Edinburgh Fringe: ‘We’re getting a city bus tour to make a show of ourselves!’

The writers and actors Pat Kinevane and Gina Moxley were feted at an event today to mark their awards at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Following an observation that if their Edinburgh achievements had been in sport, they’d be riding around atop an open bus, Kinevane joked, “I’m getting a city bus tour this afternoon, and I’ll make a show of myself with Gina!”

Moxley and Kinevane have just returned from the Culture Ireland Showcase at Edinburgh, where they separately presented plays which won excellent reviews and sought-after awards.

Kinevane won a Herald Archangel Award for sustained contribution to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His new play Before, set in Clery’s of Dublin on the day it shuts for good, is the fourth of his solo shows produced by Fishamble New Play Theatre Company. “It’s been a long, brilliant journey with the team”, he said. Forgotten in 2006 was followed by Silent (which won a Scotsman Fringe First award in 2011), and Underneath (Fringe First in 2015). All four play consecutive nights in Dún Laoghaire’s Pavilion in September.

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Gina Moxley won both a Fringe First and Herald Angel award for The Patient Gloria, produced by the Abbey in association with PanPan and presented at Edinburgh’s Traverse. Moxley wrote and performs in the funny, bawdy and sobering play about therapy and female desire, playing three male psychiatrists interviewing Liv O’Donoghue’s character.

The month-long enormous international festival is hard work, but Kinevane said, “There’s a great sense of representing your country, to deliver the best you can.” Daily shows at staggered times were a hard slog in Edinburgh, agreed Moxley, but gratifying to get great audience response, awards, and reviews.

“We were coming down with stars! It’s great to do something here that resonates elsewhere. The play attracted an extraordinary demographic, from young ones to older women, and loads of men in Edinburgh. I think some Irish men were a bit jumpy!” said Moxley.

Mostly, Moxley is delighted that staging The Patient Gloria meant “I finally got a go! It was my chance to do something; it’s my turn.”

She arrived home in Dublin on Sunday night and began rehearsals on Monday morning for Pasolini’s Salò Redubbed by Dylan Tighe, in Dublin Theatre Festival. “From dicks to child abuse,” she remarked ruefully, referring to a makeshift penis she crafted onstage in Gloria, and the “coercive confinement” and child abuse themes of Salò Redubbed.

Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan congratulated the artists, and announced €680,200 funding to promote Irish arts globally from Culture Ireland, part of the Department of Culture, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs.

Breffni Holahan of Malaprop Theatre was the first winner of The Stage Edinburgh awards this year, for her performance in Collapsible, a play by Margaret Perry, which will also be at this year’s Dublin Fringe.

Culture Ireland supported several well-received shows in Edinburgh, including Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer by dance artist Oona Doherty at the curated main Edinburgh International Festival.