Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Nation | Funny Guy | The Sun King | Fan/Girl

It’s all things weird and wonderful in the latest batch of Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews from the Scotsman.

Nation at the Edinburgh Fringe | Mihaela Bodlovic

Nation

ROUNDABOUT @ Summerhall (Venue 26), until 26 August

★★★★

In a regular town filled with regular people, unusual things are happening. A stranger appears at a party where no one recognises him, asking to be let in. Places and things are disappearing, entire homes and municipal infrastructure are lifted wholesale from the streets. And a body is discovered in the high street by a postman, blood pooling onto the remaining pavement.

Caught tight with the elastic tension of a Jordan Peele film, acclaimed theatre company YESYESNONO’s latest storytelling feat is a discomforting examination of the ways that narrative can construct realities, and the ways we are all complicit in this construction.

Writer and performer Sam Ward switches fluidly between the slow fraying of the town – uncanny suburban dread building with Lynchian effect – and the audience’s role in imagining – and thus enacting – the unfolding horror.

This is metatheatre at its most considered, drawing attention not only to the artifice of the stage, but to the artifice of all the stories we tell ourselves: the absurd falsehood of nationhood and borders, the desperate fabrication of belonging. And when the play finally twists in on its self, once more breaking the boundaries between performance and audience with shocking violence, a deeply timely tale emerges.

It is impossible to watch Nation now without thinking of the context of nationalist violence that is bleeding out across the country while it unfolds. Yet while on its surface, Nation tells an arresting allegory of immigration and hostile environments, it is interrogating something much more insidious and deep-rooted at its core.

The real horror, it tells us, is our inability to imagine anything better for ourselves, to hold tight to the story we already know. Theatre as nation, nation as theatre. Both a pact we make with ourselves, both a fiction we buy into. 

Anahit Behrooz

Funny Guy

Greenside @ George Square (Venue 236), until 24 August

 ★★★

The fickle nature of fame, success and money are smartly observed in this little smooth little American relationship comedy by Patrick Nash. Two couples, Dan and Emma, and Bill and Margie, have mirroring relationships: Dan is a seemingly successful self-employed business owner in the ‘gig economy’, who mentors his floundering friend Bill who is trying to improve his relationship with the aspirational Margie.

She's not convinced that getting into stand-up comedy is the money-spinner that both Bill and Dan think, as she confides in her best friend, laid-back friend Emma. Opposites initially attract, but then later repel, seems to be the message – plus everything’s a lot better if you’re rich. 

 “People used to laugh at clowns, now they laugh at intellectuals,” says Bill, a sharp if self-proclaimed philosopher, to Dan as his helps him to hone his simple act, which involves a pipe cleaner marionette that grows in size with his success and seems to prove otherwise.

As fortunes shift, there’s a Dickensian quality to Nash’s writing, as well as the glossy sheen of a quirky American indie sitcom. Who is whose puppet is the underlying question, in a show that uses a marionette as both a metaphor and, when its gas and glass-tube neon fuelled metamorphosis is complete, an impressive example of the kind of large-scale prop. 

Sally Stott

The Sun King

theSpaceTriplex (Venue 38), until 24 August

★★★

Pre-teen Jamie encounters a strange figure on one of his frequent, lone visits to the beach: the all-knowing, all-seeing king of a magical realm, who’s there to guide the boy towards his future – and perhaps encourage him to acknowledge his real feelings towards others.

There’s a fascinating fairytale slant to writer/director Uğur Özcan’s ambitious gay coming-of-age drama from Oxford University company Peedie Productions. And there’s a lot going on in it, too: queer awakenings, new responsibilities, friendships and more, all against a backdrop of authoritarian oppression in which real and fantasy realms seem to grow increasingly similar.

Özcan clearly has plenty to say, a lot of it fresh and compelling. But as things stand, The Sun King feels a bit like a work in progress, and could probably do with quite a bit of tightening up in its ideas and its structure and losing a chunk of its 70-minute duration.

Likewise, his actors give functional rather than vivid performances, and lines are too often simply said rather than delivered – though Matt Sheldon in the lead role is nicely needy and conflicted. Özcan is clearly a writer to watch, with striking new perspectives on queer experience. In The Sun King, however, he seems to have poured a bit too much into an already overflowing vessel.

David Kettle

Fan/Girl

Summerhall (Venue 26), until 26 August

★★★

That women’s football is minimised by old-fashioned misogynist attitudes while a huge untapped market for the game exists is a live conversation, even as the big international tournaments enjoy growing worldwide popularity. This shift, and the struggle for recognition around it, has been well-used as inspiration for Fringe theatre works in recent years.

Yet despite the familiarity of the subject matter, Bryony Byrne’s self-written and performed comic play about a ‘90s childhood in love with playing football until society told her it wasn’t for her is filled with freshness and charm. Fan/Girl is a broader tale of teen peer pressure and adopting expected roles, in fact, which is arguably more worth reminding ourselves of than ever.

A warm and open narrator, Byrne describes her own childhood footballing exploits through a nostalgic haze after being reminded of them by a friend. She details her admiration for Eric Cantona in particular (an accent shift and a thin, gaffer-tape monobrow do the job of transformation) and the period milieu of 1990s youth culture, handing out paper effigies of ‘90s pop culture figures including David and Victoria Beckham (or Victoria Adams, as she was then).

There’s plenty of unthreatening audience interaction, with people in the front row invited to help recreate her first attempt at teen makeup and everybody in the room getting involved with an invigorating ‘football’ match from their seats. It makes its point well, but with a great deal of lightness and humour.

David Pollock

Frankenstein on a Budget

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23), until 26 August

★★

The lack of a budget is the focal point, with Mary Shelley’s story of a man who makes a monster more an excuse for sometimes amusing set pieces, referencing the Boris Karloff films, in which characterful performer Tom Fox dons comedy headpieces and the cardboard set is encouraged to wobble about. With a powerful operatic voice that only occasionally shines through, this isn’t a piece that this is aspiring for greatness.

The mild threat of audience participation is as sharp as it gets. “Life isn’t a race,” goes a song at the end, but in avoiding aspiring for anything more, this leisurely approach and so-bad-it’s-good energy is limited.  

Sally Stott

Gang Bang

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), until 25 August

★★

There are some very dodgy Italian accents in this new Mafia comedy from Hughie Shepherd—Cross. However, they’re really no better than they have to be as it’s more of a series of sketches loosely strung together on a suggestion of a story.

Gang boss Don Lambrini leaves Sicily for America in 1945 only to mistakenly board a cruise to Blackpool where he sets up a very English crime family. It’s a disappointing effort as in his past plays such as Out To Lunch and Ringer Shepherd-Cross conjured an of absurd reality that made a certain kind of dramatic sense — here it’s just nonsense. Occasionally there’s a gag or two that surprises but the pastiche wears thin quickly.

Rory Ford

The Evolutionary and Inescapable Rotting of Girlhood

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236), until 24 August

★★

Passionate performances, beautiful melodic live music and a thoughtful look at puberty lie at the centre of this work by Toronto-based Theatre Company, Good Grief. Whether it’s in your recent past or fading in the rearview mirror, this rite of passage stays with us all, from periods and bras to discovering our sexual selves.

The production values are a little rough around the edges, the physicality needs tightening, and the script meanders more than it should. But these young actors and musicians go all out to make this bittersweet love letter to adolescence feel rooted in truth.

Kelly Apter