Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Del Valle: A True Tale of Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll… and Redemption | 24 Weeks | Joan Collins Blocked Me on Twitter | A Poem and a Mistake | Blaze FM | BED: A One Man Show

THEATRE

Del Valle: A True Tale of Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll… and Redemption ★★★★

Underbelly Bristo Square (Venue 302) until 25 August

Short, stocky, with gnarled arms and a stance which says don’t mess, actor Ned Van Zandt looks like he’s lived a life. Such a life that this autobiographical show comes with a patchwork of trigger warnings. Del Valle, shorthand for the Travis County Correctional Complex in Austin, Texas, has got the lot, with characters who seem to have walked straight out of a Coen Brothers film (one of the violent ones) and ripe descriptions to boot.

Van Zandt chooses to home in on just a couple of standout periods from his past so there is only room to mention in passing that Townes Van Zandt was his cousin. That guy knew how to (not) live, what’s Ned got to offer? Lots of narcotics for starters and some shameless but impressive namedrops from Lara Flynn Boyle to Chaka Khan to a certain ill-fated couple he knew from his days living in the Chelsea Hotel.

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen feature as bit players. Van Zandt was right there in their druggy orbit when it all unravelled in 1978/9 but he is more concerned about capturing the street and prison life back in his native Texas with tales of Gary and Belinda’s meth lab and the gang culture inside (where he is nicknamed Hollywood for his role in a US soap opera), juggling a burgeoning cast of characters with humour and acuity. We’ve seen and heard these deadbeats before but these are Van Zandt’s deadbeats and he sketches them with affection (even the racist prison top dog), all to the atmospheric soundtrack of a lone electric guitar.

Apparently, Van Zandt once failed the audition for The Waltons because he couldn’t ride a horse. This is only the 83rd most interesting thing you will learn from this absorbing autobiography.

FIONA SHEPHERD

THEATRE

24 Weeks ★★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 25 August

Set in a dystopian future Britain where women are rapidly losing all their hard-won reproductive rights, Tatty Pants Theatre Company’s 24 Weeks is a brave three-handed drama by Laura Walker which imagines two young female flatmates in their twenties taking matters into their own hands, when their third flatmate, Becca, becomes pregnant after a rowdy house party.

If the scenario is a powerful and compelling one, though, Cory’s handling of it takes an unconvincing turn when we begin to realise that the flatmates are planning not only to terminate Becca’s pregnancy, but somehow to cause her to forget that she was ever pregnant. Set entirely in the claustrophobic bathroom of the women’s flat, the play starts at shouting-pitch, and becomes less credible as it unfolds.

It does succeed, though, in its early scenes, in creating a chilling vision of a society - already taking shape, in some US states – where women’s privacy and autonomy no longer count for anything; and where the state monitors the very water in the drains to check that every child conceived is brought to birth, whether the woman who must raise that child likes it, or not.

JOYCE MCMILLAN

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

THEATRE

Joan Collins Blocked Me on Twitter ★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

Posh tea-loving actor Theodore Emory Jones – Thor to his friends – is a Brit in Beverley Hills. He wafts into our lives in silky pyjamas just as he is awaiting a call from his agent Judy. He’s giddy at the prospect of a “heavy pencil” for a bit part in Casualty but what he really wants is a role in Dynasty beside catfighter extraordinaire Joan Collins. Housekeeper Helga is his confidante as he reminisces on his luvvie career, but he can’t help playing to the gallery too.

Billy Walker’s camp creation is a familiar thesping caricature with enough of an ego to be comical but equally not too proud to beg. In the era of the self-taped audition, he’s ready for his close-up as a lisping Scottish lighthouse keeper in a Bee Gees jukebox musical. Many other namedrops are available and Jones/Walker is adept at finding an equivalent cultural reference for his American audience. He’s also fond of an ad lib to the extent that he frequently comes close to losing the plot. But who cares about a lucid narrative when his sparkling and silly company is entertainment enough.

FIONA SHEPHERD

THEATRE

A Poem and a Mistake ★★★

Assembly Rooms (Venue 20) until 24 August

Modern-day sexism meets Metamorphosis in this intergalactic melting pot in which the experiences of Myrrha, a committed first-year classics student, are paired with those of female characters from Greek mythology. Sharply written by Cheri Magid and punchily performed by Sarah Baskin, who shifts between genders and realities in playing all the many characters, it explodes the theme of metamorphosis to demonstrate how sexual violence is minimised by the narratives of its time and driven by a quest for power.

As Myrrha’s male professor is turned into his female student before being turned into cow, from the comfort of an ‘all gender’ bathroom, it’s humorous as well as thought provoking, pummelling through time, space, identity, myth and modernity. “When something shrinks you, you want to experience something epic,” Myrrhasays. And it’s the grandiosity of the piece that is both its appeal and, eventually, challenge as it expands through a myriad of mythical characters, drawing in evermore references to Ovid and denying the opportunity for a more singular development of Myrrha and her story. The construction shifts between impressive and self-conscious, but as a constellation of insights shaped around a thoughtfully explored theme, it’s a refreshing, bold and enlightening experiment in theatrical form.

SALLY STOTT

READ MORE: Fringe Firsts week one: we reveal the first five winners of the Scotsman's prestigious theatre prizes

THEATRE

Blaze FM ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, pirate radio stations played a significant role in developing London’s grime scene, illegally broadcasting from rooftops around the city, defying the authorities, and helping to usher in a new culture of music.

James Meteyard and grime MC Jammz’s drama Blaze FM tells the fictional story of such a station. Hopping from 2003, to 2005, to 2012, to 2016, it traces the intertwined lives of five friends who spend their time spitting bars and spinning tracks on 101.7FM.

There is the puppyish Pritstick, who likes to host silly phone-in games, until tragedy strikes. There is his younger brother Jason, a talented rapper who gets drawn into drill music. There is the aging Hughbert, defiant founder of the station, who first gets embroiled in a historical police case concerning the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot, then in the Windrush Scandal. And there is Alpha and Aisha, Hughbert’s two caring children.

Meteyard and Jammz do not manage to weave these five individuals’ storylines into a satisfying whole, but they do effectively pitch the story of Blaze FM against the evolution of London, and Maggie Norris’ staging has an infectious energy thanks to a projection-splashed design, some catchy tunes, and five effervescent performances from Alexanda Lobo Moreno, Andrew Brown, Anais Lone, Marcus Reiss and Aliaano El-Ali.

FERGUS MORGAN

THEATRE

BED: A One Man Show ★★

Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower (Venue 45) until 24 August

Ben Donaghy is not an awkward stand-up comic — he just plays one on stage. He’s more comfortable in the sanctuary of his bed, to which he returns consistently in this clearly honest but rather scrappy autobiographical show. Inspired by Tracy Emin’s “My Bed”, Donaghy warily circles around the truth of a painful breakup — distracting himself with bad jokes — before eventually confronting it. While the jokes are intentionally hackneyed Christmas cracker fare, none of them reflect his character — again, perhaps intentional but it makes this piece feel fractured and hollow rather than fully realised.

RORY FORD

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