The café at Patter House is already bustling, and it’s only 11am. This Gilded Balloon venue is stuffed full of families, tourists, and theatre nerds, the walls smothered with posters for what must be over a hundred shows. I find Jules Coyle and Owen Wright tucked in the corner. Their table is covered with posters and flyers of their show Managed Approach, to which they are hurriedly attaching pieces of paper that read “five stars”.

“It’s our sixth show today, and we’ve already got two four-star reviews and one five,” says Owen, the show’s publicist. According to Jules, the show’s writer, a mother and daughter left yesterday’s show in floods of tears. I saw its first ever Fringe performance last week, and safe to say, I needed easy access to tissues.

“It’s clear that this show comes from the heart, and from years of hard work by Jules”

It’s clear that this show comes from the heart, and from years of hard work by Jules. “Since I was little, I’ve loved writing […] I won an award for Northern Young Writers. It exposed me at the time to things that could happen in the industry.” The Fringe was always in her sights, but the real kicker for the show’s future was the play being nominated for the Charlie Hartell award: “It was always a bit of a pipe dream. But we had a big cast hug at the end of the BATS run and I said, ‘I have a feeling this isn’t the last of it.’”

The Charlie Hartell award meant funding, a run in London, and a whole new audience not made up of friends in the audience. More funding soon came Managed Approach’s way: Trinity’s Dryden Society, the Pembroke Players, Lady Margaret Players, and Keep It Fringe, founded by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, all chipped in. With this funding under their belt, the team could start preparing for Edinburgh.

“In the middle of the venn diagram of Oasis and Fringe seems to be Managed Approach”

Rehearsals were far more of an ordeal than booking a JCR or conference room to meet in, with people coming from all over the country to London to attend, but apart from one rat invading their rehearsal space, the process was “absolutely brill”. Once the team arrived in Edinburgh, it was “go, go, go,” with just two hours of tech before opening. Slight chaos came in the form of Oasis fans descending onto Edinburgh this week, resulting in Owen missing the first performance completely because of trains delayed by “an influx of men in bucket hats and blue shirts”. Oddly enough, there has been “a lot of good reception from the Oasis fans – in the middle of the venn diagram of Oasis and Fringe seems to be Managed Approach.”

Much like the Oasis fans, I had no idea about the play’s subject matter, which, according to Jules, seems to be a common trend. It discusses the UK’s first legalised red light district, which ran from 2014 to 2020 in Holbeck, Leeds, and the play has been praised for platforming stories like these which are important to people living in and around Leeds. Jules remembers a time when an audience member told her how “wonderful it was to see that place on stage and hear your accent”. Interestingly, the themes of the show occasionally steers some people away from it. Following this interview, I ran into a friend, one of Managed Approach’s many talented actors, who joked that sometimes people assumed they were offering them the sexual services the show discusses.

“It’s a very nice theatre company to be a part of”

However, as Jules says, the key to a show at the Fringe is publicity, publicity, publicity. Owen agrees, but says that, for him, his publicity for the show has felt: “incredibly earnest. I really believe in the show, and one of my closest friends wrote it. What resonates with people is authenticity.” He also discusses the fresh face the marketing of the show was given before its trip up to the Fringe, with brighter colours and a more playful tone to appeal to new audiences. Navigating the Fringe’s playfulness with the show’s serious themes has been an interesting challenge, but flyering and interacting with the Edinburgh crowds have been essential so far. As Owen says, it takes a village. The pair praise Lilly Ellis, the show’s director, alongside Margaret Saunderson, its producer: “it’s a very nice theatre company to be a part of.” At one point, even Jules’ mother was out flyering.

Managed Approach stunned at the Fringe. Seeing this show, and indeed other Cambridge shows, has been one of the highlights of my time here: it’s amazing to see the effort, passion and talent that goes into these productions. The success of the play has now birthed a new production company, OpenAire Theatre, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what they do next.

Managed Approach by Jules Coyle showed at The Coorie, Gilded Balloon Patter House at 13:40 from the 8th to the 24th August.