Top Edge was formed in 2002 when writer Simon Rae, director Ellen Hughes and actor David Keller put on Grass, first at Oxford Brooks University then at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, where it won a Highlight award.
The next Top Edge project was the 2004 show Hamlet: Cut to the Bone, this has been an extremely successful show, garnering critical acclaim and stunning audiences where ever it goes. It is still regularly touring now, and is
In 2006 Top Edge experimented with both politics and larger casts with The Life and Crimes of President Ubu, a satire based of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. This tackled the politics and questionable circumstances surrounding the Iraq war with satire, swearing and songs. This was the debut appearance of the now-infamous Top Edge Camel.
In 2007 David Keller performed solo again in Simon Rae’s piece W.C. Fields: Lightly Boiled, based on the life of the great comic and juggler. The same summer Top Edge branched out into children’s theatre The Pirate, the Potato and the Camel (not forgetting the Parrot) which (unsurprisingly) featured the second appearance of the Camel.
Since last summer we have been beginning to develop our relationship with the local and student community by forming a read-through group which meets monthly to read-through works by new authors.
This summer we are revisiting friends from last year in The Pirate, the Potato and the Camel - IN SPACE and taking our unlikely characters to an unlikely location for more riotous fun.
We’re also taking a lighter look at our old friend Hamlet, taking him out of the picture altogether and giving the audience a more cheerful, and shorter, version of the play in Hamlet without the Prince. This will be performed in the final week of the festival in Venue 260.
We have many more plans for the future, including developing educational workshops in the form of our Bard Boot Camp, building our repertoire of children’s entertainment and moving into radio plays.
