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Scotsman
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Fringe musicals and opera reviews: Nerds
Musical lovers, take note of our latest round-up of reviews for the Fringe's musicals. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Nerds ★★★★ Underbelly, Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 25 August It has taken Nerds almost ten years to recover from a financial pasting on the verge of its Broadway run, dogged by false fiscal promises and subsequent lawsuits which inspired the Hollywood Reporter to hail it 'the Fyre Festival of musicals'. Anyone would think there was a hot new product at stake which would revolutionize life as we know it…. Thankfully, Nerds has recovered from its playground dust-up to emerge as one of the most fun shows on this year's Fringe, tracing the epic rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs from their days presenting PC prototypes at the Homebrew Computer Club through the peaks and troughs of Silicon Valley to their triumphant moments on the Microsoft and Apple mountaintops. And what better way to tell the story than through the medium of jazz hands musical Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Nerds is (almost) as smart as the men it satirises. Gates, played to fusspot perfection by Dan Buckley, is the classic preppy introvert. He may have been bullied in childhood, but he's a heck of a singer. Kane Oliver Parry matches him as a preening Jobs, the pot-smoking hippie visionary who reinvents himself as a steely businessman. Their respective partners, Paul Allen and Steve Wozniak, are played as dispensable sidekicks in a world where the girls all wear glasses and are there to crush on the digital geniuses despite being the smartest guys in the room. Cue lots of coding metaphors and sassy (algo)rhythms as Gates and Jobs enter their almighty tussle for techno and marketing supremacy. Jobs literally gives a rock'n'roll presentation at the 1984 launch of the Mackintosh computer, while Windows is introduced with a dorky hip-hop number. Word to Word. No bugs or buffering here - this is slick and consistently witty fare from an immaculately drilled eight-strong ensemble who know they've got a comeback hit. Fiona Shepherd Footballer's Wives: The Musical ★★★ Assembly Rooms (Venue 20) until 24 August ITV's early 2000's trash TV series is actually fine material for a musical makeover with its glitz, glamour and the near-operatic levels of bitchiness evinced by its led character Tanya Turner. Wife of the captain of fictional club Earl's Court F.C. Turner (the dynamic Ceili O'Connor) here schemes to save her husband's career — and maintain her status — in the face of new transfers and younger WAGs. Turner makes for a formidable antiheroine, a character so Machiavellian that cannot help but root for her and O'Connor's powerful voice and undeniable star presence drive the show. The downside is that whenever O'Connor is not on stage, the narrative starts to drag. The subplots — and secondary characters — are hardly compelling and while the songs by Kath Gotts are fine, there are no real stand-outs . Even Turner's big numbers are unlikely to get your toes tapping — although she does sell the absolute hell out of them. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It's suitably vulgar without being particularly funny with it and even Arlene Phillips' choreography looks well-drilled rather than exciting. Ultimately, the show is like a well-manicured hand job from a WAG (one imagines); perfectly serviceable, thoroughly professional and, indeed, quite pleasant at times but you'll struggle to remember much about it in the morning. Rory Ford Escape Room: The Musical ★★★ Just the Tonic at The Caves (Venue 88) until 24 August Once passionate devotees of escape rooms, six university pals receive mysterious anonymous invitations to reassemble for one final challenge, after their friendships have lapsed for a couple of years. But the tricks and puzzles they're solving seem to have uncanny parallels in unresolved issues from the group's days of study. Tom Rolph and Michael Rincon's likeable musical has a neat set-up, and the creators come up with an enjoyably daft collection of characters to spin out their storyline's threads of petty competition, unspoken rivalry and – of course – unrequited love. Musical numbers are effective (although repeating two of them wholesale feels a little too much), and choreographers Hermione Lester and Naomi Park's dance numbers are surprisingly and impressively elaborate. The characters, though, could do with a fair bit more depth before we feel a proper connection with them, and one love-triangle storyline pushes credulity to breaking point and beyond. And though the fourth wall remains shattered from start to finish of the show (to the extent that 'audience member' Pierre – an enjoyably better-than-all-this Frenchman – finds himself part of the action), the meta-theatrics also detract from the puzzle solving, which for a bunch of escape room obsessives seems unconvincingly unimportant. Nonetheless, an entertaining hour with colourful performances. David Kettle Daddy Tomorrow Will I Be A Man? is on now at The Space | Daddy Tomorrow Will I Be A Man? is on now at The Space Daddy, Tomorrow Will I Be a Man? ★★★ theSpace @ Niddry Street (Venue 9) until 23 August Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Musical? Personal history? Therapy session? This slight but likeable new musical is clearly a bit of all three for its writer and performer James Willstrop, former world squash champion, and a creditable actor and singer too, even if his projection could be a little stronger across both. It's his own life story, from an early love of squash to the later pains of training sessions, plus his parents' divorce and his own reluctance to embark on a family lest the same thing should happen again. Running through it all, however, is Willstrop's perpetual questioning of his purpose in life: is it to soar ever higher among sport's elite players, or is it to drop back down to Earth as a son, husband and (possibly) father? For someone shifting his relationship with an audience entirely, Willstrop is a naturally confident performer, bringing a lot of boyish charm to his tale, and a nice line in wisecracks too. His songs are functional but not especially memorable, and the intertwining timelines of his plot could be differentiated a little more meaningfully with some smarter direction. Nonetheless, it's a captivating hour in the company of a disarmingly sincere man taking on a new challenge in his life, and kudos for that. David Kettle Dystopia: The Rock Opera ★★★ Braw Venues @ Grand Lodge (Venue 7) until 16 August Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Welcome to the state of Dystopia - as long as you are super-rich or super-compliant. It's not hard to decode the authoritarian allusions in this satirical rock opera: the band members are wearing Trump, Putin and Kim Jong Un masks for starters. President Blame and his gazillionaire sidekick Oli Flashman preside over a culture of greed and fear but another political force is on the rise with gleaming showman Magnanimous Moon preferring the carrot to the stick. None of it is subtle, but neither is pomp rock. Show creators Beldon Haigh may not boast a War of the Worlds-style orchestral backing but they do have a church organ in their venue and they're gonna use it to embellish the standard classic rock sound, with diversions into blues, prog and Latin rock. More impressive are the visuals, with lyrics projected on to screens in the style of Soviet propaganda posters, designed by band members Justin Skelton and Willie Logan. Singer/co-narrator Fiona Lynch is the vocal powerhouse of the operation, while multi-instrumentalist Dru Baker adds comic acting skills to what emerges overall as a rather scrambled maximalist mix of ideas.
Technical.ly
18-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
How tech and entrepreneurship can boost economic mobility
An American ideal is that each person has a chance at ending up better off than their parents. This idea — known in policy circles as economic mobility — is no fair fight. Where a child is born influences how much they'll earn well into adulthood. But these inputs can be changed, and we are beginning to better understand how. Research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his Opportunity Insights team was updated last fall, and has influenced civic circles around the country. It informed a recent Federal Reserve Bank event, and the second day of the Builders Conference last week. At both, and many other discussions, Chetty's point was reinforced: How likely an American is to earn more in adulthood than their parents at the same age ranges widely by state, region and even neighborhood. Nationwide economic mobility has worsened, but that simplifies a much more varied picture. Over the last generation, in much of the US Southeast and pockets of the Midwest, economic mobility has improved. In many big, older cities, it's proved much harder for someone born poor to increase their earnings than it was a generation ago. Race, which is entwined with geography, is a strong predictor of mobility too. Asian and Hispanic children — many from immigrant families — have seen rising mobility, while it has declined for kids from low-income white families and remained stagnant or only slightly improved for Black children. Outcomes vary widely by zip code, with Black boys, along with Indigenous and Alaska Native children, experiencing some of the worst results. Such divergence can make poverty feel intractable and capricious. In another way, such ranges can also inform how to give more of us a fair shake. Relying on tax records to compare kids born in 1978 with those born in 1992, Chetty's team isolated what they say is the 'single strongest predictor' in boosting economic mobility: Ensuring poor, rich and middle-income households interact. Mixed-income friendships, schools and housing are associated with significantly higher economic outcomes for children from lower-income families. Shared information resources help. Middle and higher-income kids see benefits too. Prominent economists argue that economic mobility is a better metric to focus on than inequality, which is trickier to track than it might seem. As class mobility rises as a policymaking priority and civic good, place-based economic development leaders will be on the frontlines. The coalition building that defines what many call ecosystem building can contribute. Rather than cloistered gatherings of experienced entrepreneurs and elite tech workers, we can strive to mix across education and income lines. This spring marks 50 years since the Homebrew Computer Club got its start in a Menlo Park garage. The computing clubs that followed across the country gave rise to the tech meetup culture that defined so many tech communities in the 2010s. At their best, these low-cost, no-frills and informal gatherings cut across socioeconomic backgrounds by using a shared common interest in an emerging technology. When done intentionally, entrepreneurship has a similar cross-cultural pull. I've spoken about tech and startups both at high schools filled with kids from wealthy families and others filled with kids from poor families. These topics can bring people together, when done intentionally — even when our choices in housing and schools put us farther apart. In 2019, every one of the top 10 most popular meetups was tech and entrepreneurship related, according to an annual report from the (bewildering) company behind After pandemic lockdowns in 2021, they were all friendship and outdoors related. Last year, many were still people doing sports and hobbies together — but there was a rise in groups focused on practical uses of AI. The best attended meetup of 2024 was focused on sharing tips on using ChatGPT. Technically is trying to play a part — we've resisted a paywall for our local tech career and entrepreneurship information. Our editorial strategy aims to engage both experienced tech and startup leaders, and people who aspire to join their ranks. Better income-integration in housing and schools would help plenty, but Chetty's research shows mixing incomes in friendships and professional relationships works too. Not only is untapped human potential a moral wrong, but also, as argued in a 2023 Technically report, when a high-potential child underperforms we all miss out on their unrealized contributions. So think about it. Where do you live? Where do you send your kids to school? Who are your friends? Where does your community get its news and information? Mobility isn't a mystery. It's circumstantial — and those of us with the freedom to choose can be intentional in helping it happen.
