Fringe 2017: Assembly announces lineup

This year Assembly Festival returns to its former home of the Assembly Rooms on George Street, where Assembly started in 1981. This will sit alongside performances at George Square Gardens and the nearby Assembly Hall, Checkpoint and Roxy venues. In total, Assembly will run over 200 shows in 26 spaces across these five sites.

Comedy

Much of Assembly’s comedy lineup has already been announced, and includes plenty of crowd favourites like Al Murray, Jason Byrne, Milton Jones, Shappi Khorsandi, Ed Byrne, Reginald D Hunter, Jerry Sadowitz and Andrew Maxwell, who all bring new shows to the Fringe.

Fans of improvised comedy will also be catered for with Colin Mochrie and his improvised hypnosis Hyprov, while the headline comedy show of the Assembly Rooms is the return of classic improv radio and TV show Whose Line is it Anyway? The show's original host, Clive Anderson, will lead this live revival.

Other comedy highlights include past Edinburgh Comedy Award winners and nominees Sam Simmons, Sarah Kendall, Nath Valvo, and Trygve Wakenshaw; Melbourne Comedy Festival Barry Award winner Hannah Gadsby; and the 2017 Pinder Prize Winner and Barry Award nominee Damien Power.

Homegrown theatre

Assembly also announced its theatre lineup today, and one of the most eye-catching shows will be the premiere of Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh’s play Performers, a dark comedy set in London during the Swinging 60s.

Ross MacKay teams up with Freshly Squeezed Productions and The Uncertainty Principle to present Suzie Miller’s Velvet Evening Séance, and ahead of its London transfer to The Young Vic, Fringe audiences will see Seiriol Davies’s How to Win Against History. 

Other theatre highlights include Soho Theatre’s presentation of Half Breed by Natasha Marshall; the Almeida's collaborative show From the Ground Up; and Greenwich Theatre and Culture Clash Theatre's combined effort for Under My Thumb.

International theatre

Assembly’s lineup is peppered with international shows from a dozen nations across the world. The highlight looks to be Yael Farber’s reworking of August Strindberg's classic Mies Julie, which acts as headliner for the Baxter Theatre Centre's showcase of some of the most exciting theatre being made in South Africa. More theatre from the southern hemisphere comes to Edinburgh in the form of NZ at Edinburgh's lineup, which will include the Modern Maori Quartet, Eleanor Bishop’s dark Jane Doe, and Trick of the Light’s production The Road That Wasn’t There.

For the third consecutive year there’ll be a celebration of Korean theatre too, which will showcase modern and traditional Korean performance including the return of drumming show Tago and the award winning magic show Snap. And from India there’s The Elephant in the Room.

Superbolt Theatre, multi award winning international theatre ensemble hailing from Norway, Switzerland, Britain and Ecuador, also return with their hit Jurassic Parks alongside their new show Mars Actually.

Music and Cabaret

In terms of music, Soweto Gospel Choir bring some soul to Assembly Hall, and The Magnets and Out of The Blue fill George Square. We’re promised (My) Leonard Cohen in a Ballroom and, curiously, (Chamber Pot) Opera in a toilet. There’ll also be plenty of show tunes from West End stalwarts Ferris and Milnes, plus there’s the orchestral comedy show Concerto A Tempo D’Umore.

In cabaret,  Adelaide Fringe hit Rueben Kaye and La Soiree and La Clique crooner Mikelangelo take up residency at Checkpoint, while Hot Brown Honey return with their award-winning show at Roxy. And we’re told that for a taste of New York, head down to Assembly’s site specific underground bar Joe’s NYC Bar.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a lineup that includes circus, dance, nightclubs, puppetry and family shows. For more information and full listings, head to assemblyfestival.com

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Assembly's 2017 Edinburgh Fringe programme runs 4-28 Aug