Review: Harling Fringe Festival 2026

This year saw the first ever Harling Fringe Festival take place from the 10th to the 12th of July. Although I’m Watford based it was a pleasure to jump on the Metropolitan line to Liverpool Street and switch to the train up to Diss to join the residents of Harling for their celebration of creativity and art. 

The reason I made the journey was primarily because I'd been invited to perform as the headline act. So although I didn’t get to enjoy the whole weekend, fortunately I arrived early enough to take in many of the Sunday performances. And what a delightful array of activities it was.

The first thing I attended was the Harling Horsepower Classic Car Show at the charming Peppers venue. It was a free event which pulled in a substantial crowd of people not only showing off their gorgeous motors but also having a leisurely wander around taking in the aesthetic beauty and engineering wonder of vintage cars from across the decades.

Next I hotfooted it to Saint Peter and Saint Paul's Church where there was an art exhibition featuring several local artists including internationally renowned Maz Jackson SGFA, who has spent a lifetime drawing and painting in rural Norfolk but whose work is now exhibited and purchased all over the world. The exhibition offered a wonderful collection of work, most of it available for purchase. Many of the artists had rural subjects as their key theme including some pen sketches of bird life, sculpture of rabbits and sheep, and oils and acrylics of natural landscapes. But there was also a lot of abstract and impressionistic work which added to the characterful and colourful variety.

Next up in my whirlwind tour of Harling was the comedy show Offgridleand at the Sports and Social Club. This was a really inventive claustrophobic piece that blended theatre and stand-up traditions with some innovative technology. Multi-award winning writer/performer Paul Richards starts the play by pressing play on his laptop which then sets an audio file going and the whole piece is performed in real time as he interacts with the various sounds and voices that emerge. It was interesting to see how he times his jerky actions and stuttering speech to fit in chronologically with the recording whilst making it feel completely spontaneous. After the show it was delightful to sit down with him and a band of locals to have a good old chat about theatre, art and culture in the way that really only fringes allow.

Next step was a show that is pulling out all the stops to prepare itself for a transfer to Edinburgh in August. Who Remembers the 90s is an ingenious blend of comedy sketches, parody songs and madcap physical humour providing a nostalgic trail through Tamagotchis, Mr Blobby, Friends, Power Rangers and even the rise of New Labour. Sonic the Hedgehog had a particularly memorable appearance and I had the dubious pleasure of holding up one of his golden rings! An incredibly enthusiastic and quite frankly bonkers performance from Adam Larter which I think the whole enjoy audience enjoyed immensely.

Finally it was my own turn to perform and I headed to the Nag's Head pub to share Tiger Jazz Sings, my joyful rendition of beloved and less well known songs from the Great American Songbook. The set was met with huge appreciation from the Harling audience and I was incredibly touched by the warm welcome and rapturous response they shared with me.

The whole event has arisen courtesy of the magnificent Festival Organiser Sharon Gaffney, who I know well from our work together at the Pumphouse Theatre in Watford. As a founding organiser of the Watford Fringe, now in its tenth incarnation, she has the perfect skill set and experience to make this new Harling Fringe a tremendous success. I wish her every success with this new creative impulse and hope to see it develop, blossom and flourish in the years to come. I certainly can’t wait to return in 2027.

Review: Echo House

Echo House is a really interesting concept. It tells the story of a mother who had a son at 15 who is subsequently adopted, and they are estranged from one another for 50 years. From that simple premise spin out a myriad of different trajectories and outcomes based on suggestions from the audience and inspired by a series of improvisational games.

The title Echo House perfectly evokes the sense that a house contains layered incarnations, almost ghosts, of its occupants, their lives and the different directions they could have developed. And as people return to the house, the memories of actions past echo back to them in truthful and in misremembered ways. It’s ultimately left up to the audience to decide which version of the story is most true or 'best'.

The kaleidoscope of versions of this troubled mother-son relationship is immediately intriguing as a dramatic structure. With each passing scene the you are asked to reconsider whether the son is welcoming or unwelcoming, and whether the mother is delighted or anxious at the prospect of meeting her son after half a century apart. You’re even asked to consider the drastic possibility that one or other of them may have died by (depending on your audience) suicide, fork in the toaster, car accident or Wallaby kick!

This experimental way of storytelling is in its early stages of development for The Two Jays, a writing and performing duo made up of John Harper and Julia Bolden. Harper is a towering presence whose charming smile counteracts his imposing frame. Bolden is much shorter, a contrast which they jovially play for laughs, and her laid-back demeanour brings a relaxed, chilled energy.

At present while the opening scene carries a lot of exciting dramatic potential, the following scenes lack momentum and drive. The improvisational games don’t make enough of the audience suggestions. As we enter the auditorium, the audience are asked to write down suggestions which are put into a small wooden box to be used later in the show. The box is used during two monologues, by mother and son, but the suggestions are effectively just read out as a list. They're not used to change or develop the story. Furthermore, the only person who knows their suggestion has been read out is the person who wrote it because there's no wider sharing of what those suggestions are before the monologues take place.

Similarly, when we were asked whether we want the son to be welcoming or unwelcoming to his mother when she arrives at his front door, the audience resoundingly voted for welcoming and the scene was played out. But then the unwelcoming scene was played out as well. The audience suggestion turned out not be a decisive moment in the evening's narrative, but just a decision over which narrative we'd see first.

To make this show more powerful, the audience suggestions need to be more meaningful and impactful. They need to change the shape and direction of the story as a whole. If you shout stop in a scene as instructed or present a high or low status card it really has to make a difference to the way that scene plays out. 

Overall an exciting concept in how to deliver a semi scripted, semi improvisational work, but it needs more trust in the audience suggestions to take flight.

Julia Bolden speaks eloquently about Echo House on a recent addition of my podcast What's On Watford which you can listen to here.

Review: Heart and Music

In Good Company have become an indispensable part of the Watford Fringe Festival annual lineup. But what exactly are they? As their illustrious leader, West End performer Ashleigh Fleming, pointed out in her closing remarks, they have too much choreography to be a choir, and too great a musical focus to be an amateur dramatics company. So what are they? A show choir? A musical theatre troop?

Whatever we decide to call them, what's certain is that they are a hugely talented, uber-enthusiastic group of dancing, quick-changing vocalists who know how to deliver a jam-packed celebration of musical theatre full of charisma, buoyancy and charm.

This is In Good Company's most ambitious show to date, not only in the diverse song selection but also in the challenging choreography, quick fire costume changes, rapid attack of repertoire and intense emotional layers presented with each number. They don't just sing the tunes, they invest each moment with character, mood and drama.

For a musical theatre fan like me it was a joy to hear a plethora of well-known songs brought alongside more obscure and newer melodies. The projections overhead clearly but unobtrusively pointed out which particular musicals the songs belonged to, which was a helpful and thoughtful addition. Standout favourites included the anthemic 'I Am What I Am' from La Cage Aux Folles, delivered by the five gentlemen singers with not only a sweet sense of comedy camp but also a genuine and sincere integrity. Similarly focused on the theme of equality, diversity and inclusion was the hilarious fairy tale fantasy 'Let Your Freak Flag Fly' from Shrek, presented with a dizzying array of uniquely costumed characters.

Throughout, there were beautiful duets and trios which gave the cast opportunities to show careful vocal blending and close harmonies. I was really moved by the trio of ladies who sang 'I Wish I May' from The Witches of Eastwick. They imbued each overlapping line with a wave-like sense of loss and nostalgia as well as a gentle optimism for the future.

The one drawback perhaps was the venue. Saint Mary’s Church provided a beautiful backdrop and the religious setting actually made many of the secular songs feel dangerous and risky again, as they would have been when first performed. However, it did sometimes mean that sound was compromised. While the brilliant Jon Ben on piano could be heard clearly all night, often the vocals when not amplified were lost. But that never meant we lost the track of the stories, characters or intentions. They were delivered with such confidence and scale that they came across to the very back row of the well attended space.

July promises a stupendous lineup of fringe performances for Watford. This was my first and I couldn’t have hoped for a more rousing start!