Fringe theatre reviews: Adam Riches: The Captain | A Dark Line Upstairs | Epic Economics: What would you protest about today? | ArounD the WorlD in 80 ToyS | Krystyna Hutchinson: Congrats On Not Killing Yourself! | Dead Wrong

Adam Riches | Claire Haigh

THEATRE

Adam Riches: The Captain ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

Veteran character comedian Adam Riches took a theatrical turn at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe with Jimmy, his inspired one-man bio-play about tennis player Jimmy Connors. This August, he has a foot in both sections of the programme: every afternoon at Underbelly Cowgate, he is transforming into pompous comedy reviewer Caliban Munroe in The Critic’s Way, while every morning at Summerhall, he is performing more seriously – but still quite sillily – in The Captain.

The show tells the story of Captain Matthew Webb, who, in August 1875, became the first person to swim across the English Channel, from the perspective of his coach Fred Beckwith.

Riches enters as Beckwith. The date – 24 July 1883 – is scrawled on a blackboard. Webb’s corpse lies shrouded on a gurney on the otherwise empty stage. Riches ponders it ruefully, then launches into his story, beginning with his own background as a pioneering swimming instructor at Lambeth Baths, remembering his first meeting with determined Salopian Webb, recalling Webb’s failed first try at swimming the channel, recounting his successful second attempt, then lamenting the press-driven indignity that drove him to his death only eight years later.

It is a rollicking yarn, stuffed with detail and sprinkled with humour, and Riches delivers it with great gusto. He gets the audience involved, too, answering questions, practicing strokes and chanting along with Webb’s epic exploits. There are some powerful undercurrents here, too, about masculinity, obsession and athleticism – and what happens when the afterglow of achievement fades. In this, it is similar to The Distance, Ben Norris’ quasi-autobiographical solo show about elite long-distance running, which is also running at Summerhall this festival.

Let’s hope Riches continues to plough a furrow in the theatre section of the programme in future years. First with Jimmy, now with The Captain, he is showing a real knack for sports storytelling. Fergus Morgan

THEATRE

A Dark Line Upstairs ★★★★

ZOO Playground (Venue 186) until 30 August

Matilde Vigna’s evocative solo show weaves two timelines: a catastrophic 1951 flood that submerges the Polesine region of northern Italy, and Scotland in 2021, where a woman packing up yet another home resolves, almost defiantly, to leave nothing behind. Vigna slips fluidly from one to the other as she navigates the difference between moving and fleeing. Small tics and flinching head movements surface across both eras; bodies remember what the mind would rather forget.

The staging distinguishes its two worlds through light – 1951 rendered dark, 2021 lit – and Vigna’s own posture and movement; the shift between them is achieved with remarkable subtlety. 1951 evokes a man wading waist-deep through water, leading cattle against the tide, animals abandoned, killed or drowned, their moaning can be heard from somewhere upstairs, we’re told. 2021 brings mordant one-liners (“there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes”), and the observation that a mortgage, too, is a contract only death releases you from.

Refrains build like scar tissue: “it doesn’t rain, it pours,” a freezing woman clings to a tree, we learn the distinction between a standard goodbye suitcase and a goodbye-forever one. Occasionally the two timelines blur together by design, mostly to good effect, and a clearer signal could help to strengthen transitions between them. In 2021, Vigna wonders aloud whether a river is as harmless as it looks. The 1951 scenes have already answered her: every house in the village still carries a dark line upstairs, marking how high the water once rose, each one a wound the whole community continues to live inside. Josephine Balfour-Oatts

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THEATRE

Epic Economics: What would you protest about today? ★★★

The Annexe at Paradise in The Vault (29) until 30 August

Now that Dimis Michaelides has retired from his high-pressure career at the World Bank, he has time on his hands to size up some of history’s most influential economists for us in this educational but always entertaining performance.

Michaelides weaves compelling anecdotes of resistance and compliance from his own career as an economist around an original soundscape of rearranged quotes by the likes of David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Hayek, which he then uses to ground his reflections on the pitfalls of late-stage capitalism. While his flashbacks reveal that his main concern as a student was protesting on the side with the hottest girls, in his retirement he is clearly more principled, and aims to arouse a revolutionary spirit in the audience by breaking out into warbling renditions of famous protest songs. A little directionless at times, but Michaelides inspires the feeling of being back in the classroom with an eclectic, slightly avuncular school teacher; it is unexpectedly enjoyable.

The show’s ending nicely leavens Michaelides’ doom-inspiring reflections on our justification of inequality and prioritisation of individual advantage. He invites us to write protest placards of our own. These are then displayed around the stage to an uplifting effect. Michaelides certainly proves economics doesn’t have to be dull. Lilia Foster

THEATRE

ArounD the WorlD in 80 ToyS ★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 31 August

The story of cinematic effects pioneer Georges Méliès, who was unexpectedly found working in a children’s toy shop in his later years, bookends a Jules Verne-inspired colonialist adventure in which children’s toys appropriating other countries and cultures are, in turn, appropriated by Thaddeus Phillips to take us on his own part-theatrical, part-cinematic journey. Using what has become a classic Fringe set-up -- a miniature set on stage in a box that is live filmed (in this case with two-cameras to give multiple perspectives), the show ticks off destinations including Iran, India and Yemen – many of which it’s impossible to think of, today, without the present-day conflicts and human rights violations going on in them.

Not that anything too geographically specific, even from a historical perspective, is revealed about where we end up. It quickly becomes clear that the story is predominantly a giant list of Grand Tour-style locations to tick off, with the toys from by-gone eras operating as props for Phillips to demonstrate his ingenious model making and magic skills. A series of loosely stitched together holiday snapshots build up to a beautiful use of chiaroscuro in a final scene – ‘flight to the stars’ – in which a ballon takes off and leaves the empty nostalgia behind. Sally Stott

THEATRE

Krystyna Hutchinson: Congrats On Not Killing Yourself! ★★

Gilded Balloon Patter House (Venue 24) until 31 August

Krystyna Hutchinson is unflinching and raw, but often unnerving, in her solo TED Talk style Fringe comedy that re-enacts, in detail, the dark traumas of her abusive childhood. Intended to reclaim her story, her nonchalant approach that parodies her estranged mother, and dramatises her DNA paternity test, might distance her audience from her heartbreaking story.

Hutchinson found fame whilst hosting a sex-positive podcast, and her origins in social media unfortunately shine through. The script is all-revealing, and is frequently interrupted by amateurishly edited footage so that it feels somewhat like a long TikTok rather than a live Fringe show. Still, Krystyna’s story is inspirational, and her final triumph, that she’s indeed broken the cycle of abuse, is heartfelt and affirming. Roisin McMullan

THEATRE

Dead Wrong ★★

theSpace Triplex (Venue 38) until 29 August

Murder has rarely been treated so casually as in Jaimee Doyle’s curiously dull drama. Nolan (Rio Redwood-Sawyer) and his best friend Fiadh (Doyle) return home after a ritzy dinner party during which she apparently murdered the Prime Minister’s son. Fiadh is remarkably unfazed by this rather extraordinary turn of events, Nolan much less so and trying to figure out the whys, wherefores and what have yous of the case results in a punishingly tedious, unconvincing conversation where information is doled out at a snail’s pace. It’s well acted — particularly by Redwood-Sawyer who makes the most of unpromising material — but it is quite remarkably boring. Rory Ford

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