Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Scaffolding | The Last Incel | The Expulsion of Exculansis + more

Scaffolding | Alice Carfrae

Scaffolding ★★★★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) Until 26 August

Sheridan doesn’t have her troubles to seek: she’s recently lost her husband, Emil, and cares for Joelle, their disabled daughter, who is 23.

But the village church has been a lifeline, and she has managed to raise a small fortune for repairs to the steeple. So when it’s announced that the church is to close, she reaches the end of her tether.

But Sheridan is used to being ignored, and her sit-in protest on the scaffolding seems to attract no attention at all, apart from the vicar, a trendy Hugh Grant lookalike who is over-sharing one minute and the next threatening her with adult protection services.

Too high up or comfort, she is conversing with God and googling recipes for explosives.

Lucy Bell’s one-woman play, directed by Lillian Waddington for Devon-based Documental Theatre, takes us into the small hypocrisies of village life, quiet desperation kept hidden behind net curtains. Alice Sales’ set conveys a genuine sense of height, to which Sheridan grows more and more used as the play goes on.

Suzanne Hamilton is excellent as Sheridan, funny, frank and clear-sighted about the people around her. She’s honest and unsentimental about the difficulties of being a carer for someone with severe disabilities, how the relentless drudgery of it can be punctuated by moments of tenderness. And she’s sceptical of the various professionals who should be supporting her but too often criticise instead.

If there are a few plot twists which are not so realistic, they coalesce around a very real human story about caring, isolation and community.

There’s also something about - unfashionable topic though it is - the consolation of faith and a higher power who might just answer back.

Susan Mansfield

The Last Incel ★★★★

Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 25 August

Staring from the dark with blood-shot eyes, their bright white faces glow eerily in the LED light of the screens that frame their heads. They are self-proclaimed ‘incels’, men who hate women for not having sex with them and, in Jamie Sykes’ satirical comedy, in which ‘a Becky’ invades their chatroom, they are also misogynistic creeps, tragic loners and very, very funny.  

Set in 2014, it's a delicious concept that offers a multidimensional perspective on four oddball sort-of friends whose support for each other is at times heartwarming but who also create an alternative reality full of ‘Chads’, ‘Stacys’, and women-hating rhetoric that is so extreme it becomes laughable, until it isn't.

It’s the gap between the hilarious and the horrifying that the piece, via supremely stoic journalist ‘Becky’, bravely explores.

The language is as graphic as you’d expect but intercut with gloriously camp dance routines that not only break up what could be, and sometimes is, a bleak tirade of sexist twallop, but also is a strangely logical destination for hysterical, shrieking male-driven hated when it reaches its peak.

At times, the characters equally horrible to each other as women, with “you’re so gay” a slur that, in some cases, hides a sorrier truth. They just want to “be free to do shitposting,” but will also “dox your whole family and break into your house.” 

The cast bring wild-eyed energy to characters with names like ‘Ghost’, ‘Cuckboy’ and ‘Wizard’ who each have differing levels commitment to the whole shebang, but whose ‘jokes’ about killing themselves are not at all funny.

Sykes directs and choreographs the production like music, creatively using four black hand-held frames to give it a cartoon strip quality.

A fascinating insight into a strange world full of desperation, it's a piece that also puts a human face on the causes and suggests countering them intelligently rather than with more of the same. 

Sally Stott

Hamstrung ★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 26 August

“Alas, poor Yorick!” The man referenced in the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is given his own play by charming writer and performer George Rennie, who embodies him not as a skull, but as a likeable and lively clown picking on the audience and pondering the nature of his own reality.

He’s a lovely performer, but the poetic speculations about life, death and meaning feel like they're seeking a fully formed story.

The audience of actors does a great job in their improvised roles, and the lightness and brightness offers an uplifting twist on the bleakness going on outside, in and beyond Elsinore.  

Sally Stott

Ever Yours ★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 24 August [changes to Venue 45 on 19th]

When Olivia loses her partner, she finds an unlikely source of comfort: the ghost of Vincent van Gogh. He is haunting a painting that she has stolen from a gallery to commemorate a relationship that she’s been asked to hide.

It starts well with involving performances from the young cast and has the potential to be an imaginative exploration of grief and homophobia, but the characters could do with more development to keep the conversation alive.

Some new arrivals take things into the realms of farce, which creates a lively shift of tone but one that should be integrated more smoothly.  

Sally Stott 

Bye, Bye Baby ★★

The Space on the Mile (venue 39) until 24 August

Divorce makes for good drama. Just think of the films Kramer vs Kramer and A Marriage Story.

On The Brink Productions’ four-handed play – written and performed by Lizzy Thistlethwayte, Clementine McNair Scott, Poppy Scales and Seamus Casey – attempts something similar, tracking the asset settlement between Jenny and Dan, supervised by their lawyers Katarina and Sam, who also happens to be an old friend.

It is fast-paced with flashes of humour. Quarrels erupt. Accusations abound. Revelations emerge.  The promising young cast cannot quite pull off the adult themes but they give it a good go.

Fergus Morgan

Looking for Scheherazade ★★

Greenside @ George Street (venue 236) until 24 August

Visually striking but dramatically wobbly, this mythic paean to femininity nevertheless benefits from a distinctive performance from veteran Iraqi actor Rasoul Saghir and some bold lighting cues.

Written by Kuwaiti dramatist Fawaz Al Adwani, Saghir plays a seasoned archaeologist searching to uncover the origins of the legendary storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights as he reminisces about his late wife and mother  — and his past transgressions against them.

This perhaps presumes too much prior knowledge from Western audiences — it takes too long to coalesce and even then is rather blurry around the edges — but Saghir has an entertaining performance style that veers between theatrical barnstorming and quiet filmic naturalism.

Rory Ford

The Expulsion of Exculansis ★★★

theSpace @ Niddry St (Venue 9) until 17 August 

When teenager Annika presents at her local GP surgery with low mood, sleeplessness, and eating difficulties, her doctor is quick to pinpoint ‘deficiencies’ as the root cause.

The only thing deficient in this consultation room, however, is empathy. What follows is the documented struggle of one young person and her family to advocate for her needs, and navigate a seemingly impenetrable medical system. 

Together, they become their own experts on depression, anxiety, trauma, and eating disorders, and slowly Annika begins along the brave road that is being open and communicative with others.

The play charts her first, beautifully awkward relationship, her friendships at home and in specialist treatment settings, her familial connections, and her attitude towards herself, as she attempts to rebuild a sense of ‘wholeness’ in an overwhelming world that has, until now, left her feeling hopeless and hollow. 

The Expulsion of Exclusansis is required watching for educators, young people and parents, and would benefit audiences on a UK-wide tour of secondary schools and associated institutions, to help these groups establish a shared language and confidence around communicating mental health challenges, as well as signposting to relevant organisations, which can provide bespoke levels of support for developing positive coping strategies. 

Josephine Balfour-Oatts