Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: Paldem | Punch, Drunk, Brain Damage | Big Little Sister + more

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 25 August

The actor and writer David Jonsson is a rising star of British theatre, film and television; and his play Paldem, at Summerhall, is a brave and complex one-hour drama about an interracial relationship cracking and straining under the pressures of a society still reluctant to confront the realities of racism, and now further confused and corrupted by the impact of online pornography and dating culture.

Megan and Kevin - powerfully played by Tash Cowley and Michael Workeye - are friends who once had a brief relationship. She is white, he is black; and when they accidentally record themselves in a boozy sex-with-the-ex session after attending a wedding together, Megan can’t help noticing how good they look on camera, and how much potential those images might have on an internet hungry for interracial porn.

In no time, the two build up a huge following on their chosen paid-for social network; we even get to meet one of the couples who come to their flat, all the way from France and Germany, to join them in one of their sessions.

What’s missing, though - in their edgy conversations, riddled with fashionable Gen Z street-speak - is any real acknowledgment of, or language for, the special quality of the bond between them. He speaks, once, of the strength of his feeling for her, his love for her body; she avoids the subject, and takes up with a wealthy white boyfriend she met at the fateful wedding party.

The story, in other words, doesn’t end well. And what it leaves behind is an aching sense of loss; as if, for a whole generation, the culture surrounding sex has become so loveless, so transactional, so bereft of magic and corrupted by the pornographic gaze, that it’s almost impossible for them to treat their own bodies with any respect, never mind anyone else’s, or to avoid reinforcing old patterns of exploitation, in a world without moral limits.

And although Jonsson’s bleak vision can’t and doesn’t tell the whole story of 21st century sex, it has enough force, in Zi Alikhan’s powerful production, to haunt the mind, long after the play is over.

Joyce McMillan

Punch, Drunk, Brain Damage ★★★★

Laughing Horse @ The Raging Bull (Venue 332) until 24 August

In the basement of a New Town pub, at the Free Fringe, Yekwang Robert Jung’s rattling storytelling mimics his early life, having left Korea at the age of four, growing up in England, Turkey and Germany.

But this show isn’t about that; it’s about what happens when, aged 23 and back in Korea, he’s speeding down a freeway on his motorbike and wakes up in hospital before finding out in the most unideal circumstances that he has a rare, almost-certainly terminal brain tumour with only a 5% chance of survival if he has a nine-hour operation.

Through an open and observational narration, he immerses us in the alien world of a Korean medical institution, where the only bed available costs £500 a night and the second-best doctor in the country is also not exactly known for his bedside manner.

Now 36, Robert looks back sagely on the horrors of that time and calmly conveys the significant effects it’s had on his mental health, eloquently describing his struggles with alcohol and his increasingly unregulated emotions, which leave scars on his mental health that far outlast the fifty stitches in his head.

From being high on morphine, floating outside of his body, to turning back to his former life of partying, to creating this idiosyncratic show, he captures not only the psychedelic strangeness of his experience but also, what’s talked about less, the psychological effects of going through such a huge operation and facing his mortality.

Based an autobiography that he’s writing, it deliberately breaks down the boundaries between show and chat and, tonight, for the first time, includes a rap. It’s the format of a work-in-process but turned into something more theatrical.

Finally, at the end he focuses on what he wants to do, rather than what happened to him in the past: be an actor. And so here he is now. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

Sally Stott

Big Little Sister ★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 24 August

Big Little Sister examines Holly Gifford’s relationship with her older brother, Patrick, who has severe learning disabilities.

Using the concept of the Glass Child (a child whose needs and emotions are overlooked due to an overwhelming focus on a sibling experiencing challenges such as chronic illness or disability), the narrative is refracted through the prism of Gifford’s memories, showing her unique perspective.

Guided by the voice of Patrick’s communication aid, Gifford moves from 1999 to the present day. Visual aids and animations are used throughout, creating a narrative that is layered, textured, and affecting.

She provides insight into the state of the current social care sector in the UK – particularly, its embedded biases and stereotypes – and dramatizes encounters with social workers and strangers that are informed by her family’s experience.

Patrick’s aid poses a randomised Q&A to Gifford, asking her to consider her future role in the life of her brother, and crucially, how this aligns or diverges from what she wants for herself.

It is a powerful moment that could perhaps be used as a frame to hold, witness, and honour the varying narrative and technical strands that occur in this play, which at present risk overwhelming one another.

Josephine Balfour-Oatts

16 Summers ★★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 22 August

When actor and writer Ayindé Howell was young, his late father wanted to teach him lessons about vision, faith and patience.

Yet all the young lad wanted to do over the summer of 1992, the era of Rodney King and crack cocaine in Los Angeles, was masturbate as much as he could, something his dad called “messin’ around with the black dot”.

Howell (who goes by just Ayindé professionally) never did figure out what that meant.

This is the first of Ayindé’s many very frank and amusing vignettes about growing up and discovering his own masculinity, particularly as a black man, which coalesce and callback together into a thoughtful and very relevant new solo play.

When he eventually moved to New York in 2007 to fulfil his dreams of becoming the new Pharrell Williams, he says he was “manifesting like a motherfucker”, but an encounter with a famous, unnamed film director who wouldn’t employ him put paid to that.

Acting gigs have followed, but this work is more of a collision of spoken word, beat poetry and rap than straight narrative performance.

Through powerful pieces about the Iraq War, the deployment of the ‘N’ word and his own loss and grief, however, Ayindé’s warmth and honesty shepherds a compelling thread together about what it means to be a man.

David Pollock

Growing Pains ★★

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 24 August

There’s certainly hints of promise in this comedy-drama by Fionnuala Donnelly, but it’s buried in a baggy structure and an unnecessarily long running time of nearly 90 minutes.

Tessa (Donnelly) is a failed playwright now teaching a GCSE drama class, who supports her useless boyfriend — another aspiring writer.

Donnelly is fine — though given to throwing away some serviceable jokes by rattling through her dialogue. She would be better advised to trim her own script as — while the classroom scenes are well-handled and her pupils are engaging — most of the domestic moments with her partner could be profitably excised.

Rory Ford

A Gerry Christmas Carroll ★★

Just the Tonic at The Mash House (Venue 288) until 24 August

It really does come earlier every year. Don’t be misled by the pun in the title, this is a straightforward retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by venerable Fringe veteran Gerry Carroll.

Undoubtedly, Carroll’s name suggested the show but there’s evident affection here for the tale and — apart from a couple of gentle asides — there’s nothing added to the story.

Although hardly a particularly compelling storyteller, Carroll seems a personable — if eccentric — sort and while this is unlikely to fill you with the Christmas spirit in August it does at least demonstrate an admirable simplicity.

Rory Ford

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