By Kelly Apter, David Pollock, Fergus Morgan, Rory Ford

Published 15th Aug 2023, 15:10 GMT

Updated 15th Aug 2023, 15:21 GMT

Fool’s Gold ****

Zoo Playground (Venue 186) until 27 August

At first glance, it’s hard to take Saskia Solomons seriously. Dressed as a ‘fool’ (a sub-genre of clowning), with a golden unitard stretched over a huge fake stomach and a crown perched on her head, she is immediately comical. But while Fool’s Gold gives us much to laugh about, Solomons is also here to tackle a serious subject head on: money. Who has it, who doesn’t have it, and how as a nation we might go about shifting the economic landscape into more equitable terrain.

Despite this being a solo show, we meet more than one fool. Our main host is an exuberant extrovert with a wide grin, glorying in her moment in the spotlight. To her left there’s a sceptic, scowling in disapproval and ready to throw scorn on any overt enthusiasm. To her right there’s the human equivalent of a panic attack, face fixed in abject horror at the prospect of attention. And finally, there’s the fool to end all fools, bouncing around the stage, arms flailing, with a devilish glint in their eye.

All four are, of course, Solomons putting her Lecoq-based training to fine use. Stepping from side to side, she embodies them all.

Engaging with the crowd throughout, the fool-in-chief (the smiley one) uses golden ping pong balls to illustrate the wealth of the nation. Then hits us with alarming facts, such as the 50 richest families in the UK own more than the combined wealth of half of the UK population.

There’s also a fun game of bingo as we look at the various ways cross-party groups have attempted to reduce this enormous disparity. All the while, the clowning prowess of Solomons and her endless supply of hilarious facial expressions keep us highly entertained. Especially when the naughtiest fool of all comes up with the perfect solution for wealth redistribution. Kelly Apter

Square Peg ****

Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152) until 19 August

The gowns which hang on tailor’s dummies surrounding Simeon Morris onstage are as much a part of his persona as the man we come to know in this autobiographical story rich with life experience. At one point Morris says he feels he doesn’t make these sheer and impractical pieces to be worn in any normal context: “I make dresses which make women look f***ing beautiful.”

Yet when female friends admire his creations and ask if they can buy any from him, he doesn’t want to part with them. He feels as though that would be giving away the feminine side of his personality, and he doesn’t want to do that – or at least, he only wants to do it for someone he loves. Through his gentle, contemplative presentation and stage presence, this dance continues throughout; between the masculine and feminine, the beautiful and the ugly, the adored and the unlovable.

Originally a leatherworker, who makes and sells designer accessories in his home city of Norwich, Morris is a recent acting graduate, and he brings the two strands of his professional life together here. He works at the sewing machine onstage, and demonstrates the simplicity of the bias-cut skirt and dress created by fashion designer Janice Wainwright, who he knew and worked with. The tenderness and delicacy of these passages is captivating.

Then he takes us through his difficult relationship with his father, relationship breakups, and one dismal tale of sex with a woman who just wanted to find drugs. The words of Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy break his reverie, and eventually just the simple song of a blackbird, which he and the audience listen to in meditative silence. It’s a frank and involving piece, one which surely presents a more nuanced look at the contradictions of masculinity than almost any other on this year’s Fringe. David Pollock

Tom Moran Is A Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar ****

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 28 August

Tom Moran Is A Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar is essentially an hour-long therapy session for its Dublin-based writer and performer – but a smartly written, wryly witty and profoundly piercing one. It won influential Irish company Fishamble’s New Writing Award after its 2022 run at Dublin Fringe Festival and it is easy to see why: this is an honest, angsty and amusing show about mental health.

The show starts like a stand-up gig, with a mic stood on an empty stage. Moran bounds out and starts chatting. He tells a funny story about trying to skip school by pretending he had stomach pain, then sticking with his story all the way to the operating table. Slowly, the tone shifts. Moran tells more stories about awful things he has done, lies he has told, and girlfriends he has led on. He talks about his problems with alcohol and food, his desire to be loved, his relationship with his parents, and his traumatic childhood. He bares his deepest fears and darkest thoughts.

This might seem unpalatably self-indulgent were it not for Moran’s superb performance – under Davey Kelleher’s direction, he hides his pain beneath a beaming grin, often puncturing the tension with a well-judged joke – and because he manages to spin his own experiences into something universally relatable. “Give me a cheer if you aren’t sure your dad loves you!” he asks in a repeating riff. “Now give me a cheer if you aren’t entirely sure you love your dad!”

Perhaps this is just the latest in a long line of lies, but Moran’s authentic angst suggests otherwise. It suggests instead that he has been on an emotional odyssey and emerged the other side a happier, healthier person, and now wants to share his story with an audience to encourage them do the same. We are happy to hear it. Fergus Morgan

Did You Eat? ***

Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236) until 26 August

Well, did you? For Koreans this polite inquiry of concern is part of their love language and can mean many things like “I miss you” or “are you okay?” or even “I love you”. This troubling autobiographical show from Zoë Kim is an exploration of how we would wish to be loved – and love others – as well as her Korean-American background. As Kim observes she “laughs in English but cries in Korean” and there’s good reason for that. Kim proves a disappointment to her Korean parents, not least because she’s not a boy. But as she notes, “when you’re not fed love with a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off a knife”.

There’s a very pleasing formalism to this tightly controlled piece directed by Chris Yejin; Kim is noticeably more relaxed portraying her mother than being herself but this is deliberate. Kim steadily paces around a chalk square that she returns to repeatedly, obsessively erasing and redrawing it. Is it symbolic of her heart or the walls she has had to build around it? This show documents some truly appalling abuse and Kim’s precise presentation of the facts avoids emotional manipulation while also making the raw feelings on display all the more powerful. Rory Ford

Paul Zenon in Monkey Business ***

Le Monde (Venue 47) until 27 August

“This is an origin story,” says Paul Zenon, and everyone in the audience who read the same crumpled but well-loved old American comics which he holds up in a bundle during the performance knows exactly what he means. It’s the moment where a new hero – likely first introduced in the midst of an exciting battle – has a flashback a few issues later so readers can learn how they got their powers in the first place.

For Zenon, a working magician for many years, the story told in Monkey Business is the origin of his powers, and it turns out they are genuinely in those comics we’ve been shown; not the superhero titles, but in the adverts in the back of old EC horror comics, where magical toys and gizmos were offered for sale. Zenon first encountered these delights in Blackpool, “the Las Vegas of the UK”, and he decided then, “I'm going to do that myself for a living … con kids.”

He warns the piece will be more of a lecture than a magic show, but it’s still entertaining and informative, as the eccentric showman characters behind such gimmicks as the Joy Buzzer, the Hypno-Coin, X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys – and occasionally the gadgets themselves – are reintroduced, amid a twist of nostalgic humour. David Pollock

Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre reviews: Fool’s Gold | Square Peg | Tom Moran Is A Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar | Did You Eat? | Paul Zenon in Monkey Business