First shows announced in Greenwich Pick of the Fringe

I’ve often written in this column about the importance of fringe festivals, of opportunities for early career theatre makers to share their work with a captive audience of theatregoers, industry peers and press. Edinburgh, Brighton, Camden and the growing number of small and regional festivals occupy a crucial position in the theatre ecology of this country – so at Greenwich Theatre we have decided to devote October to showcasing work from a range of those festivals, to give another chance for audiences to see the work that is being made at the grassroots of the industry.

The programme launches on 4&5 October with two performances of Alex Wanebo’s play Ever Yours, inspired by the real smash and grab theft of a Van Gogh painting in 2020. It centres on Olivia, a young woman whose only companion is a painting she stole in a desperate demonstration of love for her late partner. But the painting comes with a surprise – the ghost of the man who painted it. As she does her best to hide the stolen art from a suspecting curator, her girlfriend’s family pressures her to hide the true nature of their relationship.

In Paul Vale’s 5-star review for The Stage, he described Carson McCalley’s direction of Ever Yours as “whip-smart… catches every moment of humour, but leans in to the more wistful elements of the story with obvious compassion.”

Then on 6 October, US based Brilliant at Breakfast presents two performances of Lobster Bisque, a high-energy farce full of slapstick, clowning, innovative storytelling and outrageous characters in over-the-top situations – all performed by two actors and a menagerie of puppets.

Bringing work from overseas for a short run like this is never simple, but I am genuinely excited to have made this possible. The Scotsman, one of the most influential news outlets for Edinburgh Fringe reviews, described the show as “written in the tenor of a classic English farce… deliciously, deliriously funny.”

Then, for one performance on 9 October, Less Theatre presents the new folk tale The Tree And Her Tale, about the friendship between a Boy and a storytelling tree. Each day the Tree tells her tales to the Boy; stories of adventures, friendship, love and life. Everything is perfect, until the cruel winds arrive and rid the Tree of all her leaves and their stories, leaving her broken and bare. It is now down to the Boy to protect his friend at all costs.

We were proud to be able to support Less Theatre in the development stages for this show, and are delighted to now welcome the finished piece back to Greenwich after a sell-out run in Edinburgh.

More shows will be announced here next week, or audiences can find us online for the full line-up. With work from several other festivals and more international shows coming, including the true story of the woman who went undercover, pretending to have a new unknown disease in early 2020 and testing the hospitals of New York, this is set to be a rich celebration of some of the most exciting emerging theatremakers sharing their work across the fringe festivals of the UK.

Picture credit: Alex Wanebo’s Ever Yours, courtesy of Vis-a-Vis Ensemble