Brighton Fringe 2026

Neddy Goes to Glasto

Corrina O’Beirne

Genre: Biographical Drama, Comedy, Contemporary, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, LGBTQ+ Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: The Lantern Theatre, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

“Can’t believe I’m back… I travelled down with my big sister Maz. In her Austin Allegro. Bessie the Beast, BB to her friends. She was the colour of Colman’s mustard. Or sick. Depending on your perspective.” Instantly you know you’re being horribly exposed to the writing of Corrina O’Beirne, whose three-hander With Ruby & I last year so impressed many, including me. Returning to the Lantern with this solo play about a Glastonbury Festival trip, O’Beirne’s Neddy Goes to Glasto directed by Prue Griffiths runs till May 10.

Jo Dakin is Neddy, originally Sinead, and taking her sister there again after 30 odd years for her 50^th birthday, though she’s driving now. But not in the same way. And she’s also carrying two other passengers. One is Maz’s self-appointed bestie, insufferably loud, insufferably big Payday Paula. And the other is the griexf Neddy’s feeling which she hugs closer to her than Maz’s urn: which Paula had grabbed and Neddy had never wanted on this trip. Along with Paula. And it’s now a vicar-ready Volvo they pootle in, replete with National Trust stickers. “Hobnob crumbs in the footwell.” Another has Paula being told to be careful with imbibing. “Churchill-dog nod. Ohhh yessss.” Details like this tease through the play’s 75 minutes.

Payday Paula, voiced basso by Dakin, inhabits one of those grunge goddesses who like to call themselves earth goddesses. She’s continually etched in: “she has the neck mobility of an owl.” Assertive, noisy, appropriating Maz and quite often abdicating experience for any driving, she’s the last person Neddy feels comfortable with. But then she’s been hugging loneliness to her a long while, and there’s been nobody in her life. Why does Maz seem the only friend she’s ever had. Who’s a bit jealous when sloshed on Tia Maria Maz confessed of Paula: “‘We don’t share blood, we share wounds.’” That one particularly gets to Neddy, and how she deals with it threads the play like a nosebleed.

The solo play pulses with Dakin’s thrub and shift across the small stage backed I one corner by Tracey Gibbs’s video projection and lighting. At times it breathes spectacularly. There’s some moments when Dakin vanishes during the narrative when she’s being called on her mobile. The video projects exuberantly sad images and the lighting, when in full play, transforms the stage.

Both to Paula, reluctantly, and later to “Slippery Twat”, or “Rick the Dick”, shards of Neddy’s past tumble out. The home neglect by two alky hippy parents who desert them leaving a fiver under the cereal packet and a postcard from the Isle of Wight (another festival home years ago). Maz who puts he scholarship to Edinburgh University aside, mentors Neddy through her GCSEs and life generally. Always a magnet for sad things, animals, then humans like Paula. Or her. And now she’s dead.

Neddy Goes to Glasto is about far more than this, and there’s reveals all the way: sidelight swipes at Neddy being reportedly “a bag of nerves” and sidelight glances from others alive and dead that tell a slightly different story. Though Neddy’s a truthful not very unreliable witness. Well, until they’re encamped and Neddy wants solitude after taking a smiley she implores to go easy on her; and there’s a tussle with the urn. “ A black-and-brass urn that I’ve spent hours staring at, talking to, screaming at. We sit in the loudest silence I’ve ever heard.”

Lyrical and witty writing coils in metaphors: “And I’m sick of being all coiled up. Drive myself twatty. Like Maz says, I need to stop wearing my shoulders as earrings.” Maz is still present tense This is tight, idiomatic revelatory writing, with fine movement direction from Jennifer Kay to vary the pitch.

There’s an explosive confrontation, escape and something kicks in. First though Neddy encounters a deliciously inflected waste of space too whom in her state she confesses things. Though his response is to suggest he knows it already, and that’s when he’s actually listening. As dramatic conceits go it’s a fine mode of reveals, that Paula and she wouldn’t need to discuss.

There’s still this dependency: “I should’ve brought the pill back up. I should’ve done so many things. Life has been a neverending test and even though it’s multiple choice, I manage to get all the questions wrong. Most of the time I was alright with that, with Maz around.”

Escaping yet again that pill kicks in and we’re treated to the most exuberant and technically thrilling part of the show, and vision. Gibbs’ lighting works overtime and Jamie Finlay’s and Frances Allison’s sound cleverly projects loud without drowning out performer or the audience’s ears. It’s all perfectly calibrated though a few narrative tassles hang when Dakin apparates and vanishes. Where does Eyeliner Goddess fir in, and will this encounter change Neddy’s life? For her life does change. It’s really worth finding out how and why.

A an exploration of grief, solitude and a witty yet devastating way of exploring it through comedy, this is a masterly small play, endlessly quotable (there’s far, far more) and relatable, whether you’ve been to Glasto or not.

O’Beirne masters the demotic, the lyrical, the witty and metaphorical, all at once. This marks an advance on With Ruby & I in its writing and perhaps characterisation. The reveal is gentle rather than earth-goddess-shattering but satisfying, not predictable. I only wish – quite wrongly – it was larger-scaled, and very much hope to see another show from O’Beirne soon. She’s ready to break out and her creatives suggest a real ambition at scale. A must-see.

Video and lighting – Tracey Gibbs

Stage Manager – Frances Allison

Sound design – Jamie Finlay and Frances Allison

Movement Director – Jennifer Kay

Director – Prue Griffiths

Performer (Neddy/Payday Paula/Slippery Twat)  – Jo Dakin

Eyeliner Goddess (voiceover) – Sarah Hannah

Writer – Corrina O’Beirne

Published May 10, 2026May 10, 2026 by Simon Jenner