Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023. Oh… it’s nearly finished!

This is a blog for those with a bohemian bent, which is my way of saying I can sound a bit trendy whilst being a complete idiot. And use hashtags and stuff. @edfringe #Fillyerboots.

But I do have one bit of sound advice for anyone who wants to binge on theatre at the world’s biggest open arts festival – the Edinburgh Fringe. DON’T produce a show here.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t come here as an actor or technician or in fact any other role with a show. Just don’t produce if you want to see a lot of theatre. I’m guessing even the rich big-shot producers would agree.

Now not many people in theatre know what theatre producers do, and at the level I’m at we do a lot. A real lot. There’s always something to do, work on, improve, network, promote. And if you find you have a bit of free time, you will, of course, take flyers to places and people. I know there are still a pile of flyers to get though. We’ve sold out a few times, got great 5 star reviews. But. Maybe if I do a bit more flyering… you know… on top of the flyering already being done by the flyerers, I might… just might… sell one more ticket. It’s got to be done. So I won’t go and see that show, I’ll use my time more productively.

I’m planning to go and see a few more shows next week. Oh hang on! The bloody festival finishes on Monday! Bugger!

For more information on tickets and stuff… see here.

Nostalgia… it’s not what it used to be..

Me and Sir Del.

Blimey… at the Edinburgh Fringe with ‘The Birth of Frankenstein’ when this pops up! Me and Sir Derek Jacobi working on my ‘Hamlet-Horatio’s Tale’ script outside the RSC in Stratford on Avon. I obviously didn’t dye my hair in those days. Like I do now! 😳

Another great review…

I’ve Produced, Directed and Adapted (rewritten) The Birth of Frankenstein currently playing to sell-out houses at the Edinburgh Fringe. And as I’m responsible for this site, it’s a bit of a stretch if I publish reviews of my own work. So I commission other reviewers if it’s a project I’m involved with. (Oh…and get in touch if YOU would like to be a volunteer reviewer!)

But there’s NOTHING wrong with me publishing others reviews. And I quite like the style of this one, by the evergreen, Fringe Review.

Read the review HERE.

A Monster of a New Frankenstein Story!

🍷🍷🍷🍷 🍷 – 5 stars out of 5. Plus a clap of thunder!

The Cellar, Pleasance Courtyard, Venue 33, Edinburgh. Then the Billesley Pub, Birmingham B13.

The Birth of Frankenstein.

The Power Trio – Jamie Patterson, Calum Pardoe and Teryn Gray.

Frankenstein is one of the most popular books in the world and has never been out of print since it was first published. It’s given rise to innumerable films, tv series, other books and spinoffs.

So I wasn’t really expecting much from Maverick Theatre’s offering ‘The Birth of Frankenstein’ which opened this week at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. As with most Fringe shows, it’s an hour long without an interval. And what is there new to say about Frankenstein?

As it happens – an awful lot! This is really the story of Mary Shelley. From the early gruesome death of her Mother to the final showdown with the monster she has created, we are treated to a theatrical hour of tragedy, high emotion, horror and, perhaps the overriding message of the piece… love. I wouldn’t normally expect to be emotionally moved at the end of a play about a monster… but judging by the sniffles I could hear from around me, I wasn’t the only one.

It’s written by Robert Lloyd George and ‘adapted’ (whatever that means) and directed by Nick Hennegan and they are a team that was able to rather cleverly condense almost 100 years of international history into an hour last year at the Fringe with ‘Winston and David’. That was about Lloyd George’s great-great grandfather’s mentoring of Winston Churchill and was similarly moving, because like this show, the central character is a young woman.

There is no doubt that Mary Shelley (nee Godwin) was from a privileged background – the daughter of two radical thinkers. And let’s face it, most of the population of the UK were unable to read or write back in the early 1800’s. But the glory of this production is how it presents the three main characters, Mary and Percy Shelly and George Gordon, Lord Byron as characters we can still identify with.

And goodness, the actors are good. Teryn Gray (an American, although you’d have NO idea from her accent) is mesmerising as Mary Shelley, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, the fifteen year-old virginal victim of a vampire and Mary’s firecracker step-sister, Claire. She can brilliantly change character in a beat and is completely and convincingly sexy, silly and insecure depending on the character. Callum Pardoe has a great presence and creates just enough sympathy for the decadent, self-obsessed, sexual predator Lord Byron to allow us, even today, to like him. And then his masked portrayal of the monster is heartbreaking, even more so underscored by the original music of Robb Williams.

Jamie Patterson brings an attractive sympathy to the free-love and fatally boat-loving Percy Shelley. We even forgive him for his infidelity. The early love scene between him and Mary is a theatrical tour de force. Moving, emotional and actually erotic with no more than a theatrical dance and hand movements. He is hilarious as the Doctor Polly Dolly, in a ‘man talk’ with Byron. And then heartbreaking with his final speech.

There are some very clever and subtle theatrical devices too. Apart from the three principal characters, Dr Polidori, young Claire, Victor Frankenstein and the monster are all represented by prop items hung on a hat stand at the rear of the tiny Cellar stage.

This is really what the Edinburgh fringe festival is all about. Brilliant actors, a moving script, great music and movement all crammed into a tiny fringe venue. This is a new birth for the story of Frankenstein. It is emotional, funny and stimulating. I think Mary Shelly would approve.

Billie Andrews.

https://www.mavericktheatrecompany.com/Tickets.php

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/birth-frankenstein