By Grace Hatchell
I am writing this one from the quiet corner of the sorting office, where even the kettle seems to know not to whistle too loudly.
Some shows arrive in the satchel with jazz hands, sequins and a trumpet blast. Others arrive more softly. Carefully. Like something you don’t want to crease.
LAUNA feels like one of those.
Following a sold-out run in Oxford, Tidal Theatre brings LAUNA to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for its Fringe debut. Set inside the cluttered familiarity of a small apartment, the play follows Edna, played by Sanaa Pasha, a young mother navigating the first year after the loss of her daughter.
At home, Edna washes dishes, eats cereal, answers cold calls and drifts through yoga videos. These are the small rituals of survival. The ordinary things we do when life has become anything but ordinary.
But LAUNA is not simply domestic realism. The production blends intimate new writing with movement, puppetry, handheld lighting, shadow work and immersive soundscapes. Around Edna, an ensemble dressed in the colours of Launa’s childhood wardrobe begins to disturb the fragile world she has built for herself.
It sounds like a piece that understands grief is not tidy. It does not sit politely in one room. It appears in memory, in routine, in imagination, in what has been lost and in what might have been.
Edna’s partner, Joe, played by Ollie Gillam, tries to stop her from slipping into an imagined world. Yet Launa herself, played by Coco Scanlon, flickers through the play as both remembered child and imagined adult. She is a presence full of unresolved regret, watching as Edna’s relationship with her younger sister Beth, played by Kitty Brown, brims with life.
That contrast between the living and the dead, the remembered and the real, seems to sit at the heart of the production.
The piece promises a world where childhood wonder, humour and devastating loss can exist side by side. Bedtime stories sit near shredded flowers. Books become bin bags. The everyday becomes strange. The strange becomes painfully familiar.
Writer and director Rowan Brown has described the inspiration behind the piece as coming partly from Nick Cave’s description of loss as an “entirety”, holding both terrible powerlessness and a kind of spiritual freedom. Brown says the company wanted to create a theatrical language capable of holding both realities at once.
That feels important. Because some subjects need more than neat dialogue. They need movement. Light. Silence. Shadows. Space for what cannot be easily said.
LAUNA also marks the work of an emerging cast and creative team, with previous credits across productions including Scenes With Girls, Tristan and Isolt, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RED, Romeo and Juliet and Anything Goes.
Reviews from the Oxford run described the production as “awash with emotion and surreal flair” and “original, witty, bold and colourful.”
This sounds like a Fringe piece for those drawn to theatre that sits with difficult things rather than rushing to explain them. A show about motherhood, grief, memory and the fragile theatre of simply getting through the day.
And from where I’m standing, with my satchel placed carefully by my feet, LAUNA sounds like one to approach gently — but not overlook.
LAUNA runs at theSpace @ Niddry St from 7–22 August 2026.
Dates and times:
7–15 August: 12:00pm–1:00pm
17–22 August: 10:30am–11:30am
Running time: 60 minutes
Age guidance: 12+
Tickets: £10 / £8 concessions
Box Office: Launa | Edinburgh Festival Fringe
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