Whether this is a Ed Fringe common occurrence, my naive first time attendee is unsure, but this year there is a ‘Death Season’. Many productions have taken this theme and created theatre in response to the stimulus. And also for some great causes.

Glass Half Full Theatre’s How To Save A Life is no different. It sees the story of  Melissa – a young 20’s female, seemingly with her life all ready and raring to go, suddenly finding out she has cancer. What follows is her journey, and those of her boyfriend and best friend in wake of the news.

Melissa is such a loveable character. I kind of what to be her. She loves glitter. She’s confident, fun, with amazing hair and a lovely personality. It is no wonder she catches the eye of a handsome man who wants to be with her forever and becomes best friends with a girl who is wild but equally as loveable.

We get to know Melissa; we laugh and joke with her. We associate ourselves with her, with her ideals and her life, and if we do not have this already, we want it. We want to funny, beautiful personality of Melissa, a caring and adorning partner, a best friend who is mad but would do anything for you. So when we reach crisis point and the C word is issued, we feel even more for Melissa; we feel her pain, her disbelief and her struggle.

Melissa was our constant character, and rightly so – this was her story. And when we soon became her friends, privileged to live her life with her, she makes you begin to think about your own life, your own loved ones and your health and how important all of these are. Who would have thought such a beautiful soul would lead such a tragic life!?

How To Save A Life is hilarious, but heart wrenching. Not many a production would reduce me to tears but as the lights come up, I find myself in a snotty, painful and wet mess, wishing this had not happened to Melissa. This is one of the best productions at this year’s Fringe – A Must See!

(2 / 5)

Think back to the Agatha Christies. Miss Marple, Poirot.
Think even to the extent of Sherlock Holmes. These crime stories, full of
mystery and far fetched narratives. Number Please felt very reminiscent of these.

When a telephone operator hears a murder on the telephone,
she is dragged into a world of secrecy, double crossing and spies. Enter train
chases, over the top character’s, and London (because a murder always happens
in London and alien invasion, but that is Doctor Who and off topic).

This female lead company came to bring us fun, frivolities
and intrigue. And they execute some of this. I am glad that it was meant to be ‘hammed
up’ as the characters seemed quite one dimensional, and my worry was for the
stereotyping of women. Saving this, the 1950’s styled era saw a strong female
lead, solving the murder and uncovering the mystery.

While I had a lot of fun and enjoyed their performance, I
could not help but wonder whether it was meant to be unintentionally of an
amateur persuasion or whether this was the point; a metta/ironic take on the absurdity
and predictability of these genres.

What cannot be argued is that the performers put their all
into their performances. Every facial expression was executed, every pun and
the fact they high-kneed ran for a good 5 minutes non stop is something to be
admired.

Number Please is a fun, easy going, easy watching show. If you want to just sit back and have a little giggle, this is for you.

(2 / 5)

With the current climate, and the news of a new, and not
much wanted Prime Minister, a political play is just what we need.

Twice Over compares the political climate when our only two
women Prime Minister’s have be in office; with the use of two women, both in
their 20’s but at different time points (the 80’s and 2017) we see how ideals
have changed, how attitudes have changed yet the confidence in politics
remaining the same.

This production is very simple; two performers, a guitar,
basic lighting and basic set. For something with intricate and complex issues
in its narrative, this simplicity is all that is really needed to bring the
concept across.

Part poetry, part scripted, part verbatim, I found it
difficult to follow.  The writing was
interesting and I loved the approach taken, but I couldn’t define the
difference in these writing styles and suddenly we would be hearing rhyming
couplets, the next an almost political speech. If there was an added dramatic
change to these, whether this was performative or even a lighting change,  it would have complimented it more and gave
more complexity.

The music was beautiful – again, simple but really effective
and gave a nice break to the very hard going narration.

I really applaud the Twice Over production for taking on such an important subject, triumphing women and feminism. There is a way to go with this production, with a little tweaking, it could be a really hard-hitting production. Never the less, with politics in the current times, it is definitely worth seeing.

(3 / 5)

Sometimes it’s quite nice to see a celebrity on stage. In Wales, they feel like they are in abundance on the Welsh Theatre scene, with the pool of the industry in this country being small. So it was a surprise to watch For All I Care, and not realising until after that the performer was Hannah Daniel of Keeping Faith fame.

This surprise is a good surprise. I entered the performance
and found myself so engrossed that it was not until I read later on that day of
who she was; a performer who I (only too recently) had just seen in a huge
binge of Keeping Faith series 1 and 2.

For All I Care is a one woman show looking at mental
health, Wales and the magic that is the NHS. Daniel takes on around 6
characters in total – we see majority of the play focussing on the relationship
between Clara and Nyri; two very different women leading very different lives.
Clara is a young woman suffering with her mental health, and attempted suicide.
Nyri is a mental health nurse who tries to help Clara, but she is not totally
altogether herself. Daniel also takes on other intermittent characters such as
Marco, the mental health Doctor, Nyri’s son, Alex the younger man Nyri sleeps
with and ‘The Devil’; Clara’s controlling crime boss.

Daniel does a brilliant job of chopping and changing these
characters – to help with this the basic staging has 3 microphones hanging from
the ceiling. She picks these up when another character comes in to the scene,
into the main character’s story. This creates a barrier; it is so disassociated
and almost hyper-real that it works; it suspends our disbelief and we see that
other person, almost as if another actor had walked in. My only criticism is
that we know Daniel is capable of more, and for me, it felt like there needed
to be more definition of each character, whether this meant more of a physical
change, more pronounced vocal differences or both.

The narrative itself is a fresh take on mental health; with
this once taboo subject being encouraged more into main media and society,
there’s many a play I have seen where the medical professional is clean nosed
and almost angelic. Clara has real problems; real psychological issues. And while
Nyri may not be to this level, her life is not perfect; she still makes
mistakes, she has her own issues and her own past. She is more relatable and
more likeable than other productions that make us almost shake our head at the
lack of realism to a medical character.

For All I Care is a lovely piece; it provides a fresh narrative, and really has the ability to showcase a performer as a solo talent, with some minor tweaking.