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And so it begins!
As the UK swelters in yet another heatwave it must mean that it is finally August, and for us that means only one thing, it's time for the Fringe and time for DarkChat to hit Edinburgh!
This year we only have 4 Darkchatters , so there will be less shows to review though I am sure the quality of the shows we have selected will be as high as ever.
Ever present Darkchatter Dave is back, amazingly 40 years after his first festival. If anyone wants to buy him a Decaf Latte he will bore you with his story about starting his festival with a Midnight showing of a Rowan Atkinson performance. Darkchatter Anne is back after an absence of 2 years and is hoping to see as many of her favourites, Thom Tuck, Rob Auton, Mark Thomas (to name just a few) as possible. Lastly, relative newcomers David and Thuranie are back for their 6th festival and amazingly, will not be seeing all the same shows.
Before the mayhem commences on Friday David has been on an interview frenzy.
These include Jim Judges who we first fell in love with as Ian Crawford in his delightful " Accident Avoidance For Cutlery Users Training - Level 2, Carys Jeffrey Evans who tells us why she should represent the UK at Eurovision, DarkChat favourite John Robertson, Dom Lewis of Bare Productions and Fringe Legend Attila the Stockbroker. You can read all of those here.
2025 DarkChat Awards - winners announced
As this year's Fringe begins to fade into the dim and distant past what better way to relive some of your favourite moments with the 2025 DarkChat awards.
Yes, for the 15th time we have handed out awards to some of our favourite shows. For those of you who like numbers, there were 17 different categories, with 29 different shows nominated and a total of 113 nominees.
So, how can we hear who won you might wonder? Just follow the link below which contains the full list of winners along with all of the nominees in each category.
You can see the full details here
And so it ends almost as
soon as it begins
Well, the Edinburgh Fringe is not 2 weeks old but DarkChat are done, having had feet on the ground since the beginning of the festival, factors that tried to change things, (including one of us getting Covid and then Storm Floris doing it's best to stop half of us getting to Edinburgh before we even arrived!) we've enjoyed yet another year at the Fringe, but real-life now intervenes and we'll be returning to our 'normal' lives over the next few days. If you want to look at what shows we saw, and our reviews for them you can see them here, see anything you like the look of?
This year DARKCHAT originals David, Carl and Kate were back again along with relative newbies David and Thuranie plus Harri and Dylan, who despite being only sixteen were attending their 8th festival!
Keeping in touch with goings on in Edinburgh we've also interviewed Arthur Hull to see how his show 'FLOP' has been going this year.
Before August arrived David was also out and about looking for talent, some new, some a little more well known. A trip to the New Theatre, Cardiff to see Nick Mohammed - Show Pony gave us the opportunity to be impressed by newcomer Ben Pope who also gave us an interview prior to us seeing him at this year's festival.
David then moved to Edgbaston to take in some tennis and whilst there took the opportunity to watch "Scouts - The Musical". This is produced by Gigglemug Theatre, who are returning to the festival with last year's success " Jaffa Cake - The Musical". Artistic Director Sam Cochrane kindly gave us a lovely interview to whet our appetite.
You can read both interviews on our news page here.