Fringe theatre reviews: Buggers | Transmission | Forget About Me and more

THEATRE

Buggers ★★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 30 August

For eight years, renowned painter Francis Bacon embarked on a love affair with London criminal George Dyer. In 1971, their love affair ended when Dyer was found dead on a toilet in a Paris hotel room. Buggers explores their romance, violent and unforgiving, whilst obsessive and all-encompassing, and although grounded in writer Alistair Hall’s historical research, it is undoubtedly led by feeling.

The audience enter Bacon’s mess of a flat via its fire escape, aptly located in Pleasance Courtyard, and we’re met by Alistair Hall as Francis Bacon, and Peter Clements as Dyer. They are drinking within the Perspex walls that corner the stage in a fantastically conceptual set designed by Rosie Elnile. It is the morning after their first night together, and here begins the next eight years of their love. Love that lifts them, and sinks them, and that ultimately, destroys them both, all over the course of an hour.

It is a once-in-a-lifetime desire, and as time passes, and power dynamics shift, they each become increasingly dependent on the other. At the same time, with masterful direction by Alice Wordsworth, the production’s naturalism fades to reveal a fragmented, dark depiction of the men’s lives. This darkness sees Dyer commit a horrifying act against Bacon, punctuated by disorientating lighting and smoke, and interrupted by mesmerising physicality, choreographed by movement director Ken Nakajima.

These actors have a real grasp of the world they find themselves in, particularly Peter Clements as George Dyer. He is vulnerable and adrift, and he gradually disappears: ‘I used to have control of it,’ he whispers, ‘my temper and my heart.’

A potent account of gay admiration hiding in shame in 1960s Britain, it is only at the conclusion of Buggers that Francis Bacon’s fame as a prolific painter becomes totally relevant. Alistair Hall reads aloud the name of every painting Bacon ever dedicated to Dyer. Looking back at these portraits after the performance, it is difficult not to see Peter Clement’s very real George Dyer in the lost, smudged soul of Bacon’s art. Roisin McMullan

THEATRE

Transmission ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 23 August

In this mischievous character comedy, performer Nelly Kelly satirises the anti-trans movement that has taken root in Scotland in recent years, particularly poking fun at the public figures that have fanned the flames of division for their own political gain. Co-created by Kelly, K Biff Nicolson and Susan Worsfold, it is a gentle, playful riposte to a poisonous, polarised discourse.

Kelly, who is trans, plays James Donaldson, a leading light of the Scottish Freedom Party. He – Kelly uses they/them pronouns, but Big Jimmy is defiantly he/him – is keen to exploit the trans debate to further his electoral ambitions, as evidenced by his "Make Scotland Cis Again" cap, but he keeps messing up in a series of shambolic hustings and inept adverts. His slogan accidentally echoes a trans rallying cry. He gets caught on a hot mic calling his hometown Yoker a “frightful shitehole.” He is the victim of an attempted assassination by Tunnock’s Tea Cake.

Alongside this caricature, Kelly weaves in more serious elements. Inflammatory and spineless comments from Trump, Musk, Starmer and Swinney are piped in over the sound system. So, too are more inspiring speeches from Sylvia Rivera, Leslie Feinberg and Jo Clifford. Kelly weaves in an autobiographical strand, too, pondering why they have not performed in drag since 2019. How, they ask, has Scotland’s status as a world leader in LGBTQ+ rights slipped so far?

There is a sharper, funnier, fiercer version of this show – one that might grab more headlines and bigger audiences – but Kelly and their team have opted to make something softer and slower that prioritises access and inclusivity. Surtitles are provided. Elliot Webster-Mockett provides BSL interpretation on stage throughout. Several breaks are inserted into the performance, during which Kelly reclines with headphones and snacks are shared with the audience. What this playful production lacks in bite and snap, it makes up for in care and compassion. Fergus Morgan

THEATRE

Forget About Me ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August

Horror is something that it’s genuinely difficult to make work at the Fringe - perhaps it’s just too difficult to conjure an atmosphere of creepiness and dread with a roomful of audience and performers hyped up on festival energy. But Dylan Howells and Liverpool-based Despite the Monkey theatre company manage it beautifully in this deliciously unsettling, slippery story of sinister children, night-time apparitions and fragmented family memories.

And one reason for Forget About Me’s success is undoubtedly Howells’s own disarmingly informal, chatty persona: the show begins almost as if it’s a stand-up routine. Howells maintains that likeable informality, but the atmosphere gradually changes as he delves back in his memory to dredge up childhood recollections of a dilapidated house his father was renovating, a mysterious discovery in the bathroom, and a growing sense that something terrible has been awakened.

He might seem casual in his delivery, but Howells is nonetheless adept in some tricksy sleight of hand, and also in some nicely confounding Derren Brown-like moments of suggestion, distraction and deflection. To say more - obviously - would spoil the fun. Most gratifying, however, is that his tricks and illusions - and there are several of them - are embedded so deeply in the show’s unfolding story that you barely even notice what’s going on (which is, surely, the point).

Are there jump scares and ghostly apparitions? That would be telling. More interesting is the way in which Howells implicates all of us in his tale, and how what began as a story of an apparent haunting gradually morphs into a reflection on disbelieving our own memories, or even reconstructing a fictional past. Forget About Me might seem like it’s becoming a conventional haunted house story, but by its quietly breathtaking close, it’s transformed into something far more unnerving about memory, suggestion and free will. David Kettle

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THEATRE

Giro Baby ★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

There’s more ambition in Scottish actor Sophie Sandor’s self-penned solo play than there initially appears to be in the life of the young Glaswegian girl, also named Sophie, she portrays throughout the character’s adolescence. There’s a truth and a humour to the world she portrays, in which a job down the local chippy appears to be the total of her youthful ambition, the halcyon days of 2009 (when she was 13) are marked by Oasis splitting up and underage nightclub Sea closing down, and older men from bouncers to politicians take a possibly exploitative interest in her. Although Sophie’s own political awakening is an unexpected twist in the tale, the raw delivery of the play could have done with more polish. David Pollock

THEATRE

Paywall ★★

C ARTS | C venues | C aurora (venue 6) until 30 August

Words and the power they hold are central to this one-woman dark comedy. Lizzy, 27, is moving back home after completing a journalism degree, juggling jobs and struggling with living costs. We follow her from childhood, discovering her love of writing, and learn the lengths she will go to in pursuit of a journalism career. Her determination, bordering on obsession, to uncover the truth is where the character is most interesting. Neysa Killeen gives a passionate performance, but the piece would benefit from more humour, bolder characterisations and Lizzy’s obsessiveness could be pushed further. With several story elements to cover, it can feel muddled, though there are intriguing ideas worth developing. Suzanne O'Brien

THEATRE

My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram ★★

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

When Australian comedian and storyteller Yoz Mensch debuted at the Fringe two years ago it was with an uproarious absurdist clown show. Ear-catching title aside, My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me On Instagram is a far quieter, slower, more confessional and less theatrical affair which could hardly be more different. While transitioning, Mensch undertook a lo-octane odd couple road trip from Lands End to John O’Groats with said grandpa to scatter grandma Joy’s ashes and fail to disclose their gender identity to the taciturn beer-swilling nonagenarian who, brought to life as a curmudgeonly character by Mensch, turns out to be the best thing about this ponderous show. Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

Bean vs The Robots: A Solo Show Musical ★★

theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall (Venue 53) until 29 August

If you have ever lost your heart to a starship trooper, Midge Lema’s oddball solo space pop musical initially feels like it might be the show you need. Travelling the galaxy with her only friend - her Korg keyboard - her alias Bean spins a space satire on corporate culture with its robot-generated rules before the deliberate monotony of the songs and her tendency to circle back on the same thoughts (often involving Elijah Wood) dissipate the promise of the engaging early moments of her performance. As her intergalactic journey heads haltingly into grief territory, the show loses thrust and becomes aimlessly lost in space. Fiona Shepherd

THEATRE

The Longer My Mother Is Dead the More I Like Her ★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

Deborah Unger plays both mother and daughter in this solo memoir, flashing between characters with a prop (glasses pulled down, pushed up) and photo cards on a music stand to orient us in time. The material is rich – childhood cruelty, an army kid upbringing, a father’s decline from Parkinson’s – and the shift from “mummy” to “mom” to “mother” traces waning intimacy alongside increased hurt. Sound effects distract rather than support, and pacing struggles under accumulated memory. Despite this, the ending is navigated with nuance, finding hard-won peace, as anger gives way to something gentler. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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