Fringe theatre reviews: Endometriosis: The Musical | Make Yourself at Home | Mysteries of the Picts + more

Endometriosis: The Musical ★ ★ ★ ★

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 24) until 31 August

Endometriosis: The Musical opens with a nod to Shakespeare’s stage direction – “exeunt, pursued by a bear” – as Brad is mauled before a presentation, and Jane Smith steps in to fill the gap. Borrowing a recognisable theatrical direction to open a show about an experience recognised yet routinely misunderstood is striking. Jane’s name reinforces this: she is presented as an everyperson, inviting audiences to see themselves in her.

What follows is a well-seeded tragicomedy. Jane insists she’ll be fine, “as long as she doesn’t get her period”, and the show justifies her fears: when it arrives, she doubles over in a meeting, loses an account, and finds her pain treated as a liability rather than a disability. A number featuring “Aunt Flo” and a red ribbon parodies period euphemisms, while piano keeps the tone buoyant as the material darkens.

The sharpest device stages sixteen years of dismissed symptoms: a corridor of growing syringes, a doctor intoning that Jane’s pain is “all part of being female”, and a spinning wheel of treatments satirising diagnostic tools designed around the male body. A gameshow-format diagnosis scene closes the loop, turning the healthcare system’s disjointed approach into a puzzle to be solved.

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By stating that one in seven people are affected and that the average time to diagnosis is ten years, the show acknowledges there is no cure, only management. This prevents the ending from becoming falsely triumphant, though a reprise of the “fobbed off” motif could deepen that truth.

The result extends beyond endometriosis.

At its heart is a question of power: who gets believed, whose body is treated as the norm, and what happens when gaps in knowledge leave institutions ill-equipped to recognise the people in front of them. It speaks to those whose pain has been diminished, and anyone working within systems capable of making change. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Make Yourself at Home ★ ★ ★ ★

Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152) until 30 August

It starts off like an American TV sitcom with a young man, Michael, hanging out on his couch, watching TV and chatting to his girlfriend Natalie. So far, so samey. However, it gradually becomes clear he can’t leave the house – at all. And when Natalie instead leaves him, he’s got no one left to talk to but the TV, hoover and a woman from the porn films that he watches – all of whom start hanging out with him in his flat.

Alexa Belli’s absurdist script feels refreshingly mainstream for the genre due to its warmly conveyed characters, including Michael, who she also plays, with Helora Anna, Ally McQuade, and Samuel DeMuria taking on the roles of the TV, down-to-earth porn star and Natalie/the hoover. Michael is easily a character who could be dislikeable; needy and reliant on the affirmations of women and household objects, but Belli balances this with a skilfully structured slow-reveal story, with some superb merging of the characters dialogue and the TV chat accompanied by a dimension bridging laugh track.

The story follows how Michael got to such a dark place that clearly signals a mental health issue, but one that’s initially concealed by the cartoon-like characters of the flat and upbeat nature of daytime TV. Counting down the days to a trip to the dentist starts to feel for Michael, and us, a monumental journey. The offbeat tone of the dialogue covers up his condition for a long time as we’re trapped, like he is, in the static situation of his flat.

As he is forced to keep himself entertained, so too does the writing have to find ever-ingenious ways of keeping us similarly interested. By the time he’s finally able to name his condition, it feels like progress is being made, even if it’s one step on a longer journey. Sally Stott

Mysteries of the Picts ★ ★ ★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

Sauna Theatre's first venture into the Fringe continues with a production that leans in hard to the sense of the time-honoured, mysterious and borderline mystical surrounding sauna and wellness culture. For this performance the audience are transported back to the time of the Picts to contemplate whether they, and not the Finnish, were responsible for the creation of the sweatlodge.

The production’s dramatic elements are thin, but they set the scene perfectly, as two actors describe the history of the mysterious Picts as passed down through Roman writing; that they were naked, painted warriors living in the northern British Isles, whom the Romans had to wall off rather than attempt to defeat. The text notes that unknown chambers, possibly hot stone-heating places of healing and relaxation, have been discovered by archaeologists across the British Isles, in Downpatrick, Wiltshire, Assynt and Orkney.

It’s by no means a forensic historical examination, rather a bit of verbal set-dressing for Sauna Theatre’s Aufguss experience, with two sauna practitioners pouring ice and water on hot stones, wafting scents around the room in a dance of leaves and towels, and eventually spraying the audience with water shaken from sheaves of branches. The experience of it is unforgettable, although the narrative elements of this particular piece are mostly just set dressing to the unique physical encounter. David Pollock

Quinn’s Abyss ★ ★ ★

C ARTS | C venues | C aquila (Venue 21) until 30 August

This understated one-woman spoken-word odyssey – written, created and performed by K. Quinn Hampton – has a visually stunning animated shadow puppet film backdrop that evokes monsters, oceans and distant lands, as well as a mental health issue and climate concerns. It’s a place in which the mountains of the mind sit under the sky of the soul, bookended by key stones and inhabited by a watchful group of “loved ones”, in a piece that is inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

The monologue is packed with lyrical, luscious word combinations that at times seem overly delighted with themselves, but the pairing of these with the film tethers what could have been a very dense narration to strong visually imagery.

With a background in producing, Hampton’s performance has an unaffected honesty and generosity that is refreshing, but it operates in isolation from the film that is being projected behind her – something that a good director would help with.

The ever-diverging dreamlike journey through the ‘Labyrinth of the Lost’ and round the ‘The Swamp of the Stuck’ and other locations is full of poetry, but would benefit from a more defined narrative and sense of character. However, Hampton does a wonderful job of creating a quiet space of meditation and rest just off the Royal Mile, one of the thoroughfares of the Fringe. Sally Stott

READ MORE: Fringe theatre reviews: Steak Out | Sobremesa | The Understudy + more

Liz Wesleydale: (Shadow) Home Secretary ★ ★

Paradise in the Vault (Venue 29) until 30 August

‘Liz Means Biz’ says one of the campaign placards promoting Home Secretary and Premier League footballer’s wife Liz Wesleydale’s (Lola Bean) re-election campaign, but sadly Liz, glamorous in pink raincoat and tartan skirt, finds her brand of ‘capitaLizm’ can’t sway the electorate.

Comically unable to understand her new shadow role, she press-gangs hapless civil servant Susan (Stella Stevens) into making her important again by any means necessary, whether that’s promoting climate change awareness through bizarre mascot Marvin Conoxide or lurching to fascism.

Bean captures Liz’s haughty pearly Tory (we presume) manner well and writer/director Connor James Reid’s script contains some lively satire, but the delivery pace is languid, draining energy from even the best one-liners. David Pollock

Habits ★ ★

Just the Tonic at the Caves (Venue 88) until 30 August

Rita (Estefany Perez) has written a show for children about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which she breaks into here, a dark fable about three geese being led off by a buzzing bee to their death by fox. She also breaks the fourth wall to talk about her own fears as a (fictional) actor with OCD, particularly her fixated dread that she’ll wet herself onstage, to which end she’s agreed with her offstage stage manager Charlie that he won’t let her leave until the performance is done.

It’s a work with promise from its young, Edinburgh-based company – Perez is a charismatic actor and Scott Strom’s writing delivers amusing, playful insight – yet the tonal shift between child’s fable, psychological confessional and stand-up monologue is wobbly and uneven. David Pollock

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