The Newcastle Fringe arrives

Published: 23 July 2021
Reporter: Peter Lathan

The Newcastle Fringe Festival
39 Horses
Me and My Doll
Good Grief

The Newcastle Fringe Festival, produced by Alphabetti Theatre and a team of local freelancers, takes place from 27 July to 7 August at the theatre.

Consisting of theatre, comedy and music, the Fringe runs alongside Invigorate, a series of workshops for people in the industry. Invigorate workshops will all be presented via Zoom while performances will be both live and streamed. In keeping with Alphabetti’s normal policy, all events are Pay What You Feel and must be booked in advance.

Among the theatre performances are:

39 Horses
Izaak Gledhill
A 15-minute show for up to 4 people—in a taxi. Described as “an immersive, lip syncing comedic journey” about what taxi drivers experience day to day.
(Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays: various times.)

Me and My Doll
Paperback Theatre
When workaholic Kate is 'gifted' a blow-up-boyfriend by her colleagues she keeps it as an act of defiance, but soon...
(27 July at 7:30)

rose carved in rain
gobscure
we barely survived a homeless hostel after our worst sectioning. rose carved in rain draws on childhood wisdoms and big-kid dissent in a highly visual performance. we all need our dreams back.
(28 July at 7:30)

as british as a watermelon
Film stream
mandla rae/Switchflicker Productions
mandla rae has a selective memory and they are scrambling to piece together their life. as british as a watermelon questions what it means to belong through exploring mandla’s fragmented asylum and migration memories.
(29 July at 7:30)

Muslim First Dates
Other Stories
Stuck in coffee shop in Newcastle, Jemima has five dates back to back in between her shift at the hospital. Arranged by her mum, her mum’s friends and the Imam from the mosque, Jemima has her first experience of Muslim dating.
(30 July at 6:00)

[whalesong]
xvelastin
A human-computer duet about the noise in the oceans inspired by the voices in the sea—incorporating underwater singing, deep time, hacking, machine learning, a lot of bubbles—told from the perspective of a sort of queer cyborg whale.
(3 August at 7:30)

Chop, Dissolve, Burn
WANCS: Richard Boggie & Lisette Auton
A black comedy "that will have you squirming in your seat." This play pokes fun at society’s attitudes towards disability, whilst exposing the terrifying truth about the impacts of inequality on disabled people’s lives.
(4 August at 7:30)

Retrained
In Bed with my Brother
"As per government advice, we’ve retrained. We’ve spent the last year developing some skills. We’ve shaken hands with Rishi Sunak and promised him we’d show all you thespians how much more employable we are now. For one night only, In Bed With My Brother will present something so meaningless and completely chaotic that everyone will leave in agreement that theatre is dead. There will be prologues and narrative threads and several intervals. And they’ll all be boring. But we’ll still charge you 50 quid for an ice cream. [Exeunt] pursued by a career in cyber bay-beeeee."
(5 August at 7:30)

Good Grief
Ugly Bucket
A dying man’s wish: for Ugly Bucket to create a show about death. Will it be subtle? Will it be sophisticated? Probably not, but it’s his funeral. Literally. The multi-award-winning company Ugly Bucket processes the death of a friend in the only way they know how: through "a high-energy maelstrom of clowning, movement, verbatim and thumping techno tracks."
(7 August at 7:30)

Full details of all theatre, comedy, music and workshops, including how to book, are available on the Newcastle Fringe web site.

*Some links, including Amazon, Stageplays.com, ATG Tickets, LOVEtheatre, BTG Tickets, Ticketmaster, The Ticket Factory, LW Theatres and QuayTickets, are affiliate links for which BTG may earn a small fee at no extra cost to the purchaser.

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