Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Pillock | 100% My Type on Paper | The Screen Test

A fresh batch of Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews covers dating, ADHD, and grief in a series of the latest shows seen by our reviewers.

Pillock at the Edinburgh Fringe | Andrew Downie

Pillock

Assembly Rooms (20), until 25 August

★★★★

Pillock’s brain moves a mile a minute, and so does he. Leaping around the stage and jumping between thoughts, he never slows down. In Jordan Tweddle’s debut Fringe play, something deeper and darker is hiding behind the daily chaos of life with ADHD.

As a performer, Tweddle has boundless energy and impressive emotional range, flicking between crying and cracking jokes in seconds. He gives a consistently assured performance, expertly delivering a script that really never lets up. Scott Le Crass’ direction too is sharp and attentive.

Tweddle’s script is water-tight, pieced together like a quirky jigsaw. Images and ideas that initially seem random weave their way into the story, reappearing at unexpected moments. It’s the kind of writing that catches you off-guard: as soon as you settle into the dick jokes and rom-com references, it gives way to a devastating exploration of what it means to ‘be yourself’, diving into themes of loneliness and desirability.

At a festival full of solo shows about identity, it’s this that separates Pillock from the pack. In amongst the humour is a boldness that doesn’t shy away from the embarrassing and taboo, with mentions of several different bodily fluids.

The show is also remarkably slick. Subtle sound design from Pierre Flasse comes together with simple but effective set design: soft-play style coloured cylinders that act as seats, sculptures, and stepping stones. The overall effect is a polished, professional production – even in a mobile shipping crate of a venue. 

Writer Tweddle describes the show as less about ADHD and more about his experience of it: “it lives in the texture, the form, the rhythms, in the unique experiences that have moulded Pillock.” This sums up why the show works: an ambitious coming together of content and form, Pillock shows, rather than tells, what it’s like to be a queer person living with ADHD. 

Katie Kirkpatrick 

100% My Type on Paper

C ARTS I C venues I C alto (venue 40), until 25 August

★★★

The pitfalls of modern dating are examined — repeatedly — in Lola Annesley’s(((CORRECT))) neat new play. Sammy (Evie Meadows) and Clyde (Benjamin Oliveira) are on their first date after connecting on a dating app. Both are nervous, both keep saying the wrong thing. They’re trying to be themselves but, more importantly, not too much themselves; presenting facades that they’re not entirely comfortable with. It’s awkward but if they could start over, how would they present themselves differently?

This is exactly what they get the opportunity to do at the behest of a producer (Joshua Hogan) who demand they do the scene again — and again. Not for their benefit, but the audience’s. More confidence would be better, as would more drama — more gaslighting? And where’s the sex appeal?

It’s an ingenious conceit as the initial meeting is played out, sometimes with only quite subtle differences — this is the group effort of three directors. Annesley realises that as we try to present ourselves afresh each time we’re essentially playing a role informed by social media, drama, reality TV. How we want to be seen is not necessarily how we are — perhaps rarely, in fact. For all it’s necessary stops, starts and reboots this is a fluid, clever show.

Rory Ford

The Screen Test

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), until 26 August

★★★

This riotous debut solo show from Bebe Cave – the younger sister of actor and comedian Jessie Cave, and co-host of the podcast We Can’t Talk About That Right Now – follows a young, British woman as she is chewed up and spat out by Hollywood.

Cave plays Betsy Bitterly, who arrives in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s, lands a seven-year contract and a producer husband, and looks set to be the next big thing. Then, it all starts going wrong. She does dozens of screen tests but never lands a part. She gets into debt. Her husband has an affair. She ends up desperate, alone, and drinking too much.

The misogyny of the male-dominated movie business is a serious subject, but the tone here is extremely silly. Assisted by video projections, a cartoonish sound design, and a besuited mannequin, Cave acts out the entire thing with unflagging, infectious gusto.

Sporting a glitzy dress, she narrates Betsy’s story, does ridiculous screen test after ridiculous screen test, and insults everyone, including her audience. The story and the staging are a bit chaotic, but Cave holds it together with a turn of real wit and bravado.

Fergus Morgan

Squidge

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33), until 26 August

★★★

This low-key one-woman show from actor and writer Tiggy Bayley is modestly moving. It follows a twenty-something, South London teaching assistant called Daisy, whose brother has recently died and who is hiding from her grief behind a veil of apathy and indifference. She sits on the sofa and has stunted phone calls with her mum. She has casual sex with her plumber. And, at work, she babysits a troubled Irish kid called Paddy, whose younger brother has also passed away in traumatic circumstances.

Over an hour, Bayley’s Daisy narrates a few weeks in Daisy’s life, as she slowly learns to open her heart, address her grief, and care about life more, thanks to the unexpected friendship she strikes up with Paddy. That sounds slightly saccharine, but it is not. Bayley’s writing is nicely understated and unfussy throughout, and studded with blunt, blithe shots of humour. Her performance is similarly subtle, full of detached shrugs and involuntary shudders, and with a raw, unrelenting sadness visible underneath.

Selwin Hulme-Teague’s staging is slim, involving little more than a plastic Primary School chair and a jacket, but it does not really need to offer anything fancier than that. This is a quiet show, devoid of big gestures and big flourishes – but it has a big heart.

Fergus Morgan

Four More Short Plays Loosely Linked by the Theme of Crime

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39), until 24 August

★★

The best thing about this show is that if you don’t like one play there’ll be another along pretty soon. Which is lucky as Charles Edward Pipe’s anthology opens with its poorest entry, a lame Western pastiche. The three performers fare better with a contemporary retelling of Macbeth in suburbia and an unlikely plot hatched to forge a will but a return for the Low Bar Theatre company’s dim, Guy Ritchie-esque gangsters, Ronnie and Johnny can’t end this on a high note. The cast do well but they deserve better material.

Rory Ford

13th Morning

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

★★

This “queer sequel” to Twelfth Night from American writer-director BT Hayes is brightly performed but plays out like a wildly over-extended Saturday Night Live sketch. It expands upon the assumed identities and gender confusion in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy to posit that neither Sebastian or Olivia would be truly happily married after the play’s end and would be preoccupied by thoughts of other people — and genders.

It’s pacily directed but struggles to find a consistent tone, grasping at farce, pastiche and travesty. Essentially it’s simply a lark; an excuse for pretty people to flirt with each other onstage for an hour but it loses its sparkle quickly.

Rory Ford