Scotsman Fringe First awards: our next six winners of 2024 revealed

It's week two of our 2024 Fringe First awards, as the Scotsman continues to celebrate outstanding new theatre premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe - over half a century after the awards were established, back in 1973.

The Scotsman Fringe Firsts recognise outstanding new writing premiered at the Fringe. Shows in the theatre, dance & physical theatre, and musicals & opera sections are eligible, and winners are announced on each Friday of the festival; there is no set number of winners each week. Shows are nominated by The Scotsman’s team of critics, and winners are decided on by a judging panel consisting of our chief theatre critic Joyce McMillan and writers Susan Mansfield, Mark Fisher, Jackie McGlone, Sally Stott, David Pollock and Fiona Shepherd.

This year the awards are being jointly sponsored for the first time, by Edinburgh Napier University and Queen Margaret University (QMU). We are hugely grateful for this new support, which will help meet the cost of running the awards and staging our three prize ceremonies throughout August.

Thanks again to our judging panel for all their hard work in selecting this week’s first group of 2024 winners, and to Black Box in Edinburgh for making our distinctive plaques. This week’s winners are:

Comala, Comala (Zoo Southside)

What we said: "Comala, Comala - presented by Pulpo Arts of Mexico City and New York - is a mysterious, beautiful and completely enthralling stage adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Paramo, about the relationship between the dead and living in Mexico, and the legacy of a vicious and corrupt village patriarch who has left little but destruction in his wake. After a deathbed confession from his mother, Pedro’s illegitimate son Juan Preciado arrives in the almost deserted small town of Comala, seeking vengeance against his father. What he finds, though, is a village of the dead riven by patterns of grief, hatred and betrayal, where ghosts and the living walk cheek by jowl; and in this remarkable production, all of this is brought to life by a stunningly talented company of seven actors, singers and musicians."

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A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First (theSpace @ Niddry Street)

What we said: "Based on their own experience of growing up in US military families, Xhloe and Natasha's brilliantly choreographed, whip-smart and yet heartbreaking piece of physical theatre follows patriotic pals Ace and Grasshopper as they try to be real boys becoming real men, with macho Ace taking the lead, and Grasshopper convinced he’ll never make it. The inspired use of a soundtrack of Beatles songs, played on two harmonicas, not only tells the story of a generation but also reminds us how close the Beatles’ songs were, in their origins, to the working-class music of the Americans who died in Vietnam, from blues to blue grass, and beyond."

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Mairi Campbell: Living Stone (Scottish Storytelling Centre)

What we said: "Mairi Campbell has strong family connections to the island of Lismore, just off Oban; and this new show tells the story of a stone unearthed there a few years ago, an ancient millstone of hard rock, which appears as a strong second presence on stage. Campbell’s meditation on this stone, and the story it tells, has produced an exquisite 60-minute show - full of peace and contemplation, but also of powerful history, and 21st century observation and mirth - that is illustrated throughout by Campbell’s beautiful songs."

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Son of a Bitch at the Edinburgh Fringe | Karla Gowlett

Son of a Bitch (Summerhall)

What we said: "In her debut play, comedian and actor Anna Morris has hit upon the golden blend of a simple, intriguing premise which is able to be thoroughly explored within the space of an hour’s Fringe show. In one line, her story is – what happens when a mum goes viral for calling her four-year-old son a “little c*nt” as they get off an aeroplane? Written and performed solo by Morris, with direction by Madelaine Moore, the play cleverly uses these few short seconds as a refracting lens through which a relatable portrait of one experience of modern motherhood can be seen. It’s an excellent piece of first-time writing from Morris which really gets to the heart of pompous, context-free viral judgement in the 21st century, motherhood at its absolute zenith of stress and the endurance of parental love."

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VL (Roundabout @ Summerhall)

What we said: "If toxic ideas about masculinity represent one of the world’s greatest current problems then there’s nothing more timely, on the Fringe, than a good show that subjects those ideas to a blast of critical analysis. Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair’s VL is a brand new show by two of Scotland’s leading playwrights that seeks to do exactly that, while also offering one of the sharpest and funniest comic nights out on the Fringe. Its twin heroes Max and Stevie - played to perfection, in Orla O’Loughlin’s flawless production, by Scott Fletcher and Gavin Jon Wright - are “just two wee guys trying to survive in an ordinary Scottish secondary school”; but in order to do so, they have somehow to persuade their classmates that they are not VL’s - i.e. Virgin Lips, who have never been kissed. In the end, the show offers a female perspective from the woman of Max’s dreams, exposing just how harshly the same judgmental culture bears down on young women."

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Weather Girl (Summerhall)

What we said: "In Tyne Rafaeli’s breathtakingly intense but beautifully-paced production of US writer Brian Watkins's searing new monologue, New York-based actress McDermott plays Stacey, a television weather girl in central California who finds herself reporting on ever-intensifying wildfires in the home state she loves. If you’re searching for a 2024 Fringe show that speaks the brutal truth about the world we now face, and does so in brilliantly theatrical and gripping style, then our should seek out this unforgettable Weather Girl - while giving profound thanks for the cool winds that still blow in Edinburgh, even in the height of summer."

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Batshit | Pia Johnson

WEEK ONE WINNERS

BATSHIT (Traverse)

What we said: “In Australian theatre-maker Leah Shelton’s brief but brilliantly vivid solo show BATSHIT, she conjures up the life of her grandmother Gwen, who was written off as mad after finding herself unable to conform to the social norms imposed on housewives in 1960s Australia.

“It’s short, it’s often funny, and some of it is utterly shocking; and it tells a deeply political truth about the pathologising of female pain with unflinching courage and intelligence, in a show that’s both intensely theatrical, and, in the end, deeply moving.”

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The Border (Pleasance @ EICC)

What we said: “Studio Wachowicz-Fret’s beautiful tribute to Antonina Romanova, a non-binary artist who was living in Kyiv when Russia invaded Ukraine, conjures up the pressures both of the war, and of the long journey towards full rights for gay, trans an non-binary people; as well as insisting on the right of artists like Romanova to continue to be heard, even when war prevents them from fully practising their art.”

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Cyrano (Traverse)

What we said: “Virginia Gay’s gorgeous gender-flipped version of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac offers a damn nearly perfect good night out at the theatre, a sizzling and hilarious 21st century comedy about human yearnings, aspirations and absurdities.”

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A History of Paper, Traverse Theatre | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

A History Of Paper (Traverse)

What we said: “A rare and sparkling event, given a huge additional weight by the death last year of the playwright, Oliver Emanuel, who co-wrote the piece with his long-time friend and collaborator, the composer Gareth Williams. Songs of deceptive simplicity and absolute beauty transform a classic narrative of love, bereavement and loss – a pervasive theme on this year’s Fringe – into something magical and strange by viewing it through the lens of the thousands of pieces of paper through which, even in our now supposedly “paperless” world, we record and document our lives.”

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June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music And Me (Summerhall)

What we said: “It is the story of June Carter Cash’s early struggle to maintain and build an independent career in a patriarchal world, while raising two young daughters from two broken marriages, that Charlene Boyd intertwines with her own, in what is not only a stunning solo performance, but also her debut as a playwright.

“Backed by a brilliant three-piece on stage band, and put together by an outstanding creative team including director Cora Bissett, music director Pippa Murphy and designer Shona Reppe – June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music And Me emerges as a stunningly vivid and heartfelt tribute show-cum-memoir, all dressed up in 1950s hillbilly frills and sparkly stetsons, in telling a story that resonates with so many women’s lives.”

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So Young (Traverse)

What we said: “Set in writer Douglas Maxwell’s home territory of Glasgow’s south side, So Young chronicles the events of a single traumatic evening, when middle-class couple Liane and Davie go round to visit their recently widowed friend Milo, only to find that “poor Milo” wants to introduce them to his new partner Greta, a poised but glowing 20-year-old he has found on an internet hook-up site.

“The dialogue is fast, cheeky, frank, brilliantly observant, and often lethally funny. Director Gareth Nicholl’s brilliant cast of four – featuring a superb Andy Clark as Davie, with Nicholas Karimi and Yana Harris as the lovers – somehow unleash all the ferocity of humankind’s most ancient passions; from love, rage, desire and the timeless battle of the sexes, to ferocious envy of the young, and the fear of death that stalks us all.”

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