Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018: The best new writing to see

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Zoe Paskett20 July 2018

Edinburgh Fringe Festival fast approaches. It’s the ultimate pilgrimage for arts and culture lovers and makers around the world.

As well as following your favourites, it’s the best place to find something new before everyone else sees it.

The programme is longer than War and Peace and it takes a week to read half of it, so if you’re not up to the task, here are a few suggestions for the best new writing to see at Edinburgh Fringe.

Kidding by Rosalind Brody and Eloise Heath

How many of us revert to a teenager when we return to the parental home? Sounds Like Thunder theatre company questioned everyone from grandparents to schoolkids about their relationships with their mums, asking how often we speak to them and how things change are you both grow older. Writers Brody and Heath have compressed the answers into a verbatim play that tells stories of parenting your parents and leaving the childhood home. The play was a runner-up in Clean Break Theatre Company’s Edinburgh Fringe competition.

Aug 3-14, ZOO Southside

Busking It by Danusia Samal

Helen Maybanks

Jazz and soul singer Danusia Samal has been busking on the tube for a decade. Her voice, normally heard by people passing through the tunnels of the London Underground, comes to the Pleasance for the Fringe. Written by Samal, she performs her gig-theatre piece with live music by Adam Cross and Joe Archer, drawing on her experiences performing to passers-by.

Aug 15-27, Pleasance Courtyard, Upstairs

(even)HOTTER by Mary Higgins and Ell Potter

Verbatim seems to be the medium of the moment. Queer performance collective Transgression Productions brings HOTTER to Edinburgh having interviewed women and trans people between 13 and 97 years old. Continuing their campaign to banish embarrassment, the play highlights the moments at which our bodies give us away. It’s a frank and funny celebration of the body and everything it does (with and without permission).

Aug 1-13, 15-20, 22-27, Bedlam Theatre

Edinburgh previews in London

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Sticks and Stones by Vinay Patel

BAFTA-nominated playwright Vinay Patel (Murdered by my Father) premieres his new satire. When a misfired joke has unexpected consequences, B begins to question what it means to be good. How do we navigate living in a time when technology magnifies every mistake?

Aug 1-3, 5-6, 8-11, 13, 15-17, 19-20, 22-25, Roundabout @ Summerhall

SPARKS by Jessica Butcher and Anoushka Lucas

Jessica Butcher wrote SPARKS off the back of her own experiences of grief, in the knowledge that it is something that everybody goes through at some point in their life but few talk about it. Intertwined with Anoushka Lucas’s original music, it’s a hilarious and often devastating two-hander musical about love and dating, being a woman and the brain’s response to grief.

Aug 1-7, 9-12, 14-19, 21-26, Pleasance Courtyard, Beneath

London's best new writing theatres

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Welcome to Self Co by Hope Kennedy-Smith

“Our ideal candidate will be an anxious, stressed-out individual with excellent self-loathing and low motivational skills.” With the demanding hours, demeaning and stressful tasks and horrible bosses, Welcome to Self Co plays on the idea that having depression or anxiety is like having a full time job. Director Patrick Graham and writer Kennedy-Smith draw on their own experiences with mental illness in this dark and absurdist comedy, challenging audiences to understand not only how depression feels, but also that the way we work may be causing it.

Aug 15-26, The Phoenix, Below

Edinburgh Fringe Festival runs from August 3-27. To brave the full programme, head to edfringe.com

Sirens by Zoo Co

When three sirens wash up on Hastings beach, ancient Greece and 21st century England collide. Any man who hears their voices will die instantly, which is a pain, and 2018 isn’t really the right time to be a demi-goddess whose only job is to sit naked on rocks and look beautiful. With an electro-folk soundtrack, Zoo Co theatre take aim at gender expectations. Sirens has a deaf inclusive cast and BSL inclusive narrative (which means the cast will sign during the show) as well as being captioned.

Aug 1-12, 14-19, 21-27, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Two

Edinburgh Fringe - in pictures

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Brexit by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky

There’s no getting away from it, especially not at an arts festival. This is by no means the only Brexit themed play at this year’s Fringe, but the cast is stand out. Starring Hal Cruttenden, Jo Caulfield, Pippa Evans, Mike McShane and Timothy Bentinck, this satire follows a new Tory Prime Minister, the only candidate the party could agree on, as he tries to put his Brexit plan into action...if he can remember what it was.

Aug 1-12, 14-19, 21-26, Pleasance Courtyard, Beyond

Dangerous Giant Animals by Christina Murdock

Christina Murdock’s debut solo show is based on her own experience of disability: through the eyes of a sibling. Her younger sister, who is severely disabled, has a love for the dangerous giant animals of Jurassic Park and Jaws. Murdock details her struggle as a care-taker, having to grow up sooner than she anticipated and shutting down her own animal impulses. The comedy is all about compassion for people with disabilities and those who care for them.

Aug 2-7, 9-12, 15-20, 22-26, Underbelly, Cowgate

Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner

The world’s a difficult place these days, especially for a straight white man. Roger hates his job, he’s tormented by his ex-wife and his girlfriend has just discovered feminism. He’s teetering on the edge when he finds Angry Alan, an online activist and “voice of reason” in the madness. Penelope Skinner’s new play, performed by Donald Sage Mackay, explores masculinity in crisis.

Aug 2-12, 14-26, Underbelly, Cowgate