Classic drama with a twist at Buxton Fringe

PRESS RELEASE for immediate release June 2nd 2022

Fringe theatre is always a great place for a twist on an established classic.

Multi-award-winning Fringe favourites Three's Company & Underground celebrate their 20th anniversary with a bold and joyous new adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's timeless classic, The Little Prince. A stranded pilot battling to survive the desert is interrupted by a young boy visiting from a distant star. He comes with an urgent request... for a drawing of a sheep. More classic adaptations come to Underground Venues from regular Fringe visitors, Rob Johnson, who adapts dark and comic tales from Kafka into surreal satire and physical theatre, and Chris Neville-Smith, who retells the HP Lovecraft story, The Rats in the Walls, in the shadow of the Vietnam War. 

25 years after the Edinburgh debut of what became one of the most successful solo shows of all time with over 2000 performances worldwide, Olivier Award winner Guy Masterson is at the Rotunda to present the highlights of his globally acclaimed solo tour-de-force Under Milk Wood - Semi Skimmed! And for some more guaranteed Rotunda quality, the return of well-received shows The Ballad of Mulan and The War of the Worlds from Red Dragonfly and Grist to the Mill Productions sees Michelle Yim reprise her role as the real Chinese heroine that inspired Disney’s Mulan, and Ross Ericson bring a new adaptation of HG Wells’s classic story.

For an alternative take on Dickens, theatre-lovers will want to check out Twist! from J45 Productions at the Green Man Gallery. In the Liverpool docklands in 2022, Oliver and another boy get into a brutal scrap over a packet of cigarettes. Watching on, Dodger is impressed and introduces Oliver to Fagin and the dark world of county lines drug dealing. 

Similar twists on the classics can be found elsewhere at the Fringe. In Dark Horse, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ short story, The Yellow Bird, Mrs Tutwiler and Alma step into the foreground amid tempestuous events and reveal a glimpse into their mother-daughter relationship. Delila Theatre also performs Dede, the age-old story of love, betrayal and ever-present power struggles. 

Back at Underground, Sprinkle Theatre Company uses original music, physical theatre, and puppetry to offer an engaging and refreshing take on George Orwell's Animal Farm, about a group of farm animals who overthrow their human masters, whereas Sweet Productions’ one woman show Jekyll & Hyde, is a reimagination of the science horror focusing on class, terror, and hypocrisy in Victorian London, as the search for self collides with the lure of the sensuous, taking its toll on all.

Further theatre treats can be discovered on www.buxtonfringe.org.uk and on the free to download Buxton Fringe App.

The Fringe wishes to thank High Peak Borough Council, its Fringe Friends and the town’s many Fringe supporters and venues.

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