Gaza genocide to cost of living crisis Fringe Festival about oppressed

The National

14 hours ago

The initial trio of festivals came in the aftermath of a terrible world war. They spoke to the need of people in Scotland, across the UK and internationally for a cultural renaissance that would express the resilience and the hopes for the future of a humanity traumatised by conflict.
[[Edinburgh]] – which was often described as the 'Athens of the north' – was the perfect place for this renaissance, on account of both its architectural splendour and its relatively small size. Ironically – given the festivals' emergence as a response to the six years of military carnage that had just been unleashed on humanity – the August celebrations were joined in 1950 by the Royal [[Edinburgh]] Military Tattoo.
The Tattoo has certainly had its admirers. In 1997, the governing Labour group on Glasgow City Council was embroiled in accusations of corruption, including, as The Independent newspaper reported, outrage over abuse of the Council's Common Good Fund to pay for 'a fleet of limousines to take 20 councillors and their spouses to the [[Edinburgh]] Tattoo' the previous year.
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However, to others – myself included – there is something pretty weird and unsettling about a carnival of militarism being established just five years after a war and a Holocaust that took the lives of between 70 million and 85 million people (more than 3% of the global population). As the English poet John Hegley wrote: 'to you / it may be taboo / to poo-poo / the tattoo / but to me / the tattoo / is something to say ta-ta to.'
Now, in 2025, Edinburgh's festival programmes take place in another period of catastrophe. This time, however, humanity looks to the future, not with hope, but with trepidation.
In Gaza, the State of Israel continues to slaughter and starve those in a civilian population who have, miraculously, managed to survive the relentless genocide – by means of mass military destruction and inhuman blockade – of somewhere in the region of 60,000 people. Some experts believe that the civil war in Sudan – a conflict in which various regional and global powers have an undeclared hand – has led to death on a similar scale to that in [[Gaza]].
The Democratic Republic of Congo is embroiled in a horribly bloody conflict in which literally dozens of militias are involved. From Limassol to Los Angeles, the climate catastrophe sends raging fires through the obstinate objections of moronic and/or venal science deniers, including, most notably, the president of the United States.
Across the world, countries that are – or, in some cases, were – democracies are witnessing the most dangerous rise of the far-right since the 1930s. Some are already in the hands of semi-fascist or fascist demagogues: think Donald Trump in the US, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Türkiye and Narendra Modi in India.
(Image: Anadolu via Getty Images)
Others are facing a deeply worrying resurgence of far-right and fascist forces. These range from the unreconstructed neo-Nazis of the National Rally in France, to Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders's hideous 'Party of Freedom' in the Netherlands, Chega in Portugal and Reform UK in the nations of the British state.
Artists tend to be people of conscience. By and large, they are the type of people who choose to observe and respond to the world around them.
Those who see art as a mere refuge from the world – rather than a crucial means of engaging with humanity – are in a small minority. It is inevitable, therefore, that – this year in particular – audiences at Edinburgh's festivals will find a lot of work that addresses itself to the precarious condition of the human race and the planet on which we live.
Perhaps the clearest expression of artists' desire to respond to the current omnicrisis is the mini-festival entitled Welcome To The Fringe, Palestine (Portobello Town Hall, August 12 to 15). Organised and programmed by a stalwart group of Scotland-based artists – including the Egyptian dramatist Sara Shaarawi and the acclaimed Scottish playwright David Greig – the programme offers four days of Palestinian theatre, dance, comedy, storytelling, music, poetry and food.
It has taken a great collective effort – including a lot of voluntary labour – to make the Palestinian showcase happen. As Shaarawi says: 'Art and theatre have always played a role in humanising narratives and in resisting oppression … It's more urgent than ever now to reach out and lift up our Palestinian friends and colleagues, at a time where they are facing so much censorship, harassment and violence.
'We would not have been able to organise [Welcome To The Fringe, Palestine] without the immense support and donated labour, resources and skills as well as monetary donations of various communities in Scotland … We cannot wait to share this brilliant programme of Palestinian performances in Portobello this August, and hope that the public joins us in welcoming Palestinian artists and celebrating Palestinian life!'
The four-day programme is packed with fascinating events. Performance artist Fadi Murad's piece Flux In This Forgotten Farm (August 12) is certainly one of them.
Invoking the elements and the human body (in all its resilience and vulnerability), this work promises to be a subtle and resonating contemplation of the human condition in general and the Palestinian reality (in which unspeakably violent oppression collides with unimaginable pride and determination) in particular.
Over on the Fringe programme of the always exciting Summerhall venue, Palestinian dancer and choreographer Farah Saleh presents her performance lecture Balfour Reparations (August 13 to 25). The piece is set in a fictional 2045, 20 years after the UK Government has agreed to pay reparations to the Palestinian people.
The production obviously requires considerable and very willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, given that the Starmer government, far from issuing a historic apology to the Palestinians, is currently complicit in their genocide. However, Saleh's imagined scenario is a means of engaging with the wretched history of the UK state – especially that of the Scottish Tory politician Arthur Balfour – where Palestine is concerned.
Balfour it was who, as foreign secretary of the British government that held a governing 'mandate' in Palestine, made the fateful 'Balfour Declaration' of 1917. The declaration, which supported the Zionist proposal to establish a so-called 'Jewish state' within Palestine, served as the basis for the violent dispossession and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias in the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948.
From the past, present and future of Israeli apartheid in Palestine to an acclaimed adaptation of a classic tale created in post-apartheid South Africa, Faustus In Africa! (Royal Lyceum, August 20 to 23) is the work of celebrated Cape Town-based Handspring Puppet Company (the people behind the much-loved, life-sized puppets in War Horse).
The production – in which Faustus, who sells his soul to the Devil, goes on African safari – has wowed audiences, critics and awards juries since it premiered in 1995. It arrives at the EIF at a time when – from the hideous wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the state repression of the anti-corruption movement in Kenya – its themes are strikingly relevant.
Handspring – whose output includes the brilliant Ubu And The Truth Commission – are renowned for creating work that combines intelligent storytelling, sharp political insight, powerful performances and superb puppets. Faustus In Africa! is certain to be a highlight of next month's festivities.
Also part of the EIF's theatre programme is James Graham's satire Make It Happen (Festival Theatre, July 30 to August 9). Starring two of Scotland's finest actors – Brian Cox (as the ghost the famous Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith) and Sandy Grierson (as the disgraced banker Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin) – the play is a fictional take on the extraordinary rise and catastrophic collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland (which was, in 2008, the biggest bank on the planet).
If we want to know the roots of the current, much-vaunted cost of living crisis, we have to go back to the banking crisis of 17 years ago. A co-production between the [[Edinburgh]] International Festival, the National [[Theatre]] of Scotland and Dundee Rep, this world premiere – which is directed by the Rep's artistic director Andrew Panton – boasts a large and impressive cast of Scottish acting talent.
Edinburgh in August remains, of course, a huge cultural smorgasbord for the artistically ravenous. Selecting what to sample from the vast array on offer can be devilishly difficult.
However, one's past experience and the track records of particular venues or artists can provide helpful pointers. This year, I'm looking forward to Consumed (July 31 to August 24), which plays as part of the Fringe programme of the famous home of new writing the Traverse Theatre.
The play – which emerged amid the Covid pandemic and won the 2021 Women's Prize for Playwriting – comes from the pen of Northern Irish dramatist Karis Kelly. Only now receiving its world premiere, the drama – which brings together four generations of women from the North of Ireland – is set during 'a 90th birthday party that no-one seems to want.'
The piece is co-produced by: London-based new writing company Paines Plough; the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry; Sheffield Theatres and the Women's Prize for Playwriting. It is directed by Katie Posner of Paines Plough.
Posner and her co-artistic director, Charlotte Bennett, say of the play: 'We distinctly remember calling each other after we first read Consumed to share that we had both been howling with laughter, moved and shocked all within the first 10 pages.
'We love the unpredictability of this script, the metaphor that sits at the heart of the story and the way it centralises women's stories across four generations.'
If Kelly's piece is a potential highlight of the Traverse programme, so, too, is Rift (July 31 to August 24), the latest play by acclaimed American dramatist Gabriel Jason Dean. Presented by New Jersey-based company Luna Stage and Richard Jordan Productions, in association with the Traverse, it brings together a politically progressive author with his brother, a convicted murderer and leading figure in a far-right, white supremacist organisation.
Inspired by Dean's relationship with his own brother, the play seems bound to provide a fascinating window onto the dangerous polarisation of contemporary US society.
Elsewhere on the Fringe, I am intrigued by The Nature Of Forgetting (Pleasance Courtyard, August 9 to 23) by Theatre Re. The Hampshire-based company's show has attracted considerable acclaim for its emotive and memorable contemplation, not only of the anguish of memory loss, but also the liberation of living in the moment.
Italian newspaper La Repubblica described the production as 'extremely profound, poetic and communicative'. Rooted in the finest European traditions of physical theatre, the piece promises to be a reverberating visual spectacle.
Talking of great physical and visual theatre, Scotland's own Ramesh Meyyappan – a wonderfully creative Deaf theatremaker who hails from Singapore – performs his deeply affecting piece Last Rites (Pleasance Courtyard, August 18 to 24). A contemplation of the grief of a Deaf son whose recently deceased father never learned Sign Language, it is a beautiful and memorable theatre work.
If you are taking kids to the festival, you might want to consider Pekku (ZOO Southside, August 1 to 9). Part of the Made In Scotland showcase, this piece by Fife-based Red Bridge Arts is aimed at children between the ages of three and six.
'A playful look at what happens when you want to be left alone and others have a different idea', Pekku promises to be another delightful show from the makers of the award-winning children's theatre works White and Stick By Me.
From politics and economics on the grandest scale to the tragedy and comedy of everyday life, the festival programmes offer, as ever, a startlingly wide array of artworks. Now, more than ever, we need the Edinburgh programmes to remember their grand purpose.