#also like the idea that the two main characters know each other as civvies

[placesyoucallhome]

Well. Okay, yes brain I do in fact want a superhero au, and will be thinking about it for the next week.

Or maybe I'll just draw Ruhka as catwoman, not sure yet.

[blackjack-15]

All Dogs Go To Pennsylvania — Thoughts on: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake (DOG)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: mention of MHM, DOG, brief mention of VEN, brief discussion of two characters from ASH, brief mention of LIE, spoilers for 20th Century American History in case you’re not caught up yet.

The Intro:

Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake is, first and foremost, a game that is simultaneously over- and under-appreciated. It’s a rare phenomenon in gaming, and one that only occurs once in the Nancy Drew game series. 

It has an intensely atmospheric location, but is coupled with the least fitting cast to ever grace a Nancy Drew game. 

The maze (and its bird spotting/worm finding puzzles) is tedious at best, but the speakeasy is riddled with fun puzzles and pitch-perfect décor. It has the most boring, milquetoast, robotic suspects of all time, but some of the best phone characters. 

And, to top it all off, it has one of the most straightforward mysteries paired with an insanely weird ending.

The thing that DOG really nails is the location. The visuals, the accents (Emily’s is a standout), the feeling of timelessness — all of that is central to this specific area of Pennsylvania and somehow Seattle-based HER really just gets it all right. Not only is this significant in this burgeoning era of Nancy Drew games, but it also goes a long way to making the game fun to play.

By this point, HER has cottoned onto the fact that their audience really likes historical background to the games, and includes it as a matter of course. For DOG, we’re learning about Prohibition-era Pennsylvania — and more specifically, bootlegger history. 

To understand the game completely, a little history lesson might be in order. If you’re familiar with Prohibition and its cultural impact, you can skip the next few paragraphs.

For those not from the US, Prohibition was when a bunch of uptight, meddling people in the early 1900s decided that they needed a good Moral Panic and that the best way to get rid of the problems that can come with drinking was to give the government the power to make it illegal by adding it to the United States Constitution.

This lasted a total of 13 years  (1920-33) where everyone immediately and promptly ignored the law, until the government sheepishly passed the repeal in the form of another amendment to the Constitution, having accomplished nothing other than moralistic finger-wagging and the solidification and exponential growth of organized crime and the black market in the US.

Thus, in United States culture, bootleggers and others who defied Prohibition are usually viewed as folk heroes fighting against stupid governmental overreach, rather than as criminals. 

One of the most famous anecdotes from the Prohibition era is about an FBI agent who went undercover to see how long it would take to get alcohol in the major cities of the time. The longest took him a bit over 15 minutes, while the shortest was in New Orleans, Louisiana, where it took him 32 seconds due to his cab driver answering the question of where he could get alcohol by producing a bottle and saying “right here”.

This backstory is crucial not only to understanding characters like Jeff Akers, Eustacia Andropov, Vivian Whitmore, and, yes, Mickey Malone, but it’s also crucial to understanding why the game feels the way it does.

Unlike the other Nancy Drew games that touch on organized crime — Phantom of Venice, Labyrinth of Lies — this game holds a sort of fascinated reverence and “good ol’ American boy”-type feelings for Malone and his fellow gangsters. 

Usually in Nancy Drew games — and almost always in the early to middle games – HER tries to send a very strong message against any type of illegal or immoral behavior (as evidenced by the games’ Fundamentalist fanbase), but DOG stands out in its sheer American pride in these law-breakers from a different age.

It’s to the benefit of the game that the character archetypes of certain suspects and/or phone characters feed into these 20s/30s Prohibition-era tropes, as it gives them some grounding in a game that really doesn’t have much to say (in contrast to how much it feels).

Other than the historical background and its modern-day underpinnings, DOG is a paint-by-numbers Nancy Drew game with one or two annoying puzzles, a strong atmosphere, fun phone friends, and a decent plot. In a first for the series, it’s also a primarily outdoor game, which would inspire future games such as Danger on Deception Island and Creature of Kapu Cave, among many others.

While I would never rate DOG in my top games (and probably not even in the top half of games, due to the overall quality of the series), there’s a lot it does right. Ultimately, the problem with the game — and the reason that it doesn’t rank too highly on a lot of lists — is not that DOG does anything wrong, per se. It’s just that, for all its good things, DOG doesn’t do enough right.

The Title:

Lots of Nancy Drew games (always excepting the first two, which were more trial-style games and thus are different on a whole host of levels) are titled with “The [adjective] [noun]”, “[noun] in a/the [adjective] [location]’ or “The [noun] of [Proper Noun/Location]”, and Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake thus stands out a bit, making the title seem more important than it would normally.

The title tells us pretty explicitly what the main conflict — and the main “haunting”, as this is a Haunted game in its trappings, if not in its actual plot — will be: the ghostly dogs that haunt the Moon Lake property. It also lets us know, in a roundabout way, the location of the game (though there are Moon Lakes in multiple places throughout the US).

However, that’s all the title does. Unlike most other titles in the series, DOG’s title doesn’t really let you play around with possible meanings or read into it at all. As good a title as it is for pointing you right to the heart of the premise of the game, it’s also a bad title because it refuses to tell you anything else about the game.

In other words, the title, much like the rest of the game, is a mixed bag that, for me at least, hangs a little more on the negative side than the positive.

Now, onto the only thing that the title points us to:

The Mystery:

Nancy’s been called to investigate by a friend of her family’s, Sally MacDonald — a photographer and land owner — due to the fact that Sally’s cabin has been experiencing nightly hauntings by ghostly dogs of the cabin’s previous owner, a Prohibition-era gangster named Mickey Malone.

Technically, Nancy is supposed to be there to visit, but Sally can’t take another night of hauntings, and books it out of there before Nancy can arrive. Upon her arrival, Nancy experiences one of these hauntings, and promptly sets out to solve the case behind the Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake.

As a mystery, DOG isn’t too standout — it’s in the vein of MHM, though not as good — and follows the basic structure of a Haunting Game: a few instances of the haunting, some logical explanations, some illogical explanations, and a few shifty people who could have caused the disturbances.

The reason behind the hauntings is established fairly quickly, as Nancy learns that Malone’s property is valuable for a number of reasons, and Sally’s purchase of it upset the plans of the other three residents of Moon Lake. What’s not clear is which of our three extremely guilty-seeming suspects (four if you consider Sally a suspect) is actually responsible.

While the culprit in this game isn’t immediately recognizable, as HER has tried to lay some red herrings and distribute blame a little more than they have in the past, it’s still easy to figure out once you’ve hit the halfway mark (and can be figured out well before that if you’re paying close attention), but that’s more due to the suspects being one of the most lackluster suspect groups in the entire series.

The Suspects:

Sally MacDonald is the owner of the so-called haunted cabin on Moon Lake, and is the “client” of the game. She bought the Moon Lake property for its picturesque views, but soon learned that the cabin came with a price beyond the monetary. Upset by the hauntings, Sally high-tails it out of Moon Lake, leaving Nancy an incredibly garbled message about the dogs and not much else. She also hasn’t apparently tested her water even though she’s been there for a month, which is a Bit Much, City Girl.

Sally’s not really a suspect, but there’s nowhere else to put her, and if the game didn’t begin with Nancy witnessing the dogs for herself, Sally would start out as a halfway-decent suspect herself, rather than a mostly-pointless phone friend.

Sally herself is one of the weakest points of the game (more on that below), which is a little sad when you consider how important her presence is to the game versus how much impact she actually has (less than anyone else)

Red Knott is the rather unfortunately named birdwatcher that perches on what I’m pretty sure is Sally’s property to begin with and yells about The Youth with the vigor that only an oldster in civvie-camo can do. He’s upset about Sally’s purchase because he wants to watch birds 24/7 and having more people — especially someone younger, as he hates those under 50 — in Moon Lake means more people disturbing the birds.

Red is rude, cantankerous, and firmly believes in having people do things for him, provided it’s an 18 year old in unisex camo gear. You’d think his and Sally’s shared hobby of photography would link them together and make Red your first-cleared buddy-buddy suspect, but Nancy’s pretty much on her own the entire game.

As a suspect, Red is pretty lackluster as well. Sure, he likes his birds, but no one believes for a moment that this dude is actually behind anything other than being a pain the butt. Red is entirely un-useful in everything, but not so unhelpful as to stymie Nancy. In a cast of nothings and no-ones, Red is especially forgettable apart from asking Nancy if she smokes.

Jeff Akers is the local park ranger and resident owner of the most firmly lodged stick in the universe. He’s also the strongest tie to the Prohibition-era backstory as the Lawmen opposing people like Mickey Malone and Valerie. 

It’s a shame he doesn’t do his job better; Jeff should be the embodiment of Consequences when Nancy goes too far, but instead, he barely shows up to have his dog be a red herring and then disappears into Moon Lake like some Nessie-style monster of Little Consequence.

As a suspect? Well, Jeff isn’t going to tick many boxes. Sure, he’s got a dog — albeit not the right type of dog at all — and he’s not fond of Nancy, but pretty much no one in this game is a fan of Nancy, so that doesn’t do much for his suspect-ness at all.

In a game where dogs are bad news, Jeff is all bark and no bite. He’s a comic relief character that shouldn’t be a comic relief character, and a present-day presence when he should be a relic of a past time.

Emily Griffin is the owner of a local bait shop/general store/Prohibition-era antique corner who definitely only sells Legally Obtained items, thank you very much. She’s got that cheeriness that HER liked to conflate with friendliness, ignoring that they’re two very different things and produce two very different reactions in the player (think in ASH Toni’s cheeriness versus Alexei’s friendliness).

She’s the one most tied to the past through her side hustle of selling Prohibition antiques, and it’s obvious that she must be the culprit through that reveal alone. Unfortunately, that’s her only tie to the Prohibition era, as nothing else about her is a shadow of Malone, Vivian, or any other bit of the past we learn about in the game.

As a suspect, Emily is the best, but still isn’t fabulous. There’s little depth to her beyond simple greed, and her interactions with Nancy might as well be with a slightly cagey computer rather than a person. She’s not sinister enough to be scary (apart from one subtle moment covered below), but not silly enough to be funny. She perhaps best represents DOG as a game: she’s a mixed bag with a few shining bits, but is ultimately forgettable.

The Favorite:

There are a few things that DOG does righter than rain, so let’s take a run-down.

The first and most important thing that DOG nails is the atmosphere. I’ve mentioned it above, so I won’t dwell too much, but HER really just gets rural Pennsylvania right, and it’s an absolute treat to play in that atmosphere.

The next is also covered above, but I really adore the good ol’ American appreciation for our bootlegger heroes. It would have been so easy to demonize these people who did, admittedly, break the law, but instead HER for once doesn’t play the wet blanket and acknowledges that sometimes (most of the time, really), American folk heroes are a bit good and a bit bad.

My favorite puzzle is incredibly lame, but it’s the Roman Numeral puzzle. I have a slightly secret, mostly nerdy love for puzzles that use things that are useful in the real world, and having taken Latin in college, this puzzle really actually helped me be able to 1) pass accelerated Lain and 2) feel more confident when looking at dates. It’s also just kinda fun and relaxing. I like puzzles that make me sort stuff.

My favorite moment in the game is probably when you first step into the speakeasy and Malone’s presence is almost palpable. Every time I walk in, I’m always looking around for someone to speak to, even though I know the saloon is empty. It’s a great moment and an appropriate reveal given the heft of the historical background.

Once again, the Hardy Boys are a bright spot in this game, as are Vivian and Eustacia. Really, the phone conversations are the best part of DOG — not just because the actual game is a bit lackluster, but more because they’re really just that good.

I’ve also gotta give credit for the insanely terrifying tidbit of Emily trying to give Nancy calming tea that would poison her after setting the shed on fire. It’s a great moment of fridge horror, and shows that Emily does have some subtlety (attempted murder with a femur bone notwithstanding) when she wants to.

The Un-Favorite:

There are probably as many bad things as good, however, and it’s here that DOG starts to show its weaknesses.

As mentioned above, Sally really drags down the parts of the game she’s in, as she could have been a good character and ultimately winds up not even being a character at all.

If you restructure the beginning and have a little more subtle haunting of the dogs happening to a cabin and then cut to Sally leaving Nancy a voicemail/talking to her on the phone — but Nancy sees no evidence of dogs, just general mild destruction — then you start out a haunting game on the right foot.

Proving Sally right about the dogs and right to leave Moon Lake from the beginning weakens the game, and is one of my least favorite bits of it.

As far as least favorite puzzles go, there are two contenders. The maze in the woods is a high point for some, but as someone with a little trouble with distinguishing visual stimuli in the first place, it can be (and usually is) absolute hell. None of the puzzles are hard except for the bird-spotting puzzle, which isn’t hard as much as it is frustrating.

My least favorite moment is the beginning haunting simply because it builds the game up to a point that it never reaches again, not even with the hilarious screwball ending. When the best moment of the game is the first two minutes, you’re not looking at a satisfying game.

The cast is often what makes or breaks a game and, unfortunately, this is a game where the cast breaks it. There’s simply nothing in the suspects to propel the game forward, which gives the game a feel of more of a graphic novel-type game than a whodunnit. And, spoiler alert, it doesn’t make for a good graphic novel game either.

The lack of length in this section isn’t a testament to the value of the game itself; rather, it shows DOG for what it is: just unremarkable. Not good enough to be solid, not bad enough to be an outlier.

The Fix:

So how would I fix DOG?

There’s not much you can do with the current cast of characters, despite their tenuous ties to Prohibition tropes, so I’d pretty much start over.

Make Sally a mid-game presence (actual tangible suspect, thank you very much) and shift Emily from the ‘bumpkin’ archetype to someone a bit more world-wise (though keep the accent, it’s fantastic) and hide her involvement in dredging the bottom of the lake a little longer (or implicate someone else in it first, whichever works).

Give Red something to do to make him a bit more suspicious and use him as Nancy’s buddy once Sally comes in (to keep the number of suspects the same) and have his photography actually come in handy. As for Jeff…an obstructionist presence is fine, but root him a bit more in history as a figure of the law rather than a sissified bureaucrat whose only character trait is that he loves to give tickets.

The puzzles could also solve to be more memorable and not auto-solved (save for the bird-spotting puzzle, which is a Disgrace) by the game, but part of that is the age of the game.

DOG is structured as a haunting game, so beginning it with Nancy experiencing a haunting full-stop is a horrible beginning. It takes out any suspense and any sense that this might just be an old legend and minor sabotage getting the better of Sally (or better, Sally damaging her own property in order to hype up its status as Malone’s house and then flip it for a profit/get her photos of the “hauntings” featured in a nationwide story) and instead gives us the most cut and dry (emphasis on dry) haunting game in the series.

Beginning DOG in the way that HER does, while a great cinematic (especially for 2002), drains the suspense and Mystery out of the game like sap from a pine tree. We’re still left with a structure of sorts, but it’s just not what it could have been.

Ultimately, even with DOG fixed, I don’t think it would be a standout game for anything (except possibly atmosphere). At its best, DOG is simply a three-star entry in a series; no one’s least favorite, very few people’s favorite, and memorable only for its initial haunting rather than for its plot, characters, or mystery.

[thefloatingstone]

I’m stealing my mom’s phone data to post this. I’m sure she’ll understand. I’m still not online yet but I have no patience so I’m uploading this now.

“Hey! I know what would be a good idea! Let’s draw the boys from @tyranttortoise‘s SSLL fic in their civvies! Yeah! That’s an excellent idea!”

5000 years later and here we are. (seriously I started this in January before my birthday)

It turns out fewer of them wear alt outfits in the fic than I thought when I was going through it. In retrospect maybe I should’ve drawn the beach episode chapter instead. Or the Halloween one. Oh well. If nothing else this helped cement some of their designs in my mind that I was struggling with.

big fat AU breakdown notes under the cut!

First off; another reason for this picture was to play around with the designs of each character, since I personally don’t like it when characters are just copypastas of each other with different outfits on. So I was playing around not just with the idea of civvies, but also with differences in height, body shape, posture, etc etc.

First we have Red and our vanilla boi Sans. I imagine these two as being the most similar in terms of looks, with only details being slightly different. However there are small differences. Red is slightly taller than Sans, and although you can’t see it under all that fluff, his shoulders are broader. I like the weird dynamic these two have in the fic. They’re generally in ok terms, but Red seems to have pretty rotten luck and often accidentally does something to paint himself as someone untrustworthy, and with the king of distrust around, Sans comes across as having pinned him as “troublemaker” who he has to kinda shuffle back into place every now and then. By extension, Red is actually pretty intimidated by Sans.... because he’s Sans.

Next we have Edge and Blackberry. Edge is taller than Papyrus but not the tallest of the bros (although he’s the tallest in the main building) Although this may just be because he likes his boots with a bit of a heel. I think his differences to Paps are pretty obvious. His overall facial structure is spikier not just with his teeth but overall. Black on the other hand is the shortest of the whole group which purely comes from the fact that I love the idea that the most tyrannical and bossiest of the group happens to be the smallest and he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s gonna order you around and you’re gonna listen to him. I also like envisioning Black, unlike the rest of the shorter bros, as being pretty spindly. One last detail is that Princess heel click. Which you KNOW he probably does all the time. a little detail I have to thank Vegeta from DBZ for in one specific scene somebody pointed out on tumblr with the tag “what a fucking princess”. And the second lack entered the fic that’s immediately how I pegged him.

Russ/Mutt and Vanilla Paps. Russ is the second tallest overall and the biggest flirt which is a huge fucking accomplishment. However I like the idea that he’s only serious about %5 of the time and actually just does it either out of habit or just because it’s funny to rile people up and annoy and/or fluster them. Papyrus, pure soul that he is, seems both oblivious and immune. I think he’s just happy for any kind of compliment, missing the intention behind it completely... ..I think.... Paps is difficult to fully understand sometimes. How much is he fully overlooking and how much is he perfectly aware of and just ignores. It’s a mystery. Russ’ facial structure is a mess compared to Pap’s. His jaw is really large and his chin is chiseled. His face is basically mostly jaw. It’s insane.

Blue and Crooks! Blue is a character I always struggle with, but I’m slowly getting to grips with him better (I hope???) I made him taller than Sans because I like the idea that the one who you’d project as being the youngest is bigger than some of the oldest. Otherwise, not much to say. His face is less round than Sans’ and yet somehow looks younger because of it??? weird. Crooks is the tallest, but he’s always hunched over to deal with everyone else so it’s a little unclear how tall he really is. Of course, one of the first exposures I has to AUs at all was from @forgivemeimmasin and her HT boys. So when Crooks entered the story I could only picture him as looking like her design for him. Heck in my mind he’s a mirror copy, complete with his large shabby coat and fingerless gloves. However, he doesn’t actually wear those in the story so I left them off. But yeah, he’s suppose to be Mun’s design which is why he looks just like him.

Axe, Stretch and Q! Axe is actually an exact copy of Sans. The only thing different is his posture which makes him look shorter, but it’s just his hunched, on-alert, way of standing. Again, heavily inspired by Forgivemeimmasin’s design, however, in the SSLL fic he’s literally exactly Sans but with the head wound and eye. So I stuck closer to that idea. I left off his beanie because I wanted to draw that crack. I also put him in the hoodie that the canon Sans plushie wears, rather than my personal default of Sans’ fluff hood. Just to put some distance between the two, however cosmetic.

Stretch I think I struggled with the most for some reason. I think again the differences are pretty clear. He’s taller than Paps but shorter than Edge (although just slightly) however his posture makes him seem shorter. He’s got longer legs than Paps though. And he’s got them hollow cheeks.

And lastly we have @jolie-in-the-underground‘s Q in his civvies. In the fic he actually doesn’t wear his admin outfit that much, however it’s what most people draw him in. I decided to copy Jolie’s header image for his civvies but not lose his digital cues *jazz hands*. Obviously the tallest of the Sans’, but very different in overall stature and design from the others. I don’t think that is actually canon within the fic, but my visual mind puts him looking more like this than short potato Sans. I reason it’s because the more time goes by, the more Q’s design shifts naturally away from Sans into being his own unique form. The change is just so slow and subtle it’s hard to tell.

Also also, this is completely at odds with the fic, but I imagine the shorter bros to all be a tiny bit shorter than the LL (even Red) and the taller bros are taller than her. anyway, my mom’s phone is being eaten alive data wise so that’s gonna have to be it.

[vileart]

Three Shows and a Dramaturgy: Tim Marriot @ Edfringe

A Warning From History – Mengele 

As the Labour Party argues over the definition of anti-Semitism* and the Israeli government approves a Jewish Nation State**, divisions deepen and boundaries blur.

All across Europe and the USA extremist views advance and the Far Right begins to creep into government.

Against this contemporary background, Smokescreen Productions offers a warning from history at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Mengele takes us back to a beach in Brazil in 1979 when a drowning man is washed up on a beach where he meets a mysterious woman.

The play imagines the notorious doctor of Auschwitz confronted by the woman he assumes has saved him. 

Mengele Trailer from Smokescreen Visuals Ltd on Vimeo.

Shell Shock Tackles Major Mental Health Issue Related Deaths of Veterans

Fringe Encore Winner and Best Solo Show, Adelaide Fringe 18 The Ministry of Defence has just admitted that it “does not hold information on the causes of death for all UK Armed Forces veterans”*.

This includes the growing numbers among our estimated 2.6 million former service men and women who take their own lives.

The multiple award-winning play Shell Shock,which is coming to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on 11 August as part of the Army@TheFringe programme, tackles the mental health challenges faced by some veterans trying to return to civilian life. 

All Change – Ivor’s Not Going Quietly

Ivor waits, his train of thought broken by his fragmented and decaying memory. 

His daughter Lily packs a bag, preparing him for a “home”. But Ivor’s not going quietly. As fast as Lily packs, he unpacks...

Performed by sitcom veteran Tim Marriott  with Stefanie Rossi as Lily, it’s a tale for our times, addressing the issues of failing memory and caring for an aging parent – something growing numbers of us can expect to face in years to come.

First of all, how do you define mental health? What does the term mean to you - do you have a social model of sanity, for example, or is it concerned with neural atypical conditions?

We are all happy to discuss our physical health… I wear a Fitbit tracker and will happily bore anyone to death about how many steps I have taken today, this week, this month… but there is a stigma around mental health that, in order to be truly healthy, we should address. Mental health therefore means to me exactly that – a healthy, balanced, exercised and fit mental state… or not. 

I don’t think of mental health in terms of expected social norms, or psychosis, but more in terms of how I react to stress and pressure on a daily basis. There are neuroses, injuries, degenerative conditions, physical and mental traumas and imbalances covered by the very general term ‘mental health’, but on a day to day, the phrase makes me think of emotional and intellectual well being.

What areas of mental health are you looking at in the performance?

I am doing three shows at EdFringe that

can be seen to deal with different aspects of 

mental health. Two established shows and one new one. ‘ Mengele’ exposes the mind of a narcissistic sociopath, ‘Shell Shock’ charts the descent through toxic masculinity into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The new show, ‘All Change’ is a deeply personal family story about living with dementia interpreted through a domestic and comedic setting.

In what ways do you hope that your play can help the audience to move forward in their understanding and actions towards a greater sense of mental good health?

In ‘All Change’, we use humour to bring the audience into the world of Ivor and his daughter Lily as she attempts to prepare him for life in a ‘home’. Her gentle handling of this irascible character says much about how we can respond to the condition and ease the confusion of the sufferer. Though the play also contains other complexities in that Lily has her own issues that she struggles to share with her father as his mind slips away. The play is not didactic, that is not our style, but hopes to at least provoke a conversation or two.

And given the high pressure nature of the Fringe, do you have any ideas about positive self-care during August in Edinburgh.

Performing three plays during the fringe will be a challenge and the level of involvement in each one, the emotional and physical demands of each role will make us vulnerable to anxiety and stress. Audience reaction and reviews can feel very personal and you can’t win ‘em all, so we need to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth.  As a reviewer myself, I try and take account of

this when offering a written response as I know what negative criticism can feel like and how destructive it can be to one’s mental health.  I will try and make myself and my company as resilient as possible by keeping physically fit, eating and sleeping well, keeping regular hours and avoiding too many late nights and alcohol!

Josef Mengele, known in the camp as “The Angel of Death”, escaped justice after WW2 and escaped to South America. 

The woman challenges him to attempt to justify the unjustifiable and in so doing exposes the rhetoric of a sociopathic narcissist, echoing arguments we hear again today.

Created following advice from the Holocaust Educational Trust and endorsed by the Amud Aish Museum of New York, Mengele seeks to engage, educate and provoke conversations about the issues of today as much as of the past. 

A short run at Edinburgh last year was followed by an award to take the play to New York as a Fringe Encore winner, then on to a sell out season at Adelaide Fringe 2018. 

Inspired by the novel Right to Die, the play is written by Philip Wharam and Tim Marriott, who also performs it with Stefanie Rossi and Emma Wingrove.

Mengele, the play, is inspired by and written to acknowledge the chilling truth expressed by Auschwitz survivor Lydia Tischler who said: “all of us have the capacity to be sadistic and horrible to other people. The potential for destructiveness is in all of us.”Marriott says:“It is vital for us to understand such men as Mengele, to learn from history, to stop others like them from rising again.”

Adapted from Gulf War veteran Neil Blower Watkins’ autobiographical novel of the same name Shell Shocktells the story of long-serving soldier Tommy Atkins’ attempts to return to Civvy Street and his undiagnosed PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). 

The effects of PTSD amongst generations of ex-military and first responders in a social media driven society where we are constantly under pressure to live “happy and fulfilled” lives are huge. 

Shell Shockwas adapted for the stage and is performed by BBC comedy veteran Tim Marriott (The Brittas Empire) and was created in association with military and mental health charities as a stigma reduction project for the military community and beyond. Earlier this year it was named Best Solo Show at the Adelaide Fringe.

The play is ultimately positive, offering hope and support, and is followed by informal interactive feedback sessions, or “Fire Circles”, where others are encouraged to share their own stories.

Marriott said:“PTSD can be a huge challenge for veterans. All too often the symptoms are repressed, unrecognised and often go untreated, especially in a culture defined by masculine grit. For generations we have taught our young men tobe embarrassed about their emotions and hide them, or avoid communicating them – unless in anger. This is now recognised as Toxic Masculinity.”

As Tommy shares his observations on the absurdities of the everyday with the audience, so the cracks in his military grit become apparent. As he represses his reactions to flashbacks, he rails at the world in increasing outrage. Nothing is safe. From post office queues to Ikea, computer games to ‘phone zombies, all feel the force of his frustration. 

Listings Details

·       Venue: Army @ The Fringe in association with Summerhall, Hepburn House Army Reserve Centre, East Claremont Street (Venue 210)

·       Time: 17:30

·       Duration: 60 mins

·       Dates: 11, 12, 14-19, 21-25 August. Previews 10 August. 

·       Tickets: £9 to £12

·       Bookings: https://festival18.summerhall.co.uk/book-tickets/

·       Advisory: Contains strong language

Marriott said:“Hundreds of thousands of families across the UK are affected by dementia every year. It has an immense impact on the lives of everyone it touches and as time ticks on its something that any of us might eventually suffer. But whilst the personal tragedy of dementia is at the heart of All Change, it’s very much a play filled with humanity, warmth and humour.”

All Changebegan life as a devised project, inspired by the work of St Wilfrid’s Hospice, workshopped with drama students and scripted by Toby H Marriott, on an emerging writers course at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre. Based on personal experience, the play was then developed into a compact professional production, researched and developed in Bristol and at Brighton Fringe and now premiering at Edinburgh.

Alzheimer’s Society fact file

·     There are 850,000 people with dementia in the UK, with numbers set to rise to over one million by 2025. This will soar to two million by 2051.

·     Some 225,000 will develop dementia this year, that’s one every three minutes.

·     One in six people over the age of 80 have dementia.

·     Some 70% of people in care homes have dementia or severe memory problems.

There are over 40,000 people under 65 with dementia in the UK.

See https://www.alzheimers.org.uk

- Ends -

Listings Details

·       Venue: Assembly George Square Theatre, The Box, EH8 9JZ (Venue 8)

·       Time: 12:20  

·       Duration: 50 mins

·       Dates: 9,11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 27 August. Previews 9 August 

·       Tickets: Previews £10 (£9); 11-27 August £12 (£11) 

·        Marriottis best known for seven series of BBC TV's leisure centre sit-com The Brittas Empire, appearing in every episode as deputy manager, Gavin. Other TV credits include Allo Allo, Doctors, The Bill, An Actor's Life for Me, The Main Event, Luv and film credits include the forthcoming features The Real Thing, Love Type D and Revelation. He recently returned to the stage after an 18-year career break teaching English and drama. He is also appearing in two other Fringe 2018 productions, Shell Shockand All Change.

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