Gender-neutral loos, forced funerals and Dracula in space - Marijke Hall discovers three Kent shows heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year

Four unlikely strangers locked in a gender-neutral toilet with an hour to kill until help arrives.

It reads like the synopsis to a trashy beach novel swiped from the shelves of WH Smith while running for your flight at Gatwick.

But throw in some tricky conversations, a cast of diverse characters and an electrifying pop-rock score and you’ve got yourself a musical.

Public - The Musical, to be exact. And it’s heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer.

The brainchild of queer-led Kent theatre collective Stroud and Notes, this funny and sensitive new show tackles some pretty hot topics - from the climate crisis to toxic masculinity, gender identity and social media - while all set to the sounds of catchy bops and heartfelt ballads, penned by singer-songwriter Kyla Stroud.

They admit it’s been quite the journey from the first rumblings of an idea 18 months ago and it’s been fast-going, getting it from their head on to the stage.

"It’s only an hour long, but oh my god I didn’t realise how difficult it is to fit anything into an hour,” Stroud laughs. “I have a lot of respect for people who put time into drawing out the initial plan of how you create a musical because we didn’t really do that.

“But the beautiful thing is I didn’t have all the restraints that come with that. It does feel fresh and new and that’s because it’s been a little bit of a broken way to go about making it.”
Making a musical is new to Stroud, who found success as a solo artist, but they had an idea they truly believed in and the concept has already proved a hit, with Public winning the Pleasances’s Charlie Hartill Fund and VAULT Origins Award.

“It’s a gender-neutral public toilet, which was a big thing. We knew we wanted it to be a space that anyone could use but where there was jeopardy”

— Kyla Stroud

“I knew I wanted to create four characters in this scenario of being trapped together,” explains Stroud, who lives in West Peckham near Tonbridge.
“I think at first there were some eyebrow raises from people about whether or not that would be enough of a concept for a musical.

“They’d say ‘You need a big story arc’ and I’d say ‘Well, maybe we don’t need it, maybe we can just put these interesting characters alongside some music’.”
In March last year, armed with her idea and just one song, Stroud brought on board co-producer Hannah Sands, twin sister and movement director Natalie Stroud and musical supervisor Olivia Zacharia.

Together they have created a musical that explores identity, compassion and connection through four somewhat stereotypical, yet relatable, characters.

There’s the opinionated white male, the posh girl living off Daddy’s money, the gay man now running late for an appointment and a nervous woman in her twenties dealing with relationship strife.

“The idea was that it would be four very different people where the majority of the population can relate to at least one of them,” says Stroud.

“It’s playing off the idea of stereotypes, especially in society at the moment, but then using that hour to tear them apart and show our human connection and how important that is.

“The conversations that these characters have are really real and there are moments when you feel like you could honestly be in that situation with these people. But it’s funny, not toilet humour, but very specific.”
So why a toilet? Surely there are plenty of places for people to get trapped. A lift, perhaps?

“It’s a gender-neutral public toilet, which was a big thing. We knew we wanted it to be a space that anyone could use but where there was jeopardy,” says Kyla.

“We’re a queer-led company and I guess we knew it would mean through the setting we could bring up conversations we wanted to have.

“The setting was probably one of the first things I decided. I suppose also because there is a natural conflict that comes with it that we can create within those characters.
“Like one of the first lines from Andrew, who is our slightly problematic but also at times lovable character, when the other character Laura walks in is ‘I think you’re in the gents, love’.”

The musical is in real time, showing the hour they spend within that bathroom with two cubicles on stage.

“It’s a very funny show, but there are some really serious topics in it,” Kyla explains.

“I think we approach them in a way that is very accessible - we’re not trying to point fingers. If we do, it goes both ways.

“It’s much more about connection and trying to inspire important conversations between different people because we all live in a world where we just hang out with people like us with the same views and it’s not real. People are different and that’s the premise.”

Stroud and Notes isn’t the only Kent act performing at this year’s Fringe.
Writer and performer Izzy Tennyson, the brains behind the award-winning Brute and critically acclaimed Grotty, is returning to the festival with a wickedly dark play about Western ideas of grief and class called The Great Ruckus.

Not only has she written the piece but she is one of two performers taking on multiple roles in the show. Oh, and she’s also created the Ralph Steadman and Ralph Searle-inspired artwork to portray the grotesque characters.

That’s quite a feat.

“I’m making my life very difficult!” she admits. “But I wanted to challenge myself.

“The drawing was quite stressful as I had to learn as I went along.”
The Great Ruckus centres on two sisters navigating their way through their mother’s funeral surrounded by a “snake-pit of self-absorbed relatives”.

“Events like weddings and funerals force people together with different temperaments, motives and backgrounds,” explains Tennyson. “My mum died when I was 21 and while this play is not autobiographical, it was a springboard of how weird the whole thing was.

“What’s interesting in families, especially in a situation like a funeral, is you get a lot of people who have gone up in class, gone down in class, or are kind of stuck.

“It’s a group of people of lots of different ages in one space. There’s a great quote from Thackeray about old people and young people being the most selfish and I think that really relates to this because it’s about people making it about them and behaving badly.

“Death and grief are serious subjects, but life doesn’t stop being funny when people die any more than it stops being serious when you laugh. The Great Ruckus embraces that.”

So, from a toilet to a funeral to, er, outer space, there’s another Kent act – string quartet Bowjangles - heading to the Edinburgh Fringe this year.

But forget everything you think you know about string quartets - Bowjangles are bringing music, theatre and comedy together in a unique way.

Their explosive production Dracula in Space sees the award-winning musicians blast into the unknown to meet a mysterious bloodsucking benefactor whose proposition seems a little too good to be true.

Ezme Gaze from Bowjangles says Dracula in Space is a love letter to classic horror films and their iconic scores but at its heart is camaraderie.

“This affectionate and hilarious production explores artistic ambition with the constraints of group dynamics,” explains Gaze. “This deals with the roots of conflict and how we are affected by elitism, misogyny and class disparity, alongside navigating friendships and professional relationships - while trying to pay the bills.”

“Bowjangles started in 2008 as a busking group, then our movements got a bit more choreographed and over the years we also started singing and acting. We never set out to be funny, but we do seem to make people laugh. We’re marking our anniversary with an out-of-this-world production that brings to life an intergalactic horror.”

It sounds like Nosferatu should steer well clear.

For tickets, go to www.edfringe.com