The Edinburgh fringe is mostly where new work is forged but that’s not the full picture. Amid all the hot-off-the-press shows are a number of familiar titles that have been around for years yet are only making their professional UK debut now. That’s the case with two fairytale musical productions hoping for a longer life whose festival run is a chance to engineer that happily ever after.
Bliss, co-created by Tyler Beattie and Emma Lively, won a new play award in the US in 2019 and had its world premiere in Seattle the year after. A handful of its songs were released in 2022. Now developed into what is billed as “the biggest new musical of the Edinburgh fringe”, it has a cast of 17 which exceeds regular fringe proportions – as does the running time (80 minutes rather than the standard hour).
When I arrive fairly early at the Pleasance’s 750-capacity Grand theatre, it is already packed out. The first thing to report is that many of Bliss’s powerpop songs are copper-bottomed. Inside These Castle Walls swiftly sets the scene with four princess sisters locked away in a castle by an over-protective single father.
Break Through the Dark is their galvanising anthem of escape and the ballad Save a Dance captures how one loses her sense of self along the way. The sisters are strongly delineated – Faye (Miriam Nyarko) seeks action, Carmella (Alexandra Emmerson-Kirby) seeks fame; Holly (Matilda Shapland) loves animals, Piper (Akshara Gunda) loves science. House of the Dragon’s Tom Bennett makes a summertime panto from the role of a grizzled, 500-year-old fairy godfather.
His name is Glimmermore which reflects how he lures Piper into dipping in a pink lagoon that will rid her of “imperfections”. The parallels with online beauty filters and other scourges of modern teenage life are clear. She emerges devoid of individuality, her scientific ambitions evaporated, and marries a flashy, raver prince (Jordan Calloway) who has a holstered mic rather than a sword.
There’s a great morning-after scene where he sulks that his ball is over and bounces like a manchild on his trampoline. Co-produced by West End hit factory ATG, Bliss could easily be scaled up with set pieces, especially for the royal ball, and spend more time developing the sisters’ reactions to Piper’s transformation. It has a minimal set to suit fringe logistics but the lagoon, the sisters’ castle in Minisculia and a dragon befriended by the sisters would all lend themselves to eye-catching designs in a new venue.
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