Fringe benefits: with oversaturated festival programs, how can artists cut through?
The snark is very entertaining but something emotionally serrated lurks below the apparently frothy surface. First seen in Sheffield in 2017, it’s impeccably directed by Mark Maughan and performed here by Ery Nzaramba, Nick Blakeley and Emmanuella Cole. (And check your email). The Rosemary Branch has it all. Now the long-awaited revival comes to Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre. In a nutshell... “It’s the story my dears – every great musical has a great story that can be summed up in one sentence. Best theatre at Edinburgh Fringe 2019: reviews of 20 must see-shows including Phoenix, Like Animals, and The Shark Is Broken Which is a modest way of stating that what you hear will very possibly blow your mind – as six young members of the BAC’s Beatbox Academy unleash a human tornado of impossibly fast rhymes, soulful explosions of song and repetitive beats so mechanised as to test credulity. In a nutshell... American playwright-poet Dael Orlandersmith’s remarkable solo deals with the 2014 slaying of black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer (Darren Wilson). She quick-switches, creating a sense of connection in the community, even when there is none, creating an indirect choral lament for a nation in need of healing and dialoguing. Black comedy and plenty of research come together in Alex Oates' story of a normal youngster from Newcastle who gets himself and his nan embroiled into the fathomless underworld of the dark web. This enjoyable hour (created and performed by Guy Hughes and Joe Leather, “two bawdy bros in doublet and hose”) takes us to 1616 – the year of Shakespeare’s death. It might be easy to dismiss as too narrow, too ‘first-world’, and marginalising of this projected-on other, but it rings relatably true to life. In a nutshell... “A Doll’s House for the 21st century” may be over-selling it but Katie Guicciardi's playwriting debut – which she herself performs – is a compelling monologue about a mother feeling the effects of urban and marital isolation after the birth of her son. In a nutshell... Tim Cowbury’s three-hander explores the injustices and flaws of the asylum system with a similar verve to Joe Penhall’s scathing examination of psychiatric system in his 2001 classic Blue/Orange. Here that play’s racial divide – and stash of confused cultural assumptions - is compounded by a language barrier, jeopardising a reliable outcome for a solitary and vulnerable black male who’s subject to a crucial evaluation by two officials. A whirl of imagery, language and music conjures memory and psychology in a vivid and visceral performance. What begins with a backstory about a boy fatally stepping onto some ice then pushes 15 years into the future – and a scenario involving the mother’s liberation of her daughter from a doomsday cult run by her grieving dad. In a nutshell... Incredibly loud and refreshingly scary – a series of shocks to the collective system that range from comical ghost-train type scares to full-blown menace. In a nutshell... A quirky, thought-provoking two-hander from real-life couple Kim Donohoe and Pete Lannon: their cooing, loved-up relationship, apparently sustained through perfect communication, is contrasted with (and affected by) scenes in which they bring to life two bizarre tales of attempted inter-species linguistic contact. Fringe theatre . London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2019 (Photograph: Peter Lewicki) NOTE: To slow the spread of Covid-19, all theatres in London are currently closed until further notice. It began as a Victorian music hall where greats like Charlie Chaplin and Marie Lloyd once performed, growing into a blossoming fringe theatre has won awards across the board. Flesh and heaps of rage get revealed, thoughts are shared on impending motherhood and poverty. At the RSC, the actors scour footnotes. This solo piece, co-written with songwriter Jessica Sharman, has a vaguely similar theme and a lot of the same charm, albeit we’re transported to Sixties America, where an aspiring singer-songwriter called Ash walks into an LA diner, gets served by a waitress who looks like Lauren Bacall and figures: “I just met the rest of my life… I’m floating in a future where I fetch up walking hand in hand with the hand that fills the ketchup.” Life pans out differently though – when a baby enters the fray and it’s our hero who’s left holding him, while Alma makes movies and leaves the domestic picture.

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