“Bull / Fight”, Summerhall, Edinburgh
Mark Brown at the Edinburgh Fringe
★★★½☆
25 August 2026
What a breath of fresh air it is – at an Edinburgh Fringe in which so many shows are characterised by desperate, hollow attention grabbing – to see a new work by a young, Scottish company that engages seriously both with important subject matter and theatrical technique. Mythography Collective – an emerging, Edinburgh-based company of young, Scottish and international actors and theatremakers – has created the Spanish Civil War drama Bull / Fight with the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling (and respect is due to the latter for throwing its weight behind the project).
On an uncertain date in August 1936 the great Andalusian poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca was captured by fascist forces in his home city of Granada. He was then taken to a nearby hillside, shot dead by a firing squad and buried in a shallow grave.
Lorca’s offences – in the eyes of those who had so ardently sought his death – were legion. Chief among them were his homosexuality, his leftist politics and his commitment to expressing the female condition under a repressive Catholic authority.
Bull / Fight – which is collectively devised by Mythography Collective – takes as its starting point Lorca’s rehearsing of his great drama Blood Wedding during a time of rising nationalist (i.e. fascist and Catholic) censorship. Gabriel Bird gives a charismatic and compelling performance as Lorca, with the other five actors offering strong support in the roles of his fascist jailer and the actors of his company.
The text they speak is poetic and beautifully expressive of Lorca’s passions and his commitment to duende (the concept at the heart of the flamenco culture of Andalusia that expresses the inseparability of desire, love and death, and which resists all attempts at translation into a single word in English). There is atmospheric use of recorded voices (such as those of the fascist authorities) and flamenco music, including fine live percussive accompaniment by way of a cymbal and clapping hands.
The poet’s death bifurcates this 50-minute play. In the second part, movement associate Tsoi Huen Wong’s highly stylised choreography comes increasingly to the fore as a troupe of actors seek to navigate their way through a war-torn Spain.
Some moments (such as those in which the six players act in the tragic unison of an Ancient Greek chorus) are more effective than others (a somewhat distracting scene in which hand-held electric lights are accompanied by beat-driven electronic music fails to really land). Not every choice in director Philomene Cheynet’s production is a good one, and one might have wished for a better balance between text and movement.
Nevertheless, this a thoughtful, admirably ambitious piece about a worryingly pertinent episode in Europe’s modern history, and one that bodes well for the future of Mythography Collective.
Until 31 August: festival.summerhallarts.co.uk
