Edinburgh Fringe: the one-woman ones

Now, I’m wholly aware that ‘female’ is not a genre, but I wanted to highlight the wealth of female talent that is on show at the Fringe. These picks are just a drop in the ocean.

I’m A Phoenix, Bitch

Before I got to the Fringe, I was very much of the mind that performance art was not for me. How wrong I was. 

Bryony Kimmings’ exploration of her recovery from PTSD, which occurred after the birth of her son, who became gravely ill, is a stomach punch of a show. Even while singing a rather hilarious song about how women try to make men never leave after their first night together, satirising the ‘predatory woman’ stereotype, she sets the audience on edge. Having reassured us at the start that we are safe, just as her therapist does as she retraces her experiences, she keeps us in a state of tension until the closing line. 

Will Duke’s carefully crafted sets – including a gorgeous recreation of Bryony’s thatched Oxfordshire cottage in miniature – and video design helps her reveal her range through old-timey film personas, haunting songs and spectacular visual effects. But it never feels ‘too much’. 

The tension is increased by Bryony’s movement and repetition, as she paces the stage chanting ‘I’m not coming’ and obsessively lifts weights (suddenly her base outfit of sport gear makes sense), her ‘I’m strong’ mantra from her time in therapy echoing in our ears. The use of a voice modifier to create a deep, male tone which represents her inner monologue (much like the dark voice of depression in Caroline Horton’s mesmerising All Of Me, playing at Summerhall) brings the lasting impressions of her trauma into focus. 

Her manipulation of audience feeling by drip-feeding us information is what makes the show a winner. Her relationships with past, carefree Bryony, who opens the show dressed in a long, blonde wig and orange sequinned dress, and with her son Frank, feel initially lighthearted. The voice memos of funny tips to help Frank survive the apocalypse, which she records throughout the show, is at first merely evidence of the gentle bond between mother and son, until her trauma is gradually revealed (along with mini sets under white sheets, like furniture in a dilapidated house) and we realise he already has survived it. And so has she.

Pleasance Courtyard, until August 25

Algorithms

Sadie Clark’s tale of newly single bisexual woman Brooke's bid to find a date for her 30th birthday party is a heartwarming look at millennial dating – and the intimacy she creates with the audience while playing an array of characters is pure magic. 

Brooke works on compatibility algorithms for an online dating site, and as we bear witness to the dates she goes on, she has her comic timing down pat. However, the strongest thread is the candid exploration of her relationship with her overbearing mother. This lets Clark perfectly offset the funny moments with the empowering message at the heart of the play: ‘You do you’. 

While at times Clark’s clownlike expressions – emotion plastered onto her face – feel a tad well-worn, this cannot dent the spirited nature of her performance. She makes you root for Brooke, and by the end you want to grab a pastel-coloured balloon from the set and just dance.

Pleasance Courtyard, until August 26

Madame Ovary

Rosa Hesmondhalgh’s beautiful mixing of prose and poetry, and her powerful, startling transition between the two, was a highlight of my Fringe. I had such a bodily, visceral reaction to her words (likely heightened by the heat of the full house – full for good reason). This blending is what Rosa does most artfully – the humour with the tragedy, the cold and clinical with human warmth.

She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 23, and at the heart of the surprisingly feel-good show is the thanks she gives to the support she received while undergoing chemotherapy, upending her worry that she would never find love. While many of us thankfully cannot connect to the central topic, Rosa still ensures that the show feels wonderfully relatable, with her portrayal of the struggle of online dating and the search for a successful career after getting an arts degree. She puts multimedia to good use, with tidy messages to 'Tinder Boy' contrasting with the messy representation of Googling symptoms that later fills the screen.

The opening resolutions from the year she was diagnosed come full circle – her dreams of making good art, of looking after her body, and of getting her priorities right. These priorities – or rather her understanding of them – have naturally altered by the end, a fact Rosa reveals with the merest of changes in expression, and emphasises with a poignant closing video montage featuring a cameo from a certain documentary-maker...

Pleasance Dome, until August 26

Collapsible

Breffni Holahan breathlessly rattles through Margaret Perry’s words, crouching uncomfortably on a plinth for the duration as dust from it falls to the floor – the perfect symbol of her precarious, panicky existence. Despite a few slip-ups (inevitable in a show of this nature), Breffni’s performance as newly single and jobless Essie is staggering. Her mantra-like recital of the list of words describing her, put together to help with her job search, grips you. She hopes to find a sense of belonging and identity in them, but you are jolted out of believing that can work each time she is unable to finish the sentence ‘Feet firmly on the ground’, as the sound of crashing rocks plays out. 

When her ex-girlfriend points out that these are simply generic job application words – those you are meant to define yourself with in a society which lays out the expected, stable path of a career and marriage – she cannot handle her security blanket being taken from her. As Essie snatches the list back, we see a chink of violence that sits unnervingly under the surface, echoed by her ex’s testimony – her troubles run deeper still. 

The beauty of Collapsible lies in the images created by Perry to convey Essie’s hopelessness – a body full of stones, the desire to slip into someone else’s skin – and Alison Neighbour’s crumbling set. But as the lights go down, you sense that her cry for help might just be answered.

Assembly Roxy, until August 25

Sexy Lamp

A woman sits with a lampshade on her head, as sound bytes of well-known films treating women with... contempt feels like too weak a word... play in the background. Aptly wordless, she uses cue cards to note that if a female character in a film can be replaced with a sexy lamp without altering the plot, it fails writer Kelly Sue DeConnick's sexy lamp test. 

Katie Arnstein's humorous ukulele-based examination of what we might have expected when booking the show (it shall not be sexy, nor include much in the way of lighting chit-chat) takes us nicely into her journey to becoming an actor, and her desire to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz – the film that led her to this career. 

But we’re soon shown a darker side to the industry – after all, the only lead paid less than Judy Garland was Toto the dog. We see the horrors of a ‘part-time full-time job’ got via an agency that was sickeningly also an escort agency; an agent who tells her there aren’t many roles for ‘tall girls’; and an audition she is forced to do topless. This deliberately jars with Katie's joyous, playful songs, juxtaposing an actor’s desire to play with the harsh reality of being a female in the job. 

Yet, in the aftermath of the #MeToo era, Katie chooses to end on a hopeful note, with a moving, empowering tale of how she helped a woman being harassed on the Tube: finally, she is Dorothy. Her plea to the audience to see more female-led shows, after telling us of the struggle to just get to the Fringe as a woman, sits on my chest – it feels more urgent than ever.

Pleasance Courtyard, until August 26