It's the Economy, Stupid! & Every Brilliant Thing at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe

It’s the Economy, Stupid! & Every Brilliant Thing

On Day 4, the last of my quick Fringe binge in Edinburgh, I squeezed in two final shows before rushing for my afternoon train back to London. Both funnily enough featuring cardboard boxes and an important lesson.

Every Brilliant Thing ★★★★★

I try to keep a gratitude list, but it comes nowhere near the length of the one Jonny Donahoe’s genial character compiles here. After his mother’s first suicide attempt when he was just seven, he begins the list of “every brilliant thing” worth staying alive for. The first item: ice cream.

With contributions from others, selected ones read out by the audience – vigorous nods for “sunlight”, “a hairdresser who listens to what you want”, “waking up with someone you love”, “never having to wear a tie again” and many others – the list tops one million. There’s so much to be grateful for.

Add this uplifting play, co-written with Donahoe and directed by Duncan Macmillan, to the list. Brilliant.

Fave line: “In order to live in the present, we have to imagine a future that can be better than the past. That’s what hope is.”

Roundabout at Summerhall until 26 August 2024.

It’s the Economy, Stupid! ★★★★

The title of Joe Sellman-Leava’s latest play is taken from James Carville, the Democratic strategist who helped Bill Clinton win the 1992 US presidential election. Sellman-Leava provides a crash course in modern economics from Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand through Keynesian state interventionism to neo-liberalism and shows not just how this affects our politics but absolutely everything else.

What could feel like a dry lecture is made accessible through magical use of those cardboard boxes, cartoon sketches, spot lighting and the way that Sellman-Leava, with the onstage assistance of his collaborator and designer Dylan Howells, links theory and a whole bunch of numbers back to himself and the people he loves.

Fave line: “If that is success, what does failure look like?”

Pleasance Dome until 26 August 2024.