theSpaceUK announces their full 2022 programme, with over 400 shows on sale at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The 2022 line-up features the return of Fringe favourites along with a packed programme of new writing and new companies.
Theatre Highlights
A new multimedia hybrid – part live stand-up, part film – featuring Sylvester McCoy and Linda Marlowe, Apartness is funny, poignant and full of shocks and surprises. The cute, attention-seeking lamb who became the most famous sheep in history, Hiya Dolly is about the scientists who cloned Dolly in an Edinburgh laboratory and changed biology forever.
A homeless balloon-selling storyteller recounts her mishaps with lager, love, and latex balloons in The Girl and Her Balloon. The sell-out smash-hit A Highly Suspect Murder Mystery returns to the Fringe in an interactive murder mystery which you, the audience, must solve! Step aside HG Wells, take a break Jeff Wayne, back to your trailer Tom Cruise; War of the Worlds (On a Budget) is the musical-comedy, action-adventure we didn’t know we needed!
theSpaceUK Supported Artists Programme helps new companies producing their first show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and includes GirlPlay, a powerful exploration of emotion, sex and the female body, spun out in slam. Centred on sexual violence against women, Spit Me Out from Slap ‘n’ Tickle Theatre Company shows what it means to live with the life-altering effects of assault. From the award-winning writer of the five-star musical Rust comes a modern-day folktale: Blue and Pip questions what it means to both grieve and celebrate our bodies at the same time.
Cabaret Highlights
A whacky, weird and wonderful cabaret that provides insight into the frenetic nature of dating in this modern age, Puppets uses everyone’s favourite Sesame Street characters to help tackle the sense of dread a young woman feels when dating. Best of Cabaret returns to the fringe packed full of vivacious variety, musical theatre, comedy and award-winning headline burlesque features. Join the fabulousness as West End diva Sue Kelvin romps through the Divine Miss M’s life and songs in Bette Midler and Me (including a puppet show version of Beaches!).
Abby Rose Morris details her experiences as a plus-size performer in More Than Tracy Turnblad, a quirky, snarky cabaret that exposes the absurdity of the entertainment industry’s body standards. Forget your troubles and join a fictional Las Vegas legend in Trudy Carmichael Presents: The Improvised One-Woman Show! for a daring, improvised event featuring original songs, starry-eyed anecdotes and stratospheric high notes.
Musical Highlights
Worshipped opera singer… Renowned swordswoman… Flaming bisexual, Julie the Musical is an original, new musical telling the life and adventures of historical LGBTQ+ icon Julie D’Aubigny. From the company that brought you Six, Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society are back with Living with Sin, a brand a musical seducing us all to try a little sin.
The year is 1348 and the small Yorkshire village of Bogsfield is about to be hit by the Black Death. With catchy folk music, Plague is a fun-filled medieval tale of hope, community… and root vegetables.
Young, trendy Spencer leaves home and hits Soho like a whirlwind in a journey of love, laughter, heartbreak and happiness. Soho Boy is modern tale of the gay scene which can be harsh and lonely surrounded by glamour, sex and songs. A new folk musical comedy, Prejudice and Pride reimagines Jane Austen’s classic novel in modern America with gender-swapped characters
Comedy Highlights
Private Eye’s MD and author of Dr Hammond’s Covid Casebook dissects the pandemic. The more certain someone is about Covid, the less you should trust them. With a mix of impressive improv and biting satirical genius, Sylus makes comic gold out of politicians who will literally promise anything to become president is this acclaimed solo comedy show.
Inspired by classic sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends, could this show BE any funnier? Mates is an uproarious improvised comedy from comedians behind the award-winning Sex, Lies & Improvisation and CSI: Crime Scene Improvisation.
Don’t miss the smash hit comedy from 2021 – described as the ‘Freshest of the Fresh’ (Kate Copstick) Fraser Brown is back to once again take the audience on a riotous and dark analysis of his own anxieties and worries in it’s Fraser Brown, I’m Afraid.
Children’s Highlights
Canada’s award-winning clown band sparks the imagination with musical clowns… in space! Clowntown In Space is packed with adventure, live music singalongs and interactive comedy. Start the day with a riot of crazy kid-friendly laughter for the whole family in the Crazy Comedy Company.
Put on your critical thinking cap and join the Top 30 UK podcast Den of Enquiry for a crash-bang-wallop and a poetry whoosh, to see if we can answer one big question: is democracy about more than just voting? A piping-hot piece of brand-new children’s theatre that asks: Should you play with your food? There’s Nothing Quite Like Spaghetti Bolognese is a brand new extravaganza from New Celts Theatre.
Dance & Music Highlights
California based Hip-Hop Orchestra, Ensemble Mik Nawooj, presents music from their new album, in the Hip-Hop Orchestra Experience and joins forces with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to deconstruct seminal classical composers using funky rhythms with rapid fire rhymes. SMACK & Spektakel offers an adventurous double bill of dance, refreshing the commentary on the empowered female body.
Charles Pamment, Artistic Director of theSpaceUK, said “It’s with great pride that we present our 27th festival in a row! We were very proud to pioneer the return of grass roots performance to the festival last year and we continue to offer the most established programme for new and original writing as well as established work. theSpaceUK experience is how the Festival is meant to be seen, every genre of live performance in one spectacular programme, we offer that unique and special experience that can only be found in Edinburgh during August.”
theSpaceUK at the Edinburgh Fringe runs from the 5 – 28 August 2022 across 18 venues in 7 sites including: theSpace@Surgeon’sHall, theSpace@SymposiumHall, theSpace on North Bridge, theSpace on the Mile, theSpaceTriplex, the Space@Venue45
Audiences can see the full programme and purchase tickets via theSpaceUK website
