Edinburgh Fringe Theatre reviews: Eggs Aren’t That Easy to Make | The Time Painter | Her Raving Mind + more

Eggs Aren’t That Easy to Make ★★★☆☆

Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 25 August

Drunken promises made in the flush of youth nearly come back to bite everyone in this gentle but amusing comedy about pregnancy and friendship from Maria Telnikoff. Specifically a promise made at a student party by Claire to her best friend Dan, when she tells him that if she ends up in a lesbian relationship later in life, she wants him to be the sperm donor with whom she conceives a child.

Eggs Aren't That Easy to Make | Fabi Waters

Fast forward ten years and Claire is indeed in a relationship with Lou, while Dan is dating Naomi. At the first hint that Claire and Lou are planning to have a child, Dan joyously agrees that he’d love to finally do his duty as a friend – only to find Claire has scrubbed her half-cut promise from memory, and that she has a list of difficult and demanding requirements for any prospective father to live up to.

What follows is a very modern comedy of manners, where this quartet of well-adjusted, dinner-partying young professionals (and bumbling, over-enthusiastic Dan) navigate the complicated intricacies of starting a different type of family to the norm. It’s warm-hearted, agreeable and sapped of real bite because everyone involved just wants to get along and do their best for one another, but four capable actors, Lauren Tranter’s smooth direction and Telnikoff’s witty dialogue make for a perfectly truthful and enjoyable hour.

DAVID POLLOCK

The Time Painter ★★★☆☆

Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 24 August

On 18 May 1980, troops fired on civilians in Gwangju, Korea, who were protesting against the expanded use of martial law, with the loss of between 1000 and 2000 lives. Some see echoes of that time in the recent debates on the use of martial law in the country.

Part of the Korean season at this year’s Fringe, The Time Painter looks back to 1980 through the eyes of Kyung-ja, a female painter (in the painter-decorator rather the artistic sense) living and working at the Gwangju provincial office.

The story of Kyung-ja and her daughter, Bok-hee, is explored in largely wordless vignettes which make creative use of objects: paper, apples, chunks of piping, balloons. The five female performers work a kind of magic, turning a sheet of paper into a valley at night, a computer keyboard, a child’s doll.

As a magical account of a child growing up, it’s gently comedic and completely charming. Then, suddenly, the day of the protest arrives and the tone shifts completely. It’s too big a change, too fast, and the playful theatrical language which has been established feels inadequate for the weight of such a tragedy.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

READ MORE: Scotsman Fringe First Awards: the stories behind the guest festival prizes being awarded this week

Her Raving Mind ★★★☆☆

Just the Tonic at the Caves (Venue 88) until 24 August

El (Fenia Gianni) is in a psychiatric facility. In her regular therapy sessions, she gradually reveals her story: parents who had little time for her; a gaslighting, narcissistic mother. As a youngster she was already binge eating.

El parties through her twenties then, just when life seems to be entering a happier phase, the “love of her life” turns out to being a master at coercive control. Reliving these experiences in therapy sends her fragile mind into turmoil, represented by sound and strobe lighting.

Gianni wrote and co-directs the play with actors Edward Garcia and Kat de Leiros playing all the other parts. The low, dark space of The Caves adds plenty to the atmosphere. El’s name is a reference to Electra but it’s unclear whether Gianni intends to mirror specific elements of the Electra story or just evoke the general mood.

The play is confusing at times, particularly when it becomes hard to distinguish El’s story from her violent fantasies. Mostly, she seems calm and committed to getting well, but a strange twist at the end throws all this open to question.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

Parody of the Rings ★★★☆☆

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 25) until 24 August

For some reason this year at the Fringe appears to be the year of Tolkien, with Recent Cutbacks’ foley-based spoof Fly You Fools also making its debut alongside a number of unrelated fantasy comedies. There’s no mistaking the tone of Parody of the Rings from that title, although the work itself isn’t so much a send-up of the Lord of the Rings trilogy itself.

Just like Fly You Fools, rather, much of the humour is in recreating such a lengthy and big-budget epic with the slimmest of resources and plenty of well-practiced theatrical nous. Actors Jacob Alcroft and Alexandra Ricou are a pair of red-waistcoated cinema ushers named Peter and Jackson, who are welcoming the audience to their theatre for a marathon screening of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, just as the projector gives out.

Panicked, they inevitably launch into a frantic reenactment of the films together, with lots of impressive clowning, vocal mimicry, physical comedy and inventive use of props taking the place of big budget special effects, and three willing audience members briefly press-ganged into Frodo’s band of warriors.

It’s light but it’s consistently funny, with memorable moments including the use of an at-hand mop as Gandalf’s beard and an impressively staged battle scene between Gandalf and Saruman. How they get around the obvious problem of fitting nine hours into less than one is also amusingly done.

DAVID POLLOCK

SWAN? ★★☆☆☆

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 24 August

Deriving from the film Black Swan (which is itself a derivative of the classic ballet Swan Lake), SWAN? follows a half-swan, half-ballerina on her quest to escape the strictures of a sorcerer’s curse. What starts promisingly devolves quickly, as the audience – who are given a collective name, the day they attend – are asked to detail their dream hero. The damsel-hero trope is explored but never excavated as the Swan, played by Lauren Brady, speaks in sounds and expletives and engages in mating dances and phallic imagery. There is little nuance, however, and innuendo is more gratuitous than it is subversive.

JOSEPHINE BALFOUR-OATTS

Play On ★★☆☆☆

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 24 August

Although competently (under)played, this very mild two-hander by Erin Boulter fatally lacks much in the way of tension, pace or drama. The characters, two estranged siblings, Ash (Boulter) and Lea (Nora Went), are decently sketched. Locked in an escape room after their mother’s funeral, they’re faced with solving the cryptic Shakespearean clues in order to exit and access the will. The set-up holds potential but little of it is fulfilled as there’s no sense of urgency (a time-limit would help) and the conclusion is flatly predictable. Fans of the people-locked-in-a-room subgenre will leave disappointed.

RORY FORD

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