Buxton Fringe shines spotlight on prize-winning performers

Prize-winning performers are bringing new drama to the Buxton Fringe which launches today (Wednesday, July 7).
The Virtuous Burglar will be presented by award-winning company Sudden Impulse.The Virtuous Burglar will be presented by award-winning company Sudden Impulse.
The Virtuous Burglar will be presented by award-winning company Sudden Impulse.

Easy Company present a play entitled Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons. Speech is limited by law to 140 words a day, can a relationship survive without the building blocks of conversation?

A fast-paced comedy about wooden characters forever trapped in an enchanted cuckoo clock is the theme of Tempus Fugit, presented by Nathan & Ida.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Master storyteller Polis Loizou airs Mr Fox, a wicked folk tale about a headstrong young woman, her secretive fiance and his deadly secret.

Award-winning Sudden Impulse stage the much-loved Kes at the Old Clubhouse and take Dario Fo’s comic farce, The Virtuous Burglar, to Buxton United Reformed Church.

Jekyll & Hyde is reborn in a one-woman show from Heather-Rose Andrews while vampire horror is lampooned by one man playing 18 roles In Dracula! One Bloody Fang After Another.

There are several powerful explorations of inner lives to be found on the Fringe. Qweerdog Theatre presents a darkly humorous, intimate thriller about a loss of faith in For I Have Sinned, in which a weary priest is eager to give a desperate man succour. Eddy Brimson’s Naughty Boy is a powerfully performed journey from mental institution to a hedonistic weekend of sex, drugs and violence which jangles the nerves. When you’ve witnessed the worst things imaginable, the world can never be the same again; Battle Cry from Madam Renards is a solo piece based on a true story of a former soldier battling PTSD.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Buxton’s REC Youth Theatre Company bring four shows to the Fringe this year. The Senior Company are up at St Thomas More School with Ryan Craig’s How to Think the Unthinkable, an adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy of Greece’s most famous teenager, Antigone, fighting for what she believes is right in the aftermath of a bloody civil war. Also up at the school, the Junior Company compete for the title of ‘Britain’s Brainiest Child’ in Bright. Young. Things. You can also find the Junior Company performing Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox outdoors in Grinlow Woods, and the youngest REC company will be up in the woods as well, waiting for Peter Pan to return in The Lost Kids.

Some favourite shows return to the Fringe this year. Patricia Hartshone performs a colourful, comic and poignant solo cabaret, Dressing Up Dietrich. Ray Castleton brings back Without Malice or Ill Will, about a miner who became a police officer and how he then faced his mates across the picket lines in 1984/85. The misfiring magic, trademark fez and quick-fire gags are all there in Just Like That! The Tommy Cooper Show.

Before Covid had even reared its ugly head, Buxton Drama League had entered the Fringe’s first online event, and they are back with another original comedy audio play, A Whiter Shade of Pale, about ghostly uninvited guests in an ancestral homes. Ashgate Heritage Arts have a new version of their murder mystery musical online. In Crooked Spire, John Carpenter arrives in 1360 Chesterfield to build a windlass and erect a new church spire, but the master craftsman is murdered, and intrigue follows.

For further information, go to www.buxtonfringe.org.uk

Related topics: