Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: FLUSH | Feltman: World’s First Hot Dog | That Show About the Hot Dog + more

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

The wild hen party, the naive underagers, the eager partygoers and the desperate singletons. All people you would expect to see in a nightclub, and all are vividly brought to life in this busy, chaotic piece set in the club toilets.

The script is hilariously funny one minute and emotionally raw the next, with an undercurrent of something darker running beneath the lightness and laughter.

Topical references to TikTok trends, Charli XCX, and Chappell Roan keep the mood buoyant, even as more serious themes emerge. Issues like body image and eating disorders are explored through candid conversations, particularly between two of the hens, grounding the piece in relevant, urgent issues.

Clear and dynamic direction keeps the energy flowing, capturing the unique atmosphere of a ladies’ bathroom in a nightclub - part sanctuary, part stage, part battleground. This, combined with a strong cast of five, allows many different stories to play out simultaneously and convincingly.

Even though some characters lean into familiar clubgoing stereotypes, the script and performers flesh them into individuals with real stories, backgrounds, and vulnerabilities. This layered storytelling is a key strength, inviting the audience to eavesdrop on overlapping conversations and glimpse into different lives.

April Hope Miller is brilliant as the loud, foul-mouthed maid of honour who takes her role incredibly seriously. Her performance reveals impressive range within a character that could easily have been one-dimensional. Jazz Jenkins delivers a heartbreakingly real portrayal of Billie as she unravels after an encounter she can’t process, a moment made even more impactful by its inevitability.

Though the story isn’t new, its themes remain relevant. The company has partnered with Ask For Angela, an initiative supporting people who feel vulnerable on a night out, reflecting the ongoing real-world issues the show addresses, and how important it is for theatre like this to exist.

Suzanne O’Brien

Feltman: World’s First Hot Dog ★★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

That Show About the Hot Dog ★★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 23 August

Glorious Greenside, the multi-stage mega-complex in the New Town, has decided to programme two shows about hot dogs at the same time.

It’s the kind of thing that you might expect in this quintessentially Fringe venue with a full wall dedicated to its formidable schedule and a foyer that’s busier than an airport terminal, through which crocodile chains of audience members are led, sometimes directly into one another, by ushers with lollypop signs in-between shouting show titles through a megaphone.

“Feltman: the World’s First Hot Dog! No, not the other one. That’s over there.”

In Feltman: World’s First Hot Dog, actor and entrepreneur Michael Quinn tells the story of Charles Feltman, a German immigrant and New York baker, who is credited with inventing the hotdog after he began selling sausages in buns at his food stand on Coney Island in the mid-1800s. As the business grows, a restaurant, bridge and railway follow, with Quinn capturing the evolution of a much-loved area of the city, as well as the transformation of a sausage and a bun into a design classic.

It’s an American Dream – or nightmare if you’re a competitor – that’s repeated over the decades, through a potted Lehman Brothers Trilogy-style structure, that eventually sees Quinn resurrecting Feltmans and to turn his love of its history into something more profitable – so successfully, that he eventually loses control of the company.

It's a involving story, told with passion, albeit one that’s clearly from someone who has a vested interest in presenting their version of what of events.

But like a miniature Lehman Brothers Trilogy (with a Lehman brother briefly featuring), it captures the excitement and challenges of successfully building a business from scratch, as well as the magic and energy of entrepreneurship across the eras.

Less obvious is the go-to-market strategy that has led to it, today, being performed for an audience of one: me. This seems at least party due to its rival, That Show About the Hot Dog, having a more industrialised approach to fliering.

I’ve already been offered two and have a full collection of souvenir badges in my pocket. But while the marketing is focussed, the show is wild.

Seemingly framed around the idea that “All the world’s a hot dog and we’re just hot dogs in it”, it loosely revolves around a search for free will and meaning in a world of sausages, all of which are knitted.

With an upbeat avant-garde atmosphere, two deadpan characters, called Wee Wen-nie Wiener (Wee Wee) and She She, accompanied by The Hot Dog Players dance troupe and The Hot Dog Mechanicals jazz band, carry out a series of sketches, parodying theatre, experimental film, contemporary dance, haute couture fashion and the narrative structures of both Hollywood film and Chinese philosophy. And then a giant pickle floats in the sky.

Touching on American politics, although never direct enough to delve too deeply into them, there’s a call to “grow beyond duality”, but also a question of how to practically do this when to make a hotdog requires a sausage and a bun – plus also dancing condiments.

“What meaning do you find in this?” the company asks, a fascinatingly diverse collective of artists, performers, costume designers, architects and more. In the middle of their ingenious set of ever separating and reconnecting sausages, they relish the absurdity of “dressing ourselves up” while brilliantly demonstrating just why it’s so fun.

Sally Stott

Dreamscape ★★★

Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower (Venue 140) until 24 August

In December, 1998, an African American woman called Tyisha Miller was shot dead by police officers in Riverside, California, while lying unconscious in her car at a gas station in the early hours of the morning. She was nineteen years old.

This 45-minute two-hander from US writer and director Rickerby Hinds is an imaginatively structured retelling of Miller’s life and death through remarkable beatboxing, twisting movement, and lyrical hip-hop.

Two genial, gentle performers – Natali Micciche and John Merchant, taking over from Jada Evelyn Ramsey and Josiah Alpher, who performed the show earlier in the festival – orbit around each other on a stage that is empty save for two chairs.

Merchant doubles as the policeman that shot Miller and the coroner that examined her body, weaving together their emotionally detached reports of her death with impressively versatile beatboxing.

Micciche plays Miller as her young life flashes before her eyes, each bullet that enters her young body bringing with it another memory, which Micciche delivers in passages of lively, rhythmic rap and supple, sinuous dance.

Hinds does not dive far into the socio-political resonances of Miller’s death and the show consequently feels fairly slight, but it engrosses for what it is: a mellow and melancholic hip-hop exploration of a tragically short life.

Fergus Morgan

How To Win 5 Grand on the Internet ★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 24 August

Despite its title, this is far from a guide to online gambling success, but neither is it a searing condemnation of the ills and dangers of internet poker. No, actor/writer Laurence Baker’s debut Fringe show is a far more elusive creation, and a much more interesting one as a result.

His obsessive online poker playing took him to some pretty dark places, but it also paid his London rent for six months. Does that mean it was even a problem? Is it too simplistic to blame it on Baker not dealing with the death of his father? Or does it come down to more fundamental questions of competition, one-upmanship, even self-belief?

From an improvised drinking contest to intentionally intrusive audio interviews with his mother, Baker’s show throws its net wide in its explorations.

Not all of his elements come together, and he probably ought to devise a stronger through-line to link them. But there’s interesting, self-aware material here that even questions why a Fringe show is the right place to ask some of these questions, and he’s a gifted physical performer, communicating so much pent-up emotion in moments where words clearly fail him.

At times shining a bright light on Baker’s own vulnerabilities, How to Win is a quietly revealing, provocative contemplation of our yearning for success.

David Kettle

Midnight in Nashville ★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 24 August

Country singer Marcy Aurora has lived a life as melodramatic as any country song. Twenty years ago, she really was stuck in Folsom Prison and now she is steeling herself to make a comeback, knowing she needs to be unimpeachable.

Her long-suffering producer is guiding her through a late night recording session and the musical news is not good.

Biz Lyon is credible as the chastened veteran whose singing could be stronger, whose songs could be better, but it’s just not that interesting being a fly on the wall of this studio, at least until a twist comes out of the blue.

Fiona Shepherd

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