What is the Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a sabbatical, a pit stop, a pause-and-check-the-map opportunity for actors who don’t quite know where to go next. Alison Skilbeck has written a ‘serio-comic celebration’ of Shakespeare and her performance attracts a decent crowd for a show that starts at noon. She plays a fruity-voiced thesp, Artemis Turret, who delivers lectures about the Bard’s older females to groups of layabout pensioners gathered in a scout hut. It’s pure Joyce Grenfell. Good fun, too, but without much potential beyond the fringe.
Dominic Holland’s show, Eclipsed, is about his life as a fallen comedy god. In the 1990s he was on telly all the time and he accepted the royal command to perform at Prince Charles’s 50th birthday party. Now 50 himself, Holland is treading water. Or, as he puts it, ‘I’m at the free fringe doing a show which I introduce with the words, “Good afternoon”.’ The complication is that Holland’s son, Tom, has overtaken his dad and is busy making movies. He’s Spider-Man. Holland offers a smart and witty guide to the pitfalls of having a superstar in the family.
Trumpageddon has a great title and a sensational opening. Play-goers are ushered into their seats by a twitchy secret service agent in a menacing black suit. Outside a chopper approaches, thud-thud-thud. The chopper lands. A door swings open. Lights blaze. Smoke swirls. Chords of stirring music soar. And here comes the president, whooping and waving at the audience with contemptuous vanity. He puffs out his chest and greets members of the crowd with handshakes and comments, insulting the men and peering down the women’s cleavages. And he’s hilarious, for a few minutes, but this imposture quickly palls. The show seems careless and unloved.
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