Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: High Steaks | Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars | Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz | Help Yourself | The Fruity Prince
HIGH STEAKS, Summerhall (Venue 26) *****
until 13 August
Eloina Haines has been told it’s rude to start her show naked, so she’s wearing an accordion. It hits mid-calf, like any old midi dress, except it plays a discordant tune as Haines twitches her hips. “Can you believe I’ve never had any professional training?” she deadpans. It’s a silly and warm skit – Haines’ modus operandi – but also strangely, surprisingly empowering. Here, in this performance on labia, gendered beauty standards and plastic surgery – before any mention of anything vulvic has occurred – the body is shown to be something instinctive and capable, even in its most unvarnished state.
Over the course of the next hour, Haines removes first the accordion and then the two beef steaks hanging from her labia, chops and fries the latter, and covers them in chimichurri, all while dissecting the complexity of our genitalia and the heavy weight of shame they so often carry. For all its deceptive simplicity, Haines’ theatre-making is deft and intricate: crafting a striking visual language from bits of meat and light, Haines tenderises and slices, placing sharp metal next to the softness of her naked pelvis and articulating a collective proximity to harm. Stunning interstitial bits of physical theatre, meanwhile, render her body almost statuesque, reclaiming it from millennia-worth of artistic representation and beauty standards.
HIGH STEAKS is ostensibly a one-woman show but it miraculously subverts its own form at every turn, staging a heart-rending and communal liberation of the body from patriarchal and capitalist violence – surgical or no. Testimonials from other vulva owners echo as Haines cooks, while Haines’ mother plays her own part in the proceedings; intergenerational inheritance and care is a thread that runs bright and joyous through the piece. It’s witty and charming but also astonishingly moving: a love letter to the ridiculousness and fleshiness and simply there-ness of our embodied selves. Anahit Behrooz
Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars, Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) ***
until 27 August
Ambitious and technical, much like a NASA launch, Glass Ceiling Beneath the Stars follows two women as they blaze into space on the Endeavour shuttle. The year is 1992, and Mae Jemison (Winnie Arhin) is the first Black woman to join NASA’s astronaut programme, after having fought against limiting expectations all her life. Jan Davis (Alex Hinson) has worked for over a decade to join a space mission, but her husband Mark is also crewing the shuttle and reporters are desperate to know if they will “consummate” the trip.
Bric a Brac theatre explores racism and sexism in the space industry through these two remarkable women, taking a blurrily speculative approach to their biographies. A mix of micro-cinema, projections, dance and dialogue, the ensemble (with Alice Kitty Devlin, Marion Burge and Christina Holmbek) also use hand-held cameras to mediate the story. A smart staging choice, it brings a suitably space-age aesthetic and adds to director Anna Crozier-Spielbichler’s meta-theatrical framing, although this structure could be enriched beyond shouts of “Cut!”
When all the components of this multifaceted play work in harmony, the impact is powerful. One such sequence, set in an anti-gravity dreamscape, soars with the utopian vision of a truly feminist future. Katie Hawthorne
Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, Summerhall (Venue 26) ***
until 27 August
A born romantic, Nathanial’s got it made. Well, he will have, once he’s fixed his rent, bills, student debt and a soul-sucking 9-5. But who cares about that when you’ve got a date with "the one”?
Actor Nathan Queeley-Dennis makes his playwriting debut with Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, an achingly sweet one-man rom-com. At first his Nathanial is the most confident guy going; he’s got all the right lines and has sussed out the city’s sexiest spots. When life starts to slip through his fingers, starting with the stunning betrayal of his barber’s ill-timed holiday, we see his bravado start to crack. Can romance really fill the void?
Winner of the 2022 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, Bullring Techno is a rarely staged depiction of heart-on-sleeve masculinity. Nathanial’s goofy self is beautifully written, as are his group-chat mates, but the pivotal father-son relationship could have used the same depth. All the same, Queeley-Dennis is a sure-footed and incredibly charming performer – the audience are eager to laugh at his observational every-man comedy, and even quicker to scream “noooo!” as he regales them with red-flag texts from an absentee date. The play’s lightness of touch doesn’t land every emotional beat, but Queeley-Dennis’ future is brilliantly bright. Katie Hawthorne
Help Yourself, Summerhall (Venue 26) ***
until 27 August
There are slips of paper scattered on the seats. They bear a one-line questionnaire: how do you help yourself and fix everyone around you? That’s the central question of Help Yourself’s seminar-cum-pyramid scheme; before you know it, Walk the Moon kicks in, a loudspeaker is welcoming the program’s platinum members, and two women in neon power suits are marching out.
Help Yourself cleverly deconstructs toxic cultures of wellness and mental health-washed capitalism through a relentless barrage of cringe corporate speak and increasingly ineffectual panacea. Performing duo Jess Brodie and Victoria Bianchi are pleasingly energetic as the program’s snake oil girlboss-in-chief and She-EO, and if the targets of Help Yourself’s critique are a little too easy, there’s still a great deal of humour to be found in watching them take fire.
Most compelling, however, are the eerie glitches that interrupt the five-stage program, and that accumulate throughout the play; it becomes clear that some kind of incident has occurred that goes beyond the easy solutions that their wellness campaign is so eager to provide. Much like its eponymous scheme, it’s uncertain whether Help Yourself has the complexity to fully chew what it has bitten off, but when the final punch lands it is undeniably powerful. Anahit Behrooz
The Fruity Prince, Paradise in The Vault (Venue 29) **
Until 27 August
In The Pesky Players’ take on revisionist Tudor history, the aging Queen Elizabeth I decides to appoint her illegitimate son, Henry IX, to the throne. Problem is, Henry would rather pursue a life on the stage with his boyfriend, Jonty. What’s a bastard prince to do? And yet it’s hard to sympathise, as the writing itself doesn’t seem quite sure what to make of this situation either. Veering wildly between absurd, earnest, and downright random, The Fruity Prince suffers from both wooden dialogue and a chronic lack of comedic timing. An irreverent take on ‘Tight-ass Andronicus’ is good for a few laughs, but unfortunately this production is more smoke than sizzle. Deborah Chu