Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Reviews: Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir | All the Fraudulent Horse Girls and more

Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir | Zoo Southside

Common Is As Common Does: A Memoir ★★★★

Zoo Southside (Venue 82) until 17 August

Much like family life, this powerful work by Glasgow-based company 21 Common is a rollercoaster of highs and lows. One minute we’re enjoying a fun rendition of a country song, belted out with a smile, the next we’re witnessing an alcohol-fuelled Saturday night brawl.

Because the family we follow in Common Is As Common Does does not have to go looking for its troubles. Like too many households, their relationships are steeped in an endless cycle of love, violence, remorse that’s on constant repeat. 

Using the Wild West as an amusing, but sadly apt metaphor for the internal lawlessness that can occur in families, the show is shaped around two fun recreations: karaoke and line dancing.

At times, it’s as if we’ve pitched up at the Grand Ole Opry (the Glasgow one, not Nashville) where everyone is dancing, laughing and living their best life. But then we’re taken by our expert narrator deep inside the domestic life of one battle-weary family.

Introduced only as The Man, The Woman, The Rascal and The Boy, we witness how good intentions mean nothing when you’ve been ground down by inopportunity, poverty and a desperate need to be loved, regardless of the cost. 

There are no real villains here, only victims. At no point does the show excuse domestic abuse or its perpetrators, but it does acknowledge that nobody wants to behave like this. If it all sounds tough going, it is -  but there are also moments of levity and a catalogue of good country tunes passionately delivered.

That said, if any of the subjects played out here have touched you personally (and even if they haven’t), prepare to feel a swell of emotion at the almost pre-ordained hopelessness of it all. Then join them in a sense of optimism that cycles can be broken, lives changed. 

Kelly Apter

All the Fraudulent Horse Girls ★★★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 26 August

Defiantly anarchic, with its at times relentless high-octane delivery galloping towards a subliminal jump cut to a more melodic finale, this equestrian exploration of 11-year Audrey’s metamorphosis from a squealing horse-obsessed pastiche of girly femininity into cowboy/girl John Grady Cole, from the novel All the Pretty Horses, defies all predictions of where it’s going and what might happen next.

Written by Michael Louis Kennedy and performed by a diverse young cast, as well as a chorus of surprise supportive voices, the piece initially feels like a celebration of being different while failing to fit in with all the other cooler, less frenetic horse girls/ insert childhood subculture of your choice.

But by the end, in what must be one of the best post-show speeches, it’s a parody of the idea that all of this could somehow ‘mean’ something and that the many years of development and tens of thousands of pounds that might go into making such an aspiring cult hit are anything other than farcical: a f**k you to those who prefer their theatre with a three-act structure (although it has got that), character-driven ‘journey’ and easy to distil purpose that can be pithily described in a review like this.  

Sally Stott

OUTPATIENT ★★★ Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

For egocentric journalist Olive Johnson, how to deal with death is as much a question to be avoided as it is content for a new article - at least, that is until she receives her own diagnosis.

Wryly written and solo performed by Harriet Madeley, it’s a neat little concept that flips the focus from someone awkwardly failing to find the right words to say, to terminally ill interviewees, to being on the receiving end of her war reporter fiancé Tess’s strategies to ‘fight’ a progressive illness on the battlefield of Harley Street.

Based on a real-life story, it’s a refreshingly light example of a genre that spans theatre and journalism, where sharing a new perspective from the precipice of facing one’s demise offers those who have yet to get there a view of what they might expect, while inspiring them to live more fully.

Freewheeling adventures and small-scale brushes with the law follow for Olive, as well as a new friend and potential love interest. But when the immediate rush of the will to survive subsides, it’s the domesticity of long-term partnership where Olive finds value in a play that’s yet to fully find a way for her to have it all.  

Sally Stott

As Good as It Gets ★★★

Greenside @ George Street - Mint Studio (Venue 236) until 24 August

In her first-ever Fringe show, Elizabeth Colarte stars as a disillusioned 20-something who’s on the hunt for something - anything - to distract her from her otherwise mundane existence.

Discontent and on the lookout for excitement, she bounces between volunteering in an old people’s home and enduring fraught family dinners at Texas Roadhouse (the restaurant’s whole schtick, Colarte explains, is that you can throw peanut shells directly on the ground when you’ve finished eating them - a fact which seems to both horrify and fascinate the genteel Edinburgh crowd in equal measure).

Much like the real world, our protagonist is pulled in many different directions; this unfortunately means that As Good as It Gets can feel disjointed at times. Colarte briefly touches on intense themes such as parental death and disordered eating, then drops them as suddenly as they are introduced.

In fact, the best parts of the show are when Colarte goes on humorous tangents about the more mundane joys life has to offer - from the aforementioned Texas Roadhouse to her sexual awakening at age 12 while watching the 2004 classic The Prince and Me. In these moments, As Good as It Gets makes a very compelling case indeed for enjoying the little things. 

Ariane Branigan

Saint ★★

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 10 August

Kayleigh Benham’s one-woman play is about a teenage girl who discovers her feelings for other girls – and one requited crush in particular – against a backdrop of small-town rural England, where her religious parents register shocked disapproval at who their daughter is growing into. The storytelling is warm and relatable, especially to the LGBT audience which the late-night show is deservedly starting to pick up, and the intolerance of religion is shot down with amusingly unequivocal irreverence. The staging is raw and the plot feels somewhat undercooked, but it’s an honest piece of work which deserves to find an audience.

David Pollock

The Selkie ★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 10 August

Glasgow-based Oor Theatre are pure spirit of the Fringe, a grassroots company mounting a short run of a new play in a snug space with a commitment to providing affordable theatre on the Fringe. They invoke spirits of a different kind in Madeleine Farnhill’s short work playing on the selkie myth of seal/human shapeshifters. Who knew there were selkies in Rothesay? Ferry worker Finlay is credulous, his colleague Ciaran less so. Their bored banter on a quiet late shift slowly reveals the quiet tragedies of fishing communities with another young man “lost at sea”. But when they are both confronted by a sprite-like apparition who has found something she shouldn’t have, the scene is set for a fantastical revenge thriller which ends too soon to fulfil the potential of the set-up.

Fiona Shepherd