As the theatregoing community dives into its annual flurry of Fringe-mania, with burgeoning new voices and shows dotting every nook, cranny and corner of Edinburgh, it’s always worth remembering that the Celtic capital does not hold a monopoly on indie productions. Birmingham’s Old Joint Stock Theatre has proven itself a cultural hotspot of original and in-house pieces, including the serving up of shows rarely seen on the UK circuit.

First Date is a perfect tentpole example of this. Winsberg, Zachary and Weiner’s spunky rom-com represents a shiny UK premiere for the Birmingham venue. Outside of a Samantha Barks and Simon Lipkin-headed digital version streamed during lockdown, this is the first time First Date has been performed this side of the Atlantic, and it proves a canny fit for the Old Joint Stock.

Whilst not quite a two-hander, Date centres around, unsurprisingly, a blind date match up for awkward, overdressed Aaron (Michali Dantes) and spirited yet guarded Casey (Rokaya). The intimacy of the Old Joint Stock’s theatre allows the creatives here to perfectly transform it into ‘Cupidz’, the New York bar-restaurant where the show takes place. Plenty of credit to designers Joanne Marshall and Jacob Finch for crafting a really palpable sense of place and ambience. Kitschy neon signs, an actual bar and Tom McVeigh’s vibrant yet stylised city backdrop invites audiences into the world of First Date, and it’s impossible to shake the sense that you’re sat in the thick of the action.

And what colourful, zany, inspired action it is. For despite its closeness and intimacy, the five performers who head up First Date do a seriously impressive job of making this register as full throated musical theatre.

In many ways, the MVPs here are the triad of supporting performers – Tom Kiteley, Lowri Hamer and Joey Warne – who spin, cartwheel and even death drop their way through a panoply of wildly different and tirelessly entertaining characters and bit parts. The catty, increasingly impatient gay best friend. The deified ex fiancé. In a vein similar to, say, the thought avatars of A Strange Loop, many of the trio’s characters are embodiments of friends, former lovers and other parts of the leading duo’s psyches lending voice to how this fractious first encounter is transpiring. Some may balk at how some of the characterisations tiptoe a little awkwardly close to slightly dated tropes, but when you’re having this much fun with it all, such criticism feels cynical.

First Dates is perhaps at its strongest and most infectious when it lets the freewheeling, bonkers elements of its story run riot – from a sidesplitting showdown of conflicting religious authorities, the hyperactive puppetry of an imaginary son through to the literal physical embodiment of Google itself putting on a vaudevillian song and dance number.

“…perhaps at its strongest and most infectious when it lets the freewheeling, bonkers elements of its story run riot…”

Director James Edge asks a lot of his company throughout, threading constant movement (shoutout to a particularly inspired idea to have the characters be ‘served’ the props for their upcoming scenes and numbers), energy and vibrancy through a piece that is essentially about two people sat down getting to know one another. As mentioned, the talented group more than rise to the challenge, and thoroughly impress in turning the big show tunes and numbers into really substantial and entertaining musical set pieces.

In fact, the showier and sillier moments of First Date are so winning that they regularly threaten to overshadow the more formulaic romance at its heart. Thankfully, Michali Dantes and Rokaya are both in fine voice, and do a good job of fleshing out their leads over the course of the two hour piece, dipping into some genuinely touching territory come the second act in particular. There’s a definite arc and growth to these contrasting yet complementary characters, and we come to share in Aaron’s gradual empowerment and Casey’s slow yet determined breaking down of her defensive barriers.

“…there can’t be enough good things said about the absolute delight that is that supporting trio.”

Strip it to its bare bones, and there isn’t all that much that is devastatingly original or new in First Date. Yet Edge and company inject it with enough character that we actually come to care, and there can’t be enough good things said about the absolute delight that is that supporting trio. Kiteley, Hamer and Warne prove themselves chameleonic physical and character comedians par excellence, and in no small way help to elevate the formulaic into the fabulous, and the intimate into something frequently impressive.

To say we are living in the age of the influencer and the social media celebrity will likely come as neither news nor searingly original insight to practically anyone. And the cultural clout of the online face has bled its way into the world of theatre, too. Former supermarket TikToker Hannah Lowther and her journey to Six. Rob Madge and their myriad musical theatre, panto and solo delights. Heck, even West End wunderkind Carrie Hope Fletcher first cut through courtesy of her early Youtube work.

Sharing his own colourful, unconventional rise to ‘official celebrity status’ over the course of a certain pandemic is Richard Poynton – AKA Stage Door Johnny – in the aptly titled Accidental Influencer. Poynton’s journey, which began with a ‘deeply scientific’ exploration of second and first class stamps on TikTok that attracted the attention of the likes of LadBible and BBC Radio One’s Greg James, gets the one-man treatment here, with Poynton shining a hearty, frank light on the fun, the excitement, the pitfalls and even the occasional absurdity of going ‘viral’.

Perhaps best known now for his ongoing series of videos all about the English language and its own internal mess of contradictions and inconsistencies, Poynton has risen to 1.5 million followers on TikTok, and almost as many on Instagram. His account of how it happened, and some of the junctures along the way, makes for a charming, funny and enlightening look into a very modern digital success story.

From the halcyon days of early internet chat rooms and messaging (‘ASL’, anyone?) through to dealing with imitators and Turkey-teethed wannabes ripping off his formula and work (sometimes word-for-word), Poynton proves a witty, disarmingly humble and often self-deprecating force. He’s a lovable, unpretentious core around which the madness of the past few years envelops.

“Poynton proves a witty, disarmingly humble and often self-deprecating force…. a lovable, unpretentious core…”

Did you know that Jamelia’s ‘Superstar’ is not only a cover, but indeed one that saw the singer incur the wrath of Denmark? What happens when a healthily skeptic social media influencer attends a ghost hunt in a basement? Why should you take particularly care when filming a video on Cameo for a nine-year old?

And can you guess which theatre production Poynton was invited to watch features the immortal, searing poetry of ‘Your films are shit and you like like a whore!’?

If it all sounds like something of an erratic cluster bomb, it’s testimony to Poynton’s irrepressible warmth and confidence as compere that it all works so well. Injecting laughs, randomness and an abundance of real-life anecdotes and observations at every turn, Influencer is an effortlessly funny and honest piece of work.

Poynton shines at the heart of it all, and is never afraid to poke fun at himself, too. Dipping into a kind of message board Gogglebox by ploughing the online reactions to his stamp escapades proves utterly hilarious. It turns out there are indeed nowt so queer – or flippant – as folk.

“…ebbs with real heart and humanity…”

But Influencer ebbs with real heart and humanity, too. There are soupçons of light stand up and the customary jabs at the likes of Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock which are all great fun, but it’s when Poynton pivots from the funny that the show gains an extra sense of purpose and resonance. We share in his frustrations and anger as others mimic his work. We marvel at the healing, creative and affirming side of connections that only our digital and social media age have made possible, showcased in truly moving fashion with some of the beautiful artwork, creations and edits his fans have crafted.

By the time we are seeing and sharing in heartwarming comments and messages from people who his videos have helped when struggling to learn English, have provided comfort and memories for in place of an absent father, and in some cases are thanking him for having saved their lives, the full promise and potential of not just Influencer, but indeed the concept of the influencer as a whole, becomes movingly, stirringly realised. It’s beautiful stuff.

Occasionally, the timeline can get a little muddled. We go from a story where Poynter was sitting at quarter of a million followers to one not long after where he cites significantly fewer. But despite this very minor haphazardness, the overall arc of the piece, from cackling with laughter to being genuinely moved by its surprising earnestness and feel-good optimism, is confidently charted. And Poynton has a notable flair for making what is surely rehearsed and scripted feel spontaneous, natural, off the cuff.

It all makes for a moving, marvellous and quite masterful stamp of individuality from a voice and personality on the ascent. At a perfectly-pitched 75 minutes (without an interval), Poynton and his Accidental Influencer takes us on a blisteringly funny, brilliantly honest and beautifully uplifting journey through the highs and lows of social media superstardom, with all its associated frills, flourishes and foolishness. And at a time when it is so easy to be consumed by the idea of such platforms being a force for overwhelming negativity in the world, Poynton powerfully reminds us that we are all influencers of a fashion, and on funny, frustrating, fabulous journeys all of our own.

With its vivid flushes of neon pink and striking sans serif scene-setters, Tinuke Craig’s funky, punky and oh-so-camp The School for Scandal certainly lands its visual impact. Between Alex Lowde’s heightened, 18th century-via-Warhol aesthetic, Ravi Deepres’ video portraits and ripples of modernity injected into Brinsley Sheridan’s classic comedy of errors with mentions of super-injunctions, political disgrace and the like, it’s a decidedly post-modern affair. Think of it as Bridgerton by way of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, with a splash of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette thrown in for good period measure.

Like Shonda Rhimes’ wildly successful Netflix period romp, scandal, gossip and social intrigue form the crux of School’s tale. Following a vogue-lite hybrid of high fashion runway and drag ball open, this stylish production flies out of the gate with a brand new preface. Siubhan Harrison’s delectably snide Lady Sneerwell, the grand dame of gossip mongering, seductively invites us in amongst her court of conspirers and malcontents, and for good measure instructs the audience to withhold their judgement.

We may all be about to witness a rabble of bitches and backstabbers, lies and deception, but we bloody love it.

Like many a Shakespeare farce, Richard Brinkley Sheridan’s romp is a melting pot of crossed purposes and collapsing ruses. Harrison’s Sneerwell relishes her role in architecting social scandal and disgrace, and has thrown her lot in with Joseph (Stefan Adegbola), one half of the Surface brotherhood, due to inherit a fortune from their formerly absentee uncle, Sir Oliver (Wil Johnson). His brother, Charles (John Leader) is a flamboyant, freewheeling playboy, yet shows flairs of kindness and joie de vivre by comparison to his more cunning, sentiment-preaching kin. Feisty, freewheeling young Lady Teazle (Tara Tijani), meanwhile, is slowly driving her kindly, older husband, Sir Peter (Geoffrey Streatfield) to despair, despite the duo having only recently been wed.

Confusion, paranoia and frustration all explode into a melange of plotting and subterfuge as this colourful group of characters begin to fall foul of their own ambitions, desires and machinations.

As mentioned, there are moments where Craig intercuts the classic piece with more contemporary comedy or perspective. They have great, knowing fun getting their characters to clumsily dodge the source of Sir Oliver’s fortunes, for instance, born of his history with a rather problematic merchant company of old. The fourth wall is routinely broken, with characters opining or darting commentary at the audience directly throughout. Joseph’s penchant for waxing lyrical is given angelic, almost revelatory accompaniment from above, and always gets its laughs.

It’s a bright, colourful jolt of fun, carried on performances that are writ as large as any of Lowde’s grand, decadent costumes. Adegbola is a standout as the charming, manipulative Joseph, though he is well met by his on-stage brother, a wonderful animated and buoyant John Leader, who injects Charles with an elastic and infectious exuberance. Streatfeild and Tijani are great fun as the warring Teazles, each in their own way lending the piece its few glimpses of real heart and growth.

“…a side-splitting, scene-stealing Emily Houghton, whose pompous yet underhanded Mrs Candour represents something akin to a grotesque Victoria Wood creation on steroids.”

Amongst the rest of the cast, Wil Johnson leans into the nudge nudge, wink winkery as his returning Sir Oliver adopts a variety of disguises to test the mettle and quality of his heirs, whilst Tadeo Martinez is every inch the odious bootlick as a transatlantic Mr Snake. And particular credit must also go to a side-splitting, scene-stealing Emily Houghton, whose pompous yet underhanded Mrs Candour represents something akin to a grotesque Victoria Wood creation on steroids. Houghton once again proves herself a formidable character actress, and her expressions and facial tics alone will lhave you yearning for more than her handful of appearances.

Funny, sassy and spirited, with high camp to spare, it’s nevertheless difficult to shake the sense that Craig’s adaptation isn’t perhaps quite as pacy or taut as it ought be. There’s an abundance of repetition and reacquainting the audience with key threads and relationships within Sheridan’s text that could quite easily be truncated, or excised altogether, here. For a show that looks and sounds like a pop music video, the periods where it languishes and plods through its more meandering beats only feel amplified.

“For a show that looks and sounds like a pop music video, the periods where it languishes and plods through its more meandering beats only feel amplified.”

And, whilst there are plenty of laughs along the way, it never quite hits the same uproarious levels of frenetic chaos or frequency of hilarity as its current counterpart, The Merry Wives of Windsor, which it plays in rep with at the RSC this summer.

With a new epilogue bolted on that juxtaposes Sneerwell’s salacious open, and ends the evening on a pleasant and affirming note, chances are you will walk away from School for Scandal suitably entertained and amused. Craig’s production is lavish and certainly eye-opening to look at, but much like Bridgerton before it, is never quite as revelatory or original as it may first appear.

And that, for some, may be perhaps the greatest scandal of all; rather than leaving one feel thoroughly debauched or invigorated as its optics and name may suggest, audiences of this light, frothy jolt of neon fun will have to settle for simply being tickled rather pink, instead.

Outside of its ubiquitous ‘All the world’s a stage’, it’s fair to say that the pastoral whimsy of Shakespeare’s As You Like It doesn’t command the same cultural immediacy as many of the Bard’s heavier hitters. That is, to say, it lacks something of the brand recognition, identity (some would add, saturation) of a Macbeth, Othello or other such Shakespeare de rigueur.

For certain, it shares aesthetic and conceptual (if not exactly thematic) DNA with, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and fringes of The Tempest, whilst its melting pot of gender reversals, political treachery and self discovery are littered throughout much of the First Folio.

Yet there’s an argument to be made that staging a fresh production of As You Like It doesn’t necessarily demand the same stamp of individuality or high-concept thinking as some of its siblings. It’s comparatively lesser-known, so let the forest shenanigans and romantic tugs of war play out wholesale?

It’s what makes Omar Elerian’s 2023 staging of Like It such a joyful masterstroke. Pitched as a fictitious restaging of the production by a group of players some fifty years after they first performed it, Elerian has assembled a company that comprises mainly of septuagenarians and above.

“Elerian’s meta playground… builds layers into its post-modern nudge-winkery, yet is confident and sharply astute enough to never over-reach.”

Elerian’s meta playground, pitched in a rehearsal room as it is, builds layers into its post-modern nudge-winkery, yet is confident and sharply astute enough to never over-reach. It would be so easy for this concept to be positively bedecked with faked corpsing, endless audience interaction and other routine fourth-wall breaking.

Instead, Elerian and his wonderfully engaging company pick their moments to shatter the illusion carefully. Be it James Hayes’ metered frustration at his Touchstone’s increasingly technicolor and makeshift outfits (“James Hayes… classical actor”), Maureen Beattie alarmedly dodging a fellow player’s over-exuberant swings of a pitchfork, or knowingly stilted moments of fudged fight choreography, this As You Like It’s metadrama hijinks are fun and characterful, yet never overbearing.

Not that it shies away from mining the setup for laughs, though – there are giggles early on, for instance, where the play’s focus on youth and vigour become neatly ironic, and there’s something just infectiously funny about the giddiness and vim with which its characters prance about and engage in puerile mishaps when delivered by more venerable players – but it knows its bounds.

The core essence of the Like It text is winningly performed and spiritually intact, if streamlined. Arden itself notably plays second fiddle, here – be it out of necessity or rather the focus on its extra-narrative players – but it’s all leant a real air of gravitas in the hands of such seasoned and stellar performers. Their experience and affinity with Shakespeare is palpable and intoxicating throughout, and despite the initial absurdity, the romantic tussles are played, and register, with complete authenticity.

“Geraldine James is a soulful, steadying Rosalind, whilst no amount of quirky makeshift gowns and cheap tiaras can mask the comedic gold that is Maureen Beattie’s wonderful Celia.”

Geraldine James is a soulful, steadying Rosalind who masterfully bounces between flighty and formidable, whilst no amount of quirky makeshift gowns and cheap tiaras can mask the comedic gold that is Maureen Beattie’s wonderful Celia. Hayes is a terrific, suitably animated Touchstone, whilst Christopher Saul in the performance reviewed gave a commanding, dignified Jaques. David Fielder and Celia Bannerman, meanwhile, light up the lengthier second half as a deliciously fun, loveable pairing – lovelorn Silvius and an equally doe-eyed (albeit unrequited) Phoebe.

Ana Inés and Jabaras-Pita’s staging mostly rations the fantastical (but again, we’re supposed to be in a rehearsal room), leaving the occasional moment of descending light fixtures-cum-swings and sporadic musical numbers (including an inspired Act I closer) to deliver the odd injection of colour and vigour that some may expect from the title.

Not that it needs it, or is any way lacking. Again, the concept is king here, and this As You Like It feels to be as much an affectionate love letter to the performing arts, the rehearsal room and the collaborative nature of theatre as it offers up the base play’s rumination and explorations of love, loyalty, memory and more.

And Elerian signs off a tale that already bandies with gender roles and power plays with one corker of a denouement and mission statement.

As You Like It didn’t need this conceptual or idiosyncratic a treatment. And yet in doing so, this age-blind, metafictive repurpose channels a magic and spark all of its own. An inspired approach, beguiling company and impressive confidence (not to mention restraint) in layering its postmodern flourishes, results in one of the most refreshingly original, irrepressibly feel-good and unexpectedly poignant productions of the year so far.

Strange, eventful history, indeed…