Articles by James T. Harding

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Buddhism, Development and Daphne with Screenwriter Nico Mensinga

Buddhism, Development and Daphne with Screenwriter Nico Mensinga

Daphne is a coming-of-age movie about a 28, sorry, 31-year-old woman who witnesses a stabbing in a corner shop. Forced to confront her own mortality, she must reevaluate her own life, including her opinion of her mother's way of dealing with terminal cancer and her attitude towards love which, after Freud, she believes is a psychosis... 

Star Inflation is Real

Star Inflation is Real

Mutterings about star ratings are as much a part of the Fringe as plastic pint glasses. Some people think critics are too generous, some people too harsh (mainly about their own shows), and others think star ratings should be abolished altogether... 

Laura Albert & Susie Orbach Attempt Live Therapy at the Book Festival

Laura Albert & Susie Orbach Attempt Live Therapy at the Book Festival

In 2005 it was revealed that author JT LeRoy was in fact a hoax – written by Laura Albert but played in person by her sister in law Savannah Knoop. At this year’s Book Festival, Laura Albert attempted a therapy session with psychotherapist Susie Orbach in front of a live audience, talking about her eating disorder, relationship with her son, and the power of her pseudonym... 

Creatives

Creatives

At a college songwriting class in Chicago, an end-of-year competition involves the students performing each other’s anonymous submissions for a celebrity guest judge. It’s like no contest I’ve ever heard of in real life, and there’s something gloriously petty about the characters’ investment in it – it’s all very musical theatre dahling... 

Scottish Playwright Linda Duncan McLaughlin on the Birth of A Play A Pie and a Pint

Scottish Playwright Linda Duncan McLaughlin on the Birth of A Play A Pie and a Pint

Architect Rob can't find his Rotoring mechanical pencil. A small event, perhaps, but the early onset dementia it heralds will challenge Rob and his wife Cathy's relationship to its very core... 

Clique’s Milly Thomas Dives in at the Deep End with Two Plays this Fringe

Clique’s Milly Thomas Dives in at the Deep End with Two Plays this Fringe

Writer and actor Milly Thomas is best known in the theatre world for her 2016 play Clickbait and for writing an episode of Clique on BBC Three. This Fringe she is presenting two plays of her own penning: Dust at Underbelly – which she also stars in – and Brutal Cessation at Assembly... 

Prom Kween’s Rebecca Humphries on Why she Won't be Doing a Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Prom Kween’s Rebecca Humphries on Why she Won't be Doing a Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Underbelly Untapped Award-winner Prom Kween is a high-energy comedy musical about Matthew Crisson, the first non-binary person to win a prom queen title in a US high school. Features Editor James T... 

Yes, There's a Fringe for Books Too

Yes, There's a Fringe for Books Too

As the Edinburgh International Festival and its Fringe celebrate their 70th anniversaries, Broadway Baby’s James T. Harding takes a look at how they’ve inspired a plethora of literary events in counterpoint to the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF). 

Trauma and Therapy with Let Me Go Writer-director Polly Steele

Trauma and Therapy with Let Me Go Writer-director Polly Steele

Let Me Go is a feature film based on the true life of Helga Schneider (Juliet Stevenson) - whose mother was a Nazi war criminal. The film deals with intergenerational trauma, mother-daughter relationships, and the revelation of truth... 

From Stage to Screen: Modern Life is Rubbish's Philip Gawthorne

From Stage to Screen: Modern Life is Rubbish's Philip Gawthorne

Modern Life Is Rubbish is romantic comedy about a couple whose love of music brings them together as well as revealing their differences. The feature film version starring Freya Mavor and Josh Whitehouse recently made its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, but the story started life as short stage play... 

Phyllida Lloyd Transfers her All-female Julius Caesar to the Screen

Phyllida Lloyd Transfers her All-female Julius Caesar to the Screen

When it was first staged in 2012, Phyllida Lloyd’s prison-set Julius Caesar was called “gimmicky, humourless and slow” by the Telegraph and “witty, liberating and inventive” by the Guardian... 

​Drolls: The Illegal Comedies Time Forgot

​Drolls: The Illegal Comedies Time Forgot

At the largest arts festival in the world, it's easy to forget that theatre wasn't always welcome in Britain. When the Puritans made theatre illegal, the scene was driven underground... 

Agent of Influence’s Sarah Sigal on the Unusual Staying Power of Pamela More

Agent of Influence’s Sarah Sigal on the Unusual Staying Power of Pamela More

Agent of Influence: The Secret Life of Pamela More is the story of a high-society fashion journalist recruited by MI5 to facilitate the abdication of King Edward VIII. Broadway Baby’s James T Harding met playwright Sarah Sigal to learn more about holding seances with fictional characters, the nature of theatrical collaboration, and her family’s multigenerational conspiracy theory. 

Staging the Unstageable with Kill The Beast’s Zoe Roberts & Natasha Hodgson

Staging the Unstageable with Kill The Beast’s Zoe Roberts & Natasha Hodgson

Macabre comedy company Kill The Beast (Peter Brook and Manchester Theatre Award winners) return to the Fringe with their 70s werewolf spectacular He Had Hairy Hands and a new 80s futuristic throwback, Don’t Wake the Damp... 

​How to Win a Bobby: Queer Musical How to Win Against History Scoops Award

​How to Win a Bobby: Queer Musical How to Win Against History Scoops Award

How To Win Against History has been awarded the prestigious Bobby Award, Broadway Baby’s sixth star awarded to the very cream of Fringe performances.Broadway Baby Editor Henry St Leger invaded the stage after the performance today, 24th August, to surprise the unsuspecting cast with their Bobby Awards trophy. 

How to Win Against History's Seiriol Davies on Making a Musical

How to Win Against History's Seiriol Davies on Making a Musical

How to Win Against History is a new musical about Henry Cyril Paget, an eccentric, cross-dressing marquis who was written out of history by his family. James T Harding met Seiriol Davies (Mess, Underbling & Vow) to learn more about the marquis behind the musical, the show’s development into what we see today, and how to repel Roman troops using only the power of dance. 

​Linda McLean on her Adaptation of The View From Castle Rock

​Linda McLean on her Adaptation of The View From Castle Rock

Alice Munro’s short-story collection The View from Castle Rock fictionalises the real-life history of her ancestors’ economic migration from Scotland to Canada. Stellar Quines has taken up residence St Mark’s Church for a half-Fringe half-Edinburgh International Book Festival production, the first time any of the Nobel Prize winner’s work has been dramatised in Scotland... 

Jonny Labey & Quentin Beroud on Rediscovering Rupert Brooke for Verge of Strife

Jonny Labey & Quentin Beroud on Rediscovering Rupert Brooke for Verge of Strife

Poet Rupert Brooke is known for the patriotic poetry he wrote as World War One got under way, but most know little about the trail of broken hearts he left through Edwardian counter-culture beforehand... 

Julia Sutherland on Prison Romance, Staging Radio, and her show Jailmates

Julia Sutherland on Prison Romance, Staging Radio, and her show Jailmates

Based on it’s performers’ real-life stand-up material, Jailmates is a love story about an unlikely couple who meet on a pen-pal website jailmates.com. The Radio Scotland comedy drama is previewing at the Fringe before being recorded later this year... 

Inspector Sands’ Ben Lewis on What Really Happens in Care Homes

Inspector Sands’ Ben Lewis on What Really Happens in Care Homes

The elderly residents of a care home just off the A1 are waiting to die, some of them less quietly than others. What looks set to be a quiet day spirals out of control in the world premiere of Inspector Sands’ The Lounge at Summerhall... 

Tarot Talk with In Tents and Purposes’ Roxy Dunn & Alys Metcalf

Tarot Talk with In Tents and Purposes’ Roxy Dunn & Alys Metcalf

Does a prophesy merely predict the future, or does it help to make it happen? New comedy drama In Tents and Purposes at the Assembly aims to find out, via time travel, Brechtian alienation and a good does of friendship... 

Desmond O'Connor on Royal Vauxhall and the Magical Power of Gay Clubs

Desmond O'Connor on Royal Vauxhall and the Magical Power of Gay Clubs

It’s the late 80s. Princess Diana, hounded by the press, wants to escape from it all. What better plan that to go gay clubbing to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern with her pals Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett? And what better disguise than dressing up as a man? Features Editor James T Harding checks in with the Royal Vauxhall musical’s creator Desmond O’Connor (Scott Mills: The Musical, But First This: A Musical Homage to Radio Four) to find out more about this legendary story, the redemptive power of gay clubs, and Des’s musical-writing rehearsal process. 

Sebastian de Souza & Preston Thompson talk Kids in Love

Sebastian de Souza & Preston Thompson talk Kids in Love

Kids in Love made its world premiere at the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The film follows the disruption of Jack (Will Poulter)’s gap-year plans when he meets a beautiful girl (Alma Jodorowsky) and is drawn into young bohemian London... 

The Carer's Tom Kinninmont on Brian Cox, Shakespeare, and script executives

The Carer's Tom Kinninmont on Brian Cox, Shakespeare, and script executives

Screenwriter, producer and director Tom Kinninmont’s latest feature film, The Carer, starring Brian Cox, made its European premiere at 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Features Editor James T Harding met Tom (known for producing Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell and After Alice) to learn more about the film’s unusual journey, and how the production industry has changed over Tom’s career so far. 

​‘You can get away with anything dressed as Thatcher’ - Matt Tedford on inhabiting the Iron Lady for Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho

​‘You can get away with anything dressed as Thatcher’ - Matt Tedford on inhabiting the Iron Lady for Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho

Matt Tedford’s drag incarnation as Margaret Thatcher started life as a simple Halloween joke but has since taken on a bit of a life of her own, winning him Best Male Performer at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival... 

‘We just ran up and down the Royal Mile shouting at people’ - The IdeasTap Underbelly and Les Enfant Terribles Award Winners’ Panel

‘We just ran up and down the Royal Mile shouting at people’ - The IdeasTap Underbelly and Les Enfant Terribles Award Winners’ Panel

The Fringe can be a tough place for emerging talent, struggling to be heard over the crowd. Fighting this trend, the IdeasTap Underbelly Award supports four original productions each year with funding, mentoring, and support at Underbelly while the Les Enfants Terribles Award brings a brand-new production to the Pleasance with cash and mentoring from Oliver Lansley and James Seager of LET... 

How to Market a Fringe Show - Broadway Baby Breakfast with Pete Shaw

How to Market a Fringe Show - Broadway Baby Breakfast with Pete Shaw

Special guest Pete Shaw, Publisher of Broadway Baby, joins James T Harding and Grace Knight for ice cream and the second episode of Broadway Baby Breakfast. (It's a chat show that you don't have to listen to at any particular time... 

‘Did you All Come in the One Car?’ - Worbey and Farrell Interview

‘Did you All Come in the One Car?’ - Worbey and Farrell Interview

Four-handed piano duo Worbey and Farrell (that’s two hands each, silly) have been wowing audiences with their unique blend of pianistic skill and peerless patter for nearly a decade... 

Roll Up Roll Up for the Premiere Most Grand of Broadway Baby Breakfast with James T Harding and Grace C Knight

Roll Up Roll Up for the Premiere Most Grand of Broadway Baby Breakfast with James T Harding and Grace C Knight

Join Broadway Baby Features Team James T Harding and Grace C Knight for the very first ever of all time Broadway Baby Breakfast. (It's a chat show that you don't have to listen to at any particular time... 

​Mad Scientist Academy: Interactive Children’s Theatre at Boxsmall Festival

​Mad Scientist Academy: Interactive Children’s Theatre at Boxsmall Festival

Mix ‘N’ Pick Theatre is reinventing the rooftops of Princes Mall this summer with the Boxsmall Festival, providing fun-packed interactive theatre shows for children every half hour in their Showbox venue... 

The Poets are Coming: Carys ‘Matic’ Jones

The Poets are Coming: Carys ‘Matic’ Jones

Well-travelled poet Carys ‘Matic’ Jones brings Professional Nomad: What Happens When a Gap Year Becomes a Gap Decade? to Clerk's Bar this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Stan Skinny

The Poets are Coming: Stan Skinny

Poet Stan Skinny brings Love Poems For The Feint Hearted to the PBH Free Frnge this year. 

The Poets are Coming: Harry Giles

The Poets are Coming: Harry Giles

Poet and performer Harry Giles, of former Guardian Best-of-the-Fringe fame, is bringing his new show Drone to Summerhall with the SHIFT/ collective this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Sophia Walker

The Poets are Coming: Sophia Walker

Broadway Baby favourite Sophia Walker has won Best Spoken Word Show for two years running... and is bringing a brand new show up this year. Is she in the running or should she be automatically disqualified in the interests of fairness? 

The Poets are Coming: Mike Galsworthy

The Poets are Coming: Mike Galsworthy

Scientist Mike Galsworthy is doing something rather different at Clerk's Bar this Fringe... 

The Poets are Coming: Dan Simpson

The Poets are Coming: Dan Simpson

Dan Simpson is doing six shows at the Fringe this year. Six. Did I mention he's doing SIX SHOWS?  

The Poets are Coming: Harry Baker

The Poets are Coming: Harry Baker

Six months after his first poetry collection is published, world slam champion Harry Baker is heading to the Fringe with Harry Baker - The Sunshine Kid. 

The Poets are Coming: Tina Sederholm

The Poets are Coming: Tina Sederholm

Slam champion and Fringe veteran Tina Sederholm is bringing The Good Delusion to the Banshee Labyrinth this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Matthew Harvey

The Poets are Coming: Matthew Harvey

Matthew Harvey is bringing his stand-up poetry show Matthew Havey is... Dangerman! to the Fringe all the way from New Zealand.  

The Poets are Coming: Ben Norris

The Poets are Coming: Ben Norris

In the first of Broadway Baby's The Poets are Coming series, Ben Norris tells us about his one-man show The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Family, a look at fathers and sons through the lens of obscure market towns. 

The Poets are Coming: Ali Maloney

The Poets are Coming: Ali Maloney

Ali Maloney of the SHIFT/ collective tells us about HYDRONOMICON, his tentacle-related spoken-word show at Summerhall this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Andrew Blair (and Ross McCleary)

The Poets are Coming: Andrew Blair (and Ross McCleary)

Andrew Blair gives Broadway Baby a taste of his spoken-word show This is Poetry with Ross McCleary, an exploration of fictional Edinburgh not at all based on the film Troll 2. 

The Poets are Coming: Agnes Török

The Poets are Coming: Agnes Török

TED talk-giver Agnes Török gives us a tantalising preview of her spoken-word show If You're Happy and You Know It – Take This Survey, which is set to premiere at the Pilgrim Bar this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Matthew Macdonald

The Poets are Coming: Matthew Macdonald

Edinburgh man Matthew Macdonald brings Something Wicked This Way Comes to the Fringe this August, following his debut with Who Are Your People? last year. 

The Poets are Coming: Alex Marsh

The Poets are Coming: Alex Marsh

Fig leaves, female figures and chocolate cake will feature heavily in poet Alex Marsh's Fringe. 

The Poets are Coming: Max Scratchmann

The Poets are Coming: Max Scratchmann

Poet Max Scratchmann will star alongside Alec Beattie in Edinburgh in the Shadows this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Rachel Amey

The Poets are Coming: Rachel Amey

Scottish poet Rachel Amey is set to perform Peacock Blue as part of the SHIFT/ collective at Summerhall this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Sara Hirsch

The Poets are Coming: Sara Hirsch

Loud Poet Sara Hirsch is bringing her debut spoken-word show, How Was It For You?, up to Clerk's Bar this August. 

The Poets are Coming: Colin McGuire

The Poets are Coming: Colin McGuire

Glaswegian-born poet Colin McGuire is set to debut his first solo show, The Wake Up Call, themed around sleep and sexuiality. 

The Poets are Coming: Colin Bramwell

The Poets are Coming: Colin Bramwell

Hairy poet and impro pianist Colin Bramwell brings his debut solo show Scale to the Pilgrim this Fringe. Expect Highlands kitsch without the kitsch. 

The Poets are Coming: David Lee Morgan

The Poets are Coming: David Lee Morgan

BBC Slam champion David Lee Morgan is Building God at the Banshee Labyrinth this Fringe with a show about the great revolutions of history. He talks about his influences and what else he'll be going to this year. 

The Poets are Coming: Gerard Logan

The Poets are Coming: Gerard Logan

Gerard Logan will be performing in three spoken-word shows this Fringe, two based on the work of Oscar Wilde and one on Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece". 

The Lucy Porter and Marilyn Imrie Extended Interview

The Lucy Porter and Marilyn Imrie Extended Interview

Comedian Lucy Porter’s first foray into theatre, The Fair Intellectual Club, plays at the Assembly Rooms this August. Features Editor James T Harding caught up with her and director Marilyn Imrie, of Stellar Quines fame, to learn more. 

The Alexandra Spencer-Jones Extended Interview

The Alexandra Spencer-Jones Extended Interview

Director Alexandra Spencer-Jones of Action to the Word made her name with her all-male production A Clockwork Orange, currently touring with Glynis Henderson Productions. Features Editor James T Harding met her to discuss Clockwork and her new adaptation of Dracula, which is currently making its Fringe debut at the Pleasance. 

The Chris Dolan Extended Interview

The Chris Dolan Extended Interview

Chris Dolan is a Fringe First-winning writer, whose Scottish Independence-themed play The Pitiless Storm runs at the Assembly Rooms until the end of August starring David Hayman. Features Editor James T Harding caught up with him to learn more about writing political plays. 

The Miles Allen Three Minute Interview

The Miles Allen Three Minute Interview

Miles Allen is the star of One Man Breaking Bad, a solo show which ambitiously retells all of Breaking Bad in sixty minutes - that's just under one minute per episode. Fresh from the Melbourne Comedy Festival, One Man Breaking Bad plays the Fringe in various venues throughout August... 

The Rob Harris Extended Interview

The Rob Harris Extended Interview

Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story was the first show to win a coveted Broadway Baby Bobby Award this Fringe. Features Editor James T Harding speaks to co-producer Rob Harris about the musical based on a real-life murder. 

The Duck Pond
BOBBY WINNER

The Duck Pond

About halfway through this performance, a mobile rings in the audience. It’s Tchaikovsky. He wants to know if he’s getting any royalty payments. He’s not, the performers tell him: they’re only using six notes from the theme of Swan Lake... 

The Les Enfants Terribles Extended Interview

The Les Enfants Terribles Extended Interview

Oliver Lansley (artistic director) and James Seager (associate producer) are the masterminds behind Les Enfants Terribles, a theatre company now in its thirteenth year at the Fringe... 

The withWings Extended Interview

The withWings Extended Interview

withWings Theatre Company's The Duck Pond, a music and physical theatre-heavy adaptation of Swan Lake, has enjoyed a sell-out run at the Bedlam Theatre so far this August. 

The Stephanie Dale Three Minute Interview

The Stephanie Dale Three Minute Interview

Stephanie Dale is a playwright with work produced by BBC Radio 4 and Birmingham REP among others. Her new play A World Beyond Man runs until the end of August at Sweet. Features Editor James T Harding caught up with Steph to find out more about this years play, and her thoughts on writing for the Fringe in general. 

The Sophia Walker Extended Interview

The Sophia Walker Extended Interview

Sophia Walker is the reigning BBC Slam champion and winner of multiple awards for her spoken-word show Around the World in Eight Mistakes. Around the World and her new show about the care industry, Can't Care, Won't Care, run until the end of August as part of the PBH Free Fringe. 

BB Radio: Casual Violence Extended Interview

BB Radio: Casual Violence Extended Interview

Casual Violence are a five-man comedy sketch troupe who have been performing sketch comedy at the Fringe since 2010, this year bringing the comedy play The Great Fire of Nostril to the Pleasance and the sketch show Om Nom Nom Nominous to the PCH Free Fringe... 

The Dag Andersson and Tove Sahlin Three Minute Interview

The Dag Andersson and Tove Sahlin Three Minute Interview

Dag Andersson and Tove Sahlin are a real-life couple and the artistic directors of Shake it Collaborations, a Swedish performance company examining body and identity politics. Features Editor James T Harding caught up with them to learn more about their show Roses & Beans at C venues this August. 

The Steve Green Extended Interview

The Steve Green Extended Interview

Steve Green is the artistic director of Fourth Monkey Theatre company, which this year brings five productions to the Fringe including Alice, a site-specific adaptation of the Lewis Carroll story at theSpaceUK... 

The Scott Wings Three Minute Interview

The Scott Wings Three Minute Interview

2013 Performance Poetry World Cup Champion Scott Wings, part of the Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre Company in Brisbane, is performing his one-man spoken word/physical theatre Icarus Falling at C venues throughout August... 

The 17 Zaniest Names for Theatre Production Companies at #EdFringe 2014

The 17 Zaniest Names for Theatre Production Companies at #EdFringe 2014

Who isn't a sucker for a good production company name? That's right - no one. But the sad truth is it's becoming harder and harder to think of a good name as more and more companies saturate the genre... 

The Alex Brockie Three Minute Interview

The Alex Brockie Three Minute Interview

Alex Brockie is a midlands-based theatre maker whose play about a Mexican-wrestling star fallen on hard times, El Británico, is coming to theSpace this August. We sent Features Editor James T Harding to takedown some more information. 

The Lewis Ironside Three Minute Interview

The Lewis Ironside Three Minute Interview

Lewis Ironside is the director of Shit-faced Shakespeare, everyone's favourite inebriated classical theatre series, returning to the Fringe for the fifth year with a run at the Underbelly... 

The Sam O'Rourke Three Minute Interview

The Sam O'Rourke Three Minute Interview

Sam O’Rourke is co-writer and co-director of Much Ado About Zombies, a play coming to theSpace this August that... does exactly what it says on the tin. We sent Features Editor James T Harding to find out more about her company of Loughborough University graduates and get some tips on battening down the Broadway Baby office. 

The Andrew J Davies Three Minute Interview

The Andrew J Davies Three Minute Interview

Andrew J Davies is the writer and producer of What A Gay Play, a shamelessly raunchy play about a group of gay friends playing at C venues this August. We send Features Editor James T Harding to get the ‘t’. 

Feelgood Fringe Stories: David O'Doherty & The Caravan on the Cobbles

Feelgood Fringe Stories: David O'Doherty & The Caravan on the Cobbles

Comedian David O'Doherty will host a one-off gig tomorrow to pay the temporary theatre license fee for his friend’s site-specific comedy horror show in a six-seater caravan. The caravan, host of Barbara and Yogashwara's Safe Space, found itself in nearly a thousand pounds' debt yesterday after Edinburgh City Council rejected its application for a reduced fee... 

The Jack Holden Three Minute Interview

The Jack Holden Three Minute Interview

Best known for playing Albert in the National Theatre's War Horse, actor Jack Holden is about to star in Awkward Conversations With Animals I've F*cked, Rob Hayes's new play about bestiality at the Udderbelly this August... 

The Patrick Wilde Extended Interview

The Patrick Wilde Extended Interview

Patrick Wilde is a writer and director who's been a formative influence in British gay theatre since his What’s Wrong With Angry? was first mounted in 90s London. This year he’s directing Fringe First-winner Phillip Meeks’ new bittersweet comedy Keeping Up with the Joans at the Pleasance, starring Susan Penhaligon (Bouquet of Barbed Wire) and Katy Manning (Doctor Who)... 

The MargOH! Channing and MAN-ee Champagne Three Minute Interview

The MargOH! Channing and MAN-ee Champagne Three Minute Interview

MargOH! Channing and MAN-ee Champagne are two delightful queens bringing fermented realness from New York to Edinburgh this August for a late-night run at The Laughing Horse. James T Harding caught up with the 2014 MAC Nominee for Best Drag Artist and her pals for a quick gin and chat... 

The Julie Ford Three Minute Interview

The Julie Ford Three Minute Interview

A finalist at the Windsor Fringe Drama Festival, Julie Ford is preparing to premiere her new play, Totally Devoted, at theSpace this Fringe. The show is about three mature housewives who are absolutely obsessed with Robert Pattinson, so naturally our Features Editor James T Harding wanted to know more. 

The Laura Witz Three Minute Interview

The Laura Witz Three Minute Interview

Laura Witz founded the Edinburgh-based Charlotte Productions in 2009 and has since brought numerous plays about female history to the Fringe, including 2012’s Miss Marchbanks. This year’s play found its initial inspiration in the introduction of wholemeal bread… Features Editor James T Harding thought it as the yeast he could do to find out how Laura plans to rise to the occasion this festival... 

The Ben Fairey Three Minute Interview

The Ben Fairey Three Minute Interview

Musician, comedian and actor Ben Fairey, known for his acting roles in Channel 4’s 
Random Acts and 
M.L.E., is bringing his first ever solo show to theSpace this Fringe, a stramash of techno beats, character comedy, and choreography... 

Auntie Myra's Fun Show

Auntie Myra's Fun Show

The marketing for Auntie Myra's Fun Show misleadingly promises something pretty outrageous. In fact, this wonderful kid's magic show gone wrong has very little to do with the more infamous Myra the title and show picture suggest, or indeed Margaret Thatcher... 

Edinburgh Tonight with Joe Simmons and Lorraine Chase

Edinburgh Tonight with Joe Simmons and Lorraine Chase

Imagine Richard and Judy. Now replace Richard with a smoother Graham Norton and Judy with that cockney ex-model from Emmerdale. These are our presenters, Joe and Lorraine, and it's Edinburgh Tonight!Whether threatening guests with oral sex, finding ways to corrupt the front row or getting involved in even the most acrobatic of the guest acts, Joe and Lorraine are abuzz with infectious energy and camp... 

Operation Adelmo

Operation Adelmo

Adelmo Guidarelli fills the space with his rich baritone, and with impressive poise for such an energetic act. He uses a Punch and Judy stand as base camp for a series of opera-themed costume changes ranging from Cleopatra to the clown from Korngold... 

Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour

Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour

Meet Mr Clart, the drunken and prurient tour guide of the famous Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour. Clart, whose name means ‘dirty’ in Scots, promises to guide us around the drinking holes and whorehouses of Scotland’s great writers... 

Scene of the Titans

Scene of the Titans

A huge final number, full cast on stage, twiddly runs over the final note. ‘Four stars!’, I wrote happily in my red reviewer’s notebook, snapping it shut and starting to think about whether The Piemaker was still open... 

Lili La Scala: Songs to Make You Smile

Lili La Scala: Songs to Make You Smile

I love Lili. I also love obscure vintage songs. Combine the two and, as you can imagine, I’ll be very happy indeed. Think Ivor Novello, George Thornby and Cole Porter, a lost Gracie Fields and a strange song called ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’... 

FRESHER the Musical

FRESHER the Musical

Five new students arrive at university for a year of alcohol-fueled partying. For the first time ‘you can be the person you want to be’, they tell each other excitedly while preparing for the freshers’ fancy dress party... 

Monteverdi: Flame and Frost

Monteverdi: Flame and Frost

I’ve no idea why this show is called Flame and Frost, but I don’t really mind. It’s a jukebox opera using the music of Monteverdi to tell the story of Narcissus and Echo. It follows operatic conventions, but the story is told entirely through mime as the audience - I was glad to hear - isn’t expected to understand the Italian lyrics... 

Exterminating Angel

Exterminating Angel

Naturalism, at its best, carefully communicates the subtle stories behind the realistically portrayed events on stage. Those who attempt to write naturalistic plays know how difficult it is to create a coherent experience for their audiences: a single missing or underplayed aspect will push the play off balance and the audience into boredom... 

John Paul Jones

John Paul Jones

Jean Paul Jones is an eighteenth-century US naval commander with Scottish roots; and this is the musical of his life. It’s fundamental flaw is that it hasn’t decided if it’s a musical or a modern opera... 

Above the Clear Blue Sky

Above the Clear Blue Sky

Although dangerously like an extended Russian Eurovision entry, Above the Clear Blue Sky’s stadium rock surrealist take on the standard a capella ensemble is an entertaining and interesting way to spend and evening... 

West End Glee Club

West End Glee Club

The Sears Basset Glee Club is looking for a soloist for its London debut, and we - the audience - get to vote on who it will be. In this GM-hybrid of Glee, musical theatre revue and How do you Solve a Problem like Maria, four up-and-coming musical theatre stars pretend to be four more up-and-coming musical theatre stars vying for the love of the audience through solo numbers from the full gamut of musical theatre canon... 

Seven Wonders of Magic

Seven Wonders of Magic

Lewis Barlow is an old-school parlour magician working within the great close-up tradition of tricks with coins, cards, ropes and money borrowed from the audience. In this show, he sets out to pull apart the composite elements of magic and demonstrate the eponymous seven basic effects that, elaborated and combined, make up all magic... 

Sound and Fury's 'Private Dick'

Sound and Fury's 'Private Dick'

Imagine if Frank Sinatra and David Walliams put on a film noir parody with Deano Wicks from Eastenders. That’s pretty much what to expect from Private Dick - that and a load of ‘dick’ jokes... 

PianoDivalicious!

PianoDivalicious!

This gal can play the piano. With every part of her body. Switching tunes at the drop of a feather boa, Amy Abler blasts her way through a frenetic programme of jazz, rock and classical piano all the while charming the audience with her happy humour and slinky piano technique... 

Last Five Years

Last Five Years

The focus in this studio production is on the music and on the actor’s voices: Jason Robert Brown’s jazz pop score and our double-star combo can hardly fail to please! Every song is a single, and I’ve been singing Still Hurting ever since the performance... 

Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)

Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)

Don’t let the Edinburgh Academy theatre and the audience of grandmas put you off the scent: this is a professional production of an off-Broadway show. Five different miniature shows are presented one by one, each a pun-filled take off of the works of a different musical theatre style... 

Uplifting

Uplifting

When strangers Bill and Jim get stuck in a lift, it's pretty inevitable that they should end up reflecting on life and end up best of friends. Resigned to their fate, they start talking, but perhaps they are incompatible after all: Bill is a middle-aged middle-management with a bald patch and little success with the ladies, while Jim is unemployed, doesn't exactly have a way with words but certainly knows his way around a woman... 

Allegations

Allegations

The black man and the white man find themselves in a children's playground, telling each other their tragic stories. What results is an emotional landscape of a colonialism-torn Africa (country not specific), and if you can see through the torture, racism and death a serious message about facing the past emerges... 

Spontaneous Broadway

Spontaneous Broadway

Geoff Paine (from Neighbours) leads a team of experienced improvisers in this ‘never-before performed’ musical based on audience suggestion. A prepared plot about musical theatre performers as each of the improvisers takes it in turns to introduce themselves is Spontaneous Broadway’s contribution to the already crowded improvised-musical scene... 

The Drowsy Chaperone

The Drowsy Chaperone

A musical theatre fan (á la Wayne Koestenbaum) shows the audience one of his favourite records to find respite from his ‘non-specific sadness.’ The fictional Drowsy Chaperone musical comes to life from the record and is annotated by the fan in the manor of a Director’s Commentary on a DVD with titbits about the cast and the songs... 

Caucasian Chalk Circle

Caucasian Chalk Circle

The Governor and his wife are forced to flee in the wake of a peasant uprising, but neglect to take their newborn baby with them. Maid Grusha takes care of the boy and becomes increasingly attached until she feels he is her own son... 

Ladies of the Sacred Heart

Ladies of the Sacred Heart

Not another comedy about nuns! I cried, being one of those people who don’t find nuns intrinsically amusing, but I must confess I found it difficult to suppress a giggle when the lights went up and I saw the icon of Ronan Keating placed so reverently amongst the candles centre-stage... 

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors

Welcome to Skid Row, a New York slum where only those who don’t have any choice would go. Seymore is a penniless and geeky florist assistant, hopelessly in love with the unattainable Audrey... 

Vaudevillains

Vaudevillains

Greeted by the eccentric theatre owner and a glamorous showgirl, the audience wander into a Pleasance Dome transformed especially for this one-off show into the elegant Empire Theatre, replete with carnivale-style proscenium arch, full-costume band and, most importantly, working bar... 

Assassins

Assassins

Alone in a sixth-floor storeroom, will Lee Harvey Oswald use his gun to kill John F. Kennedy, or will he use it to kill himself? Styled as a gruesome gameshow ran by the enigmatic Proprietor and his Carol Vordeman, the Balladeer, the participants each get one chance to shoot the president and change the world - and now it’s Lee’s turn... 

House of Mirrors and Hearts

House of Mirrors and Hearts

A scream offstage and Laura enters covered in blood. A terrible accident... but can Anna ever forgive her daughter for the suspicious circumstances in which the family father dies? On the search for an obscure seventeenth-century poet, would-be academic Nathan instead finds a place in the family of Anna and her daughters, or so it seems... 

Zanna Don't!

Zanna Don't!

Zanna is a match-making fairy at Heartsville High, where the school Chess club rule the school and being gay is normal. Informed of a new arrival by Cindy the little birdie, Zanna sets out to make sure this quarterback is made welcome - romantically... 

Photo 51

Photo 51

Combine the Tellytubbies with a political agenda and you wouldn’t be too far off this exuberant adaption of the story of the double-helix hypothesis. Combining luscious luminous juggling and physical theatre with visual and textual quotations from the letters and publications of the scientists involved, this company of Exeter youth are certainly talent to watch out for at future Fringes... 

Jack Pratchard

Jack Pratchard

Jonathan Storey’s beautiful paper theatre is the setting for the tale of Jack Pratchard, the falling-piano casualty who discovers the City of the Dead under a drunk man’s hat. The distinctive and appealing visual style combining dusky block colours and lighting effects is a constant delight, the silhouette section particularly successful and engaging... 

Jewish Chronicles

Jewish Chronicles

This show, says its author and performer Daniel Cainer, has been catalogued under theatre because it’s neither particularly funny or particularly musical. Observational humour at its finest... 

Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package is an interactive film in which the audience of five play the main characters. Guided by their own personal screen, the showgirl, the heiress, the journalist, the detective and the producer wonder around C too, gradually unravelling a dark and delightful mystery in the very best tradition of film noir... 

Swann & Company Present: The Sad, Miserable Tale of Albert Belacqua and His Family of Doomed Neurotics

Swann & Company Present: The Sad, Miserable Tale of Albert Belacqua and His Family of Doomed Neurotics

Meet Robert Swann, the talentless writer, director and star of what is possibly the trippiest travesty of a play ever to be seen at a Fringe. The late, drunk arrival of one of the actors at the back of the auditorium causes chaos onstage as the cast fall out of character and argue amongst themselves in true Ricky Gervais style... 

Fresher. The Musical

Fresher. The Musical

Five students meet for the first time in the flat they are to share for their first year of university. Could there be a better set up for a musical? Awkward drinking games, freaky fancy-dress costumes and a convoluted love pentangle await our conveniently-diverse students as they negotiate the minefield that is first impressions at university... 

Bette/Cavett

Bette/Cavett

Bette/Cavett is a hilarious re-enactment of the 1971 chatshow encounter of Bette Davis and Dick Cavett. If you are still reading chances are that, unlike me, you like drag, know who on Earth these people are, and have already decided to see the show... 

Applause

Applause

This high-school production of the Broadway classic hits the ground running with its tale of big-name theatre-star Margo Channing gradually usurped by the devious and considerably younger Eve, who becomes Margo’s assistant in order to steal her boyfriend - as well as the show... 

Burst

Burst

Burst is a highly ambitious set of interlinked character portraits set in 20s England and Sudan. A visually gorgeous adaption of the Arabic novel Season of Migration to the North, the alternating soundscapes, dances and scenarios exploring the set up of a group of characters drawn together by the Sudan’s establishment as an independent nation... 

Swing!

Swing!

A wonderful farsical musical romp in the tradition of Mapp and Lucia, Glee and The Stepford Wives, Swing! is the story of a lower-class family who move to wealthy suburban Wafthead and become embroiled in the petty machinations of the local Lawn Tennis Club... 

War Notes

War Notes

Lili la Scala leads us through an hour of song from the world wars. Interspersed with real-life letters from soldiers involved in the Middle East conflict, the show brings the spirit of the songs to life in a modern context as well as in the musical prowess of Lili’s accomplished interpretations... 

Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light

Hildegard of Bingen and the Living Light

Hildegard of Bingen is a twelfth-century German abbess now famed for her extraordinary writings and music. Linn Maxwell’s one-woman show combines seven of Hildegard’s original songs with dramatic enactments of the story of her life to make a religious and musical cabaret which shows a profound engagement with what the work of Hildegard has to offer to us today... 

Tick, Tick ... Boom

Tick, Tick ... Boom

On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, Jon’s pre-life crisis takes the form of a musical monologue with supporting cast. This show is about a struggling musical composer in 90s New York whose girlfriend leaves him for her career and whose best friend is HIV positive... 

Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening

This musical is about adolescent sex. Onstage.Spring Awakening follows a group of teenagers struggling to cope with the clandestine world of sex in conservative 19th-century Germany, and doesn’t pull its punches - the original Frank Wedekind play was banned in Germany for its explicit subject matter... 

Chopin After Lunch

Chopin After Lunch

After the bustle of Princes Street and the Royal Mile with their American Indian/Celtic/Oriental drumming combos and hundreds of flyers, the last thing I expected in the middle of Edinburgh’s most crowded main street is the quiet calm of the Royal Overseas League... 

Facebook: The Musical

Facebook: The Musical

It’s easy to lie into a computer keyboard, isn’t it? It’s also frighteningly easy to tell the truth – more of the truth that perhaps you should. This is the central idea behind Facebook: The Musical as the lives of its six characters are at first represented and then gradually changed by their obsessive use of Facebook... 

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