Category: Edinburgh Festival Fringe

REVIEW: THE DAN DAW SHOW

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

“My body can’t conform, so I resist. And I try to make that resistance as joyful as possible.” – Dan Daw 

Originally coined by disability rights activist Stella Young, inspiration porn describes narratives – by non-disabled and disabled people alike – that objectify disabled people for the benefit (i.e. comparative comfort and/or inspiration) of non-disabled people. For example, if the message behind a paralympics commercial implies “Wow, if they (a disabled person) can do that, I (a non-disabled person) can do anything,” then that message is inspiration porn.

A lot of art sadly falls into the bin of inspiration porn. Which is not surprising, because we live in a deeply ableist world and often don’t know how to consume narratives about disabled people beyond that dispiritingly limited lens. Which is also not surprising because art made by disabled artists has generally not been given main stages or been mindfully programmed within artistic seasons.

This year, the Edinburgh International Festival had different plans. 

The very first production they decided they’d open their season with was The Dan Daw Show, Australian artist Dan Daw’s latest piece exploring the intersection of disability, queerness, and kink. 

Directed by Mark Maughan and joined onstage by his collaborator Christopher Owen, Daw takes us on an intimate corporeal journey. We witness him generate and take up loads of sexually charged space – a context onto which we don’t often layer disability. But further to that, witnessing Daw consensually take on a sexually submissive role added a whole new layer, ingeniously flipping the inspiration porn script on its head before it could wrest control of the narrative. As if to smack this anti-inspiration porn message home from the very top of the show, Daw introduces us to Christopher with wicked glint in his eye, saying, “He’s here to help you all understand why I made a show about me wanting to get fucked, in a society that is predicated on fucking the disabled, without losing my power”.

Lacing it all through with an explicit, tender, and sexy practice of consent, Daw not only allows his audience to witness his body be dominated but also to witness the sense of freedom and radical self-acceptance that live for him in this specific space. 

Watching Daw enjoy being dominated – his physical freedom consensually and pleasurably taken away from him – is like watching a cliff fall into the sea. It’s uncomfortable yet thrilling, private yet epically public. Power and empowerment and all the assumptions one has of them crack and crumble away into an ocean of universal truth. What you’re left with is a cool wind of freedom on your face and a deep gratitude for the privilege of watching an artist redefine what it means to live honestly. If anyone is reclaiming narratives, it’s Daw and the brilliant team behind this boundary-breaking show. 
The Dan Daw Show was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival. Get tickets to Daw’s next show at the Battersea Arts Centre here: http://www.dandawcreative.com/productions/exxy

REVIEW: mul-TIT-tudes (WIP)

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

If there are things worth editing in this uproarious work-in-progress show by Gaulier-graduated clown Tara McCullough, please let it not be the number of things she pulls out of her bra. 

If there are things worth editing in this work-in-progress show by Gaulier-graduated clown Tara McCullough, please, let it not be the number of things she pulls out of her bra. 

There are definitely some shows at the Fringe that really should wear little warning “WIP” pins on their lapels. McCullough’s show – opened by the insanely lovely clown Freidah (Caitlyn Duff) – is certainly not one of them. Its very success lies in this explicit and unapologetic embrace of its wonkiness. It’s wild. It’s unclean. It’s exactly what a clown show at the Fringe should be: shamelessly personal, without meaning to be.

In one of the most unassuming venues at the Fringe, the Container at Potterrow (yes, an actual, diligently soundproofed shipping container), McCullough literally unpeels the different layers of herself. It’s like an abstracted strip-tease of identity. From a  horny grandmother to a dumb chicken to a big baby, McCullough blows the bits of herself – Texan, Puerto Rican, woman – to their extremes and then lets them twinkle, one by one, before her audience. 

While she extracts herself from each costume layer – digging cheese out of her chest or rifling through her drawers for a musical instrument – McCullough also expertly coaxes out some noteworthy levels of audience interaction. As we ate candy (also from her bra) together and poured each other wine, it was clear that McCullough’s skill as a performer and trustworthy, deeply endearing clown will get her far. If she comes back to the Fringe next year, let’s just say, it will most definitely be farther than the confines of a shipping container.

mul-TIT-tudes was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 23 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/tara-mccullough-mul-tit-udes-wip

REVIEW: FRANCISCO DE NATA

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

Trust me: you could willingly watch paint dry with this giraffe for a long time

You might have to see the show to believe this, but I could willingly watch paint dry with this giraffe for a long time.

Young clown genius Keaton Guimarães-Tolley debuted his solo clown show Francisco de Nata this year at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it’s probably safe to say that he’ll soon be going places – definitely not to the zoo but definitely to a stage near you.

Over the course of this hour-long playdate, Francisco’s task is simple: paint the ceiling. Yet, it’s not long before Francisco lets his heart-melting curiosity of the world and other people take over. What starts as a rote task becomes one of the most meaningful exercises in participatory theatre and audience interaction. In a way only a highly skilled performer and clown can do, Francisco tickles awake a dormant sense of play in his audience from the moment the show begins. 

There’s something unique about this giraffe, though. He doesn’t push his audience or dupe them into participating as some clowns do. He certainly doesn’t make you feel outsmarted or that you’re missing something that only he knows. Francisco levels himself to you (as best a giraffe can) with a heart that’s so open (and flirty), it’s very difficult not to utterly fall in love with him. I (and probably anyone in the audience the night I saw the show) would get up and dance with this giraffe any day.

If you weren’t lucky enough to see the show, perhaps you spotted a very tall, G-strung giraffe sweetly pecking people and posing for pictures in the Underbelly fairgrounds. There were even moments when he was (wordlessly) directing traffic. That’s where I met him and learned about his show. And, boy, am I glad I decided to stop for this giraffe. Here’s to keeping our eyes peeled for our long-necked friend next year.

Francisco de Nata was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/francisco-de-nata

REVIEW: BOB MARLEY: HOW REGGAE CHANGED THE WORLD

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

An evening of transcendent musical storytelling that radiates with such honesty, clarity and humility, it is a real let down when it comes to a close

There are few performers who can do what Duane Forrest does. 

His show, Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed The World, isn’t just a celebratory concert of the reggae icon’s work. It is a carefully crafted, vulnerable exploration of Forrest’s own identity and a loving shrine to an artist who helped Forrest find himself. This piece radiates so palpably with hope and light and love, it is impossible to walk away without feeling its warm hand on your heart.

In the second Edinburgh Fringe run of his award-winning show, this gifted Toronto-based singer-songwriter gently pushes us along a burbling stream of cultural and political commentary, weaving together Marley’s soul-balming songs with milestones of Forrest’s own journey exploring his Jamaican roots and the historical erasure of his enslaved ancestors. Music underpins and uplifts even the darkest moments of the story.

Sometimes, Forrest introduces a song with the story of the first time he heard it – where he was, how old he was, how he wore his hair at the time. Other times, Forrest simply explains how it makes him feel whenever he hears it in his life today – how it gets him through hard times and how it makes him feel connected to those around him, those who raised him, and those who came before him. He does all of this with such honesty, clarity and humility, it is a real let down when the show comes to a close.

There is something so spiritual about this piece that words will never quite capture. It can be a bold move for an artist to write and present a whole show about personal transformation. A lot of times, there’s still what feels like a hazy wall between audience and performer. You don’t quite buy that they’ve actually undergone the change they say they have. 

But with Forrest, any doubts that a change has taken place – that the music of Bob Marley has profoundly shaped the soul standing before us like water over a smooth river stone – flies out the window. The moment Forrest greets his audience, that wall collapses. The air around you relaxes, breathes a deep sigh of relief, in the presence of something much greater than words, gestures, or images. Forrest becomes a vessel, not only in the service of carrying on Bob Marley’s legacy, but also of inspiring anyone with the privilege of simply being around him with the reassuring hope that we really shouldn’t worry ‘bout a thing. That every little thing is indeed gonna be alright.

Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed the World was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/bob-marley-how-reggae-changed-the-world

REVIEW: Last Rites

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

 Meyyappan is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to building endless worlds of play onstage and then fully embodying, inhabiting, and filling them to the brim with his bursting creative heart

Ramesh Meyyappan – a Glasgow-based Singaporean theatre maker and Deaf artist – graced the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his latest piece, Last Rites. Produced by Bristol-based theatre company Ad Infinitum, Last Rites was a part of this year’s Here & Now Showcase. With stunning visuals, an elegantly simple set, and mind-blowing movement, this production explores the death of a parent through the lenses of disability and cultural identity.

This non-verbal story (accessible to Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing audiences) follows Arjun, whose father has just died and on whom he is tasked with performing the Hindu last rite of ceremonial bathing. This would be fine and normal, except for the fact that Arjun and his father weren’t very close at the time of his death. His father never learned sign language. 

Through mesmerizingly precise and dexterous movement and BSL, Meyyappan’s Arjun emotionally unpicks the communication barrier that kept them apart all these years while he undertakes the ritual of washing his father’s body. In one of the most magical devices of the piece, Meyyappan transforms between Arjun and his father, tracing a moving visual thread between father and son when, given their charged relationship, none seems possible. Meyyappan does this with such grace and intention every time, he practically radiates love to the farthest walls of the theatre. To put it simply, it is difficult not to be moved while Meyyappan is at work.

In the absence of a shared language, this piece also makes use of the large screen upstage to create a new language between father and son, ingeniously blending BSL, animated visuals, and closed captions in a cheeky and original way that honors the story in both form and function. Where the piece sometimes falters in maintaining a steady pace, it makes up for it with a rich visual and sonic landscape that Meyyappan seems to have absolutely no problem filling with his infinite storehouse of physical and storytelling mastery. 

Meyyappan is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to building endless worlds of play onstage and then fully embodying, inhabiting, and filling them to the brim with his bursting creative heart. 

Last Rites was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/last-rites-here-now-showcase

REVIEW: I’m Ready To Talk Now

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A piece that celebrates the unique power of theatre: to give complete strangers permission to tuck each other into bed, to joyfully exchange deeply personal fragments of loneliness, and to find those who are more than happy to listen when you are finally ready to talk

Rating: 5 out of 5.

When there is only one seat in the audience and it’s for your butt, certain things happen that wouldn’t normally in traditional theatre. Your sense of presence, of your own body, is shocked into a heightened awareness that can be deeply unnerving. 

It can also be the most connected you feel to another human being in a long time.

When I walked up to Australian artist Oliver Ayres’s one-on-one production I’m Ready To Talk Now in a room off the lobby of the Traverse Theatre, I was nervous. Even before I stepped inside, I felt something start to crane its neck and fix its silent gaze on me. What I didn’t expect was how that attention would, in short shrift, transform into an exchange so warm, accessible, and intimate, I didn’t want to leave.

After a warm welcome chat about life and access needs, Ayres tucked me into a hospital bed, where I watched him recount – through movement, music, and projection – receiving a whiplash diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease in his first year of gender-affirming hormone therapy. In forty-five minutes, Ayres pulled the curtain on his experience navigating multiple monumental transitions, all at the mercy of a transphobic medical system struggling to diagnose him. 

When audience and artist converge like this – in such radical intimacy with each other – everything becomes a dialogue about the body: how we’re similar or different; how we care for and listen to each other; how, despite being total strangers, we’ve both chosen to be here together. As soon as Ayres tucked me in (under a handmade blanket embroidered with every date he’d been admitted to hospital), I became hyper-aware of my body, only to watch Ayres dissociate from his own right in front of me. Some of the loneliest and most heartful theatre I have ever witnessed, it was a privilege to meet an artist who was not only so intentional with his craft but also with having me there alongside him while he shared his story. Long after our hug goodbye, I still miss him.

There’s a lot of theatre out there that lets us get away with consuming it the same way we consume social media – entering and exiting without a trace. But something else happens when your literal body is required to help someone tell their story. I’m Ready To Talk Now is not about getting you to understand or witness someone else’s trauma. It is a piece that celebrates the unique power of theatre: to give complete strangers permission to tuck each other into bed, to joyfully exchange deeply personal fragments of loneliness, and to find those who are more than happy to listen when you are finally ready to talk. 

I’m Ready To Talk Now was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info can be found here: http://www.oliverayres.com.au/im-ready-to-talk-now

REVIEW: #CHARLOTTESVILLE: – The play that Trump does not want you to see!

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Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Yes, we need to pay more attention to the rise of fascism and probably do something about it. No, we do not need another play to spell that out for us anymore.

Yes, we need to pay more attention to the rise of fascism and probably do something about it. No, we do not need a play to spell that out for us anymore.

In the summer of 2017, a local movement swelled around the removal of a prominent statue of American Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was part of a larger trend across America to retire the statues of historical figures with pro-slavery legacies. In a protest against the removal of Lee’s statue, various conservative and alt-right groups organized what became known as the Unite the Right rally – one of the most prominent displays of neo-Naziism, racism, and white supremacy on American soil in this century. 

To protest that counterprotest, liberals marched against the Unite the Right marchers, and, in a very quick turn of events, tensions escalated. Shortly after mid-day,  white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of protestors, murdering Heather Heyer and injuring thirty-five others.  The freshly elected President Trump chastised the violence on Twitter and then assured the nation that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Now that we’re in the thick of his second term, it’s not surprising that someone took it upon themselves to address this new political moment in an hour of live Fringe theatre, flipping a mirror between Charlottesville and today. But it was surprising to hear the same old message that all of us are tired of hearing: we need to do something about the rise of fascism.

By god, we do. But a fiery recital of court testimonies and first-person accounts – even by a celebrity – won’t do much more for inciting “action” than a rerun of 60 Minutes these days. 

Solo-performer Priyanka Shetty does some serious heavy-lifting of the text, playing all of the characters and doing some remarkable physical and vocal work to bring each of them to life. She also weaves her own narrative – as an immigrant from India and undergraduate student in the Drama department at the University of Virginia at the time of the Charlottesville rally – into her retelling of the event. 

But the play’s generalized anger and obsession with pointing a frustrated finger at complacency and the rise of conservatism overpower what could have been a poignant new perspective on a very recent (yet oft-forgotten) moment of Executive-sanctioned violence against peaceful protest.

The highlight was Shetty’s portrayal of Heyer’s mother and the words she shared with reporters shortly after the protest and her daughter’s death:  “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Anger is certainly a tool we can use to fight complacency. But merely demonstrating anger in a theatre for an hour is not going to be enough to shake us into action.
#CHARLOTTESVILLE: – The play that Trump does not want you to see! was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/charlottesville-the-play-that-trump-does-not-want-you-to-see

REVIEW: GARRY STARR: CLASSIC PENGUINS

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

In his own way, and by committing so spectacularly to his mission to save an inanimate collection of orange-bound books from extinction, Starr made some of us question what we’re really trying to “save” nowadays. And whether we’re having any fun doing it.

In a classic Fringe fumble, a concert of Holst’s “The Planets” ran overtime, preventing me from seeing Garry Starr perform his newest show Classic Penguins at its first Fringe venue. But, in retrospect, it was perhaps meant to be, because seeing the show at its second Fringe venue at the grand McEwan Hall – where it migrated mid-Fringe due to popular demand – was insane. 

This was not the Gaulier-trained clown Garry Starr’s first go at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and it showed. In this rowdy, anything-is-possible evening of full-frontal comedy, Damien Warren-Smith let us ride on his hilarious coattails… and sometimes sniff at what lay underneath them. 

Often, the show leaned a bit too heavily on the proximity-to-his-cock-and-balls fun. Did he need to crowdsurf as far as he did across the audience? But then again, did the audience need to be that effusively happy to help him crowdsurf, naked, over them? 

There’s definitely something to be said for witnessing Starr’s ingenious ability to muster the support, love, and participation of his audience. The energy he created in the auditorium clearly did not just come from the fact that he’d made sure everyone had a good view. Starr is a born talent when it comes to clowning. You just want to keep cheering him on, no matter how dirty his proposals. 

And somehow, his mission to save a shelf of Penguin Classic paperbacks “from extinction” by acting each one out (even if it only went as far as the title) somehow had tangible resonances with the climate crisis, a feat in and of itself. Those resonances weren’t enough to make me think deeply about human responsibility for the environment, per say. But, in his own way and by committing so spectacularly to his mission to save an inanimate collection of orange-bound books from extinction, Starr made hopefully some of us question what we’re really trying to “save” nowadays. And whether we’re having any fun doing it.

If anything, a good clown will send you home with a light reminder that life is really absurd, and sometimes (if you ask nicely), just one naked crowdsurf away from a day well-spent. Let’s just say, I was very happy I could reschedule. 

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/garry-starr-classic-penguins

Handspring Puppet Company performing Faustus in Africa at the Royal Lyceum for Edinburgh INternational Festival

REVIEW: FAUSTUS IN AFRICA!

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Rating: 4 out of 5.

“An ambitious exploration of the psychological confusion, chaos, and bile that take root in colonialism’s heart of darkness.”

After its premiere nearly thirty years ago, Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse, Little Amal) teams up with renowned artist and animator William Kentridge to remount a visually stunning reboot of Doctor Faustus.

In another triumph of form meeting function, one walks away from Faustus in Africa! wondering what else but puppetry and a restrung Elizabethan tragedy could have told this harrowing tale of colonialism, empire, and slavery. In this version, Faustus is a white South African (and a puppet) whose desire to live his life to the fullest leads him down a dark and winding safari of greed, corruption, and violence. The devil Mephistopheles, to whom Faustus has sold his soul in exchange for knowledge and power, is portrayed in human form by Wessel Pretorius – an ominous storytelling choice, given that all the other characters are puppets. The imagination does not have to go far in drawing a line between a human and the Devil himself. 

Combined with Handspring’s puppetry excellence and music by James Phillips & Warrick Sony, Kentridge’s animations simultaneously offer an aesthetically extraordinary treat and a horrifying creative representation of colonial violence. His erased charcoal animations effectively drive the story across the African continent. Images that often seem non-linear, random, and dreamlike lend this ambitious production the psychological underpinnings of confusion, chaos, and bile that take root in colonialism’s heart of darkness. In one animation, the typebar of a typewriter annihilates an elephant. In another, lines become bodies crammed in a slave ship. In a testament to the power of art to tell stories as dark as this one, Kentridge’s violent smudges subconsciously prime the audience to imagine a project as sickly as colonialism.

In retrospect, the scene that has stuck with me is oddly one of the first – when Faustus almost commits suicide. He believes that he has already achieved all there is to achieve, learned all there is to learn from his small human existence. He has somehow wound himself up to believe that there is nothing more for him to do on earth, no meaning left for him to discover. His solution to this problem is a colonial rampage through the African continent and a rape of the earth so brutal, it is almost too difficult to watch in the form of stylized, black and white animations. Viewed from this angle, it is not difficult to make the narrative leap from the 16th century German tale of a doctor who sells his soul for power to our society’s ongoing deal with the devil of colonialism.  Faustus in Africa! raises deeply disturbing questions about human nature, capitalism, and the lengths to which we’ve gone (and continue to go) to quench a thirst for meaning

.
Faustus in Africa was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival and played until 23 August. Get tickets here: http://www.eif.co.uk/events/faustus-in-africa


Dance and theatre legends Crystal Pite and Simon McBurney unite with internationally acclaimed Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) to confront the climate crisis through spellbinding movement and sound.

REVIEW: Figures In Extinction

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Rating: 5 out of 5.

“Every once in a while, a work of art humbly steps onstage, regards its audience with all the grief in the world, and then utterly stretches what anyone thought theatre could be or do.”

Every once in a while, something humbly steps onstage, regards its audience with all the grief in the world, and then utterly stretches what anyone thought theatre could be or do. Something that gives you hope that the most human part of humans – not machines – will save us, if not physically, then spiritually. Something that shifts the innermost shade at the core of the soul, just enough to see something flickering and pulsing, reassuringly animal-like and universal, expertly and habitually sewn shut beneath the hem of the garment we call “daily life.” 

Just as Figures in Extinction perforates whatever standards we had for “good” theatre, so too does it challenge the very nature of a critic’s review. As I stare up from the base of this behemoth, it seems more fitting to write some poetry instead. But for now, I’ll stick to the form I know best and simply encourage anyone who sees it to let it spark their own imaginations in the way the piece clearly wants.

Figures in Extinction is the fruit of a multi-year collaboration between acclaimed Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and Complicité founder and theatre legend Simon McBurney. Perched somewhere on the dance-theatre continuum, the piece is divided into three parts – the extinction of non-human beings, the troubling neuroscience of behavior, and human mortality. Performed by Nederlands Dans Theater, Figures transcends traditional climate communication, grinding the pages of heavy natural history textbooks and oblique science journals into new colors and sounds for new compositions and symphonies. In one breathtaking swoop, it elevates non-human beings to spectators and reduces humans to the scientific probings of a petri dish. Quite simply, it has created a new language with which to effectively articulate the nastiest of today’s truths: how humans have adapted to ignore the destruction we cause. 

There are ingenious details hidden in this piece that could only be unpacked in the span of a short novel – how the sound design actively takes advantage of the very neuroscience the show explains; how the set – an ever-shifting black frame mimics and manipulates the limited focus of a human brain; how the dancers tick so precisely in harmony with every beat and sigh of the aural landscape that everything feels reverently interconnected from the moment it begins. When a piece is this detailed, it vibrates. 

When I woke up the following morning, this piece was still with me. It was in the water I splashed on my face and ran through my hair. It was in the  coffee I drank as I tried to write. In the cheeps of birds bubbling up through the window, letting the world outside greet the one inside. Whatever NDT, Crystal Pite, and Simon McBurney have gifted us in this piece, it doesn’t feel like a tissue with which  to wipe our eyes. It feels like a reason for which to open them.

Figures in Extinction is a part of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival and playing until 24 August. Get tickets here: http://www.eif.co.uk/events/figures-in-extinction