Fringe theatre reviews: Little Animals | Laughing Out Lonely | Becoming Dr Ruth | The Wreck + more

Little Animals ★★★★★

Traverse @The Lyceum Studio (Venue 593) Until 30 August

Laughing Out Lonely ★ ★ ★ ★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 30 August

The scale of the climate crisis now facing humanity, and our overheating planet, is so huge that relatively few Fringe shows have the courage to tackle it head on. Hotter Project’s HAM, at Summerhall, is one that boldly takes up the challenge; and now, here comes another, even more direct and courageous, in actor and writer Paul Ready’s debut play Little Animals.

Stripped back to the barest theatrical essentials, Little Animals features just one performer – Ready himself, a man of 40 or so in a dark suit and bright tie, clutching a bottle of water – and an audience of perhaps 30 souls, sitting in a double circle in the natural light of an otherwise empty Lyceum Studio.

The occasion, the speaker tells us, is a memorial event for his best friend Richard, who has recently drowned while swimming in a local river; and as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Richard’s death may have been suicide. Richard is a gentle soul who, unlike our narrator, never really left home, never went to university, never landed a lucrative high-stress job in the city of London, never married, never had a child – although he dotes on his friend’s young daughter Ellie.

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He does, though, have a deep and mounting concern about the state of the natural environment and our human habitat; and as Ready’s narrator looks back on their friendship, from childhood to Richard’s last troubled weeks, his monologue matures into a brilliant exploration of what constitutes sanity and rational behaviour, in a civilisation apparently bent, in its pursuit of money and economic growth, on destroying the natural abundance on which all life depends.

The result is challenging and hugely empathetic hour of theatre, brilliantly paced and structured as it steadily draws into the daylight the conversations so many of us are now having with ourselves, but which our political and economic systems seem unable to address, beyond empty slogans and greenwashing. As Ready neared the end of his second Edinburgh performance, the heavens opened over the city, dumping millimetres of rain in less than 15 minutes, and battering against the Lyceum Studio skylights. Climate change is here, the roar of the rain seemed to say; and it’s time to listen to brave artists like Paul Ready, who dare to confront this frightening moment with heart, mind, body and soul.

Richard’s loneliness, in his fear for our future, is one of Ready’s preoccupations in Little Animals; and to experience an exploration of 21st century lonelines that fairly blows the mind, and offers a quintessential Fringe theatre experience, Fringe-goers should head for Summerhall, and counter-tenor Marten Grove Frandsen’s 45-minute operatic meditation Laughing Out Lonely (LOL), staged as part of this year’s Danish programme.

In a darkened Dissection Room strewn with packing-boxes on which we sit, and often lit by the glare of large mobile phone screens, Frandsen’s character sings like an angel across a huge vocal range, while meditating in a deliberately banal English libretto on the hell of yearning for, and failing to find, fulfilling 21st century relationships.

Frandsen has an astonishing presence, tall, beautiful, sexually ambiguous. And as he wanders the room, seeks seclusion in a forest, indulges in a brief online hate-fest, or laughs himself silly while communing with a large stuffed rabbit, that sense of underlying beauty never fails; in a memorably strange Fringe show that somehow succeeds in troubling the mind, soothing the soul and uplifting the spirits, all well within a single short hour. Joyce McMillan

Becoming Dr Ruth ★ ★ ★

Assembly @ St Andrew Square (Venue 172) until 30 August

The bare facts of the life of Dr Ruth K Westheimer immediately present themselves as being worthy of dramatic treatment. A German-Jewish girl, she fortunately escaped Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport to Switzerland, then on to Israel (then Mandatory Palestine) and finally America. Here, in a well-known twist, she became a sex therapist and launched a late-night radio show on the subject in New York.

From 1980 on, Ruth became famous across the USA for her waspish, straight-talking humour, but also her extremely liberal response to all manner of sexual proclivities. Mark St Germain’s play debuted Off-Broadway in 2013 and is revived and recast here for its Edinburgh premiere. Actor Anne O’Sullivan’s Ruth is elderly, newly-widowed from her third husband Fred in 1997 (Ruth only died two years ago, at the age of 96), and about to move apartment in New York.

As she packs, she reflects on a life of celebrity, on the horror of her early life (her parents didn’t escape the camps, their actual fate unknown) and, briefly, on the curious and little-known story of her time in post-war Israel, where she trained as a sniper and nearly died in a bomb blast. It’s a straight biographical piece, but there’s more than enough for O’Sullivan to get her teeth into through her note-perfect imitation of Ruth and the blend of joy, pathos, humour and tragedy which her life encompassed. David Pollock

The Wreck ★ ★ ★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

The simplicity of the story being told in Buzzcut Productions’ The Wreck is offset by the manner of its production. Described as a ‘live cinema play’, it blends theatremaking and live-action animated filmmaking, with the actors seen not in person but on the semi-transparent screen which divides the audience and the performers’ workspace.

Ira (Camilla Anvar) and Eddie (Morgan Beale) are brother and sister, raised in the sleepy English fishing village of Ratmouth and now mourning the death of their parents. Eddie has long since left this place behind and appears to almost resent being back (“It’s a good place to be born and a great place to die, but in between you've got to get out,” he tells Ira), but she clings on, keeping their parents’ failing pub The Dancer open.

Together, the siblings return to their youthful love of scuba diving, exploring an old wreck and attempting to find Eddie’s lost wedding ring, the boat on the sea bed possibly a metaphor for both his relationship and the siblings’ old shared life in writer/director Gabe Winsor’s play.

The actors, puppeteer and camera operator Beckett Gray, and composer Faye James put live performance, puppetry, music, model diorama manipulation and animated backdrops up on screen, but, moments of underwater action aside, the tone is wistful and contemplative, a calm theatrical surface to what’s going on beneath the waves of this deceptively complex work. David Pollock

READ MORE: Scotsman Fringe First awards: week two winners revealed

Steve Burns: Alive ★ ★ ★

Underbelly, Cowgate (Venue 61) until 30 August

Steve Burns has a base of adoring fans that erupt into applause at the start of his show, before even catching a glimpse of their hero. Their love for Steve dates back to childhood, as he emerged as the presenter of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, a television show where he’d follow clues left behind by an animated dog, and ask his child viewers, now adults in the audience, to help him decipher them.

If you remember Steve from Blue’s Clues, I imagine that you’ll love his set, which is full of nostalgia. If you’re hearing his name for the first time, there’s a lot less for you here. Steve charts his life up to leaving the show, whereupon rumours began to spread that he’d died. Burns uses his story to make a valiant attempt to critique social media, preaching that it does not create the connection that it was designed to. Yet his mediations are overshadowed once he finally sits in that legendary red chair, just as he did all those years ago: the crowd goes wild, and his reflections are totally forgotten.

Steve retains his guiding, encouraging tone that he is remembered for, but his show struggles to shake his celebrity and offer more. To his mostly American fans, all grown up, he must merely be Steve Burns, alive, to be great. Róisin McMullan

We Love and Then We Drown ★ ★

Greenside at George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

Three stages of a woman’s life illustrate three stages of climate catastrophe. In 2075 she lives, depressed, in a care home, in a partially underwater Britain. In her youth she’s a climate scientist, making the most dire predictions and resolving not to have children, even as new romance and the disastrous climate moment known as the Tipping Point emerge around her. In her childhood she tries to comprehend her mother’s cancer diagnosis, even though her mum’s refusal to believe in or seek prompt medical treatment causes her doubt. The non-professional levels of production and performance are clear, but Ruth Gilligan’s play is rich in humanity, and strikes a satisfying balance of concern and hope. David Pollock

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