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A Rebuttal to Pessimism About Edinburgh Fringe

THERE’S a song in Hello, Dolly! that I always think about when times are bleak: ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’.

Out there
There’s a world outside of Yonkers
Way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby
There’s a slick town, Barnaby

Since 1947, the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe have stood as the world’s largest and most influential arts gatherings.
Together, they sell more tickets than any global event except the Olympics and the World Cup. For artists and audiences alike, the Fringe is an overwhelming feast: with nearly 4,000 shows this year, even sprinting across cobbled streets from one venue to the next, you can’t escape the feeling you’re missing out on something extraordinary.

Lyn Gardner recently pointed out the uneven financial playing field between overseas and UK companies, noting that British productions often look stripped back compared to well-funded international shows. 

Gardner laments that “on the Fringe, you can see the bones, and you can see them crumbling.” She’s not wrong about the strain — rising costs, turbulent weather, and post-Brexit bureaucracy make staging theatre in Edinburgh more complex than ever. And yes, Oasis haven’t helped matters.

But here’s the problem: if we only dwell on scarcity and crisis, we risk pushing the next generation of artists into cynicism before they’ve even begun. Festivals thrive on possibility, not defeatism. When does this become clickbait? Have I contributed to this defeatism? 

Yes, the Fringe is flawed, but it remains one of the few platforms where a bold idea performed in a basement at midnight can lead to international tours, future collaborations, or even lifelong artistic partnerships. Many UK artists do receive invitations abroad because of their Edinburgh shows — proof that risk-taking here still pays off.

This rhetoric of decline also misses something crucial: the Fringe has always been a marketplace as much as a festival. Some shows will sparkle, some will falter, and that churn is not a sign of failure but of vitality. 

To pretend otherwise is to romanticise a past that never really existed. Even John McGrath, in his 1979 manifesto A Good Night Out, argued that theatre must meet audiences where they are — especially working-class audiences — with values different from the middle-class “ideal.” His words still resonate. 

‘There is a working-class audience for theatre which makes demands, and has values, which are different from those in our idealised middle-class audience’

The Fringe, messy and imperfect, is exactly the space where that kind of meeting can happen. (I am writing this from the Traverse Theatre bar, having just witnessed – Debbie Hannan, Nicholas McArtney & Tam Dean Burn read chapters from the seminal book).

It is also true that political leaders have long failed to treat the Fringe as the global cultural asset it is. As former Fringe Society CEO Shona McCarthy recently observed, no one would dream of hosting an Olympics or Commonwealth Games without adequate infrastructure. Yet the Fringe — an event of comparable scale — operates without the same level of central investment in transport, accommodation, or digital services. 

That’s not a reason to despair about the festival; it’s a reason to demand better support from government and policymakers.

Artists, too, might benefit from broadening their horizons. Obsession with a London transfer or a UK tour can feel parochial when the Fringe is already an international crossroads. As my conversations with Francesca Vitale (Fringe Milano) and Xela Batchelder (Pittsburgh Fringe) reminded me, you never know who is in your audience — or where your work might travel next.

What gives me hope is that Edinburgh is a place to take risks, to fail gloriously, to win unexpectedly. Yes, it can break your heart or your bank balance. But it can also open doors you never knew existed. It’s all about the encounter.

To reduce this sprawling, unpredictable festival to an elegy of decline is not only inaccurate — it risks smothering the very spirit that has made the Fringe a launchpad for generations of artists.

Without theatre our lives would be infinitely less colourful. 

I know now that the real question isn’t whether the Fringe is in crisis. The real question is: how do we ensure those fleeting encounters between artists and audiences — the very soul of the festival — continue to occur, surprise, and endure?

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Edinburgh Fringe: Gush / Attachment: The Leech Show / Self Raising

There is usually a moment in a Fringe show, often after the first few minutes, when you start to relax. You are sure that you have a grip on it; all fear about making sense of things disappears.

It’s not so in Abby Vicky-Russell’s knotty but moving Gush, a photo of Prince Andrew looms Stage right. Pre-show, – a pulsing soundtrack loops: GUSH – GUSH GUSH – GUSH GUSH.

Then, a figure in a charcoal fluffy body suit and pink bob wig appears. Finally, I thought: showbiz!

Then it all stops.

Vicky-Russell re-enters playing Neil, a plumber from Yorkshire, who has been sent in to fix a leak on the set of the show that we are watching. Her physical comedy is top notch. 

Elsewhere, the resulting part stand up routine, part confessional play within a play gives the character Neil a mundane shimmer, and there are overtones of Victoria Wood in an expertly plotted visual gag involving a quiche and loads of table salt. Chaos. 

But, if anything, that overture understates the level of theatre sorcery going on here: Behind all this nonsense, a real-life, gruesomely compelling story emerges through a confessional monologue about abuse and father-daughter pain.

In any case, Gush, at Assembly packs some emotional punches and is an astonishingly unguarded piece – with a lot of potential – about the cruelties of abuse. 

Elsewhere, at Greenside I caught Attachment: The Leech Show – it’s ostensibly a slapstick piece about influential critic, Bob the Leech.

But only a very few of the gags get their laughs-and when slapstick goes flat, the effect is clunky.

This young company turn the stage into a zestful playground and give it all they have got, though the running gag makes it hard to conjure suspense – are critics really frustrated artists who never like anything? 

Yet in the final few minutes when Bob dies, the company come to the realisation that critics are just as vital to the industry as the artists that they observe.

This timely show strikes me as an enduring cult hit in the making.

Thirteen shows are deaf-led at Fringe this year, and one of those is Jenny Sealey’s lovely Self-Raising at Pleasance Dome.

“Secrets are easier to tell strangers. I work in theatre, that’s what we do.”

Well, quite.

This is an autobiographical play from disability-led company Graeae – alongside her “terp” (sign-language interpreter) where three generations of the Sealey family are unpacked.

Sealey set out to adapt Anne Fine’s book Flour Babies before real life took hold and she changed course. Opportunity and social mobility are underlying themes.

The narration is accompanied by captions, sign language and audio description, along with family pictures, video and voiceovers from Sealey’s son, Jonah. 

This show is beautifully put together, from the cunningly simple design by Anisha Field where three cupboards neatly double as the family kitchen and a darkroom and where family photos – and secrets are developed, to the simple lighting design by Emma Chapman.

There is almost too much here to be squeezed into the brief running time, but director Lee Lyford keeps things motoring.

Sealey and her co-writer Mike Kenny have delivered a charming story that is funny, graceful and fully accessible. Alas, it’s the subject rather than the staging that moves the emotions.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show / Woodhill / The Boy Out The City

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show, rip up  snippets of pop culture, lip-sync, clown around, and ultimately craft a rich interrogation of eating disorders and gender dysphoria.

It also happens to be an entertaining hour that is cool, funny, heartwarming and infectiously optimistic too.

Examining the power structures and political intrigue that have shaped man’s world, the duo deliver a dense, ambitious triumph that totally taps into the Barbenheimer zeitgeist.

There are snippets of pop music, flashes of apocalyptic explosions, TVs Come Dine With Me and Bake Off – with the pair miming expertly to the audio and visual segments.

It pincers the audience in a kind of keen, nervous imbalance—it holds our attention by throwing our incredulity at where we are as a society back in our faces.

“It’s great having a break from having a body,” they tell us.

This is a very artfully put together show. Don’t be misled by its bumbling, ditzy qualities.

At Summerhall, LUNG Theatre have created a lyrical and relentless piece of verbatim dance-theatre in Woodhill.

In June 2018, a prison report stated that, “staggeringly”, a total of 20 men had taken their lives in seven years at Woodhill, higher than at any other jail in England and Wales. Disturbingly, there have been more cases since.

Assembled from 70 interviews, Matt Woodhead’s visceral piece focuses on the deaths of three real prisoners deaths –  Stephen Farrar, Chris Carpenter and Kevin Scarlett – in HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes – and their families’ fight for justice.

One of the best things about Woodhead’s production is that it gets the details so right; not just in the relentless score with composition by Sami El-Enany, or Will Monk’s pulsing single lightbulb design, or the painful thump of the music and testimony, but in the way it interrogates so expertly the subject matter.

It is deeper, edgier, more emotionally dangerous than this groundbreaking company’s earlier work; script, design and lighting, soundtrack and choreography conjoin in one lethal embrace.

Up there with the very best of the Fringe shows that I saw, this is a terrifying and haunting 70 minutes; At times it’s like a hallucination looming out of the dark.

“We spent so long trying to keep the men safe from each other,” says one official voice, “we forgot to keep them safe from themselves.”

Powerful, essential theatre.

Declan Bennett’s rough and ready Boy Out The City at Underbelly, Cowgate, is directed efficiently by Nancy Sullivan.

This confessional piece is inspired by Bennett’s experiences of pandemic isolation in Oxfordshire. At the start he tells us. “This is about gay shame and loneliness, not Covid lockdown”.

Sullivan doesn’t always negotiate the switches in mood or the fact that Bennett throws too many back stories into the mix. But the story is never dull, and he is a relatable and compelling storyteller.

It’s a simple setup, but one freighted with complexities. There’s also flourishes of some genuinely great writing here: “You bring a bit of culture into the village,” locals tell him, “but we think they mean homosexuals.” It is the kind of place “where butter forgets to melt out of the fridge”.

Later, Autumn hits “like discarded brown corduroy”.

Just lovely.

His comic timing is also spot-on, and if the reminders of the storytelling veers dangerously close to being self indulgent, overall, it also feels raw and truthful.

Bennett is quite clearly a man who has learned, sometimes the hard way, that you don’t have to put on a performance all the time.

Frankie Thompson and Liv Ello: Body Show runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 27 August

Woodhill runs at Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August, then Shoreditch Town Hall, London, 20 September-7 October and North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, 19–20 October.

Boy Out The City runs at Underbelly, Cowgate until 27 August.

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Edinburgh Fringe Shouldn’t Exist In A Civilised Society

The 76th Edinburgh Fringe festival has begun but there is concern some parts of the event may be under threat because of the financial climate.
Organisers of the Edinburgh Fringe have declared the situation has reached a “crisis point” and also admitted the event’s long-running financial model is “no longer viable for anyone”.

The boss of one of the Fringe’s biggest venue operators, Assembly Festival has warned the company may not survive another year due to a £1.5m debt and was surviving on a short-term loan.

The Stage Awards and The Total Theatre Awards, both key opportunities where talent is discovered, won’t go ahead this year. Indeed, ministers respond to growing hardship by telling the public to just work more hours.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh International Festival director Nicola Benedetti has cautioned that the city is facing an “identity crisis”

Does it matter? This year marks the second largest programming on record, with 3,535 shows registered in 248 venues, it is the Fringe that dominates the city each year and nothing seems to stand in its way. Furthermore, according to a report from The Scotsman, local business and hotels indicate demand for accommodation suggests that the attendance rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels. 

Business as usual. 

But I would say it does matter for several reasons. My real concern, in viewing the ecology of the Fringe are for performers and audiences from low-income backgrounds – incurring debt and making huge sacrifices to be there – accessing the festival. 

What record breaking tourism ignores is that, in the complex ecology of British theatre, everything is interconnected.

In some ways, the “crisis point’ feels most emblematic of all the current systemic failings and their knock-on costs to ordinary people who simply cannot afford them.

Since right now, civilised long weekend accommodation would set you back £1,300-2,000 for four nights – flats are being listed at around £10,000 for the month – that is before travel, food, and theatre tickets.

In a sobering read, The Guardian ran a piece recently that featured performers considering the financial risks. 

As one act puts it: “If you break even that’s a bonus… It’s not just about bums on seats, the more important thing is using the fringe to generate relationships with people interested in the work. We should end up with tour dates for 2024. That’s why you go. It’s an investment.”

Anyhow. Times critic Clive Davis, meanwhile, summed it up in his column: “For the past couple of days I’ve been staying in a run-down student block near Holyrood. My room is cell-like and the soundproofing so flimsy that I can hear the woman in the next room clearing her throat. Four of us are sharing a shower and toilets; on the first day I was here there was no hot water.”

Oh dear.

If all this wasn’t implausible enough, I can only congratulate a group of performers who travelled from the US staying in a disused Cold War bunker after being quoted £30,000 for accommodation in the city centre of Edinburgh for the month of August.

For that you can blame the greed of Edinburgh City Council who, by disobeying the simple rules of supply and demand, have reduced the market value of the Fringe to the point that, sooner or later, it will inevitably collapse.

Too little too late. Sigh.

Anyway, I will be in Edinburgh for 4 nights (17-21 Aug). If you have show tips, email mrcarlwoodward@gmail.com – I’ll be updating this blog daily. 

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022: Day 2

I really rate James Ley’s brutal but adorable Wilf, directed by Gareth Nicholls. Wilf is a Volkswagen which has had seven previous owners. (“we’ve both been used” says Calvin)

This unusual, salacious and feel-good play explores Calvin (Michael Dylan), a gay man’s journey through a breakup and sex addiction set to the soundtrack of 80s power ballads. 

Wilf at Traverse

Unexpectedly, the most striking innovatory material can be seen in the apparently modest, over-familiar form of the duologue with immensely watchable and hilarious Thelma (Irene Allan) a woman with her own issues and history. 

What impresses me most about Ley’s play is its attention to detail. The quips, the nervy shame, unpacking mental health & the brilliant design by Becky Minto.

That may make it all sound a little kooky. But this is a tender and cracking play suffused with grief and absence that scratches at the fragility of our crazy existence.

★★★★

More queer joy at Summerhall, in cabaret musical Grandmother’s Closet – performed by the immensely watchable Luke Hereford.

The closet here is a gateway to endless glitzy costume changes and small-town childhood hijinks; its surface exuberance seems to conceal a great sadness around his nan’s memory loss. 

Talented Bobby Harding plays the perfect deadpan musical foil to Hereford.

Grandmother’s Closet at Summerhall

Ostensibly, this autobiographical piece is fast and furious, occasionally crude and theatrically tender, too. But it’s mostly well-paced and entertaining as it explores the glamorous musical icons in his life, that include Judy Garland, Kylie Minogue, Jake Shears. And his nan, of course. A true ally. 

Indeed, there’s plenty of growing up gay cabarets at the Fringe but I doubt that I will see a more authentic one than Grandmother’s Closet this year.

★★★★

At Pleasance, No Place Like Home by Alex Roberts & Co. (winner of Les Enfants Terribles Award 2022) is described as a tragic odyssey into gay club culture and the places we can call home. On his first night out to a nightclub, he surprises himself.

I really, really wanted to get behind this piece, but it never takes off and it lacks grit. In this one-hander, Alex Roberts plays both Connor, a teenager exploring his sexuality, and Rob, a casual barman.

No Place Like Home at Pleasance Dome

Here, the club soundtrack and fluorescent video design is ill-pitched. It doesn’t help that there is *sometimes* quite a lot of acting going on, the kind that offers signposts rather than subtlety. 

Alas, this is a show that feels as desperate as its characters, but there are two redeeming features: the fluid physicality of Roberts and his poetry. 
★★★

2,500 years after the Euripides original and 22 years since it was last seen, the National Theatre of Scotland’s operatic Scots-language production returns.

Edinburgh International Festival’s transfixing Medea at The Hub is theatre to enchant. In Liz Lochhead’s promenade version we see things fresh-minted.  

Tom Piper’s cunningly uncomplicated set design, which raises the actors on a catwalk, with audience standing, offers a immersive view of the female-centred tragedy. 

Medea

A diverse chorus of 10 women are made up and include Pauline Lockhart, Eileen Nicholas, Janette Foggo, Wendy Seager and Fletcher Mathers. 

All of this tragic evening is steely and well-focused. It is beautifully lit by designer Colin Grenfell. Spellbinding, in fact. 

By the end, as Medea rails against the patriarchy you can’t help sobbing. 

Totally timeless. Beyond brilliant. Pure class. 
★★★★★

Wilf

Grandmother’s Closet

No Place Like Home

Medea

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Edinburgh Fringe 2022: Day 1

DOWNTOWN, the world’s largest arts festival, resembles Skid Row. 

Down on Skid Row

Mini tornadoes of detritus are flying into the faces of pedestrians.

Cleaners in Edinburgh have begun an 11 day strike – local authorities on Friday increased their pay offer from 3.5 per cent to 5 per cent, but until they accept it, the Edinburgh industrial action will continue. 

I will be writing to Ms Sturgeon.

Anyway, the first good thing about Myra DuBois, as far as I can glean, is that she isn’t taking prisoners. 

Uptown, DuBois – at The Dairy Room, Underbelly – ferociously addresses our problems in her camp comedy chat that flamethrowers good taste – the whole hour feels like being kicked in the shins and rolled in glitter. 

Her biting wit is on fine form as the scathing diva berates audience members’s dress sense and first world problems. If I was measuring pleasure in decibels then the screams and squirms would sound like a joyous riot.

This may not be a show for sensitive souls whose idea of a jolly evening is sitting at home reading Anxious For Nothing. 

Overall, really, really wickedly funny. 

★★★★

We’ve all read in horror describing the bureaucratic hurdles facing asylum seekers, and the inhumane Rwanda policy but plonking Exodus makes us wish we could book a one way ticket there for ourselves. 

The point of this show, i guess, is to be on the nose on a topical subject – all the best shows on television, film and stage are.

I had high hopes for this timely play at Traverse. Unfortunately, Uma Nada-Rajah’s farce about an MP using refugee intolerance to get ahead is depressingly clunky and lacks imagination. 


The attempts at farce are painful, though. I blame the director, not the spirited all-female cast.

The play revolves around Home Secretary Asiya Rao, a Priti Patel clone played with some flare by Aryana Ramkhalawon.

Exodus



This MP sets about a policy to stop migrants crossing the channel by erecting a radioactive barrier.

I lost the will to live after 20 minutes.

★

Max Fosh is a YouTuber with over a million subscribers. Unfortunately, his debut live show Zocial Butterfly is a laboured and repetitive experience.

Max Fosh
Max Fosh

Playing games with the audience and combining it with tepid stand-up, Foss supports his act with a slideshow and clips of his self proclaimed greatest moments. 

Nevertheless, “The A to Z of conversation” one of the games he plays – starting the first word of each sentence in a conversation in the same order as the alphabet – is just kind of mediocre. 

For his casual stage show, charismatic Fosh cracks jokes about his penis, the exotic name Gary, and his diverse education at Harrow. Hardly radical. 

★★★

Over at Summerhall the press team are on roller-skates. Literally. 

Riffing on modern gay culture, Samuel Barnett is wildly ingenious in Marcelo Dos Santos hot play Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen.

Barnett is consistently amusing and greatly enhanced by his playful, forceful manner.

Meanwhile, Matthew Xia’s startling and intelligent production marries filthy eloquence with sheer silliness that makes you laugh out loud. Pretty and witty and gay.

★★★★

One of the top picks of Edinburgh Fringe 2022, Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder: a joyous piece of theatre about two hapless best friends from Hull who host a true-crime podcast. 

Written and directed by Jon Brittain (Baby Reindeer), with irreverent music and lyrics by Matthew Floyd Jones (Frisky and Mannish) – it’s the most promising thing I’ve seen at the Fringe. 

Performed by a cast of excellent five, actors Rebekah Hinds (Kathy) and Bronté Barbé (Stella) root the heart in the hysteria. 

Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder

Also from Fleabag producer Francesca Moody, this larky whodunnit mini-musical is a complete one-off: a little bit weird, totally charming, bags of fun and very, very sweet. I loved the songs.

This show deserves a further life.

Kill for a ticket.

★★★★★
Myra DuBois’ A Problem Shared

Exodus

Max Fosh: Zocial Butterfly

Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen

Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder




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Here’s Your Definitive Guide to Edinburgh Fringe 2022 (you’re welcome)

It’s nearly that time again: Edinburgh is set to host more than 3,000 shows when it starts next week.

The Fringe was cancelled completely in 2020 because of the pandemic but made a limited return last year with about 600 shows. But, top venues have warned that ticket sales are down by about a third relative to pre-pandemic levels, with the cost of living crisis, summer’s travel disruption and Covid cited as reasons.

I have no idea why the bone brained bosses made the horrendous decision not to have an app for this year’s event. And don’t get me started on the scandalous accommodation costs. Not a great look. Removing barriers to attending the Fringe for artists and audiences is a key priority for the Fringe Society.

(There’s always the Free Fringe, though, if you are feeling the pinch.)

Gulp.

First up: Lauryn Redding’s terrific Bloody Elle. First seen at The Royal Exchange, this gig musical is full of quirky original music performed live on stage. At Traverse, obvs.

Bloody Elle – A Gig Musical

Next, I’m curious to see Uma Nada-Rajah’s new dark comedy Exodus, at Traverse, too. It’s about politicians and posturing, and exposes systematic deception and indifference to human suffering.     

I am looking forward to seeing Afghanistan is Not Funny by Fringe veteran Henry Naylor at Gilded Balloon, Teviot. 

Elsewhere, Silent Faces ask why half the world’s population is excluded in a funny, pop-culture piece Godot is a Woman, at Pleasance Dome. If you need to laugh (don’t we all) don’t miss fleet-footed Nina Conti’s hilarious The Dating Show at Pleasance Courtyard. 

Horizon – Performance Created in England is back with its second showcase, this year focussing on tour-ready performances: a curated programme of ten artists making vital, genre challenging work. Check it out.

Feminist and female-led Rash Dash are always up to something daring. This year, they present Look At Me Don’t Look At Me – a two-hander featuring a piano, a synth, two microphones, a shaky egg and 14 original songs. 

Over at Assembly Checkpoint is Americana – A Murder Ballad – an intriguing premiere by leading Scottish playwright Morna Young. 

At Gilded Balloon Justin Huertas’s wildly original musical Lizard Boy unpacks self-love and acceptance, and particularly finding love today as a gay person of colour.

Lizard Boy

Indeed, Summerhall is essential for any Fringe visit. While you’re there go and see Invisible Mending; a show about love, grief, and knitting. Also: grab a ticket for Maimuna Memon’s Manic Street Creature. Bill Buckhurst (Sister Act) directs. Carly Wijs (Us/Them) returns to Summerhall with Boy. Don’t miss it. While you are there, have a G&T and head over to Luke Hereford’s fun autobiographical queer cabaret, Grandmother’s Closet.

Among other highlights, Caligari at Underbelly Cowgate, I’m sure, will be a riot: Five actor-musicians reimagine the seminal silent film, with the doctor’s victims taking centre stage. While you are there, go and see Max Fosh’s bonkers but brilliant drama-comedy Zocial Butterfly. I really want to catch Cassie and the Lights; a spellbinding play with music about children and the care system, too.

Paines Plough’s Roundabout is usually good value for money. Get along to world premieres Sami Ibrahim’s A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain – a poetic fable of an immigration system that mirrors our own. In Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s play Half Empty Glasses, a young Black student who auditions for a prestigious music school, but becomes disenchanted by the lack of Black names on the curriculum.

Half Empty Glasses – photo by Paines Plough

Over at Greenside, storyteller Kim Kalish’s The Funny Thing About Death looks like a tonic. Brain and Hemingway  piece about a songwriter with severe writer’s block – also looks fun.

If you missed the laddish Olivier Award nominated Choir of Man originally here in 2017, or last year in London, you can catch it once more.

Succession fans will want to take a walk over to Assembly George Square to catch a glimpse of legend Brian Cox. The actor and his wife have teamed up to produce new play She/Her. A hot ticket. 

So, there you have it, that’s the end of my Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2022 guide.

It’s good to be back, isn’t it?

Choir of Man

Anyway, I hope you have found some use in this guide to what the Fringe world has on offer. 

If you have show tips, tweet me: @mrcarl_woodward – I’ll be updating this blog weekly. 

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My 2020 Theatre Heroes & Villains

Theatre Heroes and Villains of 2020

AH, dear old 2020.

In mid-March Covid-19 prompted all British theatres and arts centres to close their doors.

From that moment onwards, the carnage, pandemonium, weirdness and misery barely let up; our world-beating £7 billion cultural sector, so savaged by lockdowns that it remains at risk of permanent decimation.

A socially distanced Watermill Theatre in Newbury, with select seats wrapped as presents for the future.

For the first time in its 70 year history, the Edinburgh Fringe was cancelled. Broadway shows are expected to remain closed through to at least May 2021.

There was, though, many great acts of heroism; not all heroes wear capes.

Let’s begin with the National Theatre. The NT at Home initiative was one of the biggest virtual triumphs of lockdown; it broadcast 16 productions for free on YouTube, clocked up 15 million views and reached 173 countries.

The one-off free streaming of Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s potent monologue Death of England: Delroy – which had its live run cut short – was sensational.

The NT has today launched a brand new streaming platform National Theatre at Home – featuring a range of NT Live productions and, for the first time, some treasured plays from the NT archive.

For unlimited access to the catalogue on National Theatre at Home, a subscription will be £9.98 per month or £99.98 per year. For access to a single play in a 72 hour window, it will be £5.99 for an NT Archive title and National Theatre Live titles are available from £7.99.

I thought ITV’s three-part drama Quiz, written by James Graham – based on his stage play that began at Chichester Festival Theatre- was a masterstroke.

The dark irony was, though, that the ‘coughing major’ comedy was one of the few TV shows that was good enough to make us all forget the ongoing medical crisis for its duration. Graham donated his full commission to funds for freelancers.

Looking back now, one of my personal favourite moments involved a last-minute decision to throw open my Zoom on Friday evenings to anyone who wanted to take part in a theatre quiz. It was unexpectedly popular and rewarding and, in the chaos of lockdown, very moving.

ITV Quiz

During that first lockdown I came to a crossroads when I realised that the secret truth at the heart of almost all theatre is: Everyone’s Doing Their Best.

It’s hard to say why this revelation impacted me so deeply. Had I previously been under the impression that people were deliberately making terrible theatre, or simply being terrible at their jobs, just to annoy me? I came to realise that most things are simply bad by accident.

Anyway, this year, she closed 18 shows. Paused 10.

Sonia Friedman Productions continued its success at the 2020 Olivier Awards, scooping the coveted Best New Play Award for the fourth consecutive year with the intimate and epic Tom Stoppard play Leopoldstadt.

Incredibly, SFP was also responsible for a superb filmed stage version of Uncle Vanya starring Toby Jones. It was a hit in UK cinemas and will be screened on BBC Four this Christmas. This woman has been my idol all of my professional life, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Toby Jones and Richard Armitage, Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter Theatre

All year, producer Friedman used her clout to lobby government. Announcing comedy play The Comeback in the West End, she said: “Medicine saves lives, but culture makes life worth living.”

Looking back now, many of UK theatre’s producers and artistic directors rose to the challenges of the pandemic – combining laser-focus and decision making-authority with a real emotional feel for the creative workforce.

Of course, there are plenty of people in the industry who are simply phoning it in.

But so many took exciting digital work to audiences or streamed archive productions. Under Elizabeth Newman’s leadership, just one of a number of bright ideas, Pitlochry Festival Theatre set up a Telephone Club for vulnerable members of the community, Alan Lane and Slung Low continue to meet local needs distributing food and books to the people in south Leeds.

Artistic director Alan Lane, left, and The Slung Low team at the Holbeck.

The Unicorn theatre presented Anansi the Spider Re-Spun: fun virtual performances, created in lockdown, for children. Cultural organisations like this remain vital to communities, enabling young people’s creativity, whilst fighting for survival.

Throughout those initial long Covid months, there were modest acts of heroism from producer David Pugh and his touring production of Educating Rita at the open-air Minack Theatre in Cornwall. I loved it.

Pugh later made light of the fact that profits for investors were enough for ‘a meal at KFC’. The show has a week-long run at the Mayflower in Southampton in February.

To her credit, Nica Burns reopened the first West End theatres post lockdown – welcoming audiences back to the Apollo – for Adam Kay’s show about the NHS, This Is Going To Hurt. Burns will reopen the first West End musicals Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Six and hopes this return will prove the sector is safe and ready to resume.

Staying with the heroes, film and theatre director Sam Mendes called on Netflix — who profited from the acting, writing and directing talent nurtured on stage during lockdown— to pour some of their COVID-19 cash into British theatre. Netflix obliged, with the Theatre Artists Fund for freelancers. Mendes’ practical suggestions included: increasing the theatre’s tax relief scheme from 20% to 50%, and inviting the government to become “theatrical angels”, by investing in productions.

Moreover, performers deserve huge credit for keeping us all entertained online: Rob Madge and Oscar Conlon-Morrey lift our spirits on Twitter during these difficult times.

Pick of the bunch, for me, is Kieran C Hodgson impersonating characters from The Crown – Season 4. Genius.

10-year-old ‘#CheerUpCharlie’ Kristensen released a charity single with some of his West End favourites to raise money for the Diana Award. Little legend.

The Bush theatre commissioned six black British artists to respond to the killing of George Floyd, the results, The Protest, were astonishing, disturbing, vital and offered urgent perspectives on Floyd’s death.

Wise Children’s Emma Rice and Bristol Old Vic’s Tom Morris on stage at Bristol Old Vic in September

Elsewhere, Black Broadway and West End stars performed an ambitious online charity concert, organised by Nicole Raquel Dennis and Ryan Carter, this event supported the Black Lives Matter movement: Turn Up! Live at Cadogan Hall , raised nearly £13,000 for four charities and picked up a Black British Theatre Award.

One of my biggest treats was visiting Bristol to see the Romantics Anonymous one-night only performance, with a live socially distanced audience.

In September, Emma Rice’s Wise Children and Bristol Old Vic’s Tom Morris were dazzlingly inventive, partnering with venues to present a “digital tour” of the musical – allowing individual regional theatres to sell tickets across specific nights.

The shows will go on – in some tiers. The government’s post-lockdown plans give the green light to productions fortunate enough to find themselves in Tiers 1 and 2. Boris Johnson has announced that theatres in Tier 3 will remain closed.

Oracle Cameron Mackintosh

Villains? (Deep breath)

It was the year when theatre vanished from our lives. And Cameron Mackintosh didn’t.

Disappointingly, the West End producer got rid of 850 staff early on in the crisis, said theatres that received financial aid were ones that “were going to fail”, allegedly mistreats his staff, declared himself an “oracle” for predicting disaster and has been snow-ploughing his way through the darker recesses of the pandemic ever since.

Mind you, compensation came in the form of Andrew Lloyd Webber – who took part in the Oxford Coid-19 vaccine trial – joining TikTok.

Take a moment. I know I just did.

Perhaps most importantly, Arts Council England did a good job of turning around the government’s Culture Recovery Fund and rescued struggling organisations of all shapes and sizes.

Overall, that £1.57bn rescue fund has protected our theatres, concert halls, arts centres and opera houses.

Slytherin culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s intervention was not enough to save every institution and although we were all thankful for the money, financial models are bust.

Indeed, the government continue to do the bare minimum for an estimated three million self-employed workers. At one point, Pantomime dames marched to Parliament Square.

Slytherin Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak

Find another job, said the surefooted chancellor Rishi Sunak. By forgetting our workforce and dismissing an entire sector, the chancellor has begun to reveal his true ideological colours. But our sector is key to our national identity, provides hope – and billions for the Treasury.

On top of that idiocy, the suggestion from the government seems to be that arts jobs aren’t viable. They are, Mr Sunak, and when the time comes, the powerhouse theatre industry will play a crucial part in the nation’s recovery.

Above all, I was appalled by The Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) who failed to inform customers how they could obtain cash refunds instead of hopeless credit vouchers. With countless shows axed or postponed, many found it impossible to get money back – not only that, ATG were not automatically refunding transaction fees, claiming this was in line with the industry’s Code of Practice (newsflash: it definitely wasn’t).

Birmingham Rep, The #LightItInRed campaign involved more than 500 buildings

At least, though, there has been some last-minute redemption for ATG; the operator has now furloughed its 2,500 casual staff and is gifting tickets for pantomimes to NHS workers this Winter, which is a Christmas miracle.

If we’re really looking for the individuals who’ll push theatre forward through the sheer force of their own imagination, in my opinion, they are more than likely to be creative freelancers. We must protect them.

And the self employed may be more widely visible through the Freelancers Make Theatre Work group, #thescenechangeproject and The Freelance Task Force. But they must never be taken for granted again.

The Theatre Artists Fund was set up to support UK theatre workers and freelancers falling into financial difficulty while theatres remain largely closed. Many freelancers have lost everything and we are losing thousands of highly skilled theatre-makers.

Saving buildings is pointless without protecting the people who make art. For now, I have financial security. That is why I plan to donate 50% of my December salary to Theatre Artists Fund.  If you are able to, so should you.

As I say, everyone has been doing their best. Stay present, thanks for reading this year, and Merry Christmas.

 

 

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Edinburgh Fringe is heading online

A digital Edinburgh Fringe Festival has been announced for 2020

As part of the scheme, the Fringe Festival Society has revealed plans for a FringeMakers Crowdfunder, whereby venues and artists will be able to register as part of a central Fringe campaign, pay no fees and keeping 100 per cent of funds donated for their own cause. This will launch on 13 July.

A new “Fringe on a Friday” variety show will be streamed online, and see some of the best productions present snippets from shows online. More details are to be announced. There are also plans for a Fringe Pick n Mix – where artists can upload 60-second clips for online audiences to enjoy.

There will also be 30 digital events including panel discussions, workshops and networking sessions for those wanting to hone their skills, as well as a Fringe Marketplace to help promote tour-ready work. This will help companies project themselves onto a global stage and pick up vital commissions and programming slots for next year.

Penguin Random House will release a new audiobook while Comedy Central will release mini episodes featuring up-and-coming comedians.

Shona McCarthy, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society chief executive, said: “It’s hard to imagine a summer without the Fringe. The explosion of creativity and community that the festival brings every year is unparalleled, and whilst we may not be able to provide a stage in Edinburgh in quite the same way this year, it feels hugely important that the spirit of this brilliant festival is kept alive.

“Little did we know way back in autumn, when we first started talking about this year’s programme artwork, how prescient the superhero theme would be today. We’re happy to be able to shine a spotlight on some of our Fringe heroes now, as we rally round to support the people that make your Fringe. On the other side of this, we’ll need them more than ever.

“The impact of Covid-19 has been devastating for the countless artists, audiences, venues, workers and small businesses that make this festival happen every year. The FringeMakers crowdfunding campaign is designed to support them, while the Fringe on a Friday live show and the Fringe Pick n Mix website aim to bring some much-needed joy to our devoted audiences both here in Scotland and all over the world.”

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