I watch six shows a day so you don't have to
What have I learned after two solid weeks of theatre, comedy and opera?
Mexican magical realism. Climate crisis apocalyptic comedy. Promenade opera in a museum. Edinburgh’s various festivals have been A Lot. Returning to the comparatively deserted streets of Glasgow for a few days off, I felt like a toddler after seeing Hey Duggee live for the first time.
Exhausted. Mentally drained. Badly in need of a big nap.
Now I’ve had a carton of juice and a box of raisins, I’m ready to start digesting and drawing conclusions. Seeing so many shows back to back is its own quality control. Work has to be really strong to stand out in a six-show day.
I picked I’m Almost There, a freestyle adaptation of The Odyssey, because it fitted into my schedule and was produced by Francesca Moody of Fleabag and Baby Reindeer fame. It taught me my first lesson of 2024:
It’s still possible to be surprised, delighted and astounded
Here was something I’d never seen before, a story with an admirable degree of bonkers mostly sung to a musical accompaniment but that was nothing at all like a musical.
There was quite a lot of sex yet it was never smutty or cringey. The parents beside me with their 11-year-oldish daughter did not appear to regret their decision to bring her along.
It was clever without showing off. There was no visual clutter or other extraneous elements.
I would have enjoyed I’m Almost There under any circumstances. However it hugely benefited by coming straight after a show that was underdeveloped and poorly structured.
This taught me lesson two:
Scheduling matters
The time slot a show is on. What anyone has seen before or after. Whether they are mentally receptive or have had their fill of sex and death for that day.
Sex and death are two of the main themes of drama so it would be unusual to escape them altogether but it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. In retrospect, I should have split up The Sound Inside, Penthesilia and Carmen.
Had I realised the emotional impact of The Sound Inside, an outstanding play about a gnarly creative writing professor and her talented weirdo student, at 10am, I would have taken the rest of the day off.
As it was I had booked an afternoon of intense emotion, clanging Dutch metal and, when a normal person might be having an afternoon cup of tea, death sex slathered in liquidised liver.
By the time I got to the Festival Theatre I could tell it was fantastic Carmen but had run out of capacity to feel anyone’s pain.
Can this be mitigated by anything other than better diary planning? Yes it can, which this leads me to lesson three:
Charm can overcome just about anything
As the audience filed into the Traverse theatre at breakfast o’clock, Virginia Gay was working the auditorium, greeting friends, welcoming others, handing out poems. As this slowly segued into the actual performance of Cyrano, she thanked us all for coming “at the natural time for theatre, 10am.”
It was a masterstroke, it meant we were all in it together and it set the tone for one of my very favourite shows of 2024. Cyrano triumphs in love by being caustic, hilarious and the smartest person in the room. Of course this spoke directly to my soul.
Cyrano is such a strong piece of work that it would be a joy at any hour of the day. But the next lesson is:
A tricky time slot reveals a show’s weaknesses
Quarter to two on a Tuesday afternoon is not, to paraphrase Gay, the natural time for mental queer burlesque cabaret that pivots from a live Grindr profile to a massacre in a primary school.
The Disappeared toggles between late lunch and evening slots and it would certainly be more at home with a bigger, better lubricated audience. In front of a thin, sober house even the banging beats failed to get the party started.
Under these circumstances, a Scottish audience does not want to participate. Lying on the floor, being one of the children threatened by a gunman enacted by a man in Temu lingerie? No thank you.
But if you must make me join in, butter me up first. The next lesson will surprise no one:
Flattery always works
Well played Aidan Sadler, for pointing to me in the audience, describing me approvingly as “the one with the hair”, then refusing to believe that I grew up in the 70s. All before putting me into a song. I love that for me.
The next lesson takes us to one of the talking points of this year’s Fringe programme, which features a good deal of mental health. Kevin Toolis addressed this in an unhelpful piece in the Spectator, which misquotes Andrew Eaton-Lewis of the Mental Health Foundation. My takeaway is:
It is possible to make good work about mental health
Every Brilliant Thing, for example, is a tremendous show. Moving, funny, with a judicious glimmer of hope at the end. In Two Minds is, at times, a difficult watch, but its theatrical distance means it doesn’t feel like someone bleeding on stage. Plus it’s very funny.
I have chosen not to see much stand-up traumedy as I don’t enjoy watching unprocessed pain live on stage. A talented comedian can certainly make taboo subjects such as bereavement and suicide funny but a gauche one just makes the audience cringe.
Watching deeply personal material, that leaves a solo performer exposed, is not my idea of fun. Live, unmediated trauma is exactly the kind of work the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival counsels against.
There feels like a generational divide opening up here, where younger audiences want comedy about diagnoses and medication and get a huge round of applause simply for talking about their condition and surviving.
Oldies wonder where all the jokes went.
Traumedy, badly done and bereft of anything recognisable as a punchline, or even an idea, makes me restless and unsympathetic. And I’m not the only one.
Plus, it’s now so ubiquitous that it feels very predictable. Which is why the last lesson is:
Pushing boundaries is not an end in itself
Writing your pain on A4 sheets and hanging them on a washing line across the stage might feel like a bold statement. However, if you don’t develop them into something funny and meaningful, they’re just therapy notes.
But Natalie Palamides’ extraordinary double-sided performance in Weer, a sweat-pouring, leave-nothing-behind performance unlike anything I’ve ever seen before? Inject that into my veins.
Reframing Hamlet as an existential debate about the right of people with Down’s Syndrome to occupy space in the world? With an everybody-up dancing finale? Now there’s a boundary worth pushing.
I’m not ever doing 6 shows a day, so a big thank you for doing that for us all. You do make me think that next year I should maybe step out of my official festival only mindset. Will stalk you. But with later starts.
As someone who is also knee-deep in Fringe madness, I totally agree with ALL of this!! I would add: "Location Matters". My friend and I stacked our first weekend with one full Summerhall day, and one full Traverse day, so that we could see some of our favorite programming without sprinting across the city and back again. We now consider ourselves geniuses/visionaries/etc. "Lunch Matters" is on our list of considerations as well. I'll look over our proposed show schedule sometimes and say: "but when do we eat?" Easy to forget about, and a show will be ruined if your stomach is growling during it!
Loved the call-outs to Hamlet, Comala, Comala, and The Sound Inside, which were big faves of ours. Adored the call-out to Weer, which ruined me (in the most perfect way). Transcendent. I actually sat next to the harpist from I'm Almost There during Weer and we bonded, and I'm so looking forward to seeing her next weekend!
And last, but not least, did you read Fergus Morgan's piece in The Stage about the exact phenomenon you're describing re: traumedy? https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/why-is-the-edinburgh-fringe-flooded-with-solo-shows-about-awful-experiences