Edinburgh Fringe Theatre & Musical reviews: Our Martin in the Background | Leglock + more

THEATRE

Our Martin in the Background ★★★★☆

Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) until 25 August

THEATRE

Leglock ★★★☆☆

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

OPERA AND MUSICAL THEATRE

Helen Shapiro Walkin’ Back ★★★☆☆

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

THEATRE

Shallowspace Cryotech Feverdream ★★★☆☆

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 23 August

THEATRE

The Three Marias: Women of Word ★★☆☆☆

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

THEATRE

Rev Awdry: The Thomas the Tank Engine Man ★★★★☆

Palmerston Place Church (Venue 254) until 23 August

At the Scottish Storytelling Centre, nearly one third of the shows in its 2025 Fringe Programme have just five performances. It’s a trend that’s reflected across the Festival, with many new works premiering in week three when the majority of the reviewers (although not this one) have put down their notebooks, the prizes have been decided (we signed off the Fringe Firsts on Tuesday) and the coverage of other, less comprehensive publications that aren’t the Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday has gone to print.

But stick around and you’ll have the chance to discover freshly cut gems, such as Our Martin in the Background, which opened at the Storytelling Centre this week. A warm and witty reworking of Brief Encounter with a twist, it’s by writer and performer Mark Kydd and has all the class, comedy and an undercurrent of melancholy of an Alan Bennett Talking Head.

The story follows Martin, a ‘background artist’ on the set of the famous feature film in 1945, who prefers to stay out of the limelight, although he enjoys making astute observations on it from the sidelines. Life mimics art when he meets a man he cannot be with, but who quietly changes the course of his destiny, as he travels from his Lancashire home to swinging 60s London and the prospect of a more accepting era.

Created in lockdown as a series of short pieces, it’s now in full form – with lighting and sound design by Roddy Simpson – polished and complete, precisely put together with a solid heart and good humour, like Martin himself. Catch it if you can.

READ MORE: The Best Edinburgh Fringe Theatre 2025: Every show with a four or five star review from The Scotsman so far

Cost is clearly a big reason for doing a show with a shorter run, along with the chance to experiment with new ideas away from the pressures of weeks one and two. In Leglock, a teenage boy bursts onto the stage like a bomb, the number one ‘cage fighter’ in his county, which is also Lancashire. He might be a ‘lightweight’ still at school, but in Lowri Mathias’s sparky new monologue, punchily performed by Taylor Uttley, he’s heavy in sweat, swearing and adrenaline.

The fast-flowing dialogue paired with Uttley’s agile moves creates a whirlpool of energy that it’s impossible not to get swept up in, while simultaneously feeling that this extreme kind of violence – with broken bones and tendons torn – can’t be heading anywhere good. It’s a strikingly written study of a lad with nothing to lose and everything to fight for, and includes an underexplored sadness that briefly shines through his ultimately thin skin. It feels like the story is just getting going before it ends, but hopefully the team will be able to secure more funding to develop the story and a longer run next year.

As well as a tight budget, the timing of the school holidays is one of the factors that led to the sell-out Helen Shapiro Walkin Back having only a one-week run at the end of the Festival. That’s because the cast are, like 14-year-old 1960s pop star Helen Shapiro when she topped the charts, predominantly young teenagers. In a preview performance today, they are forced to sing a cappella due to sound issues, but persevere, against a hostile older audience in need of more amplification, to tell the story of Helen’s rise to brief fame.

Lilly Martin and her backing singers have great if, without mics, somewhat quiet voices and could really learn to project, in case this happens again – as there’s no reason why, with practice, their voices shouldn’t be able to fill this small space – but it’s an otherwise tight little show that, with full sound and visuals, is sure to enchant anyone’s who’s a fan of Shapiro’s music or nostalgic for its bygone era.

Both Greenside, where the show takes place, and theSpaceUK, which is also popular with young companies, are happier to programme short runs than some of the Big Four venues. theSpaceUK also offers cheaper slots in week three than weeks one and two. This has enabled writer/performer Callie O’Brien to bring Shallowspace Cryotech Feverdream – an experimental trans-futurist one-woman sci-fi show (with a substantial amount of tech) – to the festival for six days. It’s a poetic and at times visceral piece, in which she plays August – one of eleven ‘shepherds’ charged with looking after the archive that was once our lives – who looks back on her own and humanity’s demise from the future, during the constant assembling and disassembling of her body and identity.

The fantastic audio-visual immersive production is as much a part of the piece as the script. O’Brien is also a full-time venue technician at the Festival – another reason for the short run. With a synth-wave soundtrack created in collaboration with Fraser White, the piece is driven by mood and atmosphere, rather than a fully formed story, but is nevertheless haunting and tragic.

The Three Marias also has the intense energy of a company giving something a go with less to lose than whoever had their time slot in weeks one-to-two. With empowerment-fuelled smiles, its three young actresses give defiant performances as Portuguese authors and feminist heroes Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa who, during the 1970s, had their collectively written work, New Portuguese Letters, banned by the then fascist regime.

A combination of exposition-filled dialogue and direct-to-audience address is delivered with levels of conviction that feel bigger than the small space can hold. The performers capture the passion and strength of Portuguese women “breaking the hypocrisies of their times,” even if it’s in a way that, through a string of earnestly spoken speeches critiquing the patriarchy, feels overly literal.

Over at Palmerston Place Church, Searchlight Theatre is staging seven shows, with the final one Rev Awdry: The Thomas the Tank Engine Man a new production opening this week. “The train arrived late to the platform,” writer, performer and company co-founder David Robinson tells me. This is because the team wanted to build an audience with their existing work first. But now we’re here, what a super destination it is, in which Robinson plays the authoritarian but avuncular Reverend Awdry, author of the beloved stories about Thomas and the team, in the site-specific venue of a beautiful 18th-century church, with Freddy Goymer as son Christopher and Daniel Woolley as a ‘Slim’ Controller.

With ingenious interaction with the audience (including self-referential quips between performers who clearly have a great camaraderie) and an imaginative multifaceted set (featuring live music, projections, dancing and playing cricket in the aisles), the piece delivers its message about the power of friendship – from the books, the pulpit and the stage.

It's a joyful combination, fuelled by deceptively sophisticated, interdisciplinary storytelling that entertains, informs and, ultimately, like a fully functioning railway network, moves. In places sorrowful at the inevitable passing of time (the Reverend died in 1997) and yet also celebratory – with a chance to see all of the companies’ shows for a £12 upgrade – it’s a wonderfully apt and economic way to approach the end of the line at this year’s festival. Toot toot and ta tar!

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