Fringe theatre reviews: Scott Turnbull | Golden Time | Blandy

Scott Turnbull presents... Surreally Good ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 27) until 25 August

This extremely odd solo show from surrealist theatre-maker Scott Turnbull combines lo-fi animation, live drawing and absurdist humour into something strangely compelling.

Turnbull – who hails from the North East and was recently named Tees Valley Artist Of The Year – re-imagines himself as the descendant of a famous family. His late father founded Edutainment, a touring business that delivers socially conscious seminars with the help of an old-school overhead projector. Turnbull has inherited his occupation – the audience is cast as students at an Edutainment session – but financial difficulties have resulted in the family firm being sold off to the callous Wilks Booth corporation, and Turnbull must stick closely to their script. His wild mind keeps wandering off course, though.

Got all that? It doesn’t really matter if not, as narrative coherence is not the main concern here. Turnbull uses this convoluted framing device as an excuse to tell a series of increasingly bizarre stories, which he delivers with the help of his projector, a series of pre-prepared slides, a few sections of David Shrigley-ish live drawing, a bit of gentle audience interaction, a handful of abrupt and quirky songs, and a lot of off-beat charm.

The environment lesson dissolves into a weird tale about two lesbian geologists discovering an art gallery in a seaside cave. The section on youth disengagement becomes a bizarre story about a young rabbit who moves from LA to Stockton-on-Tees and falls in love with a vampire David Bowie bunny. Throughout, Turnbull teases the story of how his late father and mother met: when he eventually delivers it at the show’s conclusion, it is a haunting, cryptic yarn about a fisherman, a mermaid and an egg.

Turnbull – part supply teacher, part grieving son, part soulful artist – weaves this weirdness together with a soft smile and a glint in his eye. He is a thoroughly endearing performer and this is a uniquely strange show. There is nothing else like it at the festival. Fergus Morgan

Golden Time (and Other Behavioural Management Strategies) ★★★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 60) until 25 August

Rewards-based systems used in school to make kids conform, and the effects of these on children with a more diverse range of needs are the focus of this upbeat show with powerful points handed out like sweets, by former teaching assistant, Kate Ireland. Focussing on ‘Golden Time’, in which free time is given or taken away by teachers, Kate tells the story of befriending a neurodivergent child through a waterfall of rattling dialogue. It’s this kind of wordiness that could get you ‘sanctioned’ at school but is almost expected in a Fringe show – particularly when there’s a strict hour time slot, as the audience reviews in the creative captioning are keen to point out.

Encouraged to join in, the audience poignantly list the petty deviations that they were punished for in school: rolling eyes, not sitting on a chair “properly”, “talking”. Really what 99% of them wanted to be doing was drawing, we learn. It’s a piece that channels its criticisms through the broad archetype of a clueless authoritarian teacher, Miss Sheppherd. But more interestingly, it encourages rekindling the clarity of childhood selves at their freest – to draw if that’s what you want to do, rather than be part of the 99% of audience members who, as this show proves, still fall into mindless chanting when ‘a teacher’ tells them to. Sally Stott

Blandy ★★★

Assembly George Square Studios (venue 17) until 25 August

Hold on tight. There is no option but to be taken away with this quick and crazy tale which blends history, Bridgerton-like scandal and modern pig fairytale, Penelope. At the centre of the story is Mary Blandy, an 18th-century woman who famously murdered her father.

Desperate to find a suitable suitor, Mary’s life turns upside down when a charming man arrives. Secrets, supposed love potions, and murder follow. The play questions what really happened, giving the opportunity for Mary to tell her side.

Performers Georgie Dettmer and Luke Nixon barely take a moment to breathe, yet strong direction and distinct characterisation make the fast-moving shifts between present courtroom and flashback easy to follow.

Energetic lighting and sound add intensity, evoking a modern club-like atmosphere. Amidst the chaos of characters and flashbacks, Mary recounts a fairytale of a Pig Princess, trying to make sense of her situation. An arrogant prosecution lawyer, dramatically lit and holding a microphone, repeatedly drags Mary back into the courtroom, forcing her to stay on track.

The ending is slightly less satisfactory. It feels rushed with a bit too much still going on and competing for attention. Slight refinements and clearer focus could propel this piece to exciting heights.

Coco Cottam’s writing and the cast are unstoppable, but quite frankly, they shouldn’t be stopped. Suzanne O'Brien

Baker Street Ladies ★★★

theSpace @ Symposium Hall (Venue 43) until 23 August

A trio of strong performances — all from one very talented actor — makes up this cosily entertaining triptych. A little more than mere pastiche, Lexi Wolfe’s one-woman show is like a valentine to Sherlock Holmes delivered to 221b Baker Street by three ladies with strong ties to the great detective while he is out — presumably on a case. Introduced by a monologue from Holmes’s landlady, Martha Watson, in a reassuringly convincing Scottish burr, Wolfe busies herself with a feather duster while reminiscing about all the damage wreaked on the premises by her troublesome tenant.

While initially somewhat foreboding, Mrs Hudson's disposition softens the more she recalls. This contrasts nicely with the guarded attitude of Dr Watson’s wife, Mary (Wolfe’s costume and character changes are efficiently swift) who arrives looking for John, nervously eager to impart some news and anxious as always about the safety of her husband. While this is essentially fan fiction, it’s nevertheless well-observed and Wolfe has a clear eye for the emotional truth of these characters. It’s light on even the suggestion of a plot until the last caller, Irene Adler, provides a hint of narrative and intrigue, but it’s a handsome showcase for Wolfe’s fine character work all the same. Rory Ford

God Is Dead and I Killed Him ★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 25 August

This is the third year that writer/performer Callum Patrick Hughes has brought an energetic, poignant and deeply personal solo show to the Fringe - it’s tempting to suggest that sharing his life stories with rapt audiences might be almost as good as therapy. He certainly doesn’t hold back on disarming honesty - and he has plenty to recount from his rich, incident-filled life that’s thoroughly entertaining and quietly provocative too.

In the case of God Is Dead and I Killed Him, it’s Hughes’s encounters with spirituality in its many and varied forms that form the backbone of his show, from being a devout Christian boy to seriously considering whether he might be a witch, as an aunt informs him he is. In between we get songs and hymns, school bullies and weed, with Hughes sliding smoothly between his various story strands and finding surprising connections and coincidences.

If anything, though, there’s probably a bit too much going on for Hughes to delve into any of it in much depth, and directors Roann Hassani McCloskey and David Shopland’s sometimes breakneck pace doesn’t help. Though a final sharing section teeters dangerously towards exploiting the audience’s own cherished memories, God is Dead is nonetheless a rewarding hour in the company of a fluent, compelling storyteller. David Kettle

Motorhome Marilyn ★★

Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Venue 24) until 25 August

Despite the marketing behind this solo piece, written by Ben Weatherill and performed with bittersweet elegance by Eastenders star Michelle Collins, it has little to do with Marilyn Monroe. Only the lead character Denise’s occupation links to the famous siren, with her career as a Marilyn impersonator taking her from Essex to Las Vegas, where the men are just as unpleasantly abusive and the breaks no easier to find.

A gritty, noirish edge emerges, as Denise decides she’s had enough and takes action in no uncertain terms, but the one-note, downbeat nature of the tale doesn’t give Collins a whole lot to do. Her impassioned, melancholy version of the song River of No Return is a highlight. David Pollock

The Lost Priest ★★

theSpace @ Surgeons Hall (Venue 53) until 23 August

At the age of ten, says solo performer Gabe Seplow, he was too young to understand the concept of his religious identity as a Jewish boy. Three years later, we discover that he decided not to be Bar Mitzvahed. Through this reflective monologue, he mulls over his experience of and thoughts on his Jewish identity as an adult, taking in the burden of antisemitism (which goes back, he notes, to the ‘comedy’ of The Merchant of Venice in 1596) to his own feelings of guilt associated with Israel. There are moments of definite poignancy, but the piece feels light-touch and one-note, not digging as deeply as it could for audience identification. David Pollock

The Big Day ★★

theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39) until 22 August

Four bolshy Glasgow girls are gearing up for the gig of the year - the year being 1990 and the gig being The Big Day, the citywide free festival which was the centrepiece of Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a holding cell having lobbed a glowstick at Sheena Easton during her badly received performance.

While they figure out how to get out in time to catch the rest of the event, they bicker about their respective life choices, such as they are for a group of working class lasses kicking against the industrial decline of the previous decade and looking forward with a mix of trepidation and hope. The Big Day is standard friends-get-in-a-scrape fare but performed with commitment from a cast of Napier University graduates. Fiona Shepherd