Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre and comedy reviews: An Alternative Helpline for the End of the World | At That Time, Byeon | La Codista/The Queuer | This is Not a Play (It’s a Pathetic Cry for Help) | The Death & Life of All of Us | Meat Boy | Lucy and Friends | Crizards: This Means War

Our latest batch of theatre and comedy reviews includes some boldly told true stories, an upfront alternative cabaret extravaganza, and a curious consultation with an existential counsellor.

An Alternative Helpline for the End of the World ***

Summerall (Venue 27) until 27 August

“Any questions?” asks Glasgow artist Katrine Turner, at the end of my consultation. Yes! Many! But that’s surely the point. An Alternative Helpline for the End of the World is a neat Fringe curiosity: a fifteen-minute phone call which costs less than a pint and dispenses personalised advice for coping with the end times.

Inspired by Turner’s stint on COVID-19 helplines during the first lockdowns, this “alternative” sits somewhere between dystopian fantasy and uncomfortable reality.

My apocalyptic diagnosis requires a series of clunky YES/NO questions. Such bluntness forces concrete answers to existential statements, and Turner’s polite professionalism makes the whole experience even more uncanny. To avoid potential spoilers, I’ll keep the nature of my advice to myself, but it was surprising and beautiful: an opportunity to think about agency, power, and blame.

Still, much like calling HMRC, the process itself feels vague and cyclical. Turner’s Helpline is both compassionate and almost icily cold, and I feel a strong urge to ask for another go, to have another chance at solving the unsolvable. Lucky that Turner’s performance is also available to watch for free most days in Summerhall’s Old Ticket Booth, with each new caller’s details withheld, of course.

Katie Hawthorne

An Alternative Helpline For The End of the World (Photo Copyright Brian Hartley)

At That Time, Byeon ***

Greenside @ Nicolson Square (Venue 209) until 19 August

Based on the true story of a murder in 1930s Korea, Theatre Haddangse’s black comedy is a towering achievement of visual storytelling and object theatre, let down only by a flimsy plot.

The play centres around the eponymous Byeon, a Korean maid employed by the Boss and his Japanese wife, Madam. When Byeon catches Madam in a clinch with the suave Salesman, and is seduced into an affair with the Boss, sexual intrigue and colonial tensions come to a head with fatal results.

A stirring homage to the tradition of silent filmmaking, the show is undoubtedly a tremendous study in style. Evocative foley effects and elegant projection work by its ensemble cast is truly spellbinding stuff, so much so that a sex scene between two lamps noticeably raises the temperature in the theatre.

For all its undeniable beauty, however, At The Time, Byeon cannot paper over the show’s narrative flaws. Its characters are either curiously slight or, in the case of the Witness and the Detective, underused and confusingly placed. Potent themes, such as anti-Korean racism, are gestured towards, yet never explored.

Even a cleverly rendered car chase near the show’s climax cannot prevent the wheels from coming off this production, which ultimately splutters to its unsatisfying conclusion.

Deborah Chu

La Codista/The Queuer ****

Zoo Southside (Venue 82) until 17 August

Marleen Scholten is standing perfectly still under a single strip light on an empty stage. To be a successful codista, a queuer, a person who waits in line, she says, you need good shoes. You’ll also need layered clothing to adapt to the fluctuating temperatures of bureaucratic buildings, a cigarette (optional), patience (essential) and – most difficult of all – you need time. She does not move.

Based on the real story of a Milanese man who made queueing his profession, Scholten’s hour-long, prize-winning monologue is a remarkable feat of storytelling and stillness. Produced by Rotterdam’s Acteursgroep Wunderbaum, the company co-founded by Scholten, La Codista is a painstakingly simple performance.

With dramaturgy from Dafne Niglio, Scholten shows us a whole world observed from the queue, suggesting that if you ask a person for patience they will reveal their true selves. It is captivating to watch emotions of grotesque impatience and total serenity flit across her face and, all the while, she does not move.

As her ticket number rises through the queue, Scholten contrasts the politics of standing in as a proxy for richer folk with the economic necessity of paid employment. Is she a “salmon swimming upstream” against capitalism, she wonders, having found the ultimate way to make money out of the time-sucking intricacies of bureaucracy? Or is there nothing radical about it at all? A job’s a job, and people with financial means will always pay to avoid inconveniences.

Remarkable acting makes all this philosophising feel fascinating and twisty, which is no small feat: in less skilled hands, an hour of waiting would surely feel interminable. A bold gambit from a bold performer, La Codista knows that time is money. It doesn’t waste a second.

Katie Hawthorne

This is Not a Play (It’s a Pathetic Cry for Help) ***

Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 13 August

It’s Amanda De Beer sitting in the wheelchair in front of us. Yes, the Amanda De Beer. She’s here to set the record straight about that awful business with her father. Except after her period of – well, let’s call it self-imposed isolation – Dutch writer Jonas Müller has approached her to rehabilitate her reputation, writing his own version of the traumatic events that led to her withdrawal from society. With Amanda as the lead actor in her own story. Unless this isn’t really her story at all.

Jonas Müller (or perhaps more correctly Dutch theatre maker Tim Honnef) has a long history of playful, patience-testing meta-theatrical experiments at the Fringe, a series of shows that almost count as a multi-year mega-project exploring Müller’s life and interests. This is Not a Play… is just the latest, and the previous shows’ trademark tricksiness is all present and correct. We’re never sure where reality stops and theatre (or theatre within theatre) starts, and we’re never told the specific details about – well, anything.

This is Not a Play…, however, feels like it’s putting out a few more feelers towards the real world, in its dark suggestions of abuse and exploitation, and its sideways references to celebrity culture. Not surprisingly, there are more questions than answers here – but that’s all part of the fun.

David Kettle

The Death & Life of All of Us ***

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 27 August

Would Victor Esses’ deceased great-aunt Marcelle have wanted her lifelong secret to be revealed through a multimedia performance at the Edinburgh Fringe? No, seems to be the answer, at least during one of the filmed interviews Victor made of her many years ago. “This is very private,” she says, perhaps spotting the spectre of Summerhall looming in his lens.

But largely Marcelle maintains an elusive presence, aided by the armour of everyday chitchat, and Victor is left to focus on his identity as a Jewish-Lebanese gay theatremaker and the ways that intergenerational trauma travels through time.

Like Marcelle, the audience are mined for material. “Have you ever felt lost, lonely or unappreciated?” Victor asks, encouraging us to stand up if we have, in segments that could be more integrated into the rest of the show. Visually rich design by Yorgos Patrou is immersive in a smoother way, and a haunting soundscape, written and performed by Enrico Aurigemma, reaches depths of melancholy that Esses’ imaginatively structured script sometimes struggles to match.

Finally, Victor dances joyfully in a way that seems to symbolise life over death and a celebration of of experimentation on stage and off.

Sally Stott

Meat Boy **

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 19 August

A sense of Monty Pythonesque wackiness abounds in this comedy play from writers Beth Crossley, Erin Cooke and Ginny Davis, in which downtrodden coffee shop employee Fred (Austin Keane) is triggered by memories of school when he serves music teacher Mr P Noot (Rory O’Dwyer), who was mean years ago about Fred’s love of sausage rolls. As outlined by the narrators (Jen Finlay and Phoebe Sanders), Fred’s plan for revenge involves his old teacher’s nut allergy and lots of hazelnut syrup in his coffee.

There are committed comedic performances and funny moments throughout, but its deliberate shallowness feels somewhat self-conscious.

David Pollock

Lucy and Friends ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 23 August

Lucy McCormick’s latest Fringe appearance contains loud music, haze and strobe, strong language, scenes of a sexual nature, nudity and allergen warnings around tomatoes, carrots, humus and wine. Plus a song lyric sheet, but there appears to be no advance warning of that. Still, sign me up!

While McCormick is upfront – in all sorts of ways – about the spicier elements of the performance, the show title is a misnomer. McCormick either has no friends or they haven’t shown up for her latest alternative cabaret extravaganza, so she’ll just have to do the whole thing herself, including serving interval drinks, with a little help from her new friends, the audience, assigning non-speaking roles and light tasks to some relatively willing victims.

There are typically messy/dangerous/ribald McCormick set pieces as a tree, a labourer, an office worker and a tribute to herself – she’s a one-woman x-rated Spice Girls/Village People. It transpires that it’s never too early in the evening to wield an angle grinder and you’ll never guess what she can do with a sharpie – unless you’ve seen her act before, in which case you can probably imagine.

Fiona Shepherd

COMEDY

Crizards: This Means War ***

Pleasance Dome (10Dome) (Venue 23) until 26 August

Crizards' 2022 debut was one of my favourite shows of that festival, a loveable deconstruction of the double-act dynamic through cowboy iconography. And while their follow-up never comes close to scaling those heights, Eddy Hare and Will Rowland still deliver an enjoyably knockabout World War II caper.

With Hare as the unsmilingly stolid, serious artist and Rowland as his flighty comrade-in-arms, bored by the subject matter but happy to show-off in his friend's opus, This Means War is a “play wot I wrote” in khaki.

As Private Grandad, Hare is trying to extol his grandfather's wartime exploits, entrusted with a Pheidippides-style mission to run across Belgium and deliver an important message. Rowland meanwhile, cycles through a succession of hats as the supporting cast of grinning idiots, dropping in and out of character to distract him.

Leaning into the pair's bickering bromance, chief among Rowland's portrayals is Grandad's naïve friend Stan, in a constant, warbling state of bucolic nostalgia for the apple-filled orchards of Scrompshire.

Patchier than its predecessor, with fewer memorable songs and the laughs really dipping in an underwritten speakeasy scene in the middle, This Means War nevertheless retains at least one great tune, with Crizards' fond chemistry intact.

Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Lulu Popplewell: Actually, Actually ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Three) (Venue 33) until 27 August

Wild child actor slams beloved Christmas rom-com, dancing on the grave of late co-star. The press have already run their side of Lulu Popplewell's tale. But it's only part of the story, and not just because Love, Actually is actually a highly problematic film.

The 32-year-old stand-up has lived a life since playing Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's daughter in the 2003 movie, with her Fringe debut a candid reflection on being a bipolar addict, sober for eight years. In 2020, she went on a podcast and was asked about the film, making some disparaging remarks, picked up on by the Daily Mail. And all hell broke loose. As an addict, Popplewell couldn't stop herself masochistically gorging on the hate she attracted, putting her sobriety in jeopardy. And as a queer young woman with a messy private life, she was prime fodder for the tabloid feeding frenzy.

Sparingly using Richard Curtis' film as an allegory for addiction and mental illness, Popplewell seizes her right to reply with grace and droll, self-deprecating humour. Some of Actually, Actually is exceptionally dark and glossed over in montage, while still more of her lowest ebb doesn't make the cut. But she retains a puckish twinkle in her eye, not least when incorporating the memory of Rickman into a routine that'll send her detractors apoplectic.

Jay Richardson

COMEDY

Louise Young: Feral ***

Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker One) (Venue 33) until 27 August

In one of her wildest, most chaotic episodes it took five police officers to restrain Louise Young. Yet watching her relate this tale now, nothing seems likely to hold back this charismatic but poised performer, no longer reaping the relentless whirlwind of her harum-scarum youth but judiciously picking over the wreckage for some accomplished storytelling.

A queer Turkish-Geordie from a humble background, with a family history of mental illness, she's not the first gigging comic to decry the no-frills hell of a long Megabus journey, have fun with the lingering bogeywoman caricature of Margaret Thatcher or marvel at the sheer, Hogarthian desolation of Booze Britain. But as well as an attuned observational eye for some of the more ridiculous deprivations of working-class life, and the efforts of wider society to sweep them under the carpet, Young has a devil in her that means she can't do anything in moderation. This after all, is a comic whose tales of going out on the tear provoke Paul Gascoigne to teary empathy.

Rarely casting blame around for her addictive behaviour and the failings of the authorities to restrain her, Feral is a clear-sighted account of someone hitting rock bottom but turning their life around with humour, spirit and burgeoning star quality.

Jay Richardson