PERHAPS the biggest single youth theatre contribution to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe programme is the American High School Theatre Festival whose cultural cheerleaders will be set in motion at Church Hill Theatre and St Oswald’s Hall from August 16 to 30.
They will present some 15 plays and musicals including standards such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, A Chorus Line and West Side Story as well as A Cloud of Witnesses about the siege and fall of the Alamo.
Local and Scottish groups, however, are not thin on the ground, with the Edinburgh Acting School’s own production of The Crucible along with a new play called Cleaners, a romantic comedy set in . . . a gents’ toilet.
Edinburgh Youth Theatre revisits The Magdalene for a dose of Victorian values, the said Magdalene being Edinburgh’s institution for fallen women.
Fettes at the Fringe is offering Steven Berkoff’s Metamorphosis, acrobatic, physical theatre which sees Franz Kafka’s dung-beetle brought to life.
Joan of Arc will visit the Fringe courtesy of Kirkcaldy High School, which is to perform Jean Anouilh’s The Lark at St Oswald’s, while Fringe stalwart Leicestershire Youth Arts offers Cider with Rosie, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Wiz and Little Shop of Horrors at St Ann’s Community Centre.
On the musical side Craigmount Youth Theatre presents Showstoppers - The Movies at Inverleith while Edinburgh Youth Music Theatre opts for Edinburgh and London with Greyfriars Bobby and Captain Stirrick about a gang of infant pickpockets. Wonder where the Dickens they got that idea?
The National Youth Music Theatre returns to the Assembly Rooms for The Kissing-Dance based on Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer.
Raymond Ross
