – the production doesn’t pass over the difficult aspects of Burns’ biography. There’s the maid he impregnates as a teenager and is not permitted to marry, and later (almost as a counterpoint) the pregnant lover he abandons. There’s the relationship with Jean Amour, who he at first is not permitted to marry, but eventually does. There’s the fact that it was only the unexpected success of the publication of his early writings that stopped him sailing off on that boat to Jamaica to work for the enslavers.  There’s the babies who die. The farms that he struggles to keep. And the odd fact that, when his early publishing success peters out, this unconventional Socialist and anti-establishment hero becomes a tax collector in order to pay his bills and keep his family afloat!  

A complicated man, who did so much in a short lifetime – poet, songwriter, collector and cataloguer of Scottish folk songs, farmer, family man and more. It is astonishing to think that that he died at just 37 years of age. 

As we are told early in the production, apart from ‘Happy Birthday’, Burns’ ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is probably the most sung song in the world, compulsory on New Year’s Eve right across the world. ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?’ No, no – never. ‘We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.’ Good to make your acquaintance, Rabbie! I won’t forget you… and I still have my secret letter from you.

Another Scottish production, and more storytelling, this time a bona fide one-man show, although he stands on the shoulders of giants. Or maybe that’s giantesses. For it is Johnny McKnight aka Widow McTwanky – Scotland’s most famous Pantomime Dame. The lights are flashing, the entrance music blasting out, but where is she? She’s behind you! No, really she is – entering from the back of the auditorium in a blue gingham dress, fright-wig and a ‘hideous yet age-appropriate leisure shoe’ – comfy, but red and sparkly, of course. This particular McKnight alter-ego is Dorothy Blawna-Gale – fresh from the Land of Oz. There follows a thrilling hour’s worth of caustic humour, sizzling storytelling, song, dance, and audience participation – which ranges from the gentle engagement of catching packets of sweeties thrown out to the crowd, to the snogging of a gentleman called Alan (‘They’re always called Alan’), and the invitation given to a young woman volunteering to come up on stage and be a Silly Billy – the red-rouged, gormless character usually played by the youngest male member of the company. And yes, we learn, this is how Johnny started out: as a Silly Billy. Later, these interactions all becomes material for reflections on safeguarding, consent and onstage representation.   

All the interactive fun and games was to be expected – but there’s also a good dose of pantomime history woven into the evening; plus a poignant coming out story, documenting Johnny’s personal journey as a young gay man from Silly Billy to Dame, in  the surprisingly heterosexual world of traditional Panto; and concurrently the story of Scottish Panto’s evolution from tabloid-pandering racial caricatures and dodgy jokes to something (under McKnight’s watch as writer, director and performer) far more inclusive and diversified. 

With a costume change from Dorothy’s gingham to fabulous flouncy swan feathers, we get the culmination of the story of Panto’s first full-blown gay kiss, in a reworked version of Jack and the Beanstalk premiered (successfully!) to an audience of infant school children and a Christian bible group.. This is all both jolly good fun, and proper edu-tainment.

Johnny McKnight is a legend in Scotland –and it is great to see She’s Behind You – presented at the Traverse, and directed by John Tiffany – becoming such a big hit of the Edinburgh Fringe 2025.

Featured image (top) James Clements: The Burns Project

Victoria Melody: Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak, Pleasance Courtyard, 14:15

James Clements: The Burns Project, The Georgian House, 18:30 (until 16 August)

Johnny McKnight: She’s Behind You, Traverse Theatre, 21.15 or 21.30

For further information or to book tickets see www.edfringe.co.uk  

A ghost house, a Wheel of Death, a pack of wolves, and a 17-strong ensemble of acrobats from 13 different countries. Four circus shows seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 by Dorothy Max Prior

Circus Hub on the Meadows is always the first port of call for anyone attending the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a yen for world-class circus; and for 2025 they are back with a programme of 11 shows – not only circus but also cabaret, comedy, and variety – presented in their two venues, the Lafayette Big Top and Beauty Spiegeltent.

This year, I saw three shows on the programme, all strictly circus, and all in Lafayette. 

Québec’s Flip Fabrique bring us Six° – a show previously presented online for the Edinburgh Fringe 2021, that odd Covid-ish year when the Fringe returned, but in a reduced hybrid form, with much online. I gave that a miss then, so was very pleased to see it back for real.

It starts with the sound of a thunderstorm, the rain lashing down. Which is ironic as the performance I’d originally been booked in to see the day before had been cancelled due to the massive storms, with 85mph winds sweeping Scotland, and making shows in a circus tent out of the question. So some of us are looking up anxiously – but no, it’s definitely on the soundtrack, not for real. ‘Storms make the flowers fresh again’ we are told.

This is an ensemble show with a cast of five – six if we include the house in which the action takes place, which most definitely has a personality of its own: talking to the occupants, issuing instructions, and sometimes taking the electronic controls into its own hands. There have been numerous sci-fi stories about houses that are seemingly alive, often malevolent, and Ray Bradbury’s HappyLife Home (in short story The Veld) comes to mind at a point in the narrative when a door opens to reveal a red-lit space animated by the roar of lions.

I say ‘narrative’ but this one is very much of the fractured variety. We meet five different occupants, who it would seem have received a mysterious invitation that leads them, on a stormy night, to an old abandoned building deep in the forest. But the house doesn’t look deserted; it is cosily furnished and seems to have a soul. Oddly, the five seem be in residence at different times, or perhaps in different multiverse strands – one in the 1950s, one the 1970s, one the 1990s etc. They are all there, but rarely seem to see each other: to each, the others are more like ghosts than real flesh-and-blood people. 

As for the set: the ‘house’ is a three-walled structure that is tugged around into different permutations throughout the show. There are doors and windows and picture frames and tables and bookshelves – all of which are animated throughout the piece. Frames get pulled off to be used as hoops; a small table become the site for a balancing act; book leaves fly around the space. There’s most definitely an Alice in Wonderland vibe: not least because one of the female performers is dressed in a puff-sleeved frock, Mary-Jane shoes and a large satin hair bow.  

We are given scenes of everyday at-home life that take on a surreal dream-like quality – a way of bringing the circus acts in to the equation. Often, one person is presenting their act – Robert with his deft book/brick-juggling, say – whilst others are interacting with him more as witnesses or silent partners than as co-performers. It’s an interesting dynamic. As far as the circus acts go, we get top-notch juggling, smoothly sensuous hooping, a great female Cyr wheel turn, a lovely two-man acrobalance and tumbling routine, and of course – this is Flip Fabrique, after all – some fantastic trampolining by the boys that’s nicely merged with a female hand-balancing and contortion act, performed on the ‘roof’ of the house. Sonically, there’s a palate of recognisable pre-existing tunes driving the piece forward. We veer from Harry Nilsson’s cheery ‘Coconut’ to Leonard Cohen’s gloriously moving ‘Happens to the Heart’ and on to The Commodores anthemic ‘Brick House’. 

It is no surprise that the show was made during Covid – addressing how we deal with loneliness and isolation, whilst also staying connected to others by remote. It also seems to be portraying the power of the imagination to overcome humdrum realities when stuck indoors. Six° is a very different sort of show to Flip Fabrique’s usual non-stop hi-energy work: slower, more thoughtful, but still thrilling. Most highly recommended!

 
Next up was Nose Dive Assembly, described as ‘big-top circus with heart and spectacle’ from the UK’s Revel Puck Circus. I’d missed this at Brighton Fringe earlier this year, so was glad to catch it in Edinburgh. It’s a hi-energy fun-for-all-the-family spectacle. It’s contemporary circus in its aesthetic – for example, the performers are dressed not in spangly leotards but in unisex jumpsuits or colourfully patterned trousers and shirts – but with much of the structure and good-time vibe of a traditional tented circus. 

That trad structure and vibe is clear in the show’s use of the clown as the communicator with the audience; the person who reminds us with their actions that acrobats are fallible human creatures. The clown also traditionally keeps the audience entertained whilst the riggers and stagehands (or, as is the case in contemporary circus, the other performers) move the kit in to place for the next act. Most of the cast are British trained (I learn from the legendary Charlie Holland that seven are graduates from the National Centre for Circus Arts, aka Circus Space) – with Canadian clown and acrobat Arielle Lauzon the exception. 

Although traditional in function, the fabulous Arielle Lauzon is very much of the contemporary world: a former competitive gymnast who trained at the École de Cirque de Québec. She appears first at the rear of the big top, harnessed and desperate to fly ‘on the wings of a butterfly’. This becomes a thread developed throughout the show – at one point moving through us with a ludicrous contraption of electric fans strapped to her body that she hopes will help her take off; at another point, sporting a giant balloon that covers her whole head. (I’m one of numerous audience members roped in to pump up the balloon.) Eventually, towards the end of the show, she makes do with a butterfly costume and gives us a spectacular mat-based acrobatics routine, proving that she is more than a funny face.

After Arielle’s entrance, we go to Annie Zita on the cloudswing – a fabulously thrilling opening act. The show whizzes by, with many traditional favourites given a contemporary twist, including a great aerial straps act from Imani Vital (I love the performer’s oddly flexed feet, and the moment when she holds hands with her counter-balancer). We get a neat hand-balancing turn from Becky Robins, and a great teeterboard act from Sebastian Parker and Emily Lannigan, to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. There’s also the much-touted Revel Puck USP: a circular stage that rises, with Thorne Bailey and Fiona Thornhill presenting a skilfully synchronised Cyr Wheel routine. Bailey is raised into the air on the platform, whilst Thornhill spins below, the lighting design highlighting each performer in turn. Later, they switch roles, so she is now on the raised platform, and he is below. This is one of numerous shows I see at this year’s Fringe that feature a female Cyr wheel performer: something that used to be a rare occurrence. The times they are a-changing.  

The final act of the show sees Fiona Thornhill and Emily Lannigan back, this time on the Wheel of Death, that most traditional of circus acts, although this is the only one in the UK (perhaps in the world, I don’t know!) that is performed by two women. If you don’t know what this is, imagine two giant hamster wheels on a pivoting metal structure, one performer inside each wheel, walking then twisting and turning as the wheel turns at a faster and faster pace, reversing direction now and then. The choice of music – Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’ – is great. The mesmeric, repetitive loop of the song suits the act perfectly. The complicity between the performers, the timing and the sensitive response to the music makes this act more than a traditional circus spectacle. It’s a great finale to a lovely show that is daring, funny, and totally entertaining. Bravo Revel Puck – it feels that British circus is flying off with flair into new dizzying heights, occupying territories previously claimed by the traditional tented circus companies, and infusing them with a funky feminist vibe. 

Finally, Circa: Wolf is my third show of the day at the Circus Hub, again in the Lafayette big top tent – although this is a predominantly floor-based acrobatic show, so height is rarely needed. 

Hardly surprising with Wolf as the title, the show features a lot of hunting and stalking movements; and a lot of pack work. Dressed in sleek, tight-fitting black and fawn costumes (designed by Libby McDonnell), the ten-strong company arrive on stage with a ferocious energy, within minutes creating three-high towers or staggering stacks of six people on one base.  The pack runs in circles, spreads out into straight lines, huddles in big or small groups – with a breathtaking move from one complex acrobalance or hand-to-hand tableau to another, human towers rising and falling (often sideways, which is terrifying), people swung or thrown to other people; and links of fast-paced solo acrobatics into and out of position.

At one point the group moves into a capoeira-style roda or inward facing circle, different partnerships of men with men, men with women, and women with women, playing out battles to be leader of the wolf pack. This being Circa, female bases are a given – the women here are strong and fierce. There’s a lovely scene where the wolf theme seems to be taken into the domain of the gay male nightclub; an all-male tussle for intimacy and the role of top dog.

There are just two breaks in the ferociously fast floor action, one for a female aerial straps performer who acts out what seems to be a twisted marionette motif, although perhaps it is intended as a captured animal. But this is me constructing narrative: it is robotic and staccato, and feels quite different in tone to the rest of the show. There’s also a male rope act – like the straps act, top-notch of course (there wouldn’t be anything less in a Circa show) but again I can’t quite decide if it is really needed. Perhaps if everything were floor-based I might be craving something else, but both times the arrival of aerial equipment feels slightly out of kilter. 

As for the scenography and sound design: Circa have commissioned a hardcore techno score for Wolf from DJ Ori Lichtik. And it is pretty relentless! At times the bass really works its way into your guts, adding to the edginess of the piece. There is no set, and no equipment other than the aforementioned aerial straps and corde lisse rope. The lighting design gives us scenes lit with a tooth-and-claw blood red, and an eery jungle green. There is sometimes smoke haze. But the main impression is of a tabula rasa, on which director Yaron Lifschitz has written a thrilling physical story  – animal magic meets stupendous human achievement. As ever, Circa are the crowing glory of the Circus Hub programme.

Away from The Meadows and over at the grandiose indoor venue Assembly at the Mound, we find The Genesis from Copenhagen Collective – a 17-strong ensemble based in Scandinavia but drawn from all over the world, with artists from Denmark, Australia, Peru, Canada, UK, Uruguay, Chile, Portugal, USA, Germany, Ireland, France and Guinea. Phew, that is indeed an international line-up!

There are many crossovers with Circa, and I think it would be fair to say that without Circa, The Genesis (and very many other contemporary circus shows) would never have existed. Dressed like gymnasts, not entertainers, in unisex dark lycra? Check. Amazing ensemble skills, with phenomenal complicity, super-precise timing, and a breathtaking move from one ‘picture’ to another? Check. Female strength and power highlighted, with women bases the norm throughout the show rather than the exception? Check. This is no criticism: the Copenhagen Collective are a newly-formed ensemble, and Circa have been going for 20-plus years. I remember seeing Circa’s first appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe, and like everyone else was astonished at witnessing the role that the women performers played, the focus on power not prettiness. We hadn’t seen anything like it! Two decades on, this is routine in much contemporary circus worldwide – younger artists probably think nothing of it.  Which can only be a good thing.

The Genesis, like Circa’s Wolf, is less a narrative show than a themed show, and on similar territory. We seem to be witnessing the exploration of the human soul versus the animal spirit. It is purely floor-based: there is no aerial or other non-acrobatic acts. No equipment, no set. Everything is down to the human body – and mostly the 17-strong ensemble are all on stage at once, morphing from one extraordinary grouping to another. Thus, we have at one point early in the show a five triple towers, which makes for a fantastic stage image. There’s a lot of hero-and-chorus work – solo performers emerging from circles or huddles. I love the strange tower of bodies that grows from a heap on the floor, people standing on the shoulders or chests of others. There’s a fabulous ‘resurrection’ scene where 16 bodies are lying prone on the floor and one person animates them by tugging on a body part, each revived person going on to revive another. There’s also a great party scene, with waves of performers progressing forward in different combos, vogueing and reaching out to the audience – one of the few points when the fourth wall is broken. Another occurs when a lone man is thrown out of an upstage huddle of bodies, rights himself, and says ‘hi’ to us slightly sheepishly. I enjoy these theatrical moments – the first half of the piece is full of fabulously skilled acrobatics, but rather dense in its relentless onslaught of astonishing tricks and turns, with towers rising and falling, three- or four- or five-way acrobalance ‘sculptures’ developing and dissolving – but with a feeling that the performers are behind a glass wall. When that wall is shattered, the show becomes stronger.

The stage set-up is simple – looking quite a bit like a school gymnasium, in fact. The lighting is minimal, mostly blue and white; and the music a good mix, interspersing relentlessly beat-driven scenes with more moody string sections, and including a few pre-recorded autobiographical-confessional texts about control and vulnerability, reminding me of Les 7 Doigts’ show Traces. So yes – echoes of other company’s work – but it’s own thing too. What is most extraordinary is to see so many fabulously skilled human bodies working together so harmoniously. And really – how often do you see a four-high tower? As they take their bow, the full house at the Mound go wild in their appreciation. It’s not my favourite Fringe circus show this year, but it is one of the best – predictably, a sure-fire hit.

Featured image (top): Revel Puck Circus: Nose Dive Assembly

Flip Fabrique: Six°, Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (The Lafayette), 14:05

Revel Puck Circus: Nose Dive Assembly, Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (The Lafayette) | 16:10

Circa:Wolf, Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (The Lafayette), 18:20

Copenhagen Collective: The Genesis, Assembly at the Mound, 12:30

For more information or to book tickets, see www.edfringe.com

A trio of physical theatre shows that reference or usurp variety, vaudeville and cabaret traditions, as seen by Dorothy Max Prior at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 

A&E Comedy have been blazing a trail these past few years, making feisty feminist physical comedy that’s not afraid to address topics that most shy away from, not least the fear of the crone, and the delights and terrors of the ageing female body, in shows such as Enter the Dragons and Witch Hunt. Their latest show, Do All the Things, presented at Assembly Checkpoint, is a slightly different beast – in some ways more mainstream and Ed Fringe friendly – although their trademark mix of caustic humour, clowning suss, ludicrous costumes, and general silliness is still upfront. 

At the start of the show we meet a pair of end-of-the-pier comedians, Cyril Suckit and Sammy See. (Collectively known as Suck it and See, see?) With their sparkly tuxedos, toupés, and protruding rubber teeth, they are a fair parody of your friendly neighbourhood avuncular entertainer of yore. They sing the show’s theme tune ‘Do All the Things’ to the tune of ‘It’s Raining Men’ and introduce the special guests and fun-for-all-the-family participatory games, the highlight of which is the special version of bingo with interactive tasks such as swearing in foreign languages, drawing portraits of your neighbour without looking at the page, and muff-spotting. As for the guests – who are (of course) all played by our trusty clowns Emma Edwards and Abigail Dooley – we meet an endocrinologist who tells terrible jokes (‘How do make a hor-mone? Refuse to pay her’), a dementedly-dancing glam rocker clad in silver foil, and a naturist who invites us to come and hug a tree, all the while confiscating all our unnecessary worldly possessions (jackets, iphones, bags), reassuring us that we’ll feel a lot lighter without all this materialist baggage. Then comes a very silly send up of the Marina Abramović  piece Rhythm 0, in which audience members are invited to take any object from the table to use in any way they like on the artist’s body. Thus, our intrepid artists find themselves wearing bunny ears, daubed in lipstick, and with custard pies splattered on their chests. Is nothing sacred? No, thank goodness.

There’s a clever device to allow for costume changes, with a film shown to us between skits purporting to be a live feed from the dressing room, the two squabbling about what sketch to do next, and deconstructing the content of the show with mock-academic seriousness. There’s also, less successfully, a series of parody TV ads that fall a little flat. 

Emma and Abigail are seasoned clowns, and the show feels well-held, with the copious quantity of audience participation moments managed with great aplomb (and hats off also to the pair’s glamorous assistants, playing trees, bears etc.) For me, a veteran appreciator of the company’s work, the core content of Do All The Things wasn’t quite as strong as their previous two creations, but this is nevertheless a very good Edinburgh Fringe show, and audiences new to their work were clearly delighted not only with what they witnessed but with what they were drawn in to so expertly. Do suck it and see!

There’s a connection to the next show, Rabbits Out of the Hat, that I didn’t know until I found myself in the queue for it at Pleasance Dome with both Abigail and Emma – it turns out that Abigail directed it. 

Norvill and Josephine are our hosts, purportedly a brother and sister variety act. He’s a Master Magician with ‘a cape, courage and cojones’. She’s his glamorous assistant, sawn in half in the Cabinet of Swords, performing the elegant dance routines created by her mother. But it’s 1905 and the Suffragettes are in town – soon the tables are turned and the rabbit is indeed pulled out of the hat…

The show is not a pastiche: it features bona fide magic tricks (levitation, escapology, transformation) from Magic Circle member Christopher * playing Norvill; and fabulous contortion and acrobatic dance from Desiree, plus vaudevillian panache, and a great rapport with the audience. The story of the siblings who realise (she first, then he) that they are not content to have their identities defined by what they have inherited from their parents progresses in a breathless, whirlwind mix of circus-and-magic rich cabaret acts and narrative that quietly and lovingly deconstructs assigned gender roles in society, proving that identity politics can be fun. An uplifting and inspiring show. Plus, we get to take home an origami rabbit!

Over at Assembly Roxy, there’s a fabulous demonstration of physical theatre and cabaret skills from Luciano Rosso, one half of the team that created the Total Theatre Award winning show Un Poyo Rojo. His solo piece, Apocalipsync, is a magnificent melée of diva dancing, contortionism, bone-cracking (with a comical twist), lip syncing.

There’s a simple set of a stage-wide plastic shower curtain – peeked through, flounced through, transformed into an odd kind of ballgown – plus, used as a screen to project onto. There’s an excellent lighting and a sound design that incorporates romantic Boleros, banging house tunes, barking dogs, fighting neighbours, clanging pots, and soundbites from world leaders (Trump, Boris Johnson, and numerous other foreign ones I don’t recognise) reminding us that we have a pandemic on our hand. ‘Stay indoors’ says Boris, inviting a titter from the audience. For yes, this is 2020 – and Apocalipsync is the show that Luciano devised whilst in solitary confinement, his lockdown nightmare morphing into a moonage daydream of disco dancing, lone karaoke, ostrich impersonations, and playing flamenco air guitar. The plastic curtain is a clever choice as once we realise the context it evokes the protection measures in hospitals, taxis and shops that become so normalised so quickly. Had I known this was a ‘lockdown’ show I might not have come, but as it is, I was very glad I did. It’s probably the only show about the lockdown that I’d want to see, though – a joyful celebration of the pleasures of a solo life. 

A&E Comedy: Do All The Things, Assembly Checkpoint, 14.45

Norvill & Josephine: Rabbits Out of the Hat, Pleasance Dome / King Dome,11.35

Luciano Rosso: Apocalipsync, Assembly Roxy, 17:25

For further information and to book tickets, see edfringe.com 

A tale of love and luck told with dolls and toy vehicles, Ulysses for children featuring pop-up books and paper cuts, and a deconstructed King Lear replete with puppets and projections. Then, there’s a beatnik poet pickled onion, a story featuring animated lesbian vampire bunnies, and a crisp-stealing flock of birds. Some of the visual theatre treats seen by Dorothy Max Prior at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 

Visible Fictions’ show Up – presented at Gilded Balloon, and aimed at a teen and young adult audience – is a breathless two-hander exploring luck and love, the odds of surviving a plane crash, and Heraclitus’ Union of Opposites. As the piece starts, we encounter two people who find themselves sitting next to each other on a long-haul flight. One, Jay, is the luckiest man in the world – as a baby, he was the only survivor of a plane crash that killed his parents, subsequently got supported by an anonymous benefactor, became a trader who made a million, and has now quit to tour the world. Jayme, on the other hand, is also an orphan, raised by her granny – but has encountered bad luck at every step of the way, her mournful history of trips and falls, bangs and crashes, and tragical lost loves relayed with sharp humour.

Blending new writing, physical theatre, and object manipulation, the piece is skillfully directed by Duggie Irvine, and performed with enormous precision and feeling by the two actors, Zoe Hunter and Michael Dylan, who have a fabulous on-stage complicity, fielding a dizzyingly complex choreography of tiny figures and vehicles, toy animals, dolls, suitcases, umbrellas, balloons, cakes, wine glasses, playing cards, and photographs. Phew, it is exhausting just watching them!

Some of those suitcases turn out to have tiny worlds inside – from Hawaiian volcanoes to the elusive Loch Ness Monster. Unlucky Jayme and Lucky Jay’s life stories unfold in between scenes of plane turbulence (and worse), performed with excellent physical theatre timing and panache; and tongue-in-cheek whiteboard lectures on airplane safety statistics, speculation on what is actually meant by ‘good’ and ‘bad luck, and that crucial theory of the Union of Opposites. What goes up, must come down. But what comes down must also go up…

A refreshingly ambiguous story that gives no trite answers to conundrums posed, and offers us numerous possible endings to the tale – but it is clear that whatever the outcome for our two protagonists, love trumps death.

Meanwhile, over at Pleasance Courtyard, Branar’s You’ll See offers us James Joyce’s Ulysses for children. Really? In under an hour? Yes, really! Solo performer Helen Gregg pulls it off with the help of three beautifully designed pop-up books (the story’s told in three parts, naturally) and a whole ensemble of paper-cut people, plus a lovely little mechanical diorama, which gives us the passing streets of the city as Paddy Digram’s funeral carriage passes slowly by. There’s a great soundtrack of waltzes and found-sounds of Dublin streets, bars and sea shores; and Helen Gregg delivers it all in a very deft and welcoming storytelling mode that manages to convey the essence of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Molly Bloom’s 24-hour odyssey without ever talking down to the young ’uns. 

As the piece proceeds, we learn that ’‘Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves’.

The pop-up books are truly a thing of beauty, giving us gorgeous representations of key sites in the book. Thus, we encounter the start of the story, the dawn of 16 June 1904, with Stephen Dedalus on Sandycove Strand, musing on the ‘snot green sea’ – one of many inclusions of tiny snippets of Joyce’s text into the piece. The children in the audience enjoy Stephen taking a wee, then picking his nose and depositing a bogy on the rocks. We move into town, passing through the National Library, the Freeman’s Journal offices and printing press, and Davy Byrne’s pub. Switching to Leopold and Molly Bloom’s stories, we enter their house on Eccles Street; the butcher’s shop where ‘Mr Leopold Bloom [who] ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls buys his breakfast pork kidney’; Sweeny’s Pharmacy, where Bloom purchases lemon soap for Molly; and the Post Office, where the content of the letters Leopold has been exchanging with a lady friend are brushed over nicely by our storyteller, who tells us that ‘we’ll have to miss some things out of the story as we haven’t time, and this is one of them’ – with an ironic nod to the adults in the audience. 

Of course, this is just a taster of Joyce’s Ulysses – but is it an enjoyable one, and does it make us want to read (or re-read) the book? Yes, yes, and yes!

Another Irish company – this time an ensemble – and a retelling of a very different sort can be found at The Traverse, where Irish playwright and filmmaker Dan Colley’s Lost Lear plays out as a deconstructed, reimagined version of Shakespeare’s King Lear – or perhaps, more precisely, the production uses Lear as a springboard for a meta-theatrical exploration of a whole host of ‘difficult subjects’ including dementia, absent parent-neglected child dynamics, honouring the needs of ‘the child within’, setting relationship boundaries…  

‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ We start in a rehearsal studio, where a young actress (played by Venetia Bowe) is working through her preparations for her exciting new role – she’s to play King Lear. The first big twist of the story comes early (so I feel OK about this revelation), as we discover that in fact we are inside a nursing home, and what we are witnessing is an elderly dementia patient, Joy, engaged in a Groundhog-day series of rehearsals for a production of King Lear that will never happen. Her director and co-actor Liam – who is in fact her therapist (played by Manus Halligan) – explains to Conor, her estranged son come to visit (played by Peter Daly), that this charade is vital to preserve her sense of self-worth. Imagined as a foil to the female Lear, the son has been cast as Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia in the latest ‘rehearsal’. Conor is not convinced. As the play progresses, the difficult history of Joy and Conor’s relationship is unearthed.  

The cast are all great. I especially like Peter Daly as Conor – played with fantastic subtlety, a powerhouse of shifting emotions. That Joy is played by a young woman – and her rather over-the-top stage presence – seems odd at first, but all makes complete sense as the story unfolds. It is a visually rich show, with  puppetry, projections and live-feed video playing a vital part in the piece. The two puppeteers, Em Ormonde and Clodagh O’Farrell, do a sterling job, not just with the large-scale puppet when it eventually appears, but in ‘puppeteering’ Venetia-as-Joy, and the space itself with (for example) hand-held fans creating the ‘winds that blow’.

A thought-provoking show broaching difficult subjects – and a clever dramaturgy, with the reveals coming slowly but surely as the piece progresses, until eventually the jigsaw puzzle is completed. And what a joy to see a big, bold stage design (courtesy of Andrew Clancy and the rest of the design, film, costume, AV, sound and lighting team) and a five-strong ensemble onstage. So many of this year’s Fringe shows, even at the Traverse, seem to be one-person shows. 

But one person can populate the stage with a whole array of wonderful characters, for sure. Take Ruxy Cantir’s Pickled Republic, for example – a fabulously absurdist piece, in which we are invited into a world of vegetables sat inside a pickle jar. 

We meet a melodramatic tomato (‘Eat me! Eat me!’), a crooning potato-head burlesque queen, a Beatnik poet silverskin onion who delivers killer one-liners like ‘I have layers’ and ‘I’ll make you cry’; and a breastfed baby carrot with a melancholic penchant for sludge. Plus, best of all, a trance-dancing, strip-teasing pickled cucumber mime artist trying to get out of aforementioned glass jar.

If I have a quibble, it’s perhaps to wonder if potatoes and tomatoes do get pickled. Perhaps they do! But never mind – this is a great show. Surreal clowning, puppetry and mask – performed with panache by Ruxi Cantir; directed by Total Theatre Award winning puppeteer Shona Reppe. Totally batty, totally fabulous physical comedy. My kind of funny, for sure…

I had high hopes of Surreally Good by Scott Turnbull. We are promised ‘live lo-fi animations on an old overhead projector, catchy songs played badly on a miniature Casio Keyboard, and a series of unexpectedly tender moments’ and yes – all of this happens, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of its parts. On the ‘minus’ side, I find the framing device of an ‘edu-tainment’ lecture by the son of a famous projectionist wears thin after a while, and whilst the arts funding bodies’ obsession with ‘youth engagement’ and ‘the environment’ does deserve to be mocked, the send-ups here don’t quite hit the mark. The songs are awful – not funny awful, just plain awful. He says ‘fuck’ a lot, as if it were something naughty and alternative, rather than the bog-standard go-to of every emerging Fringe comedian – which gets tiresome. But comedy is a funny thing – one man’s meat is another woman’s poison, and I just didn’t find the show funny a lot of the time. 

But now for the plusses. I like a lot of the visual art/theatre work. I enjoy the Tony Hart-Vision On audience portrait drawing scene. The use of the OHP is great – in-character one-man-band fumbling and all. The little stories within the story, featuring some very lovely hand-drawn and live-animated illustrations, colour acetates, and shadow-puppetry silhouettes are great. I especially like the lesbian vampire bunnies story; and the drowned dog wearing glasses is great. When the ‘how my dad met my mum’ story – threatening to be told at various points in the show – finally comes, via the OHP, it is worth the wait, a wonderfully tall tale of life at sea. 

So, some very lovely things in here, but it feels as though the artist/performer has thrown all his eggs into one basket to make this show, and it is not quite working for me, although the Summerhall audience were laughing merrily. And we were given badges, always welcome – even if it’s not a Blue Peter badge (one of very many BBC TV and radio show references in the show!). For me, the visual theatre and animation aspects of the piece were the most interesting element. I’d happily see those lovely little illustrated stories framed in a simpler way…  there’s a great show in here trying to find its way out.

Finally, renowned Scottish family theatre company Red Bridge Arts celebrated its 10th anniversary with the UK and European premiere of Pekku at Zoo Southside, as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase. Created as a co-production with Japan’s ROHM Theatre in Kyoto and Ricca Ricca Festival, Pekku has already delighted audiences throughout Japan – the show is word-free, and a physical and visual delight, so crosses boundaries with ease. It’s devised by award-winning children’s theatre artists Andy Manley, Ian Cameron, and Shona Reppe – the award-winning team behind the Total Theatre Award winning show White. 

Pekku ‘takes a playful look at what happens when you just want to be left alone and others have a very different idea’. It is aimed at 3 to 6-year-olds, so I brought 4-year-old Juno and 6-year-old Saorsa with me… 

The solo performer is the highly talented Andy Manley – such a lovely, gentle clown presence, who the children warmed to immediately. From the start, we know we are in a safe pair of hands. The stage is set with just two ‘washing lines’ stretched across the performance space. Andy appears flapping like a giant bird in a big yellow-green garment that turns out – once he has disentangled himself from it – to be a tent. Somehow, from within the tent, or inside a small brown suitcase he is holding, the following objects materialise: a small table, a chair, a toilet roll on a dispenser, a red flag, a bat (and imaginary ball!), and a packet of crisps. Meanwhile, on the washing line, we see a little yellow bird – a peg, but we immediately believe it is a bird when it starts to chirp. There then ensues an escalating battle between man and bird – or birds, as more and more arrive – over those tasty crisps. Crisps eaten, Andy calls Deliveroo and orders more… and more… and more…

It’s a totally delightful story, told through visual imagery, physical action, and a terrific soundtrack of cheeps, squealing tyres, delivery van honks, and the loud crunching of crisps. We all have our favourite moments, but agree that the birdie disco inside the tent is truly terrific. Oh, and I said it was word free but my young companions remind me that there is one word: “shoo!”. And the girls have a theory about the character Andy is playing: he’s not a man, but a big bird, called Pekku, who disguised himself as a man! And who knows, perhaps they are right. 

Such a great show to see on my final day in Edinburgh for this year’s Fringe – ticks all the total theatre boxes brilliantly!

Featured image (top): Ruxandra Cantir: Pickled Republic

Visible Fictions: Up, Gilded Balloon at 5.40pm

Branar: You’ll See, Pleasance Courtyard at 12.00

Ruxandra Cantir: Pickled Republic, Summerhall at 1.15pm 

Dan Colley: Lost Lear, Traverse, various times

Scott Turnbull: Surreally Good, Summerhall, 11.35

Red Bridge Arts: Pekku, Zoo Southside  1–9 August 2025

For more information or to book shows, see www.edfringe.com