The play features the cast and crew of an Edinburgh Fringe show, stuck with a sofa on the MileSofa on the Mile Company

Sofa on the Mile opens with three actors, one director and one producer who’ve just finished their run at the Edinburgh Fringe, and simply cannot wait to get away – from the Fringe, from each other’s company and from the accursed sofa that they’ve had to work with for their show. But alas, it is the last day of the Fringe, and there is no van available to transport the sofa. The team of five are stuck with nothing but everything they want to get away from, in front of the Royal Mile, in the middle of Edinburgh, as the sky slowly grows dark and tensions which had been repressed finally burst into being.

As a play about a play, Sofa on the Mile is inevitably self-referential. The bulk of the play’s humour at the start comes from mocking stereotypes about thespians and depicting how the quintessential expectations for an Edinburgh Fringe experience often fall far from reality – a sentiment likely derived from writer and director Charlotte Cromie’s own experiences. This, however, necessarily means that only those familiar with the process – and the associated stereotypes – of putting up a production could appreciate the jokes. While it was fortunate that most of the audience on opening night seemed to have experience of theatre and therefore most punchlines drew laughs, the start of the play felt a little slow and dragged for those who have never been part of a production before.

Fortunately, the play picks up a little once we get into exploring the underlying tensions between each of the characters. While some characters were better developed than others, Cromie’s writing nonetheless gave each character at least a moment or two in the spotlight, and these moments were altogether well executed by the cast, which constituted entirely of freshers.

Some dramatic moments, however, felt a little under-served: there is a scene where Freya, played by Lottie Elton, abandons her calm and restraint, choosing instead to jump onto the sofa and make a scene about her disillusionment with the entire endeavour of the Fringe. Meanwhile the other cast members stand around the sofa, stuck between trying to dissociate themselves with her and awkwardly apologising to passers-by for Freya’s embarrassing behaviour. It is clear that the audience were meant to be the passers-by in Edinburgh watching this team of five disintegrate, but somehow the attempt to break the fourth wall in this crucial scene fell flat. I felt like members of the cast were trying to apologise to some phantom passers-by who were walking along the streets somewhere behind me, instead of feeling like I was a passer-by who was discomforted and appalled by Freya’s behaviour.

The failure of this scene to make its due impact could also be down to the design of the set. While the company was supposedly stuck in front of the Royal Mile, nothing in the set-up of the stage suggests this. The stage featured the sofa, in front of a few flats that had a couple of Edinburgh Fringe posters posted on them. I would have guessed that the entire production took place in a living room with a wall decorated by Fringe posters, if it weren’t for the constant reminders in the script that we were, in fact, supposed to be at the Royal Mile.

Similarly, nothing in the sound or light design helped the audience to believe that we were in fact, in the busiest tourist street in Edinburgh’s Old Town: the only sound effects were that of the occasional phone ringing, and the only light transition I could remember was during one of the final scenes, when a series of colourful lights simulated the fireworks being set off.

With all that said I nonetheless enjoyed Sofa on the Mile, especially the latter half of the show, where I felt both the cast and the writing had become more comfortable and natural compared to the start. I think the best scenes in Sofa on the Mile force us to question the purpose of the Edinburgh Fringe, and more broadly, the purpose of doing theatre at all. At the end of the day, when the curtain falls, and the sets are removed, what is left of the blood, sweat and tears that have been poured into the production?

If we put up shows to chase elusive five-star reviews and to give the audience the show they wanted, what happens when we don’t achieve those goals? As the cast and crew of a production, what are we then left with? For writer and director Charlotte Cromie the answer is clear: regardless of whether the show works out and whether the team works out, there is something special about the shared experience in putting on a show that makes the labour of doing so worthwhile, even if you end up stranded in front of the Royal Mile with a sofa that you hope to never see again for the rest of your life.

Sofa on the Mile is on at the Fitzpatrick Hall until 17th February