Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: VL | A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First + more

VL | Michael Wharely/Feast Creative

VL  ★★★★

Roundabout @ Summerhall  (Venue 26) until 26 August

A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson Or God: Whoever Reads This First ★★★★

theSpace@Niddry Street (Venue 9)  until 24 August

If toxic ideas about masculinity represent one of the world’s greatest current problems - and there’s no shortage of evidence that they do - then there’s nothing more timely, on the Fringe, than a good show that subjects those ideas to a blast of critical analysis. 

Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s VL - a sequel to their 2018 hit Square Go - is a brand new show by two of Scotland’s leading playwrights that seeks to do exactly that, while also offering one of the sharpest and funniest comic nights out on the Fringe.

Its twin heroes Max and Stevie - played to perfection, in Orla O’Loughlin’s flawless production, by Scott Fletcher and Gavin Jon Wright - are “just two wee guys trying to survive in an ordinary Scottish secondary school”;  but in order to do so, they have somehow to persuade their classmates that they are not VL’s - i.e. Virgin Lips, who have never been kissed.  

The rules surrounding this process are vague, yet ruthlessly enforced; Stevie doesn’t know whether a kiss he achieved as part of a school drama class really counts, while Max is reduced to desperate claims that he kissed a girl “up at his gran’s place”. 

Throughout, though, Hurley and McNair’s fast-moving, laugh-a-second script perfectly captures both the savagery of the social judgments Max and Stevie fear, and the underlying poignant vulnerability of everyone involved - even would-be class hard man Wee Cosa, brought to life by Gavin Jon Wright in a superb piece of physical performance. 

In the end, the show offers a female perspective from the woman of Max’s dreams, exposing just how harshly the same judgmental culture bears down on young women. 

For the most part, though, VL simply exposes the sheer pain and embarrassment of being a hormonal teenage lad, in a world that has little or nothing sensible to say about sex.

And if things have improved in some ways, since Hurley and McNair were at school in the 1990s, chances are that the coming of social media has, for many, only intensified the pressures that this show describes with such skill, and such unfailing wit and humanity.

If Max and Stevie are undergoing fierce rites of passage in a Scottish school, the two characters in the latest show by Fringe First winners Xhloe and Natasha are living through very similar trials at a US boy scouts’ summer camp, some time in the 1960s. 

Based on their own experience of growing up in US military families, this brilliantly choreographed, whip-smart and yet heartbreaking piece of physical theatre - titled A Letter To Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First - follows patriotic pals Ace and Grasshopper as they try to be real boys becoming real men, with macho Ace taking the lead, and Grasshopper convinced he’ll never make it. 

There’s a darker undercurrent, though; regular pledges to the flag descending into ever more chaotic gobbledegook, flashes forward to a different kind of adventure, a decade on in Vietnam, which involves real dangers, and real death.

And the inspired use of a soundtrack of Beatles songs, played on two harmonicas, not only tells the story of a generation; but also reminds us how close the Beatles’ songs were, in their origins, to the working-class music of the Americans who died in Vietnam, from blues to bluegrass, and beyond.            

Joyce McMillan

Lynn Faces ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

There are many ways to react in the aftermath of a nasty break-up – ranting on social media, taking solace in drink or drugs, keying your ex’s car – but forming “a Lynn from Alan Partridge concept punk band” is certainly an original response.

Laura Horton’s follow-up to her Fringe First-winning debut Breathless takes the form of Lynn Faces’ first, and quite probably last gig, featuring such two chord non-wonders as Dictaphone, Lady Shapes and Snazzy Cardigan (Parts 1 and 2) performed by spurned frontwoman Leah, her friends Ali on keyboards and Shona on percussion and the largely absent Joy (Horton herself) on drums.

As Leah – and consequently the gig – falls apart, we learn of the damage wrought by her former controlling partner Pete who is still intent on reeling her in with inopportune texts.

Horton slides in some dark revelations on abusive relationships under cover of the chaotic sitcom-like plot while also lobbing in a large handcrafted deus ex machina as absurd as the daffiest Alan Partridge plot.

What would his long-suffering PA Lynn do? Probably pull a mildly dismayed face and meekly mop up the mess. Thankfully for Leah, forming a bungling band in middle age is ultimately an act of shambolic liberation.

Fiona Shepherd

Cringe Effect ★★★

theSpace @ Niddry St (Venue 9) until 17 August 

Written and performed by Cecilia Marshall, Cringe Effect is notable for its darkly comic yet sensitive approach to the topic of eating disorders.

Drawing from Marshall’s lived experience of anorexia treatment, the play challenges misconceptions surrounding the illness, and offers insight into the realities of inpatient rehabilitation.

Marshall reveals the militaristic structure of her weeks on the ward, with each day comprising group-based and individual therapies, three meals, snacks, and post-meal observations.

Every moment and unit of energy was accounted for - clients can be expected to achieve a weight gain of one kilo per week during admission, and invariably, this process is both painful and emotionally fraught. 

Scientific presentations and representations of anorexia in wider culture are not typically associated with comedy, and Cringe Effect refreshes as Marshall mines her physical and psychological recovery for amusing material, and highlights the absurd, irrational nature of eating disordered logics. 

Marshall’s exploration of beauty ideals in Western culture can lack the nuance present elsewhere in the piece, but ultimately, the play’s blackly funny bent distinguishes it from other contemporary works on the subject, which often sensationalise or perpetuate the negative stereotypes that surround this urgent, highly misunderstood public health issue. 

Josephine Balfour-Oatts 

One Sugar, Stirred to the Left ★★

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 17 August

There is tea and sympathy all round in Jon Lawrence’s musical play, inspired by his own experiences of visiting his father in a hospice.

Patients Henry and Hamish are typically stoic Scottish men using gallows humour and football metaphors to cope in their final days, with the former commissioning singer-turned-nurse Bronwyn to put his lifetime lyrics to music.

As luck would have it, her songs sound just like excerpts from musical theatre and there is a budding romance with Henry’s son Justin to seal the soft-centred credentials of this production where characters are wont to break off into whimsical recollections or deliver sentimental homilies in their quest for comfort. 

Fiona Shepherd

Ghost Light ★★

theSpace @ Niddry St (Venue 9) until 17 August

There’s plenty of atmosphere in Ian Tucker-Bell’s Victorian ghost story, but it’s scuppered by some curious choices.

It’s 1865 and aspiring writer Henry Webster has arrived in London to join the London Ghost Club hoping to meet Charles Dickens. Instead, he meets a retired actor who tells him of the old theatrical tradition of the “ghost light” that illuminates empty theatres and of the supposed haunting of the house of a local widow.

There’s a great deal of exposition and narration in Tucker-Bell’s script which gives it a stodgy consistency. The cast cope well in their dimly lit environs but the decision to underscore some of the dialogue with soupy music destroys tension. The final reveal of the spectre is… unfortunate - and bringing it back for a hokey grace note at the very end doubly so.

Rory Ford

Alison Larkin: Grief… A Comedy ★★

Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 25 August

Writer-performer Alison Larkin returns to the Fringe with a very belated follow-up to her 2000s show The English American with a piece that she would rather she hadn’t felt the need to write.

After avoiding romantic entanglements for the majority of her life, Larkin found true love in her 50s with an Indian climate scientist. The title is a bit of a giveaway as to how this ends but the journey there is only intermittently engaging.

Larkin has a warm manner and her singing voice has a pleasing clarity, but while these reminiscences are obviously deeply important to her, she has a rather unassuming stage presence that may struggle to command your attention for the duration.

Rory Ford