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Brighton Fringe Reviews

And that's a wrap!

The Brighton Fringe, England's largest mixed-arts festival, is over for another year.  Here at FringeGuru, our reviewers covered almost 100 shows from the 2012 programme, unearthing plenty of gems in their personal journeys through the Fringe.  On this page, you'll find our most recent write-ups, in publication order.

Looking for a specific show?  Find it in our Reviews A-Z  >>



 
This Time Tomorrow
Published on Tuesday, 12 June 2012
4

4 stars

Varndean School (venue website)
Theatre
20, 27 May, 12:00pm-1:00pm, 1:30pm-2:30pm, 3:00pm-4:00pm, 4:30pm-5:30pm, 6:00pm-7:00pm
Reviewed by Richard Stamp

 Suitable for age 18+ only.

Returning to the Fringe for a second year – with the same concept, but all-new storylines – This Time Tomorrow is site-specific theatre trimmed back to its bare bones.  It’s mixed-bill of four short plays, set in four parked cars; it’s both an entertaining novelty, and a fascinating experiment in social conditioning.  With the tiny audience tucked, two at a time, into the cars’ back seats, there’s an irresistible thrill about eavesdropping on dialogues in such confined and personal spaces.  But the burning question for this, my second visit, was a simple one: would the acting stand up to scrutiny, now that the element of surprise was gone?

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And No Birds Sing
Published on Monday, 28 May 2012
3

3 stars

Booth Museum of Natural History (venue website)
Theatre
17-20 May, 7:00pm-7:40pm, 8:15pm-8:55pm, 9:30pm-10:10pm
Reviewed by Lynne Morris

 Suitable for age 15+ only.
 World Premiere.

And No Birds Sing was among my most anticipated shows of the festival. Performed within the atmospheric Booth Museum of Natural History, the publicity captured the mood of the type of theatre I enjoy – strange, sensory and potentially a little grotesque. Visuals and soundscapes were promised, along with the obvious taxidermy and curiosities.

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Who Did I Think I Was?
Published on Saturday, 26 May 2012
4

4 stars

Upstairs at Three and Ten (venue website)
Theatre
25-26 May, 1:00pm-1:50pm, 7:00pm-7:50pm
Reviewed by Richard Stamp

 Suitable for age 15+ only.
 Warning: Contains strong language.
 World Premiere.
 2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

As the script points out early on, Who Did I Think I Was? is a play about "two men sharing digs"; but forget any thoughts of college capers, because these men are father and son.  Both have suffered tragedies, and both have ended up alone - though both have a lot of happy memories to share. And both are played by a single actor, Peter Henderson, which means their stories are told through a series of interleaved monologues spanning several years.

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The Maydays present: The Fringe Show
Published on Saturday, 26 May 2012
5

5 stars

Komedia Studio (venue website)
Comedy
4-5, 18, 25 May, 9:00pm-10:30pm; 26 May, 6:30pm-8:00pm
Reviewed by Darren Taffinder

 Suitable for age 15+ only.
 Warning: Contains strong language.
 World Premiere.

Does improv have to be funny? There are a lot of other emotions - pathos, despair, disappointment, longing, spiritual emptiness, a sense that somewhere in the past your life has taken a wrong turn and if only you could get back to that moment everything would be okay - those are just a few that spring to mind. It takes a very brave group of performers to allow a story to unfold without a sense of where its unfolding to, and just let it go, sometimes, into very dark territory. The Maydays are brave.

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Trumpton Comes Alive!
Published on Saturday, 26 May 2012
3

3 stars

Latest Music Bar (venue website)
Theatre
Run ended
Reviewed by Darren Taffinder

For those who didn’t grow up in the seventies, Trumpton was part of a trilogy of children’s programmes (alongside Camberwick Green and Chigley) – all set in the county of Trumptonshire, probably somewhere north of us. Not much happened in Trumptonshire; basically people went to work, and came home again. The show makes Postman Pat look high-octane. But its charm lay in its puppetry animation, and Freddie Phillips’s stripped-back, lo-fi music – each member of the Trumptonshire community had their own theme song that would play when they appeared.

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The Girl With The Iron Claws
Published on Saturday, 26 May 2012
5

5 stars

The Warren (venue website)
Theatre
24-25 May, 6:30pm-7:30pm
Reviewed by Jonathon Manning

 Parental Guidance. Under-17's must be accompanied by an adult.
 2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Theatre company The Wrong Crowd make it clear that The Girl with the Iron Claws is aimed as much at adults as it is at children.  Word seems to have gotten round too, as although the audience is speckled with children, mostly it’s the faces of grown-ups that you will see in the theatre.

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You Left Me in the Dark
Published on Saturday, 26 May 2012
3

3 stars

The Jive Monkey Theatre & Bar (venue website)
Theatre
22-24 May, 8:00pm-10:00pm
Reviewed by Catherine Meek

 Parental Guidance. Under-17's must be accompanied by an adult.
 Warning: Contains strong language.
 World Premiere.
 2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Masha loves Constantin loves Nina loves Trigorin: this is a tale of their unrequited feelings and the resulting despair and torment, with characters very loosely based on Chekhov’s protagonists in The Seagull.

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Mae-Day: I'm Not Waving, I'm Drowning
Published on Friday, 25 May 2012
4

4 stars

Marlborough Theatre (venue website)
Comedy
24-26 May, 10:00pm-11:00pm
Reviewed by Darren Taffinder

 Parental Guidance. Under-17's must be accompanied by an adult.
 Warning: Contains strong language.
 World Premiere.
 2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

I wouldn’t have gone to Canadian Mae Martin’s stand-up show if I hadn’t been reviewing it. My life would have gone on as normal until Friday, 21st December (the date of apocalypse as predicted by the Mayans – the end of the world is a theme of this show). But I certainly wouldn’t have been as happy. One of the great benefits of being a reviewer is when you see something really good that you would’ve missed otherwise, and this was one of those nights.

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Rolling on the Floor Laughing
Published on Thursday, 24 May 2012
5

5 stars

Sallis Benney Theatre (venue website)
Childrens
6 May, 3:00pm-4:00pm, 7:00pm-8:00pm
Reviewed by Richard Stamp

 Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.
 2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Within the first five minutes of this imaginative modern circus show, I knew it would be one of the highlights of my Fringe.  Bringing acrobatics and dance out of the big top and onto the stage, Rolling On The Floor Laughing combined old-school ropes and trapezes with modern computer animations, all of it built around some distinctly up-to-date themes.  A cute opener, casting the young artists as characters in a Wii video game, set the tone for the evening; its oh-so-familiar sound effects and Mario in-jokes were what first captured my attention, but their real purpose was to highlight the real-life skills of the performers, on show behind the translucent video screen.

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Blonde Poison
Published on Thursday, 24 May 2012
5

5 stars

The Old Market (venue website)
Theatre
23-24 May, 8:00pm-9:20pm
Reviewed by Alice Ash

 Suitable for age 15+ only.

Without question, Blonde Poison is the best piece of theatre I have seen at the Fringe this year, and quite possibly one of the most earth-shatteringly good performances I have ever seen from any actress. Elizabeth Counsell plays Stella Goldschlag, a Jewish collaborator during the war: a broken woman, less than human, betrayer of her own people.  And she tells her story with an astonishing believability.

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FROM OUR ARCHIVES

These are archived reviews of shows from Brighton 2012.  We keep our archives online as a courtesy to performers, and for readers who'd like to research previous years' reviews.