PRESS RELEASE for immediate release May 2025
This summer’s Fringe sees a huge range of theatre productions in venues across Buxton. Fringe-goers will have their minds stretched in productions that bring the familiar and the unexpected.
There is a strong showing from plays inspired by Shakespeare. In 1 King, 2 Princes, and Shakespeare's Lie, Richard III returns to challenge the myths, the lies, and the Bard himself. Twelfth Night is reimagined from a queer viewpoint in Fiction Romance, where Antonio falls for the half-drowned Sebastian and finds himself in a painful journey of unrequited love, and in Liv: Sapphic Shakespeare, the two heroines Olivia and Viola fall in love and deal with loss, grief. Bard Education asks why we have to study Shakespeare as a group of students takes a whirlwind tour of Shakespeare's greatest hits, discovering why his plays are still relevant in the 21st century. Meanwhile Fringe favourites The Shakespeare Jukebox celebrate their 20th year of Fringey fund-raising street theatre.
Some shows fall under the banner of musical theatre – Destination: 'Old Hag' is (possibly) the world's first Situation-Operatic-Comedy, as the Ladies of the Chorus chart the ups and downs of life with live opera singing. Railway 200: The New Theatre Show, combines original new music with stories from the golden age of rail. Utopia Unlimited presents Gilbert and Sullivan’s hilarious one-act comic opera Trial by Jury, while the popular new musical The Canterville Ghost returns for its third year at the Fringe.
Youth theatre is, as ever, well represented at the Fringe. The provocative, hard-hitting Shadow Syndicate returns with Dr Korczak's Example depicting one man’s resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. ICA Riot Grrls Drama Crew presents Fresh Air, a haunting one-act play first performed at the National Theatre Connections Festival. Buxton Opera House’s Youth Fringe Company meanwhile creates a 40-minute reimagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Topical issues are the inspiration for It's The Economy, Stupid!, where Joe Sellman-Leava with Dylan Howells unpack how economics shapes our lives. The same duo also tackles apocalypse anxiety in Joe and Dylan save the World, while from the US, creator Eoin Carney imagines The Last Days of Trump (A Liberal Fantasy).
There are plays to thrill and surprise as award-winning actor and writer Lexi Wolfe brings to life the women in Sherlock Holmes’ life in The Baker Street Ladies. In Almost Haunted, audiences can follow the investigations of Spectre Quest into the enigmatic world of the unexplained, while in Death of the Author, from Buxton-based GAP Theatre, a failed writer fakes his own disappearance, but he can’t do it alone…
The workings of the mind are explored in 3 Minutes Inside My Brain, where Jennifer Jordan shrinks down for a whirlwind adventure inside the weird but familiar world of her brain. In Daydream Extremer, Fringe award-winner Mike Raffone reveals how, at nearly 60, he discovered he had ADHD. In Eli Yim’s one-man show The Easy Way Out, a musician, a doctor, and a personification of God conduct a mental health crisis assessment.
Lives are touched by famous people as in Almost Famous an actress comes back to the UK after an illustrious Broadway and Hollywood career to audition for a Fringe production – what led her there? In I Believe In One Bach, an ageing musician finds solace in Bach's sublime B Minor Mass - but is this obsession or madness? In Marie Lloyd Stole My Life we meet Nelly Power and discover the discrimination, domestic violence and press intrusion rife in the Victorian Music Hall. In Waiting For Elvis, Margaret Rutherford and Elvis fan, Albert, are thrown together on the day Elvis made his brief visit to Britain, while in What A Knight! Lynn and Marie, chase their dream of meeting their idol, ageing pop icon Sir Bobby Rock. In The Unknowing Hero the village of Eyam has prepared for King Edward VII's Coronation in 1902 but when it is cancelled due to the King's illness, decides to give a massive hero's celebration for a returning soldier from the Boer War.
One-woman show Flat 4 finds Isabel Songer delving into the joys and complexities of female friendship, while in Grandma's Shop, we meet loveable, eccentric Sheffield septuagenarian, Hilda and her second-hand clothes shop. In Wummy, Charis King brings a whirlwind one-woman comedy play about a wannabe yummy mummy while in Yards Apart new neighbours Mark and Viki meet over the garden fence – can these two lonely souls overcome their differences and become supportive friends?
Lubna Kerr’s Lunchbox draws on her experiences as a migrant child in Glasgow in the 1970s to look at the impact of bullying. In Maeve and Howard, an Irish-born journalist, and a closeted poetry editor, Howard Moss, find mutual solace in their unlikely friendship. Overwhelm, from Fringe award-winners Working Progress Collective, is a new play exploring male loneliness, online radicalisation, and addiction. There is a Light and a Whistle for Attracting Attention compares stories of girls and women and men and love with the reality of a relationship.
Fringe favourite Debbie Cannon returns with Flora Macdonald and Zombies, a rollicking and completely untrue adventure into Scotland's past. Isolated tech junkie Steve Vertigo finds escape in the beauty of the joyful, surreal tale of avian adventure Murmuration. Meanwhile A Utopia Story is an interdisciplinary journey, weaving history and philosophy with storytelling, film, and original live music.
Fringe chair Ian Bowns says: “Theatre is a huge part of Buxton Fringe and this year we are seeing an incredible range of entertainment from Shakespeare with a twist to topical drama. Our performers always show great ambition so I’m keen to see how they tackle perennial themes like love, friendship and the complexity of the human mind.”
Further Fringe 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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