The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with nearly 3,500 shows. This year, Playbill is in Edinburgh for the entire month in August for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we're sharing which ones you absolutely must see if you're only at the Fringe for a short amount of time. Consider these Playbill Picks a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
Miriam Battye’s Strategic Love Play has two characters: Him and Her. Sitting around a table with pints in hand in the center of Summerhall’s Roundabout, the date starts off awkward and uncomfortable. Letty Thomas plays Her, a woman who is over the whole ritual of small talk and making yourself palatable and normal until you’ve hooked someone. With biting remarks that slide easily between playfulness and prosecution, Her is a woman whose confidence and self-doubt pour out of her in ways where one always feels like it could simply be a mask for the other.
The push to move past the generic questions about work and impulse to gloss things over into neat packages was not what Him had in mind. Archie Blackhouse stars opposite Thomas in the role. Him is incredibly polite, clearly trying to find the nicest way out of the date without hurting Her. He apologizes constantly. And the beginning of the date makes it quite clear that these two have probably insurmountable incompatibilities. But the chemistry between them is absolutely electrifying. Are you rooting for them as a couple for their sake? Or because you don’t want the date—and the play—to come to an end?
Thomas is brilliant at playing a charming, fascinating Her and embraces the character to make you admire and dislike her in equal turn at times. Blackhouse’s Him feels organic as he slowly gets on board with the plan of getting past showing the likeable version of himself to the one that has made mistakes, and has plenty of not-so-polite things to say. There are jokes about gender dynamics that transcend the specifics of today’s generations’ forays into dating apps—ones that made even the grandfathers and grandmothers in the audience laugh.
Katie Posner’s direction beautifully manages that tension between Him and Her as much as she manages it between the characters and the audience. There are moments where that tension becomes incredibly taut as the questions of “Will they? Won’t they?” dance through the minds of the audience. It is helped along by a very smart use of a turntable. Played in the round, the set—a bar table, two chairs, and a light—rotate throughout the performance to change how the audience sees the date play out. At one point, Her is pushing Him to take a seat. She is standing off the turntable and quickly sets it spinning with a kick of her foot. An unprepared Him stumbles and falls into his chair at her mercy.
There’s a satisfaction to seeing Him’s complexity develop as his walls drop over the course of the play. And while we catch glimpses of Her’s vulnerability, there are hints of more to lay bare that is never revealed. It’s that juxtaposition which gives this show such power. Her wants to be vulnerable, to be an open book like how she wants Him to be. But she clearly isn’t willing to open herself up to not knowing what lies ahead and the hurt that could be in store. She claims to want a relationship with no love or expectations, just acceptance and negotiated terms. Strategic Love Play delivers the push for connection, for getting to really know someone, that so many crave to find. The question it asks is if we’re actually willing to take the risk.
Strategic Love Play runs at Summerhall’s Roundabout through August 27. For tickets, click here.
