Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Trump, Diogenes, the Mitfords and Malaysian comedy: Edinburgh Fringe round-up

If Rizal Van Geyzel hit the London circuit, he’d be busy every night of the week

Rizal Van Geyzel races through his 60-minute set peppering the material with snatches of Chinese, Tamil and Malay
issue 19 August 2023

The Mitfords is a superb one-woman show by Emma Wilkinson Wright who focuses her attention on Unity, Diana and Jessica. In the early 1930s, Unity became Hitler’s lover and she lived in a luxurious Munich apartment confiscated from a wealthy Jewish family. The Führer, whom she nicknamed ‘Wolfie’, gave her the pearl-handled revolver with which she shot herself in the head shortly after Britain’s declaration of war. To carry out this bizarre act of self-sacrifice she chose a favourite spot in Munich’s English Garden where she used to sunbathe naked. In wartime Britain, Diana was held in Holloway prison and she complained bitterly about being separated from her baby boy, Max, and about the hefty sandbags that prevented daylight from reaching her cell. The lack of sun seems to have caused her more distress than the lack of son. Her sister, Jessica, tried to embrace Bohemian bliss in Rotherhithe but she struggled to cope without servants.

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