With only a few months until the beloved Edinburgh Fringe is back, Cara Blackhall gives us an exciting insight into this year’s lineup…
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society announced more shows for the Fringe today.
Taking place from the 4th to the 28th of August this year, the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe will feature a range of shows with theatre, comedy, dance, circus, musicals and more.
Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society said: “We’re now well on our way to Fringe 2023, and having so many more shows to go live this week is yet another reason to get excited.
“It feels like August is just around the corner, and once again Edinburgh will be filled with artists, creatives, and people with amazing stories to tell.”
With the official launch of the festival taking place on Thursday 8th June, ENRG Culture has gathered more information on the shows available to book from today.
THEATRE:
The Quality of Mercy: Concerning the Life and Crimes of Dr Harold Frederick Shipman is heading to theSpaceUK. The drama “examines the legacy of Britain’s most prolific serial killer, written and performed by the grandson of one of Shipman’s victims”.
New Slang Productions is the company behind Tomorrow Is Not Promised at Underbelly, in which “a Black British woman finds herself homeless and alone after an earthquake”.
The Counterminers are presenting two shows at Just the Tonic. In Hersterectomy, Carmel “plots to curate the perfect nuclear household” to qualify for an operation, while “fast-paced comedy” Lost and Found “follows three best friends from London, Leeds and Glasgow as they fight to find themselves, without losing each other”.
Performed in Paradise in Augustines, Exit 20:20 follows 16-year-old Moses, whose high school board bans the graphic novel, Maus.
COMEDY:
“Queer feminist and bloody lefty” Kathelen Hughes brings her work-in-progress show, One of the Girls, to the Scottish Comedy Festival at Waverley Bar, asking what it means to be an independent woman.
Elf Lyons and Duffy present Heist at Monkey Barrel Comedy, “a ridiculous bank heist conducted in Visual Vernacular, British Sign Language with very silly and violent live sound foley”.
At Assembly, Anuvab Pal works for The Department of Britishness, selling “the idea of Britishness to India…. there’s trouble ahead”.
Fringe 2023 is also overflowing with familiar faces from off the telly and previous festival appearances, including Ed Byrne, and Jamali Maddix.
MUSIC:
theSpaceUK is hosting Aca-Villa: The Love Island Musical, where “contestants navigate their road to true love through the medium of chart-topping songs, all performed a cappella”.
The Sacred Arts Festival (a programme within the wider Fringe line-up) has music events in several Edinburgh church spaces, including new sacred compositions at Canongate Kirk, St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral and St Vincent’s in Stockbridge.
The A Club at the Merchants Hall hosts The Katuns, a West Lothian band “whose catchy riffs and high-energy choruses are influenced by indie rock bands Artic Monkeys and Nirvana”.
At The Liquid Room, The Rising: The UK’s No 1 Tribute to Springsteen and the E Street Band returns to the Fringe for their 12th year.
Le Monde is hosting a programme of tribute artists this August, with various shows dedicated to the music of Adele, The Beach Boys and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
The Jazz Bar hosts “an unmissable exclusive performance from legendary Russian American trumpeter and Jazz Messengers alumnus, Valery Ponomarev”, in 30th Anniversary! Valery Ponomarev: The Jazz Messenger.
MUSICALS AND OPERA:
Oliver Harris sings great songs from Les Misérables, Chess, Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, We Will Rock You and many more in The Greatest Show Songs at Le Monde.
Forth Children’s Theatre returns “for its 42nd year at the Fringe with their production of The Addams Family – A New Musical” at Broughton High School. Captivate Theatre also presents a programme of musical adaptions at the Edinburgh Academy: Les Misérables School Edition, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical Jr, School of Rock and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Scotland’s professional touring company, Opera Bohemia, returns with John Leo Wilkie’s highly acclaimed production of Madama Butterfly at St Cuthbert’s Church.
CABARET AND VARIETY:
Magical Bones returns to Underbelly with Soulful Magic – Volume Two, while magician and mind reader Tom Brace takes audiences on A Trick Down Memory Lane at Pleasance.
At Hill Street Theatre, the Machine Man Spectacle invites audience members to “participate in seven of the universe’s most spectacular machines, invented specifically to observe the human spiritual spectrum”.
Forth 1 returns to the Edinburgh Playhouse this August to hose its annual Forth on the Fringe gala.
The full list of shows released today can be found at edfringe.com and tickets for more than a thousand shows will be released at 12:00 BST today.