Edinburgh Fringe 2026
The Painted Revolutionary
Tip Top Theatre Collective
Genre: Comedy, Political, Theatre
Venue: theSpace@Surgeons Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The Painted Revolutionary is a bold new piece of writing from Tip Top Theatre Collective, portraying a range of familiar political concepts as uncannily real and rather flawed characters, each of whom engage with Struggle in the cramped confines of her bookshop, where she seeks solace from the rich tapestry of printed media she has at her disposal yet remains disenchanted, isolated, desiring change but unable to see how to achieve it.
Review
Struggle is, well, struggling. Surrounded by a plethora of bright ideas, she’s trying to bring change – to her bookshop, her life, the real world to name but three. The trouble is, she very rarely engages with the real world. Sounds familiar? An allegory for Gen Z “Zoomers” perhaps, the first generation to grow up surrounded by the thing that’s the interweb, smartphones and the dreaded social media?
The Painted Revolutionary, a bold new piece from Tip Top Theatre Collective, portrays a range of reassuringly familiar political concepts as uncannily real and rather flawed characters, each of whom engage with Struggle in the cramped confines of her bookshop, where she seeks solace from the rich tapestry of printed media she has at her disposal yet remains disenchanted, isolated, desiring change but unable to see how to achieve it.
Order is the only regular visitor, but with the aim of retaining the status quo rather than engaging with Struggle’s concerns. But Struggle discovers there is an audience out there, ready to listen. Yep, that’s us and, whilst we may be few in number and scattered around a rather capacious room, we’re all she has to work with. Which she does, battling with her ex-partner in crime, Revolution, the rather morose triplets of Love, Passion and Hate, Class (complete with their multi-identity states) and a range of other allegorical characters including Allegiance, Peace, Justice and its polar opposite (Injustice, since you ask).
Billed as a comedy-drama (fair warning here, it was heavy on the drama and light on the comedy), The Painted Revolutionary aims to educate “on political history, whilst also empowering the audience in their own politics and provoke a challenging political awareness” – or at least that’s what the PR blurb in my inbox told me.
And, somewhat to my surprise, it did. Any theatre nerdy types reading this will recognise this as an allegorical or morality play, where abstract ideas, qualities, or states of mind are given human form, making it a personification allegory with the characters (Struggle, Order and so on) being personified abstractions. This can be a bit of a “hard sell” when it comes to pulling in the punters but, trust me, this piece really does work.
That it does is largely down to the scripting and its consummate delivery by a uniformly strong cast led by the engaging Ellie Wallis-Atkins as Struggle in what was a bravura performance, full of energy, passion, angst, determination and just about every other emotion you can think of as she struggled (pardon the pun) to rationalise the range of arguments/issues/people bombarding her brain. Chief amongst these was Ary Satish who played Order with the understated arrogance of a member of the “UK elite”. Further support came from Lydia Sadd, who presented polar opposites as Love and Hate, Noah Edmondson who was suitably beguiling as Revolution and a bedazzling array of other characters being delivered by Neo Jelfs, Will Daniels, Campbell Maddock and Will Daniels.
But a shout out is due to Fionnuala Donnelly (who also wrote the engaging script) for his superb delivery of Class, featuring Elite, Professional and Working. People of a “certain age” should think back to that iconic TW3 sketch featuring Messrs Cleese, Barker and Corbett whilst anyone under the age of 70 should just go look this up on YouTube – you’ll understand much more about this character and, likely, this whole piece if you do.
Miranda McEwen’s direction is assured and nicely understated, allowing the words to take centre stage, which they must in a play of this intensity. Credit too for her work on costume design, the contrasts of which allowed for instant character identification of those undertaking multi-roles. Violet Usher’s functional set (just a table and some scattered books) also keeps the focus where it should be (words and actors), as does the lighting and sound.
This is an interesting, well crafted and deftly delivered piece of political theatre. It really does what it says on the tin, highlighting the glaring potholes in so-called democratic political landscapes, especially those here in the UK. It’s hard to believe that we’re on our 7th Prime Minister in 10 years, the first half dozen of which succumbed to a combination of incompetence, market forces, duplicity, sleaze and chronic indecision, leaving the current incumbent with the task of re-educating the electorate (and that includes those working in the 24/7 hell that is the news media maelstrom) that politics is about people, ideals and investing in a long term vision.
Does this explain why Millennials and Gen Z are up in arms? And why Generation Alpha needs to wake up smartish and help take ownership of the change process that’s surely required to navigate our way out of this mess? Maybe. But maybe not.
Change will always be hard given the unseen forces whose interest lies in maintaining the status quo. The Painted Revolutionary of itself won’t trigger a political upheaval, but this hidden gem of a piece of theatre will certainly get your grey matter working. Ironically it’s hiding in plain sight until 15th August, playing nightly at theSpaceUK’s Surgeons’ Hall. If you can’t find that, you really are a lost soul.
