Review: The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show, Pleasance Courtyard

Croissant and tea on the way into a show? Hell yeah, why haven’t I discovered this earlier in my Edinburgh voyage? This is so the way to start the morning. It appears I’m not the only one thinking that. This is the biggest (and oldest) audience I’ve sat in this fringe. Although maybe that is more about my show choices, which until now have all been in much smaller venues. It’s also the comfiest seat I’ve had all week (my aching back thanks you greatly). Everything is lining up nicely.

The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show very much lives up to its name. It’s big: audience, venue and stage. And it’s bite-size: five pieces of new shorts. There are actually fifteen in total, spread over a rolling three-day roster, so you could easily make this your morning routine for three separate days. Today is Menu C.

Of course, bribing us with free food and tea (coffee also available for those needing their caffeine fix) can only go so far. The show needs to live up to the warm welcome. Remarkably each of the five morsels we are served do just that, not a dud amongst them.

It opens strongly with Treasa Nealon‘s Runaway Dress, where Kat Johns Burke‘s bridesmaid has found herself in a bit of a situation. She’s tried on the wedding dress and now can’t get out of it. It’s a funny opening that leads to the expected chaos as she tries to hide her predicament from Molly Keogh‘s chief bridesmaid, before morphing into a lament of whether the bride is marrying the right man for her.

Perhaps the highlight is Paul Stears‘ The Community Group. It is a fantastic takedown of the joys of the local online group. Four community members (Tom Hartwell, Isabella Inchbald, Thomas Wilshire and, once more, Keogh) read their posts, which anyone who frequents such groups will recognise instantly. There’s the angry man moaning about everything that is wrong with society; gammon comes to mind. There’s the cat photo poster, the man selling his wardrobe and finally the woman returning to live in the area looking for connections. It’s incredibly well presented and written, filled with knowing humour of just how ridiculous these groups can be and why they really should be avoided!

Elsewhere we’re treated to Perfect Two by Guy Newsham, which sees a couple rating each other; his 8.5 for her, unsurprisingly, does not go down at all well. There’s Sean Fee’s Caffeine, which finds two strangers at a restaurant who believe they have been set up on a blind date by friends, and lastly On Mute by performer Hartwell, where a Zoom meeting goes drastically wrong when his housemate’s one-night stand turns up asking for some underwear!

The five are each presented with full staging, which in itself is impressive for a fringe show. Props, lighting and sound are not overlooked, in fact the slick rearranging of the stage between each piece is a choreographed beauty in itself. More importantly, every one of the five feels like they could be developed into their own full length shows which I would love to see. Plus, each of the five strong multi-roling cast members do remarkably well considering they have had to work on fifteen shows amongst themselves!

The Big Bite-Size Breakfast Show is a great fringe experience, and a perfect chance to catch hints of what might be coming soon by these writers. The croissant and tea may have convinced me to give it a try, but the quality will have me returning when I get the chance.

Directed by David Frias-Robles 
Stage Manager: Nawel Kobb 
Assistant director: Millie Koplick 
Executive Producer: Nick Brice

The Big Bite-size Breakfast Show plays at Pleasance Courtyard until Sunday 30 August as part of Edfringe.