Edinburgh Fringe Theatre reviews: Little Squirt | HALF MAN HALF BULL | Beyond Krapp | Barbies and Drillas | Mark Grist’s Big Box Extravaganza

A profane but profound comedy musical about a gay sperm donor and a cracking double-bill of Greek myths reimagined through storytelling and song lead our latest batch of Fringe reviews 

Hello sailor... Darby James in Little Squirt | Lucinda Goodwin

THEATRE

Little Squirt ★★★★ 

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

While over at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose Noam Tomaschoff is mulling over his own unexpected biological origins in Our Little Secret: The 23andMe Musical, down the road at Summerhall, Aussie Darby James is throwing us deep into the sticky world of – well, the other side of the story. What would motivate a 20-something Melbourne gay guy to become a sperm donor? What does it even entail – from endless paperwork to a brisk and unfulfilling session in a private cubicle? And isn’t the whole thing more about fulfilling the hopes of disadvantaged parents than caring about the new life being created?

There are plenty of titters to be had from James’s subject matter, which he milks for every last drop of double entendre. But among James’s arch wisecracks and the sideways glances, there is a lot of heart as he reveals his own naiveties and vulnerabilities, and even considers the ethics of bringing a new life into such a damaged and declining world. It’s a generous project he has embarked on, as health professionals won’t stop telling him, but what does it mean for his own plans to settle down with Mr Right, maybe even start a family himself?

James is a winning, engaging performer, dressed up like a seaman (geddit?) stranded on a desert island of his own confusion, and he gets his tongue around torch songs and quickfire patter with equal conviction – though a slight increase in his mic levels would help the witty wordplay of his more rap-like songs to be properly absorbed. Little Squirt is a warm and saucy hour of autobiographical musical comedy that manages to prod at some surprisingly profound issues, and James’s surprisingly tender climax hints at still more revelations to come. David Kettle

THEATRE

HALF MAN HALF BULL ★★★★ 

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

Festival favourites Wright&Grainger have established a reputation for reimagining Greek myths as gripping gig-theatre. After previous hits Orpheus, Eurydice, The Gods The Gods The Gods and Helios comes HALF MAN HALF BULL, a back-to-back double-bill of 50-minute shows, one on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, one on the story of Daedalus and Icarus. See one. See the other. Better still, see both because they are brilliant.

Written and created by Alexander Wright, Phil Grainger and Oliver Tilney, both shows follow a similar format. The ancient tales are told through a mix of storytelling and song, with the audience arranged on all four sides of a small, central stage. Four performers – Wright, Grainger, Tilney and Aminita Francis – take it in turns to drive the story forward.

Both stories are intelligently reworked. Part One: Theseus imagines the Athenian hero as an anxious teenager, determined to earn the love of his dad, jacked-up on coke and bravado. It also movingly casts the Minotaur as a damaged soul, and gives Ariadne more autonomy than the myth. Part Two: Daedalus recasts the story of the genius inventor and his beloved son’s fateful, feathered flight as a resonant exploration of grief.

What makes the twin shows really work, though, are the songs. They range from raucous, Rudimental-style bangers to soulful, electronic arias akin to Bon Iver’s more experimental work. At times, they are infectiously anthemic, at times arrestingly stark.

There is flair in the staging, too. The performers prowl around the auditorium. Audiences are encouraged to interject, sing along, and, in one transcendent moment, launch a fleet of paper planes across the auditorium. Imaginative lighting creates stunning visuals.

There is a slight squeamishness in some of the more hip-hop sections, when the shows come across a bit “cool history teacher”, rather like a Hellenic Hamilton. But these are soon swept away. It takes real skill to make a 4000-year-old story feel this alive. Fergus Morgan

THEATRE

Beyond Krapp ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 26 August

This one-man play, inspired by Samuel Beckett, focuses on a dead young man discussing his own funeral. Written and performed by Peter McCormick, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, it is bleakly funny and poignant, but also slim and underdeveloped.

McCormick sits at a red-chequered table, atop which stands a menu, a bottle of red wine and a candle. The glow illuminates his haunted face. Then, he launches into a 45-minute monologue, first recollecting his mother’s ghoulish glee at planning his funeral, once he has died from an unspecified cancer, aged 25.

McCormick’s character, a lapsed Catholic named Cormac, wants a riotous affair involving strip dancers, strobe lighting and a soundtrack of Timbaland. His mother would prefer something traditional. This, Cormac rants, is typical of her selfishness.

Then, the focus shifts, and Cormac starts remembering a failed relationship he had with a woman called Caoimhe, whose voice eerily echoes over the sound system. Just as Cormac’s mother forces him into her mould, so Cormac constrained Caoimhe.

McCormick’s writing is great: bitterly amusing and wryly observant. His performance is strong, too: anxious and arrogant by turns. The problem is simply that the piece is too slight to really move. For now, it is a briefly sketched portrait from a promising playwright. Fergus Morgan

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THEATRE

Barbies and Drillas ★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 26 August

In this astutely observed comedy about life as a recent grad, writer Albie Marber introduces us to a cast of familiar 20-somethings. Laurie, Poppy, William, Raff, and Lottie met at uni, and moved into rich kid Laurie’s parents’ property after graduating. Faced with the new challenges of life in the “real world”, their differences become starker and their friendships begin to fracture. 

Where this piece falls short is in its lack of variety: all three male characters fulfil the private school posh boy stereotype, donning navy quarter-zips and living off daddy’s money. The characterisation is undeniably funny but soon becomes repetitive. In contrast, the female characters are only lightly sketched. Regrettably Marber asks us to care about the group’s friendship without letting us properly get to know all of them as individuals. 

While Barbies and Drillas is somewhat one-note, it does give its young cast ample opportunity to showcase their comedic chops. Many of the quips and one-liners are laugh-out-loud good, and delivered with panache. The stand-out performance comes from Kerr Louden, who is brilliantly repulsive as privileged politics grad William, but there is no weak link. 

The stakes are too low for Barbies and Drillas to have a big impact. Marber hints at themes of class and politics, but without really interrogating how and why they are beginning to create barriers between former friends. Nonetheless, it is a charming look at post-uni life, and a comforting hour spent with characters that feel like friends. Katie Kirkpatrick 

THEATRE

Mark Grist’s Big Box Extravaganza ★★★

PBH’s Free Fringe @ Little Plaza (Venue 159) until 13 August

Poet, children’s author and rap battler Mark Grist is passionate about words and rhymes and seeks to foster a love of language in this charming, hand-knitted show for kids. In the light, airy back room of a baby-friendly café, he engages his audience with a table covered in boxes of many shapes and sizes, each emblazoned with a different letter of the alphabet. Not every box will be opened in every show, with proceedings determined by a highly technical box detector device which looks just a bit like an umbrella hovering over the table until the audience steer it to a pretty package or an intriguing receptacle.

Grist’s job was half done for him by an enthusiastic bunch of young seekers whose guesses on box contents revealed an already impressive vocabulary. Grist introduced them to the joys of the rap rhyme (don’t worry about the consonants) and regaled them with his illustrated animal-led stories and poems on grief, comfort and learning to share, while one grown-up in the audience was gifted a bottle of something beginning with Z. Fiona Shepherd