Fringe theatre reviews: The Distance | Motorway | SLAY | Bi-Curious George: Snail Trail | Dinosaurs + more

The Distance ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

Running machine plays which set an actor jogging on a treadmill for their duration have become an occasional fixture on the Fringe since Gary McNair’s ground-breaking Born to Run in 2012 (with a more recent update to a static bicycle being spotted).

Yet as a piece of physical theatre, Ben Norris’s The Distance takes it to the next level. He uses his treadmill not just to run on, but to glide across, leap through and clamber up onto the surrounding scaffolding frame with.

Here, he accomplishes impressively agile and strength-requiring physical feats without missing a beat of his lines, literally dangling to indicate being held in suspense. All of which would be an enjoyable visual spectacle, at least, were it not for the fact Norris also tells a very compelling and human tale, with the added poignancy of being drawn from personal experience.

Although he’s been an actor, playwright and theatremaker (and a Fringe veteran) all his adult life, before that he ran long distances competitively for Great Britain.

Here, Norris recounts a similar journey to his own in exhaustingly physical terms through the character of Chris. Starting out as a kid with an aptitude for cross-country at school, Chris’s talent is fostered first by a grizzled, old-school teacher, then by a GB coach who picks him up.

This section feels energising and triumphant, with Norris striking a fine balance between the wide-eyed, electric enthusiasm of the young runner and the necessary arrogance required to believe he might one day race at the Olympics.

The tone inevitably flips, and a serious injury while running causes him to come to grips with his body’s own betrayal.

Directed by Julia Locascio, The Distance takes us inside the experience of driving towards physical perfection and then of finding yourself denied by chance and your body. The beauty of it is that it really feels like we’re with Chris every step of the way. David Pollock

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Motorway ★★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 30 August

Written by and starring Daniel Cuckow and Abigail Sinclair, Motorway is a baffling four-hander set at a service station on the margins of a motorway – a liminal, eerie place where no one ever comes in, which suits Maeve and Lucy just fine.

The pair work night shifts together, uniformed in mint-green polo tops and grey pleated skirts, watching the cars pass for hours at a time. Lucy hopes, quietly, to be abducted; the night shift is her favourite.

The two friends have swapped roles since a childhood accident left Maeve with a serious head injury: Lucy became capable and independent, Maeve anxious and prone to incontinence, echoing Lucy’s own experiences as a child. Their dynamic sours when Maeve receives an extraterrestrial encounter, and Lucy’s jealousy erupts into violence.

What follows resists easy description: monologues with no discernible rhythm or reason, unwanted advances from Maeve’s older boyfriend, a visitor at the cafe who is either an alien or a doctor, dressed as if off the set of Men in Black. There’s a tinfoil hat improvised from a sieve and a CD-ROM, finger guns, tap-dancing, backwash, blood, a glowing implant, screaming, and turquoise goo.

The audience’s hysterical, uncomfortable laughter is itself proof of how skilful and strange this is. Intense and completely alive, Motorway is a show for everyone and no-one – the kind an audience leaves wanting to describe to every stranger they meet, despite being unable to recount, with any real confidence, what they’ve just experienced. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

SLAY ★★★

Gilded Balloon Teviot (Venue 14) until 31 August

SLAY opens with a squat test and a weigh-in, screening for PTSD and eating disorders, which can be comorbid, though the framing often reduces the latter to weight and thinness alone. Kit believes anyone unkind to her is secretly jealous or in love, and she’s described as a “compulsive fantasist” – an uneasy choice of words given she is a survivor of sexual assault.

Kit, from Newcastle, works in a London seafood restaurant. Scenes are notable for excellent movement-work, and Lois Amber-Toole is energetic, sometimes overly so – her Kit can be a lot to sit with.

Kit books a consultation at a “virginity restoration clinic,” found via an advert and merchandise promising to “know your power, keep your flower.” The line between Kit's daydreams and reality is unclear, and the show plays this for comedy, when it’s among her clearest trauma responses.

While the show often doesn’t seem to acknowledge the tensions that it creates, in its most powerful moment, Kit pours champagne past the rim of a cup, ignoring her ex’s demand to stop, and asks if it’s annoying when someone won’t listen.

It is a deceptively simple, and commendable, depiction of informed consent. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

Bi-Curious George: Snail Trail ★★★

Below at Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 31 August

A delightful indulgence in queer silliness, drag king Bi-Curious George charms with Snail Trail.

Enjoying immediate buy-in from the audience, George carries around a snail shell he “built himself” with pride. The shell is a place he can retreat when it all gets too much, the object from under which he squirms and squiggles with erotic glee as he picks up another snail’s scent.

Both poetic and absurd in its exploration of trans-masculinity, George has put forward a compelling premise that needs a bit of tightening and development. They are at their best when addressing the audience with an adorable reticence, but falter at times in earnest interludes about their own experience.

It would be a treat to see George fully own the tonal shift between snail-time and mic-time. Likewise, scene progressions felt a bit like a chugging engine at times, and transitions between them a bit mechanical.

The snail metaphor for queerness endures throughout the hour without reaching too far. Snail Trail is a solid premise and one that certainly moved people, as yelps of glee and hands-to-hearts peppered the audience. With a bit of work, it could become a standout. Mika Morava

READ MORE: Nathan Sibthorpe on putting audiences through a lie detector test in the interactive show Truthmachine

Dinosaurs ★★★

Greenside @ Riddles Court (Venue 16) until 29 August

There’s a living, breathing dinosaur in student Claire’s room when she returns home. What’s more, it’s a sassy reptile with attitude, and it wants food and a bit of respect. Claire thinks the whole thing’s a hallucination, then a joke - until she begins to wonder if it might have something to do with unresolved childhood trauma.

The symbolism in Mandy Rubeli’s snappily written comedy-drama from Los Angeles-based collective The Nightmare Lizards isn’t exactly subtle, and nor is the solution found for sending the creature back a couple of hundred million years to its own time.

The collision between the sometimes knockabout dinosaur storyline and the far more serious childhood abuse isn’t always convincing: at worst, it can sap humour from the former while lessening the impact of the latter.

But Dinosaurs is a smart and effective show all the same: Rubeli’s dialogue bristles with gags, and a few unexpected twists keep you thinking about the issues it’s covering.

Rubeli herself makes for a nicely needy overgrown lizard; Hailey Hudson is strong as the damaged Claire; and Devin Stone is all pent-up energy as fellow student Hayden. It’s quirky, original, and dares to approach its subject playfully, and it’s delivered with winning wit and conviction. David Kettle

The Yellow Wallpaper ★★★

Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) until 29 August

Feminist and reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman only wrote one horror story but it’s such an enduring masterpiece that it’s rarely been equalled. You can interpret it as a ghost story or — more likely — a study of a crumbling psyche but its interior quality makes it tough to adapt.

This bold “dance-theatre thriller” from sisters Caitlin and Megan Ort is surprisingly successful even if it does, at times, feel startlingly different to the oppressive tone of the 1892 original.

Jane (Megan Ort) a young woman suffering from postpartum depression is prescribed a “rest cure” and largely confined to her bedroom in a large country house. She begins to fixate on the room’s wallpaper as three women act as a kind of physical Greek chorus acting out her mental state through dance.

The story is clearly told and at times it’s hard to discern if these are dancers who act or actors who dance. As adapted, directed and choreographed by Caitlin Ort this takes some real risks there that mostly pay off — the Fourth of July sequence is definitely out of left field and best left as a surprise.

It’s certainly — quite unexpectedly — the liveliest adaptation of a dark 19th Century feminist classic you’re likely to see and is consistently enjoyable, if not entirely faithful. Rory Ford

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