I've seen dozens of shows at the Fringe... these are the best

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

On the Fringe, Karine Polwart's Windblown, an exquisite meditation on a dying palm tree in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, has also finished its run at the Queen's Hall, With any luck, Raw Material's meticulously put-together evocation of Polwart's song cycle will return. In the meantime, there is still plenty of life on the Fringe, with the following some of the best on show.
She's Behind You
Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24
Johnny McKnight has been a pantomime legend over two decades now, both as a writer and the grandest of dames. This solo show by McKnight began as a lecture at the University of Glasgow, and is both a history of the original people's theatre and a deeply personal memoir of McKnight's life-long love affair with panto and the changing mores within it. This fleshed-out production is overseen by director John Tiffany, and makes for an essential primer into what McKnight highlights as a subversive art form that speaks to mass audiences in a way that more highbrow forms rarely take on.
Consumed
Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24
The Irish Troubles hangs heavy over this remarkable new play by Karis Kelly, which sees four generations of women convene in Northern Ireland for the ninetieth birthday of family matriarch, Eileen. What initially resembles an episode of Mrs Brown's Boys – or girls – takes a more fantastical turn in a staggering study of how violence and division can linger.
Lost Lear
Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24
Shakespeare's King Lear is the starting point for Dan Colley's play, set in a care home in which a woman holds court, acting out scenes of the play with the help of those who work there. Even her son is co-opted into the everyday drama in a moving look at how the debilitating effects of dementia can be offset by tapping into memories that create alternative realities in a show that uses puppetry and video to moving effect.
Red Like Fruit
Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24
A journalist working on a large-scale domestic abuse story finds herself confronting her own past in Hannah Moscovitch's play for Canada's 2B company. Out of this she asks a man to read out her written account of her experience in an attempt to understand them better. This is told quietly in this fascinating and troubling dissection of the long-term effects of sexual abuse in which the woman listens as rapt as the audience.
The Beautiful Future is Coming
Traverse Theatre, various times until August 24
Flora Wilson Brown's plays moves across time in its meditation on the climate crisis that humanises things through the experiences of three couples, with the women in particular at the helm. From nineteenth century scientific research to biblical floods to the uncertainties of fifty years from now, Wilson Brown's play is shot through with hope.
Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x)
Pleasance Courtyard, 2.15pm until August 24
Jade Franks is a wonder in her new semi autobiographical solo play, in which she charts the journey of a Liverpool call centre worker who ends up going to Cambridge University. The class-based prejudice Jade overcomes there while working as a cleaner makes Franks' play the natural successor to Willy Russell's 1980s tales of working class women, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. The entire Edinburgh run of may be sold out, but if there's any justice Franks' funny and incisive performance should tour the nation.
Tom at the Farm
Pleasance at EICC, 3.3pm until August 24
Given the scale of Armando Babaioff's Brazilian version of Quebecois writer Michel Marc Bouchard's psychosexual thriller, it should probably be on at Edinburgh International Festival rather than the Fringe. The play sees a man visit his dead boyfriend's family farm, where he becomes embroiled in a mud spattered tug of love and hate with his boyfriend's bullying brother, their mother and a woman who claims to have been his girlfriend. Don't sit too close to the front, or you might get wet.
Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak
Pleasance Courtyard, 2.15pm until August 24
There is something deeply moving about Victoria Melody's latest work, which sees her relate how she joined a historical re-enactment society after becoming fascinated with the English Civil War. With seventeenth century agricultural activists the Digger becoming a particular focus, Melody ends up leading the charge against developers in her local community. Directed by Mark Thomas, Melody's work is a grassroots drama full of heart.
When Billy Met Alasdair
Scottish Storytelling Centre, 8.30pm until August 23
Novelist Alan Bissett's new solo play sees Bissett pay homage to Billy Connolly and novelist Alasdair Gray by imagining what might have been said by the two pop cultural giants when they met at the 1981 launch of Gray's mighty novel, Lanark. Bissett's impressions of his subjects as he recounts potted histories of their brilliant careers are well enough, but it's when he steps out of character that things move beyond a fine tuned piece of fan fiction to become a meditation on the perils of the working class artist.
Pussy Riot: Riot Days
Summerhall, Dissection Room, 10pm until August 23
The Russian art provocateurs returned this week with a new version of their incendiary stage show that draws from key member Maria Alyokhini's memoir of the group's assorted actions and her subsequent imprisonment in a show that has lost none of its sound and fury in a ferocious call to arms.
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Philosophy of the World
Summerhall, Red Lecture Theatre, 10.45pm until August 25
The starting point for this wild new show by the In Bed with My Brother company is The Shaggs, the 1960s band made up of three sisters who were once described as the best worst band ever, and who became something of a cult. The three women performers take the band's brief lifespan as their cue for a ferocious meditation on power and control in a man's world which, in Summerhall's tiny Red Lecture Theatre, you fear might explode in a show that looks like something Pussy Riot's kid sisters might have dreamt up.