This year’s EdFringe takes place from 04 – 28 August 2023 and will feature an exciting range of shows, with theatre, comedy, music, dance, circus, musicals, variety, cabaret, events and more all represented in the programme. You can find all the details including tickets here.
Ad Infinitum: Beautiful Evil Things
Venue: Pleasance Dome, Queen Dome, 2 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 7, 14 & 21)
Time: 15.40 (16.55)
Told through the eyes of Medusa as she watches the battle of Troy, Ad Infinitum takes a look at the alternative stories of the most notorious women in Greek mythology in a show co-created and performed by long-term collaborator Deborah Pugh. A bodiless head on the goddess Athena’s shield, the snake-haired Medusa watches over the battle, focusing on queens and prophets whose stories have been distorted and dismissed. Casting Medusa as an archivist setting the record straight, history is retold with full nuance and colour as seen through a female gaze, and through the most powerful gaze in mythology. Told with the same high-energy physical storytelling as Ad Infinitum’s award-winning one-man Odyssey, their one-woman race through mythology is a fierce, funny take on some of the oldest stories known to woman.
Box Tale Soup: Casting the Runes
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Above, 2 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 16),
Time: 11:45 (12:45)
With puppets, set and props made using recycled materials, Fringe stalwarts Box Tale Soup bring M.R. James’ chilling supernatural thriller back to life with their signature style of puppet-based literary adaptation. The two-hander pays homage to a writer considered the grandfather of British horror (inspiration for writers such as Susan Hill and Lovecraft), taking audiences on a ride through dark magic and intrigue, and further establishing the company as one of the go-to creators of classic Gothic theatre. Carefully crafted with tense original music, bespoke puppets, and a shape-shifting set, it follows the increasingly sinister haunting of an academic after he’s given some mysterious runes.
Temper Theatre: HOME
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Forth, 4 – 28 Aug 2023
Time: 14.00 (15.00)
Highlighting local climate disaster, the new show from Temper Theatre is the story of returning home and seeing it in a new light, and the feelings aroused when climate change has directly impacted the place of your childhood. Based in part on Artistic Director Finn Morrell’s own experiences of returning to his home in East Anglia, HOME combines Temper’s signature mix of fluid muscular movement, soul-shaking soundscapes and fragmented imagery.
Anna Lou Larkin: Le Wine Club
Venue: Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose (Nip), 2 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 16)
Time: 15.00 (16.00)
Popular Glaswegian cabaret performer Anna Lou Larkin takes the role of sommelier as she brings her solo show to Edinburgh for a mid-afternoon wine tasting paired with a murder mystery. Audiences are invited to join the chanteuse for a tipple as she sets out to solve the mystery of who killed her lover, whilst indulging in the world of wine and adding splashes of accordion-based musical comedy and magic for good measure. Anna Lou Larkin has studied wine up to WSET Level 4 and will bring her real-life experience to the stage in this funny wine-infused cabaret where all of-age audience members are invited to join Anna for a tipple.
Sarah Deller: Optimistic: Elizabeth Holmes
Venue: ZOO Southside, Studio, 4 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 10 & 17)
Time: 18.55 (19:55)
Using real world material including newly released trial exhibits, interviews, and text messages from medical fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, this verbatim devised play explores the mind of the woman who falsely claimed her technology would revolutionise medicine. Defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars and even using her disastrous technology on real patients, Holmes claimed that a single drop of blood could be used for up to 800 blood tests – and people believed her. Following the story of the rise and fall of Holmes’ success, writer and performer Sarah Deller aims to portray the true life of Elizabeth Holmes, adopting her distinctive mannerisms and famously affected voice.
Nailed Productions: The Quality of Mercy
Venue: The Space at Surgeons Hall, Venue 52, Grand Theatre, 7 – 26 Aug 2023 (not 13)
Time: 17.35 (18.35)
Edwin Flay’s psychological study of general practitioner and serial killer Dr Harold Shipman follows his final hours as he prepares to take his life. Edwin was a patient of Shipman’s as a child, and his grandmother Renee Lacey was one of Shipman’s victims, aged just 63. Nominated for three Off West End awards in 2022, The Quality of Mercy draws extensively on the findings of the Smith Report to paint an unflinching portrait of a narcissistic psychopath, and interrogates society’s attitudes towards death, justice and compassion.
Broccoli Arts in association with Thistle and Rose Arts: Salty Irina
Venue: Roundabout @ Summerhall, 2 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 8,15 & 22)
Time: 14.30 – 15.40
Shortlisted for the Bruntwood Prize 2019, Eve Leigh’s play is a queer coming-of-age love story inspired by true events. Anna and Eireni are in the throes of young love while studying at university. But following a series of racist murders in their town, they decide to turn detectives and infiltrate a far-right festival to find the culprits. But when the true nature of their relationship is uncovered, their safety is under threat and when events take a turn for the worse, they are shocked by what they find. Salty Irina examines fascism, fear and the power of collective action.
Fun Guy Productions: The Society For New Cuisine
Venue: Underbelly Cowgate, Iron Belly, 3 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 14)
Time: 18.40 (19.40)
Taking a Buddhist allegory and turning it into a dark satirical fable, East-Asian writer and performer Chris Fung’s debut one man show addresses consumerism, existentialism and a need that can never be satisfied. When a man goes through a cataclysmic awakening, he takes stock of his life and finds himself wanting. Partly inspired by a real-life experience, partly inspired by the swathes of workers in the UK, USA and China who left well paid jobs during the pandemic, The Society for New Cuisine follows the character as he seeks to find new purpose and meaning. His journey sees him confront societal taboos and takes him to increasingly dark extremes until finally he is persuaded that he’ll find satisfaction in an irreversible, bloody decision.
Lubna Kerr: Tickbox 2
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, The Green, Venue 33, 2 – 27 Aug 2023 (not 16 & 23)
Time: 17.00 (18.00)
Tickbox 2 is a semi-autobiographical one woman play which raises issues around race, perception, identity and living up to expectations growing up as a person of colour in Glasgow in the 1970s. Switching between narrating and commenting with humour on her and her parents lives, and acting as a range of characters including her mother, Lubna details her parents move from a comfortable middle-class life in Lahore, Pakistan to a four storey, one-bedroom flat in Govan in Glasgow in the late 1960’s after her father was accepted to study a PhD at Strathclyde University. Tickbox 2 deals with the challenges they encountered with humour and emotion, from bereavement to balancing two cultures to explaining samosas to the casually racist neighbour.
Unqualified Design Studio: Without Sin
Venue: Summerhall, Courtyard, 2 – 27 August 2023 (not 7, 14 & 21)
Time: Every 20 mins from 12:00 – 20:00 (17:00 – 17:40 exclusively reserved for critics)
Reclaiming the rite of confession as a non-judgmental exercise in healing and reflection, Without Sin is an interactive art experience by Dublin-based collective Unqualified Design Studio. The performance brings two participants into bespoke-crafted timber booths, recalling the typology of the traditional confession box. The booth uses state-of-the-art technology to create an audio-visual feedback loop that responds to participants’ voices. Linked via headphones, participants are guided into conversation using a deck of cards to create a story together. The experience invites audiences to consider how our relationships have evolved in recent years – what’s been lost, what we’ve found, and what it means to live together after being forced to live apart. A contemporary confessional for the modern sinner, Without Sin cultivates space for intimate conversation among friends and strangers.
From Start to Finnish in association with Agit-Cirk: Insomniac’s Fable
PART OF FROM START TO FINNISH
Venue: Summerhall, Cairns Lecture Theatre, 2-27 August 2023 (not 14 or 21)
Time: 11:00 (11:50)
Created by ballet dancer Emma Lister and contemporary circus artist Sakari Männistö, Insomniac’s Fable is a surreal dreamscape with evocative choreography by Ludovic Ondiviela and images created by Angela Annesley from her woodcuts. Subverting the ‘boy meets dream girl’ narrative, it asks what would happen if this dream girl grabbed hold of the story. Performed by Sakari with Scottish dancer Erin O’Toole, it combines ballet, juggling and psychedelic design to create a Hitchcockian love story.
You can find more shows here
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