Edinburgh Fringe Theatre reviews: Falling | Ben Moor | Painkillers | Single Use | Ah-Ma

Falling: A Disabled Love Story

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

★★★★☆

What kind of life story would you like a disabled performer to tell you? One of resilience and determination, of overcoming the odds, of self-discovery, even rehabilitation? Or one of arbitrary injury, endless pain and frustration, a struggle for hope, limited prospects? If you’re paying for a ticket and watching a show, it’s pretty clear which option you’d probably go for – and it’s a question that Californian writer/performer Aaron Pang plays on mischievously (and to telling, rug-pulling effect) in his sly autobiographical comedy Falling.

He’s a bold, confident performer – and, obviously, a devastatingly handsome one, as he grinningly tells us – disarmingly disrobing to display the fallout of his spinal injury one moment, only to admit to embellishing or entirely fabricating a story the next. It’s almost as if he’s out to give us what we expect – and then to draw attention to the ridiculousness of what we’ve just swallowed, or the impossibility that any of it could be true. Should we be more willing to believe the profound insights that a disabled performer offers us? Or is that just yet another example of a patronising, ill-informed perspective – one that Pang will mercilessly skewer a few seconds later?

Yes, Falling is a slippery, elusive show, and even Pang’s apparently honest, authentic ending (you get to choose from two) raises more questions than it answers. Is he really being quite so unflinchingly frank about one of the most intimate areas of disabled life, or is it all another bluff? Despite its gentle audience-baiting, however, Falling is a winning mix of stand-up and solo theatre, and rather than weepie autobiography, it asks us to reconsider our relationship to disability, and to the artifice of theatre itself. To do that with a smile, a wagging finger and buckets of boyish charm is quite the achievement.

DAVID KETTLE

until 25 August

Read More: US Comedian Parker Callahan: 'Lying is an art form'

Ben Moor: A Three Thing Day

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

★★★★☆

Ben Moor has carved out a highly specific niche for comedy-theatre-monologues full of wordplay, one-liners and glorious flights of surrealism. This year’s three-act extravaganza is an object lesson in inventiveness, taking the framework of a (fairly) ordinary day and weaving around it a glorious tapestry of fact, fiction and flights of fancy.

There’s plenty here which is funny and startlingly well observed: a man in “a double-bluff wig”; a person with “surprising and disconcerting warmth like a kitchen composter”; “sconces that look like scones”, or a word like “thrug” – a hug between three people.

But cleverness alone is not enough. In amongst the humour – the surreal (a dolphin infestation in the cellar) and the occasional knock-knock joke – there is a poignant account of a friend’s funeral, the “blanditudes” of the celebrant, the strangeness of clearing a house when the occupant is no longer there and, later, a beautifully observed encounter between the protagonist and his baby niece.

The third part ramps up the surrealism as rail delays and diversions conspire against Moor getting back in time for the opening of his exhibition, The Periodic Table of the Elephant in the Room. But at least he has a rail companion with a story (within a story) to tell.

Moor isn’t dramatic, rather he tends to deliver his monologue in the same even tone. But there is great liveliness in the language, and the original music, composed and recorded by Simon Oakes and the Suns of the Tundra, sketches out a backdrop of moods. Moor’s style won’t be for everyone, but this show is perfect for anyone who loves a Borgesian knot laced with plenty of playfulness, and a warm-hearted reminder of how strange ordinary life can be.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

until 25 August

Painkillers

Summerhall (Venue 26)

★★★☆☆

Glasgow-based multi-disciplinary theatre-maker and performer Mamoru Iriguchi’s solo works are the very spirit of classic fringe theatre, bringing weird thoughts and esoteric whims to life just to see what happens when they’re made flesh as performance. This means Painkillers is both compellingly odd and bafflingly difficult to get a grip on.

This is, in fact, an earlier work of Iriguchi’s, performed in a different version at the Yard Theatre in London in 2014. Scanning the QR code on the door reveals a webpage explaining his inspirations and thought processes in greater detail, but I’m glad I experienced the performance without putting any preconceived ideas in place.

In an ill-fitting fatsuit and cocktail dress, Iriguchi is Anastasia, assistant to magician Alessandro, who’s performing a mimed bullet catch trick with a member of the audience. Identities flip on a dime, as Anastasia reveals the magician’s name is really Mamoru, the name engraved on the bullet, while she is really Mari (a reference to Japanese entertainer Mari Amachi).

A wheeled, decorated hospital screen backdrop flips to show us onstage and backstage views of Iriguchi’s world, while he eventually carves his slim, flesh-suited self from the fatsuit, padding doubling as gore, and disappears into his own reflection. The finer technical complexities and audience interactions of all this balance on a knife edge, but it’s certainly evocative and pleasingly, amusingly mystifying.

DAVID POLLOCK

until 25 August

Single Use

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

★★★☆☆

Plastic waste may seem like a distant issue until it turns up with your name on it. This is exactly what happens to Ella, the lively, scatterbrained protagonist of Verity Mullan's playful one-woman show. When her old plastic bottle washes ashore in Malaysia, it sparks a change in her waste habits that is as much about climate guilt as it is about dodging the pressures of her everyday life.

Mullan is engaging as Ella, a takeaway obsessed woman in her twenties who is struggling to hold everything together. The script, written by Mullan, is witty and captures the utter chaos of juggling eco-anxiety with rent pressures and a crumbling job.

Much of the comedy comes from her honest reactions to her demanding flatmate, failing boss and attractive allotment manager. Some interactions are cleverly done through voice notes and calls, which is when we get to see the unfiltered Ella and what she really thinks. Her occasionally over-the-top caricature-like performance makes her even more likeable.

Packed with energy and light laughs, the show also highlights some horrors of plastic pollution. It weaves in sound bites from Blue Planet and a sobering visit to a recycling centre, grounding Ella’s journey in a larger, global crisis.

There’s no lecturing here, just honest storytelling that lands more powerfully because of its restraint.

SUZANNE O'BRIEN

until 25 August

Ah-Ma

theSpace @ Niddry Street (Venue 9)

★★★☆☆

The January 2025 Eaton Canyon fire in Los Angeles County destroyed more than 9000 buildings, but spared – for the most part – the property of Hong Kong-born theatre maker Cathy Lam. Nonetheless, that threat of annihilation served as an impetus for a reflection on memory, community and connection, and found fruitful parallels in Lam’s own memories of her grandmother – the Ah-Ma of her slight, fragile show’s title – and the older woman’s encroaching dementia.

The result is a tender, disarmingly naive solo show that begins in fire-ravaged LA but quickly shifts to the contrasting warmth of her grandmother’s embrace in Hong Kong. Ironically, once those parallels have been drawn and Lam’s close connections with her grandmother demonstrated, there’s surprisingly little emphasis on the woman’s declining condition, or its effects on Lam. Instead, she refocuses on the signposts that remain to connect the woman to external reality, and the enduring links that remain while others inevitably weaken and snap.

Kasen Tsui is a bright, energetic performer of Lam’s autobiographical monologue, using the simplest of means to illustrate her story. It’s a show of resilience and quiet restraint, but despite its touching poetry, it perhaps doesn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.

DAVID KETTLE

until 19 August

Make sure you keep up to date with Arts and Culture news from across Scotland by signing up to our free newsletter here