4

	Latest Music Bar (venue website) Theatre 13-14, 16 May, 6:00pm-7:00pm; 15 May, 2:00pm-3:00pm, 6:00pm-7:00pm Reviewed by Lynne Morris
Suitable for age 15+ only.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Brian Capron delivers a wonderfully personal and exposed performance, in Gogol at the Manchester Street venue Latest Musicbar. A delicately crafted script by Richard Crane allows for interpretation, as the story leaps and hops absurdly between daily observations of the mundane, politics, dissatisfaction with life, love lost, fears for the future, and most frequently the horrors faced on a weekly basis: how to fill a Sunday.

5

	The Barcelo Brighton Old Ship Hotel (venue website) Comedy 9-12, 16-19, 23-26 May, 7:45pm-10:00pm Reviewed by Darren Taffinder
Suitable for age 15+ only.  Warning: Contains flashing lights.  Warning: Contains strong language.  World Premiere.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

If you like your comedy difficult, with a cutting political edge that makes you think long and hard afterwards about the emptiness of your life… then this isn’t the show for you. If you like Carry On films, innuendo, slapstick, laughing out loud and high-energy dance-offs, then I can’t recommend it high enough. And if there is one thing that I love, it’s a dance-off.

4

	The Old Courtroom (venue website) Theatre 24-27 May, 9:00pm-9:45pm Reviewed by Naomi Dixon
Suitable for age 18+ only.  Warning: Contains strong language.  World Premiere.

The Jump Through Hoops theatre company is bringing two pieces to this year’s Brighton Fringe, performed on separate dates but in the same venue and under a single entry in the programme.  I saw both plays at a preview night earlier in May, and can recommend each – though they’re very different in character and style.

5

	The Nightingale (venue website) Theatre 16-20 May, 8:30pm-9:25pm Reviewed by Naomi Dixon
Suitable for age 15+ only.  Warning: Contains strong language.

For five nights only, the Glasgow-based company Tumult In The Clouds brings to the Brighton Fringe two plays written and directed by Paddy Cunneen. Winners of the Brighton Fringe Award for Emerging Talent in 2011, they have once again proven their worth with this astounding production of Wee Andy.

3

	Laughing Horse @ The Temple (venue website) Comedy 14-16, 21-23 May, 9:30pm-10:30pm Reviewed by Darren Taffinder
Suitable for age 18+ only.  World Premiere.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

I have a lot in common with comedian Eden Rivers. We both got married on Caribbean islands. We both have wives who are successful in their careers. And we have both been stay-at-home dads – the difference being that he has two daughters when I wimped out with one. However, every so often I have moments of real doubt. If I were a proper dad, shouldn’t I have provided better for my family?

2

	The Eagle Bar Theatre 11-13, 15-19 May, 8:30pm-10:15pm Reviewed by Richard Stamp
Suitable for age 15+ only.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Sometimes, perhaps, you just have to be Irish.  Playwright Eddie Alford scored a Fringe hit with The M Boat last year, successfully evoking a 1950’s Guinness barge in the incongruous setting of a Brighton pub.  Unfortunately, the same trick hasn’t worked with Murphy’s Legacy; its satire of rural society in the early 1990’s simply isn’t accessible enough for a general Brighton audience, for all that the Irish diaspora among the crowd seemed to be enjoying the jokes.

4

	The Warren (venue website) Theatre 13-15 May, 6:00pm-7:15pm Reviewed by Richard Stamp
Parental Guidance. Under-17's must be accompanied by an adult.  Warning: Contains flashing lights.

We’ve all heard about Britain’s wartime Home Guard; but if Hitler had invaded in the dark days of 1940, our country had one further line of defence.  The hush-hush network of Auxiliary Units – otherwise known as the scallywags – were both ordinary people and secret soldiers, fully trained and ready to die in defence of a conquered land.  It’s no laughing matter.  But it’s a fitting back-story for this well-developed comedy, which remixes our most familiar wartime stereotypes into a fresh, entertaining and ultimately moving play.

3

	The Warren (venue website) Theatre 13 May, 3:00pm-4:00pm; 19-20 May, 4:30pm-5:30pm Reviewed by Mathilda Gregory
Family-friendly. Suitable for all ages.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

Adapting a Shakespeare play for 7-year-old children upwards sounds like a foolhardy task. Unless you’re planning to go all out and modernise the language (and possibly also make the main players cartoon lions), you’ve got a big barrier to getting the plot across.  Even most adults precede a trip to a Shakespeare play with a sneaky bit of research into the story.

3

	Laughing Horse @ The Quadrant (venue website) Comedy 8, 10-11 May, 5:00pm-5:50pm; 9 May, 10:30pm-11:20pm; 12 May, 2:30pm-3:20pm Reviewed by Mathilda Gregory
Suitable for age 18+ only.  Warning: Contains strong language.  World Premiere.  Free show. No ticket needed unless otherwise stated above.

Here’s an odd little show.  A double-header from Gareth Berliner – a comic known for his soulful stand up – and Kiruna Stamell, a disabled comedian and actor with dwarfism, who’s a familiar face from TV shows life Life’s Too Short and Cast Offs. Berliner and Stamell are a real-life couple, and this work-in-progress show is about that, really: their relationship.

4

	The Blind Tiger Club (venue website) Literature 9 May, 8:00pm-11:00pm Reviewed by Mathilda Gregory
Suitable for age 18+ only.  World Premiere.  2-for-1 tickets for Friends of the Fringe members.

This poetry showcase was built around the launch of a new booklet by Chris Parkinson, also called Fashion Tips for the Last Days.  The event mainly centred on Parkinson giving readings of his poems – so many in fact, he must have read out the entire book – joined in each of the show’s three sections by another poetry guest.