Edinburgh Fringe theatre reviews: 16 Postcodes | Don’t Call Me China Doll | OommoO – I Am A Walking Universe | Taiwan Season: Little Drops of Rain | The Shroud Maker

16 Postcodes ★★★★

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) until 26 August

Staged in a bunker at the Pleasance Courtyard – and at the height of the worst housing crisis in recent UK history – Jessica Regan’s 16 Postcodes is a deeply charming and thoughtful show. Regan is an Irish actress who moved to London 20 years ago as a student, and immediately fell in love with the city, becoming a passionate Londoner by adoption.

Two decades on, though – and now aged 42 – she is still nowhere near being able to buy a place of her own, and escape from the endless merry-go-round of rented homes that become precious havens for a few months or years, only to be sold up, forcing her to move on again. In this show, every day, she tells a few tales of the addresses she has lived at, in 16 postcodes across London.

Not always the same tales, though. She always starts in Acton, and ends up in her current about-to-be-sold home at Walthamstow, but for the three or four stories in between she allows her audience to pick postcodes that mean something to them, from Hammersmith to Battersea or Hackney.

On my day, for example, I heard a light-touch break-up story from north London and a brief ghost story from Clapham, among other yarns. And if the quiet skill and assurance with which Jessica Regan delivered those stories is any guide, there’s no variation on 16 Postcodes that would fall to deliver a delightful hour of theatre while also raising some troubling questions about what sky-high property prices are doing to London and other cities – and whether ordinary people on ordinary incomes will soon be able to live in them at all. Joyce McMillan

THEATRE

Don’t Call Me China Doll ★★★

Underbelly Bristo Square – Clover (Venue 302) until 26 August

At one point during Diana Feng’s new solo play Don’t Call Me China Doll, she flips round the cardboard washing machine on her cartoon-style domestic set to reveal, on the back, a list of the types of roles she has auditioned for in the last year.

The list is dominated by geeky types in spectacles, doomed sex workers, and inscrutable kung fu warriors; and it signals the troubling fact that a century on from the early 1920s, when Hollywood’s first Chinese-origin star Anna May Wong shot to film fame, east Asian people still encounter many of the same prejudices and stereotypes, not least in the world of showbusiness.

In the end, Feng's play just lacks the quality and weight of writing that would bring out the full force of the parallels, as she intertwines the story of Anna May Wong’s life with incidents in her own. The structure is labyrinthine, the story full of complex characters.

Yet there’s no denying the extraordinary power of Feng’s performance. She explores prejudice and racism in her industry, and also – most memorably – confesses her own shameful attempts to distance herself from her east Asian heritage, and her fatal attraction to white men who are often indifferent and abusive. Don’t Call Me China Doll is a fascinating play, in other words, that needs some decisive direction and dramaturgical work to bring out its full significance. Bu Feng’s performance remains well worth seeing and savouring, for its political complexity, its wit, and its courage. Joyce McMillan

THEATRE

OommoO – I Am A Walking Universe ★★★ 

Summerhall – Demonstration Room (Venue 26) until 26 August 

A high-tech, high-concept show with a deceptively low-tech sensibility, Lula Mebrahtu’s OommoO – I Am A Walking Universe is the second instalment in a potentially unlimited modular theatre series. Continuing on from Mebrahtu’s 2023 Fringe production of the same name, this anthology is an exercise in Afrofuturism from an East African perspective.

Standing for “One of many, many of One’, the structure of the piece borrows the palindromic shape of its title. Every element is interconnected, and Mebrahtu generates lighting, sound, and video projection in real time through wearable-tech MiMu gloves and a loop pedal, giving the space the properties of a delivery room. 

The story revolves around the so-called “Black Woman Curse” and her character’s diagnosis of fibroids. While the tumour is benign, the language of Western medicine in relation to black bodies is not, and she struggles to have the tumour removed with the respect and dignity she deserves.

Mebrahtu’s voice is soft, sensual. We move between private and public healthcare settings, from feelings of discomfort to pain. Finer details are lost throughout – there are not that many narrative edges to grab onto – but this is in keeping with the project’s central theme of eternality. OommoO remains compelling, with vast possibilities. Josephine Balfour-Oatts 

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CHILDREN’S SHOWS

Taiwan Season: Little Drops of Rain ★★★

Assembly George Square – The Box (Venue 8) until 25 August

There is an indisputable charm to this non-verbal show for younger children by Taiwanese company Bon Appetit Theatre. It also carries an environmental message, with our brave heroine Hope going on a quest to bring water to her drought-ridden land. Or at least that’s what the pre-show publicity says. In reality, what should be a relatively straightforward story is hard to follow, despite the best efforts of the performers.

Regardless of this, Little Drops of Rain still has much to offer, largely thanks to an array of fun props and a barrel-load of enthusiasm from the four performers. Two playful puppeteers portray Hope, with a large head and a small pair of wellies. What she’s doing or where she’s going may not always be clear, but it’s done with such gusto, just watching her move around is entertaining in itself. A small droplet of water joins the adventure, bouncing around at the end of a rod, and a large umbrella has been inventively modified to signify a rainy day.

Unusually for a show of this kind, a fantastic foley artist provides all the sound effects. Alongside a talented musician, she creates crunches and squeaks, wind and rain with a myriad of fun objects hanging there for all to see. Kelly Apter

THEATRE

The Shroud Maker ★★

Pleasance Dome (Venue 23) until 25 August

The Shroud Maker is a solo show with a powerful tale to tell, about the lives in Gaza now being shattered by war. The lone speaker is Hajja Souad, a Palestinian woman in her 80s still working as a shroud maker in Gaza, after learning her skills as a seamstress as a child at the knee of Lady Cunningham, wife of the last British governor of Palestine before the founding of Israel in 1948.

As she works - kept busy by the high death toll from constant conflict – she tells us her story, in a monologue play by Ahmed Masoud that could, ideally, have delivered one of the most telling shows in this year’s Fringe.

Sadly, though, Masoud's own production just fails to deliver, sometimes seeming almost unable to hear the detail of its own text; and despite Julia Tarnoky’s best efforts as Hajja, this is a play that desperately needs an actor with far more stillness and gravitas, who can feel the tragedy of this story in her own bones, and tell it without the constant flapping and gesturing that only distracts the audience throughout a sadly disappointing show. Joyce McMillan