Archive for Drama

Interview with Beatrice Elena Festi

September 14, 2026 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Drama, Interviews, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Puttana traps you in its intimacy from the first moment. Festi describes how the headphones collapse the space until she’s performing inside the audience’s heads as much as her own, navigating that strange mix of control and vulnerability. Her shifts between identities carry the same charge — especially the moment she steps into the middle‑aged man, a voice that still hits her with anger, pleasure, and a kind of unsettling satisfaction. The rapid transitions work because she’s interpreted her role line by line, each character anchored in its own emotional image and mental room.

What gives the piece its force is her refusal to soften anything. She leans into the ethical weight, the complicity, the silences that pin everyone in place. The collaboration with Corradini let her work without armour, drawing on her twenty‑year‑old self to shape Laura as someone who never collapses into victimhood. Summerhall sharpened the political edge, New York confirmed the universality, and performing it night after night turned the role into a meditation. Across the interview, one thread keeps surfacing: vulnerability as a deliberate act of power, and a commitment to reaching something stripped‑back and honest on stage. Here’s our interview with Beatrice Elena Festi.

Performance, embodiment, technique

Puttana places you inside a binaural, three‑dimensional soundscape. How did performing inside headphones change your physical and emotional approach to Laura?

“Performing while wearing wireless headphones definitely changed the way I inhabit the stage… The distance between me and the audience — who are also wearing headphones — shrinks, making the experience intimate and personal… By wearing headphones myself, I also become a spectator of my own voice: this gives me control, but it also makes me vulnerable… Thanks to the headphones, a kind of short circuit occurs: Laura becomes a tangible presence in my ears and in my head.”

You embody several characters around Laura — student, sex worker, husband, wife, young man. Which identity demanded the biggest shift in your internal state?

“The first time I heard my own voice as a man it was a shock… Being able to play a middle-aged man by ‘wearing’ his voice is an incredibly powerful experience… Playing him brings on a mix of anger and pleasure… he always gives me a sense of satisfaction while I play him.”

The show’s fragmented structure requires rapid transitions. How do you keep emotional coherence while moving between characters so quickly?

“I associate a specific image and a specific feeling with every line of the text… It’s a long process — it took three years — in which I worked to build automatic reactions… Each character has their own mental space that I can enter and leave quickly, helped along by their different voices.”

Themes & ethics

The piece confronts judgement, violence, and the commodification of women’s bodies. How do you navigate the ethical weight of representing these realities on stage?

“I believe that engaging with uncomfortable subjects is at the heart of what I do… questioning yourself, examining social and political issues, is an essential part of any real artistic exchange… If art isn’t uncomfortable… then what’s the point? What’s the point of being reassured?”

Puttana deliberately places the audience in a position of complicity. What does it feel like to perform a work that refuses moral reassurance?

“In our show the audience becomes complicit… We’re all implicated, always… From the moment I step on stage I make eye contact with every member of the audience… The audience has no way out… it’s vital to put ourselves on the line, to sit with the discomfort and confront our own dark sides.”

There are moments where silence becomes confrontational. What is the most difficult silence in the show for you to hold?

“The hardest moment is definitely the direct exchange with the audience… Physical closeness, the gaze and the silences let me dig into people’s souls… I feel vulnerable and powerful at the same time… There’s no escape route for anyone; we’re in it together.”

Process & collaboration

You’ve worked with director Mirko Corradini on multiple TeatroE projects. What aspects of his direction made this collaboration particularly effective for such an intimate piece?

“Four years ago… I understood straight away how much Mirko Corradini cared about the project… There has never been any arrogance or superficiality… Mirko is a director who creates a performance bit by bit… and he’s very careful to create a safe space where I can feel at ease.”

How did the rehearsal process shape the emotional core of Laura’s story? Were there moments where the material felt too close or too exposing?

“To find Laura, I drew on my twenty-year-old self… I put my own personal vulnerability at Laura’s service: in a show like this you can’t hide… humanity has to seep out of every gesture, every word.”

What discoveries did you make about Laura during rehearsal that changed how you performed her?

“Laura is never a victim… Even when she momentarily loses control, she finds a way to regain it… The ending, however brutal, shows this resolution… Acting in another language was also illuminating… In English, Laura is more brazen and more self-assured.”

Fringe experience

Summerhall is known for politically charged work. How did performing Puttana in that environment influence your relationship to the piece?

“Performing at Summerhall was an honour… they always engage with topical, hot-button and uncomfortable subjects… On stage I felt at ease, because I knew I was in an environment that would protect me.”

What surprised you most about how Edinburgh Fringe audiences responded to the show?

“The Summerhall audience was a mixed one… far more men came to see us… They proved more receptive to the rawness of the performance… The audience’s reactions were positive and open to engagement.”

Did performing the show daily at the Fringe change your understanding of Laura or the characters orbiting her?

“Going on stage every night… becomes a kind of meditation… Every night Laura is different… I always tried to be as honest as possible… Laura is a very human character… she doesn’t conform to a prejudice.”

International recognition

Puttana’s Off‑Broadway run at SoHo Playhouse happened before Edinburgh. How did that New York experience shape your sense of the work’s impact?

“Performing in New York before Edinburgh was an excellent training ground… The American audience… very engaged and warm… It was the New York audience that convinced us Laura’s story was universal.”

Artistic development

How does Puttana connect to your broader artistic interests in vulnerability, power, and spectatorship?

“Puttana has allowed me to grow enormously… It’s a show that has taught me… about limits, about letting go on stage, about reaching a naked truth… I’ve always been drawn to realism and social themes… multifaceted, even ambiguous characters — ones that dig deep — appeal to me.”

Future direction

After a role this demanding, what kind of work do you feel drawn toward next? What are your plans?

“With TeatroE… we’re working on various ideas for a new production… Another show that, through technology, will let us close the distance with the audience… I’d like my work to always speak to people’s humanity… I do believe art can change the world, and in my own small way I try to do my part.”

Our review of Puttana is here

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Puttana at Summerhall: Beatrice Elena Festi’s Raw, Immersive One‑Woman Reckoning

August 12, 2026 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

★★★★★ Puttana is an intimate, one‑woman interrogation of a life lived at the intersection of desire, commerce and shame. The performance follows a single protagonist — a woman whose public persona and private interiority are braided together — as she moves through a series of encounters, memories and imagined conversattions. The show is structured as a sequence of short, sharp scenes and interior monologues rather than a conventional linear narrative: one moment you’re with her in a room negotiating a transaction, the next you’re inside her head as competing voices argue about agency, guilt and survival.

Technically the piece is built around an immersive headphone score that fractures the action into overlapping layers: external interlocutors, inner voices, and a kind of running commentary that sometimes addresses the audience directly. Beatrice Elena Festi slips between roles — client, confidante, accuser, child of memory — so the plot feels less like a story being told and more like a life being unpeeled. Key beats include confrontations about power and money, flashbacks that reveal how the protagonist learned to commodify herself, and moments of stark vulnerability where nudity and silence are used as ethical provocation rather than spectacle.

Puttana, as performed by Beatrice Elena Festi, doesn’t just ask you to watch — it asks you to account for yourself. The headphones and layered soundscape collapse the distance between performer and spectator, turning what might have been a passive evening into an interrogation of attention: whose voice are you listening to, whose body are you complicit in consuming, and where does empathy end and spectacle begin. Psychologically, that collapse is brilliant; it forces a kind of cognitive dissonance where your instinct to look away meets the theatrical demand to stay present, and that tension is where the piece does its work.

Philosophically, the show stages a conversation about agency and commodification. By foregrounding nudity and explicit power dynamics, Festi reframes vulnerability as a site of political argument rather than mere exposure. The nudity is not gratuitous — it’s a deliberate ethical provocation that asks the audience to examine the systems that turn bodies into transactions, and to recognise how easily spectatorship can become endorsement. In that sense the piece is less about shocking for shock’s sake and more about making visible the moral choices we perform in the dark.

On a human level, the experience is intimate and uncomfortable in equal measure, and that’s the point. You leave slightly unsettled because the show has done what good art should: it has altered the angle from which you see yourself and others. It doesn’t hand you answers; it hands you a mirror, a set of headphones, and the responsibility to decide what to do with the reflection.

Reviewed by Pat Harrington

Read our interview with Beatrice Elena Festi here

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Sasha Snowden’s Queen of the Empire Delivers Laughter, Chaos and Gut‑Punch Emotion

August 11, 2026 at 9:14 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026 ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

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★★★★★ Lizzie is the quintessential party girl. She’s 19, she dances in the greatest dance club of all time, the Middlesbrough Empire. She catches the eye of the boys when she dances the ‘Slutty Macarena.’ She hates her rival Danielle who is making a play for her boy, Joe.

When she’s sick after too many tequilas she goes outside to puke. Not like that Chloë who messed up the dance floor when she drank too much.

But there’s a different story behind Lizzie’s excessive partying and addictive self-destructive behaviour; her sister Maggie is ill with Leukaemia. She’s not dying, like, just sick, according to Lizzie whose mam is pissed off because Lizzie hasn’t visited Mags in hospital.

As her sister’s health deteriorates rapidly, this gut-wrenching emotional rollercoaster of a script hammers home the devastating effects of Maggie’s illness on Lizzie and her family. Can Lizzie save her sister with a stem-cell donation? One minute you’re laughing and cheering, the next you’re struggling to hold back the tears.

The Queen of the Empire marks author and performer Sasha Snowden’s Fringe debut. This was powerful stuff. More please!

Reviewed by David Kerr

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From Child Star to Cleopatra: Elizabeth Taylor’s Story Begins at the Fringe

August 11, 2026 at 5:22 am · Filed under Biographical, Drama, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , ,

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★★★★★ Elizabeth Taylor remains one of Hollywood’s most enduring figures — a star whose life was as dramatic as the films she made. Call Me Elizabeth: From Lassie to Cleopatra leans into that legacy from the first moment, offering an intimate portrait rather thanth a glossy biographical sweep. This production is Part One of the Call Me Elizabeth series, tracing Taylor’s journey from her early screen roles through to Cleopatra. The story continues separately in Part Two — Call Me Elizabeth: From Burton to Humanitarian — which follows her later life, her relationship with Richard Burton, and her evolution into a global humanitarian figure.

Presented by Guy Masterson, an Olivier Award winner and long‑time Fringe presence, and directed by Michael Weber, the production brings Taylor’s private world into sharp, confessional focus.

Masterson’s involvement adds a particular charge: as the nephew of Richard Burton, he carries a direct connection to one of the most famous romances in film history. The show acknowledges Burton’s stature early on, grounding the narrative in the emotional and artistic gravity he brought to Taylor’s life. It’s a subtle but effective framing choice.

At the centre of the production is Kayla Boyce, delivering a solo performance that moves fluidly between glamour, vulnerability and exhaustion. Boyce guides the audience through Taylor’s relationships, marriages and the relentless scrutiny that came with fame. She captures the emotional weight of living under constant public attention — the failed marriages, the pressure to accept roles out of obligation, and the creeping desire to step away from the spotlight entirely.

What makes Boyce’s performance compelling is the specificity: a shift in tone when discussing Burton, a brittle laugh when recalling studio demands, a quiet pause when admitting she longed for a life that wasn’t defined by cameras and contracts. These moments give the show its emotional spine.

Weber’s direction keeps the staging close and uncluttered, creating a living‑room intimacy that suits the material. It feels as though Taylor has invited the audience into her private space — not for spectacle, but for honesty. The script is tight and purposeful, allowing Boyce to inhabit Taylor without slipping into impersonation or caricature. The pacing is measured, giving the emotional beats room to breathe.

This is a thoughtful, engaging portrait of a woman who lived her life in the brightest of spotlights and paid the price for it. Boyce is convincing throughout, and the production’s intimacy is its greatest strength.

A standout of this year’s programme.

Reviewed by Jacqueline Sharp

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Krapp’s Last Tape: A Masterclass in Minimalism and Memory

August 11, 2026 at 4:49 am · Filed under Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Theatre ·Tagged , , , ,

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★★★★★ A masterful blend of silence, physicality and memory drives this new Fringe staging of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Stockard Channing.

Samuel Beckett’s work occupies that strange, compelling territory where bleakness, absurdity and dark humour meet. An Irish novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet and translator, Beckett spent his career interrogating the chaos and futility of human existence. Many consider him the godfather of the Theatre of the Absurd — a writer who placed the contradictions of life onstage with stark honesty and a wicked sense of comedy.

Krapp’s Last Tape premiered on 28 October 1958 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, with Patrick Magee performing the role Beckett had written specifically for him. The play centres on an ageing man listening back to recordings of his younger self, mocking, lamenting and circling around memories that refuse to settle. It is a piece built on introspection, regret and the uneasy humour of confronting one’s own past.

In this new Fringe production, Stockard Channing directs David Westhead as Krapp at age 69, working within Beckett’s famously tight and unforgiving script. One of the defining features of the play — and of Westhead’s performance — is the near-total absence of spoken dialogue from the older Krapp. He utters only the occasional grunt, mutter or irritated fragment. The real “voice” of the piece comes from the tape recorder: the younger Krapp speaking from thirty years earlier. Westhead’s live performance is therefore almost entirely physical, built from silence, stillness and sharply observed gestures. A shift of the eyes, a pause, a slump of the shoulders: each movement carries the emotional weight that dialogue would normally deliver.

The staging is intentionally sparse. A table, a chair, a tape recorder, and a scatter of papers and junk across the floor create a world that feels both lived‑in and abandoned. Westhead’s Krapp appears in baggy, unkempt clothes, oversized shoes and scruffy hair — a man worn down by time. The silence becomes part of the performance as the audience watches him rewind and replay the tapes, reacting to the younger voice with disdain, longing and resignation. The contrast between the articulate, ambitious younger Krapp on tape and the almost wordless older Krapp on stage is the engine of the drama.

Offstage, Westhead has reflected on the play’s central theme of memory: “We all have memories in our lives, whether we’re young or old, and it is a fascinating way to capture memories. Nowadays on mobile phones there are thousands of photographs that we never look at again, and Krapp’s way is slightly more honest because, in the course of half an hour, he can listen to a whole year and remember it.” It’s a striking observation — and one that resonates throughout the production.

What unfolds is a dialogue between two versions of the same man: Krapp at 69, and Krapp at 39, preserved on tape. As Westhead puts it, “There’s two characters on stage.” Channing leans into this duality, blending Beckett’s dark humour with touches of vaudeville and allowing Westhead’s physical performance to drive the emotional tension.

All proceeds from the run support The Wembley to Soweto Foundation, founded by Westhead sixteen years ago. The charity trains disadvantaged young people around the world in photography and essential life skills — a mission that adds a poignant counterpoint to a play so deeply concerned with memory, time and the traces we leave behind.

A sharp, absorbing and beautifully executed piece of theatre. One to mark firmly in your Fringe diary.

Reviewed by Jacqueline Sharp

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Call Me Elizabeth: A Fierce, Intimate Portrait of Taylor’s Turbulence and Activism

August 10, 2026 at 9:07 am · Filed under Biographical, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Edinburgh International Festival ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

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★★★★★ Following on from Call Me Elizabeth: From Lassie to Cleopatra, this second instalment —  Call Me Elizabeth: from Burton to Humanitarian — explores Elizabeth Taylor’s later life, her turbulent relationship with Richard Burton, and her emergence as a committed humanitarian and AIDS activist.

Guy Masterson — an Olivier Award winner and one of the Fringe’s most enduring creative forces — presents this intimate solo production, directed by Michael Weber. His involvement adds a particular charge: Masterson is Richard Burton’s nephew, and the show quietly acknowledges Burton not just as a tabloid titan but as one of the great actors of his generation. That lineage gives the production an extra layer of authenticity before the performance even begins.

At the centre of the piece is Kayla Boye, stepping into the role of Elizabeth Taylor with a blend of glamour, vulnerability and sharp emotional intelligence. Boye doesn’t rely on impersonation; instead, she channels Taylor’s inner life, offering the audience a sense of being spoken to directly rather than watching a distant icon reconstructed. The result is a portrayal that feels lived‑in rather than imitated.

The production moves through the turbulence and tenderness of Taylor’s relationship with Burton — the passion, the volatility, the public scrutiny that both bound them together and pulled them apart. Boye touches on Taylor’s well‑known appetite for romance, her succession of marriages, her fascination with leading men, and her legendary collection of jewels. These elements are familiar, but the script treats them with a light hand, allowing the audience to see the person behind the myth.

Where the show finds its deepest emotional footing is in Taylor’s humanitarian legacy. Boye reminds us that Taylor was not only a Hollywood icon but a pioneering force in HIV/AIDS activism at a time when few public figures dared to speak. She helped raise more than $100 million for AIDS research, co‑founding amfAR in 1985 and later establishing the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. The production handles this aspect with sincerity rather than sentimentality, grounding Taylor’s activism in personal conviction rather than celebrity obligation.

The atmosphere of the show is one of intimate proximity — a “living room experience”. The script has bite, Boye’s performance has conviction, and the direction keeps everything close enough to touch. It’s polished without being distant, affectionate without being soft.

Call Me Elizabeth is a production worth seeking out. It’s personal, revealing, and anchored by a performer who understands both the scale of Elizabeth Taylor’s legend and the humanity beneath it. Boye is convincing, the storytelling is tight, and the hour leaves a lasting impression.

Reviewed by Jacqueline Sharp

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Stella Kulagowski Brings La Goulue Back to Life in a Vivid Fringe Portrait

August 9, 2026 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Biographical, Dance, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Stella Kulagowski’s performance allows the extraordinary life of La Goulue to emerge from behind the familiar images of fin-de-siècle Paris. We all think we know the Moulin Rouge: the skirts, the high kicks, the posters, the absinthe-soaked mythology of Montmartre. Stella goes looking for the woman inside that mythology.

La Goulue was actually Louise Weber, born in 1866 and destined to become perhaps the most famous cancan dancer of her age. Her nickname — roughly, “The Glutton” — apparently came from her habit of finishing off customers’ drinks as she moved around the cabarets. By the early 1890s she was one of the great attractions of the Moulin Rouge, dancing with Valentin le Désossé and developing a reputation not merely for physical exuberance but for a wonderfully irreverent attitude towards respectability.

Stella makes good use of the art of the period to draw us into that world. Most important is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, for whom La Goulue became an unforgettable subject. His great 1891 poster Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, with Valentin looming in the foreground and La Goulue caught in movement behind him, did more than advertise a nightclub act. It helped make Lautrec famous while turning La Goulue herself into an image recognised across Paris.

That relationship between performer and artist gives the show another dimension. We are watching Stella perform a woman who was herself performing for an audience, while at the same time seeing how artists turned that woman into an image, even a commodity. Celebrity culture is hardly a modern invention. La Goulue understood publicity, provocation and the value of being talked about long before Instagram arrived.

Then there are the stories surrounding the famous men who entered her orbit. One of the best concerns the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. According to Moulin Rouge legend, La Goulue spotted him in the audience while performing and, rather than showing the deference normally expected towards royalty, called out to him to buy the champagne. Whether every detail has survived the retelling intact almost ceases to matter: the story has endured because it fits the personality so perfectly.

Her connections went further. Accounts of her life link her romantically with the future Edward VII, the Egyptian prince Chérif Amourad Yazi and the Russian Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. La Goulue moved through a peculiar world in which aristocrats, artists, dancers, bohemians and wealthy pleasure-seekers could all find themselves under the same roof.

La Goulue’s romantic life was far broader than the legends about princes and grand dukes suggest. Away from the cabaret spotlight, she also formed relationships with women — connections that offered her a degree of emotional stability and companionship often missing from the chaotic world of Montmartre. These relationships underline an important truth about Louise Weber: she lived on her own terms, choosing affection and loyalty wherever she found them, long before such choices were socially acceptable. In a life defined by performance, provocation and reinvention, her relationships with women reveal a quieter, more intimate side of a woman determined to claim her freedom in every part of her life.

Stella brings these strands together rather than simply giving us a succession of anecdotes. The projected or reproduced artworks are particularly effective because they remind us that La Goulue survives in two forms: as a real woman with an extraordinary life and as the stylised creature handed down to us by the artists of Montmartre.

That distinction matters. It would have been very easy to turn the whole thing into an exercise in Belle Époque nostalgia — all feathers, stockings and naughty Parisian fun. Instead, there is something more interesting going on. Behind Toulouse-Lautrec’s instantly recognisable figure was a working performer who made herself famous in a world in which women had relatively few routes to independence and notoriety on their own terms.

Stella clearly relishes the theatricality of the material, but she also has an eye for its history. Art, biography and performance overlap until we begin to understand why La Goulue became such a compelling figure. She wasn’t simply someone who happened to dance at the Moulin Rouge. For a time she was the Moulin Rouge: provocative, exuberant, outrageous and impossible to ignore.

The result is a colourful trip into Montmartre, certainly, but also something more substantial — an attempt to reclaim the living, difficult and gloriously unruly woman from the famous pictures that eventually threatened to overshadow her.

Reviewed by Pat Harrington

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Read an interview with Stella here

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Edinburgh Fringe 2026: The BBC’s First Homosexual

August 9, 2026 at 11:22 am · Filed under BBC, Biographical, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, LGBT+interest, Theatre ·Tagged , , , ,

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Set around the time of the arrest of the actor John Gielgud in a public lavatory in London, when he pleaded guilty to a charge of ‘persistently importuning male persons for immoral purposes,’ this play is set around the BBC’s first documentary on what was then seen as the ‘problem’ of homosexuality. At the time, homosexuality was seen as a major social problem, and at best was regarded as an individual’s illness that needed to be cured.

This amusing play juxtaposes the internal politicking to record and broadcast the documentary inside the BBC radio department with the struggle of Tom – a young working-class shop assistant who works at a branch of Burton’s tailors in Manchester.

Tom is only 19 when we first meet him. He’s shocked, angered and frightened by the summary sacking of a good-looking colleague convicted of ‘importuning for immoral purposes.’ He struggles with his well-meaning mum’s attempts to pair him off with a suitable young lady. Fortunately, Cynthia is a good church-going girl who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage. Phew! He managed to disentangle himself from that by professing atheism.

As the internal debate, horse-trading and politicking continues in the BBC over the scope of the documentary and how the producers should frame it, Tom is drawn to Roy, which almost leads to disaster, when Tom’s hand lingers too long while measuring Roy’s inside leg.

In his journey through public toilets, and seedy back bars in Soho, Tom struggles with his fear of being found out, potential blackmailers and finds love for a short period with his ‘darling Jack.’ Eventually he hears the broadcast on the radio and discovers that he is a victim of ‘arrested development.’

This play captures the mood of the times, the outdated attitudes, the so-called experts like Mary Whitehouse who promoted worthless theories

about mothers and sons, press hysteria over gay men and the underground culture of ‘pansies’ and ‘Nancy boys.’

The acting is superb. Jolyon Benson’s understated portrayal of Tom connects well with the audience. Max Logan and Andrew Pollard show amazing versatility in a variety of roles, from stuffy BBC executives to Tom’s girlfriends, using wigs and coats as simple props.

Anyone attending this production will be invited to complete a questionnaire on how much they knew or learned about the issues raised in the play. Your reviewer learned something new. You may learn something too.

Reviewed by David Kerr

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Girlfriends: A Road‑Trip Awakening

August 9, 2026 at 6:43 am · Filed under Comedy, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, LGBT+interest ·Tagged , , , , ,

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Back in 2014, fleeing a break-up with her boyfriend, Scout decided to drive across the continental US from New York to California in a beat-up 1998 Honda Civic with just $200 to her name. She was 22. She was sexually unfulfilled. She’d gone through the motions but had never had a genuine orgasm with her partner.

After a fateful conversation outside a drive-in coffee shop with the barista, Olinka, Scout discovers a lot about herself, the great outdoors, love, sex, and her sexuality when Olinka joins her on this journey of discovery. Scout finds fulfilment and love with this worldly-wise travelling companion. She learns how to use a vibrator, how to sing for gasoline, and that reciting a soliloquy from Shakespeare in a forest can chase off a roaming bobcat.

There are lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments and one-liners to keep the audience’s attention in this one-woman show. By just changing her position and the pitch in her voice, the writer and performer Sara Malinowski brings Scout, Olinka, and a host of other characters besides, into life in this powerful narrative.

Reviewed by David Kerr

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I Bought a Flip Phone: Choosing Offline Life

August 9, 2026 at 6:25 am · Filed under Comedy, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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★★★★

This one-man play sees Charlie approaching his 27th birthday and trying to take control of his chaotic life by ditching his iPhone for an old-school Nokia flip phone. He’s become disenchanted with the time wasted by constant scrolling, his unrequited feelings for a guy who doesn’t care if he lives or dies, his estrangement from his best friend who now lives an expensive eighty-minute train ride away and he feels crowded by texts and calls from his anxious mother. Charlie doesn’t want to ‘catch up’ with his bestie now and again. He wants to stay connected in real life.

There’s a lot to think about in this play. How is it possible for someone to be so isolated, desperate, and unhappy? Will a flip phone really help, or is it just a symptom of Charlie’s attempts to bring sense and order to his empty life? There’s some great observational comedy in and around the modern cultural expectation for instant replies to texts and the paradox that a bright, intelligent young man can be intensely lonely despite the always-on connections of today’s digital age.

Enjoy the humour. Have a good laugh. But come away from this thinking about the real-life implications of the smartphone age for the Charlies of this world. I don’t think a flip phone will fix it.

Reviewed by David Kerr

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