Fringe theatre reviews: Heart Beats Strong | This is How I Got Arrested | Josiah | Painting the Roses Red | Offgridland | The Sins of the Father

THEATRE

Heart Beats Strong ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August

There are many representations of what it means to be a young man today at the Fringe, but few as heartwarming as this which focuses on the low-key – but high stakes when you’re 18 – everyday lives, loves and losses of three young men. “How I move is who I am” one says and – in a piece in which scenes from the teenager’s freewheeling routines are intercut with sharply synchronised choreography, by a new company of friends who met on a summer course at the National Youth Theatre – it could be the mantra for the whole show.

With a striking script based on the three writer/performers’ diaries and covering topics such as coming out as bisexual, Southeast Asian identity and modern masculinity, the show also captures the high energy, frivolity and fun, as well as the frustrations, of being an older teenager. Illuminated under stick lights, wielded like lightsabres, the tightly co-ordinated text, movement and direction take us through a rotating wheel of locations in the lives of young men at a time where no hangover is able to thwart the ability to wake up late, power cycle to an appointment and still arrive two minutes early.

This is a world where ‘Dave’ might be into “competitive knitting” and a racist or homophobic slur might not be said outright but some people still sometimes come close. There’s no single grand narrative, instead a series of little moments that seem bigger and brighter at that age that play does a great job of highlighting in a way that makes you remember.

The still, at times, mumbling young men, with their awkward jokes that “don’t land” and equally awkward parents trying to relate to their newly adult offspring are beautifully and very funnily observed. Giving out badges at the end, Alfie Wickham, Kai Porter and Noah Manzoor are the perfect ambassadors for a show that it seems like they not only perform but also embody. Sally Stott

THEATRE

This is How I Got Arrested ★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 30 August

At a festival often accused of being full of privileged people, this is a chance to meet Sophie, a working-class woman who was arrested for smuggling something she terms ‘art’, played with in yer face panache by Azaelia Slade in this highly participatory show. How much of Azaelia is Sophie? It’s a deceptively skilful piece in which she deliberately keeps the boundaries blurred and channels a Tracey Emin-style authenticity – without anything as lofty as an obvious talent for painting or, indeed, putting on a play.

Instead, using hand-sketched cartoons on scraps of paper of her family, neighbours and fellow criminals, assisted by a suitcase full of random stuff, she cajoles and harangues audience members into reading the lines she’s written for them.

The focus isn’t the story – which is as thinly drawn as some of the people on her street – but a confronting experience in which the audience are asked to ‘perform’ and consider what ‘a performer’ is.

It’s messy, awkward and, at times, amateurish – but watching her power through becomes part of the appeal in an endurance test for herself, as well as us. She’s not always in control of the energy. Members of the audience are frequently better actors than she is. Although she’s apparently trained, they seem to have trained more, which, by the end, is clearly the point. Sally Stott

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THEATRE

Josiah ★★★

theSpace Triplex (Venue 38) until 29 August

Cassel Miles’s portrait of the real-life Josiah Henson, who was born and raised in slavery in Maryland, before making his escape to Canada in his forties and writing an autobiography which allegedly inspired the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is unflinching in its portrayal of day-to-day existence as a victim of this great barbaric endeavour. Yet it's also rich in human connection, not just between Josiah and his family and fellow slaves, but as a queasy portrait of the relationship between a slave and his or her supposed ‘master’.

The room is appropriately hot, and sweat lashes of Miles as he performs. He recounts the story of Henson’s defiant father’s beating, mutilation and sale in his youth, and of the anguish of a slave auction which tears siblings and parents away from one another. Yet Maryland was apparently one of the more liberal slave-owning states, and as Henson matures and earns a degree of responsibility on the plantation, the threat of being sold to one of the notoriously brutal southern states kept him in line.

Miles is deep-voiced and physically powerful, yet he invests Henson not with heroism or great nobility, but rather a stoic desire to endure, and eventually risk an arduous escape. Despite its hard-going subject matter, this play’s also a thrilling survival adventure. Note that it transfers to theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall for its final few performances. David Pollock

THEATRE

Painting the Roses Red ★★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

There’s a neat double meaning to the title of this topical new absurdist play by young company Kalopsia Theatre. On one hand, as the flyer image of a blood-stained St George’s Cross shows, it’s a dark satire on recent surges of nationalist aggression, particularly as they relate to the company’s home country England. On the other, as those who might recognise the song title within will know, it’s a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, particularly the 1951 Disney version.

Both strands come together in the tale of a young American woman re-entering the UK and returning to her British husband and child after a visit home, who’s launched down a rabbithole of bizarre bureaucracy by the immigration officers who pull her aside to check her papers. With minimal props and invested performances, the cast invent a world of identical corridors, repetitive forms, intractable citizenship tests and satirically passive-aggressive (even to the audience) staff.

Those playing the official personal, especially the Tweedledum and Tweedledee-like double act of male characters, perform with a particularly exaggerated physical style reminiscent of John Cleese, while the sense of bureaucracy being taken to absurd, fantastical extremes ties in with the themes of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Needless to say, in other words, anyone looking for a burst of youthful, Monty Python-style dark comedy should get a kick out of it. David Pollock

THEATRE

Offgridland ★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

Paul Richards, writing and performing solo, plays a frantic council worker trying to disconnect for lunch, tormented by a growing suspicion he’s living inside a sitcom. The premise escalates: a wallet, lost through a hole in his trousers, turns up beside a dead body, his sense of time is measured in series and episodes, and phone alerts become evidence in his imagined conspiracy. The writing’s skill lies in that escalation, spiralling anxiety into delirium. Execution is shakier – the pace often feels strained, and some devices grow repetitive. Ultimately, the show is stressful, amusing, and well-constructed, if not always sure-footed. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

THEATRE

The Sins of the Father ★★

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

The Sins of the Father is a solo show about inherited harm within a family, told through Suraya across four characters and shifting timelines. Performer Cat Isaacs is magnetic, and the show’s strongest moments attest to this, particularly in a haunting rendition of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” that unearths something dark beneath the familiar, and a solo physical sequence conveying violation without ever showing it directly. Both are handled with sensitivity and restraint. Structurally, the piece struggles: jumping between characters, timeframes, and a parallel police investigation makes the action hard to follow, which works against an emotionally powerful closing scene. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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