Edinburgh Festival

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a rocking rollercoaster ride through the last thirty years in Britain, from the Thatcherite late 80s, through Cool Britannia, to Brexit Britain.  Focusing on two working-class kids from Hull, Leah and Chris, it portrays their unfulfilled dreams and increasing neuroses, even as an asteroid screams towards the planet.  It's not quite a play, not quite a musical and not quite a rock concert, taking elements from each to create what production company Middle Child describe as 'gig theatre'.

Things really are rotten right now, aren't they?   We've got resurgent racism, the Welfare State's continual erosion, a terrible economy and climate change.   But will any of this get better in the next few years?  Luckily, Ross McCaffrey has travelled to the future, and as part of this show he explains to friend Jake Walton and the audience what we can expect to change between now and then.

In the 1980s, the era of Thatcher, managed decline and "the enemy within", a crack formed between the northern and southern parts of England, splitting them apart physically as well as socially.  This is the backdrop to The North! The North!, written and performed by Christopher Harrisson, a twisted dark fantasy of a young man's homecoming to the far side of that crack to avenge his mother's death.

Foreign Radical is a piece of interactive theatre focusing on surveillance and suspicion in an age of prominent terrorist threat.  At its heart, it is about our complicity in a system that condemns people without evidence, presented in the style of a twisted gameshow. 

Adapted by Pelle Koppel from the controversial young adult novel by Janne Teller, Nothing tells the story of a class of young people searching for the meaning of life.  On the first day of school, classmate Pierre-Anthon announces that life has no meaning and nothing at all matters.  To persuade him otherwise, his peers give up personal treasures to a heap of meaning in an abandoned sawmill.  As each child nominates what the next must sacrifice to disprove Pierre-Anthon's nihilistic taunts, the play takes a disturbing turn.

Guillaume Pige blogs for BWW to give us an insight into a typical day at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Cory Peterson has had an interesting career journey, from Donald Trump's matrimonial legal team to becoming a professional actor, currently playing the lead role of John DeLorean in Jon Ivay's new play DeLorean at The Assembly Ballroom, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, until 27 August.

Marcina Zaccaria's provocative and timely new drama Village, My Home, about diverse New Yorkers confronting cultural and political uncertainties, will premiere at the 2017 Dream Up Festival for a special limited engagement.

This bit's called the blurb whatever the f*ck that means. Anyway, I'm an idiot and I like being stupid so if that sounds like your kind of thing then get down to Stand 3 and laugh at me without feeling bad about it... or don't... it's up to you really...

Edinburgh Festival Fringe performer Sarah Milton blogs for BWW to give us an insight into her typical day at the Fringe.

They're back! Why? Money. After a failed BBC pilot and numerous non-appearances on TV and radio, Phil's resurrected the Edinburgh award-winning (Panel Prize still counts) cult hit Funz and Gamez in a last ditched attempt to get on TV. Join Bonzo, Jim the Elf, and Uncle Mick in a brand-new format that Phil's created, called a comedy panel show.

Creatives is a dark comic pop-opera written by Irvine Welsh and Don De Grazia with music by Laurence Mark Wythe. Set in a Chicago song writing class where students get together to create and critique each other's work, former student and now superstar Sean O'Neil returns to judge a song writing contest resulting in a finale full of revenge and jealousy.

Rachel (Austentatious, The IT Crowd, Murder in Successville) has been invited to be a guest speaker at her old school, but what kind of a role model is she really? Through stand-up, character and musical comedy, she explores what messed up message she can possibly offer to impressionable young minds.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe performer Joe Sellman-Leava blogs for BWW to give us an insight into a typical day for him at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe performer Sara Juli blogs for BWW to give us an insight into a typical day for her at the Fringe.

Two for one is more commonly applied to tickets at the Fringe rather than the plays themselves. Evidently keen to push against such boundaries, Doughnut Productions have taken a play by Andrew Bovell and separated it into two productions.  Running in tandem with a linked piece Speaking in Tongues: The Lies at the same venue, this part of the play depicts a series of relationships around the central event of the disappearance of psychiatrist Valerie Summers. 

The Odyssey is one of the most iconic stories of all time, telling the tale of Odysseus' long and epic journey home from the Trojan War.  This engaging take on it from Dutch company Patchwork Theatre offers the chance to see the Greek tale in several new ways.

Few years in recent memory have included such a host of dramatic events, so it is perhaps no surprise that the turbulent time that was 2016 has been chosen as the subject of this new musical from Evolution Theatre.

Based on the 1984 cult movie of the same name and following a successful run at London's Southwark Playhouse, the rock musical comes to the Edinburgh Fringe prior to returning to London for a limited run at the Arts Theatre in autumn 2017.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe performer Nicola Wren blogs for BWW to give us an insight into a day at the Fringe.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe performer Chris Issacs blogs for BWW to give us an insight into a typical day at the Fringe.

Well, well, well. If it isn't Rhys James, the guy who said comedy shows are for losers and blurbs are for idiots. Back here with another comedy show, as explained in this blurb. Unbelievable.

Multi award-winning stand-up and absolute mess Harriet Kemsley has survived another year and returns with her best show yet.

The cult-favourite alternative comic humbly invites you to his brand-new, absolutely brilliant hour of extraordinary-absurdist-character-comedy-nonsense-sort-of-stand-up and hubris.

Starring Richard Oliver, Robert Picardo and Sylvester McCoy, A Joke depicts three men meeting in a void and attempting to figure out who they are and what has brought them together.  They swiftly realise that they are apparently the set up for an archetypal joke, and attempt to understand the nature of their existence.  The result is something akin to Waiting for Godot crossed with Six Characters in Search of An Author.