Edinburgh Fringe round-up: Ordinary Decent Criminal, Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak, and Nowhere
Some thoughts on some shows (activism edition).
Hello, from not-Edinburgh. This is the fourth and final in my somewhat erratic series of fringe round-ups. My column on the weird experience of reviewing at the fringe and the pressures faced by artists and critics is over at The Stage, which also published the Fringe Five, our picks of the artists who have had a breakout fringe this year.
If you want to support my writing, you can do so for just £5 a month or £50 a year. Or, if that’s not doable, just share this newsletter with someone you think might find it interesting. That helps too.
Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall
England and Son, comedian and activist Mark Thomas’ previous collaboration with playwright Ed Edwards, was a bleak account of an ex-juvenile offender whose life was marked both by a failing welfare system and the brutal legacy of British colonial rule. The violence of both of his father and his nation shaped his fate, and he was unable to escape it. Apart from a brief chink of light and hope, which was brutally dashed, it was a harrowing piece performed with breathless energy by Thomas, for whom Edwards had written it.
The pair reunited this year with Ordinary Decent Criminal, which draws on Edwards’ experience as an ex-offender. Edwards wrote his first novel while awaiting trial on drugs charges. The play’s protagonist, Frankie, is also a writer with a recently published novel under his belt who is serving time for drugs offences, his facility with words making him popular with other inmates.
The play is set in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of Strangeways prison riots when steps had been taken to reform the prison system and make conditions marginally less grim, when the IRA was still active, and when the Berlin wall had only recently fallen and, with it, communism, signalling for many, the triumph of capitalism.
Less linear and propulsive than England and Son, Ordinary Decent Criminal is more collage-like in structure presenting us with Frankie’s experiences in prison, the different characters he encounters, the power struggles, and the rhythms of prison life. Frankie’s initial time inside is spent shitting himself – his background is in activism and he has only previously been arrested for demonstrating - but he soon susses out who he shouldn’t get on the wrong side of, and gains favour by becoming the go-to man if you want someone to write something for you. He even ends up typing intimate letters between one fellow inmate and a prison guard.
Thomas has a drama school background – as we discussed in this interview – and has spent decades on stage. He’s at ease in front of the audience, and capable of vividly conjuring characters, from the intimidating DeNiro, a Muslim convert drug boss, to Belfast Tony, whose political affiliations it’s best not to ask about - both men you’d be wise not to cross - to damaged young Kenny, inside for committing an act of violence against his abusive stepfather. Edwards manages to find snatches of humanity in everyone, even the screws.
Edwards’ writing marries moments of brutality and tenderness in a way that feels convincing and drawn from life; he captures the bonds that form between men on the inside, and the pain of being separated from loved ones on the outside. Thomas delivers all this with customary verve, but also more than capably handles the play’s more intimate and emotional moments.
Much as Britain’s colonial past was central to England and Son, Irish politics is part of this piece’s thematic backdrop. (Amusingly, there’s an Orange march in town on the day I see the show, and Thomas can’t resist going off-script to call them “pasty-faced cunts.”) Edwards is also interested in the way in which Frankie’s belief in the power of collective action is refired while inside. This feels like it should be the heart of the play – especially with the criminalisation of protest we’re currently witnessing in the UK – but because of the play’s patchwork quality, the way it hops from character to character, it doesn’t permeate the piece as much as you might expect.
Ordinary Decent Criminal is stronger as an account of life in prison, in the more marginally more liberal post-Strangeways era, written by someone who knows whereof he speaks. It doesn’t shy away from depicting the psychological toll the place can take on fragile men like Kenny, but it also resists a lot of prison cliches. Frankie’s experiences of prison are not unrelentingly grim, nor are they a walk in the park. Frankie spends much of the play bricking it for one reason or another, and that’s even before he, a recoverd addict, finds himself with heroin in his cell.
Directed by Charlotte Bennett for Paines Plough (the new writing company who also produced Consumed), the production makes the most of Thomas’ charisma and particular set of skills as a performer, but it also lacks some of the fire-in-the-belly energy of England and Son, and the remarkably abrupt ending comes at you so quickly, it’s like a jolt, which may well be the point - there’s danger in complacency - but it leaves you feeling a little adrift.
Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall, 11.50
Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak, Pleasance Courtyard
In 2022 Victoria Melody, in the midst of a divorce, joined a Civil War historical re-enactment society. This is, she says, typical of how she responds to stressful events. When her father was diagnosed with a terminal illness – misdiagnosed it transpired – she trained as a funeral director.
Melody has made a career absorbing herself in various subcultures. She doesn’t just research these worlds, she immerses herself in them. For her show about the UK beauty pageant scene, she ended up winning the title of Mrs Brighton. She performs her new show in an authentic red woollen musketeer costume (she was excited about this because of Dogtanian). During this period, she became fascinated by the story of various 17th century dissident groups, including the Ranters and, particularly, the Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley who occupied common land in order to farm it and grow food free for those who needed it.
At the same time, Melody, who is based in Brighton, was doing some work in Whitehawk, the city’s most deprived neighbourhood, as part of Brighton Festival’s artist-in-resident community programme. There she encountered the people who she argues could be considered modern-day equivalents, the people who fight for their community, like Bryan – who set up a food distribution centre for locals without waiting to be given permission. He is the kind of man who never lets anyone leave his presence without a bag of home-grown veg. (There’s more on Bryan and his work at the East Brighton Food Co-op here) There is also Dave, a naturalist who discovered a new species of beetle, the Whitehawk soldier beetle, thus halting plans for development in the area. She also worked with the members of the Crew Club, the local community centre (whose young members helped create the sound design for the show, along with former Whitehawk resident Simon James).
Melody’s contribution to the Brighton Festival was to stage Re-Enactment, a recreation of the Diggers’ clash with parliamentarian soldiers. The latter would be played by her friends at the historical re-enactment society, who are sticklers for authenticity, while the Diggers would be played by members of the community, who were, it’s fair to say, less concerned with historical fidelity, though they did enjoy learning some historically accurate 17th century swearing. What was planned was more of a stand-off than a proper battle, but that didn’t make it any more logistically complex to set up. The re-enactment society prepped some historically accurate stew with historically accurate knives, while Bryan rocked up with barbecues. Melody called it “part re-enactment, part demonstration and part live art piece” and came dressed as Winstanley. There’s a nice blog about the project from one of the members of the Brighton folk choir.
Melody’s very entertaining re-enactment of Re-Enactment forms the bulk of this show, which Thomas, who performed there on the day, also directs. A critic I know complained that the show doesn’t tell you all that much about the Diggers and their beliefs in divine ordination, but this isn’t lecture theatre, it's more akin to sermon theatre. It’s a piece about community and the people who go to bat for the places in which they live, the volunteers and community workers. It’s a middle-finger up to the Thatcherite ideas of society and an acknowledgement that to be in artist-in-resident in a community such as Whitehawk is a responsibility. It’s not enough to be parachuted in to a place, start a project and bugger off. It requires a longer term commitment.
The staging is relatively simple, using cut-outs to stand in for key characters (shades of Thomas’ The Red Shed here). As I said, the sound was created by community members but so was the knitted vegetables that dot the stage - there’s an impressively hefty leek.
Melody is a performer of real warmth. She’s charming and funny and slightly scrappy and her enthusiasm for her enthusiasts is palpable. (There’s also a running joke about the reenactors not letting her near any real muskets, which does not feel like it’s there solely to be self-deprecating). The re-enactment does not go according to plan in a way that is entirely predictable but no less satisfying for it and the underlying message, that when the system lets us down, we are each other’s safety nets, is a resonant one. (Watching both this and Thomas’ show, I think it’s fair to say that it’s a message that primarily going out to an audience of a certain vintage and political inclination, but this doesn’t make it any less heart-warming).
Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak, Pleasance Courtyard, 14.15
Nowhere, Traverse Theatre
Actor and activist Khalid Abdalla comes from a long line of political prisoners. His father and grandfather were well-known anti-regime activists in Egypt. He himself took part in the protests in Tahrir Square and he co-founded the Mosireen Collective, a group which supported citizen media in Egypt, by equipping people with the skills to challenge the narratives of state-run media.
His erudite solo show, Nowhere, which premiered last year at Battersea Arts Centre in London, weaves elements of autobiography together with lecture theatre, memory with history. It’s a piece about belonging and identity, and how talking about any of these things becomes tougher when there is a genocide unfolding before our eyes.
The show is tapestry-like in structure. Abdalla talks with a great affection about a friend, an artist and fellow activist, who continued to make art even as he was dying from cancer. He gives us a potted history of colonialism in the Middle East, Sykes, Picot, Balfour et al, along with a brief digression on neo liberalism. As an actor, Abdalla is probably best known to audiences for playing Dodi Fayed in The Crown, but his breakout screen role was as the lead hijacker in Paul Greengrass’ film United 93 and he talks about this too, less the experience of making the film but how being of Middle eastern appearance and heritage has shaped his journey through the film industry (and how having a passport full of stamps from Middle Eastern countries shapes his experiences in US airports).
Abdalla uses a camera mounted on a table top to show us photos and videos on his phone, mixing in old family snaps with pictures of world leaders – Reagan, Thatcher, a pre-presidential Trump. He shows us phone footage of the Egyptian protests, of tanks in the streets, capturing the terror and immediacy. Photos of his friend, in hospital, but still dancing, are projected on a curtain. When words aren’t sufficient, Abdalla also dances, though in a less joyous, more contorted way.
Produced by Fuel and presented in Edinburgh as part of the Here and Now showcase, the show is directed by Omar Elerian and some of the techniques he deploys are reminiscent of his work with Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, work that also explores the intricacies of immigrant identity. Midway through the show Abdalla pivots into a broad Glaswegian accent – he was born in Glasgow, but it’s treated as a reveal. He later deploys a pretty convincing US – his father was born in America - and Irish accent. This is a neat way of highlighting the complexity of his heritage, but can also be read as an extreme form of immigrant codeswitching (as well as a demonstration of his facility with accents). Later he invites us all to take part in an artistic exercise. We are supplied with pencil, paper and a mirror and asked to draw a blind self-portrait, to make a swift sketch of our faces without looking at the page.
Elerian’s production includes the film, made by Led by Donkeys, of row of children’s clothes laid out in the sand on Bournemouth beach, each one representing a Palestinian child who died in Gaza between October 2023 and February 2024 when the film was made. It just goes on and on and on, the line getting longer. It’s a hard watch, stilling the audience and signalling what Abdalla is primarily here to talk about.
Speaking into a microphone with whispered urgency while standing on the stairs at the side of the stage, he delivers a speech about the horrific events unfolding daily in Gaza, about political inaction and complicity, while always taking care to make room for the pain of Jewish people and to fully acknowledge the atrocity of the Holocaust. For genocide to occur we first need to see others as less than human, and this is a process of accretion. It’s happening in real-time, on our screens, in our courts, and our politicians are fuelling it. Nowhere is a piece of measured fury. It is elegant and careful and delivered by someone whose education and background have given him the tools to speak with fluency and clarity. His message resonates, but it is also delivered in the way to which the least people could possibly object, cleanly and with every rough edge filed down, which is not to diminish what he’s saying in any way. It’s stirring and affecting, but also feels at times like watching an act of navigation, watching someone charting a path through a political landscape where even to express distress at the death of children requires such careful calibration.
Nowhere, Traverse Theatre, times vary
Thanks for reading! If you want to tell me about your show you can reach me on natasha.tripney@gmail.com
I was quite moved after watching Nowhere a few weeks ago and this is beautiful encapsulation of the play and all it was trying to navigate. Thanks for clearing up some of my own thoughts on it!