Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: How To Bury A Dead Mule | Helios | Without Sin | Horizon Showcase: Birthmarked | Spend the Night with Tiffany Black

Words by Fergus Morgan, Deborah Chu, Anahit Behrooz, and Fiona Shepherd.

How To Bury A Dead Mule ****

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 27 August

Northern Irish actor Richard Clements’ grandfather Norman was a soldier in the Second World War. He served with the Royal Irish Fusiliers in North Africa and Italy, where he experienced fierce fighting and unimaginable horror on the frontline. His company was shelled in the Sahara, shot at in Sicily, and blown to pieces outside the Italian town of Monte Cavallo. Upon the war’s conclusion, Norman returned to Belfast, and lived the rest of his life with acute post-traumatic stress disorder.

How To Bury A Dead Mule is a solo show that sees Clements’ tell his grandfather’s story – a story shared by thousands and thousands of men that served in the Second World War and severely suffered subsequently with what they had witnessed. Arriving at the Edinburgh Fringe after an acclaimed run in Belfast year, it is a meditative and moving show about the lasting mental damage done by war.

Clements plays his grandfather through three periods of his life: as a young soldier, as an obsessive older man losing his grip on reality, and as a stooped pensioner in a dressing gown. He swaps between these versions of Norman throughout, unfolding his experiences in fast and feverish monologues. The boundaries between them could perhaps be delineated clearer, but it is a terrific performance – energetic and excitable, panicked and petrified, restless and reflective by turns.

Director Matthew McElhinney’s production is impressive, too. Stuart Marshall’s simple, boxy set is starkly lit by lighting designer Mary Tumelty, and backed by Eoin Robinson’s projections of archive black-and-white footage taken from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive. This all combines with Clements’ own score – he is a musician as well as an actor – of plaintive piano to tear-jerking effect, and the show emerges as an emotional, atmospheric hour of Second World War drama. Fergus Morgan

Helios ***

How To Bury A Dead Mule at the Edinburgh Festival

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 27 August

In Greek mythology, Phaeton is the child of the sun god Helios. Desperate to drive his father’s chariot, Phaeton pleads with Helios until he gives in and hands over the reins. The story ends tragically, of course, as most myths do. But wait. Phaeton, says writer-performer Alexander Wright, is also a young boy living in a Yorkshire village, whose mother has retreated into her bedroom, and whose pilot father grows increasingly absent from their lives. What will this Phaeton’s fate be? Whatever it is, will it be a worthy one?

Wright and his creative partner, musician Phil Grainger, know well the enduring power of a good myth, having explored them before in Orpheus, Eurydice and The Gods, The Gods, The Gods. In this one-hander, the Greek tale functions less like a base text and more like gentle scaffolding, providing resonance to a simple story that nonetheless attempts to contain worlds of meaning. Unfortunately, it’s not quite enough—the plot is too thin to sustain such weight, with certain revelations ultimately feeling underdeveloped and undeserved.

However, it’s still a privilege to linger amongst the hedges and hills of Phaeton’s home for an hour. Wright is undoubtedly a powerful storyteller, and his ability to create a sense of emotional topography is the show’s greatest strength. Even as we exit the cave-like interior of Summerhall’s basement, it all stays with us—the cosy claustrophobia of village life, the farmers’ fields, the silent grief that draws its invisible borders around us. Deborah Chu

Without Sin ***

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 27 August

“You are loved,” says a card pinned against the wall. “You are so hard on yourself,” says another. The small booth in which Without Sin takes place – a confessional for our contemporary age of alienation – is covered with such notes, residue left behind from previous audience members. In this brisk, 15-minute performance-without-performers, two people are invited to sit in adjacent cubicles, asking questions from cards framed around the seven deadly sins and building a moment of brief pause amidst the chaos of the Fringe.

It is a curious and moving idea, breaking down the boundaries of the stage space and positing the ways in which theatre can tell not just its own narratives, but also those of its audience. Yet there is a somewhat unfinished air to this conversation-cum-performance. If modern life has taught us anything, it is that authentic intimacy takes time to build; as much as audiences are encouraged to set their own pace, Without Sin’s strict 15 minute run-time feels symptomatic of rather than resistant to our frenetic pace of life. Still, it’s not every Fringe show that leaves you sorry it ended so soon, or with a personal note from a stranger wishing you contentment. Anahit Behrooz

Horizon Showcase: Birthmarked ***

Assembly Rooms (Venue 20) until 27 August

This self-styled “semi-autobiographical, semi-improvised gig theatre musical” showcases the songs and story of Brook Tate, a young queer man from Hastings who is taken an uncommon risk with mounting this show – not because it’s a relatively ambitious ninety minutes in a big room but because he risks being labelled an apostate by his former church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, jeopardising any future contact with his family.

He has already been disfellowshipped for his sexual orientation, thanks to the betrayal of a friend and a selective reading of the JW Bible by the church elders (“two window cleaners and a plumber”). But Tate is remarkably free of rancour and resentment – perhaps this is because he is having a ball at the Fringe with his five-piece band, a big whale puppet voiced by his drummer Eva Redman and some killer heels.

Those heels make all the difference, not just to his ability to freely express himself but to the music in the show which, until that point, errs to the whimsical. With newfound strutting glam attitude comes a gear change into the celebratory and a joyful tap dance on the door on which he would previously have been knocking. Fiona Shepherd

Spend the Night with Tiffany Black **

Paradise in Augustine’s (Venue 152) until 19 August

Within minutes of making our Fringe acquaintance, Tiffany Black is over-sharing anecdotes about vaginal waxing and her first sighting of a penis. Next, she wants to tell us about a date set up by a work colleague and to read aloud her childhood poems. The latter is funny in hindsight but thankfully her writing has improved considerably since her schoolgirl fantasies of husbands sacrificed to war. Now she offers tips on how to walk home late at night without being raped in the form of a pitch-black satirical song, as her date turns out to be a dark cabaret indeed. Fiona Shepherd