Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Long Story Short
New Stagers
Genre: Theatre
Venue: theSpace@Surgeons Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Long Story Short does just what it says on the tin – four very different, fast-paced comedies, each delivered with panache and passion. What’s not to like………..
Review
Stark, bright lights up on two people, sitting, staring blankly at the audience. Mark and Gemma’s relationship just ended. Each addresses the audience, trying to explain their side of what’s clearly been a difficult time for both of them. But is either version a reflection of the real cause of the break-up? Where lies reality? Two Sides is a clever short story, the actors mixing their respective monologues with the audience with duologue flashbacks with each recreating what they saw as the seminal exchanges between them as their life together crashed and burned.
Change of scene and it’s Mum, Dad and their adult son and daughter sat around the dining table, where dinner is about to be served. But before that, Mum proudly announces I Wrote a Play and that she’d like them to help her via a read through. Cue some believable “ham” acting as the son reads his words and the accompanying stage directions (a la Thisby in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), shock from the daughter at the play’s risque content and sweat breaking out on Dad’s brow as he realises where this whole thing might be heading. Clever too, to leave the ending hanging in the air.
Then it’s House Plant, where an anthropomorphic plant with attitude and a penchant for psychotherapy doles out unsolicited dating advice to her forty something, SINK (single income, no kids) owner, possibly in the hope that the latter would remember to chuck water onto her soil slightly more often.
We finish off with 15 Minutes To Solve a Murder, a classic period farce in which everyone tries, with varying degrees of success, to solve dear old Tubby’s murder, giving the New Stagers’ ensemble the green light to turn up the commedia dell’arte to full blast, ham it up like the best of them and produce a rousing finale to an entertaining fifty minutes of theatre.
Veronica Montalbetti has come up with something of a winner here. Four crisply written and nicely delivered pieces of theatre, all with plenty of comedy and some with a subtle message. Costuming was prosaic, basic black and whites with the occasional splash of colour. Staging was simple – chairs, tables and, naturally, a houseplant and the sound and lighting effects provided appropriate support when needed.
Long Story Short – four fast-paced comedies, each delivered with panache and passion. Just like the Edinburgh weather, something completely different every fifteen minutes. What’s not to like………..
