The Scotsman announces first round of Fringe First award winners

The Scotsman today announced the first round of its Fringe First winners, celebrating the best performances at the Edinburgh Festival.

Now in their 44th year, the awards celebrate new writing premiered at the Festival, announced every Friday throughout August.

The six winners for this week were Nassim Soleimanpour's Nassim, Elliott Warren's Flesh and Bone, Gary McNair's Letters to Morrissey, Javaad Alipoor's The Believers Are But Brothers, Baxter Theatre at the University of Cape Town's The Fall and Brian Parks' Enterprise.

Nassim, performed by Soleimanpour plus a separate actor every evening, explores the nature of human connections, mothers and mother-tongues. It is currently running at the Traverse Theatre and you can read our review of the show here.

Warren's Flesh and Bone, running at the Pleasance Courtyard, mixes Shakespearean dialogue and East End slang to produce a stirring tale of the working class on an urban estate.

Based McNair's experiences writing to the legendary Smiths singer, Letters to Morrissey at Traverse Theatre "unpicks the way we project ourselves onto our pop heroes", according to WhatsOnStage reviewer Matt Trueman.

Parks' Enterprise, running at Assembly, is stuffed with satirical mockery and dissection of modern ideas of capitalism.

The Believers Are But Brothers is a fraught yet pertinent discussion of why young men are enticed by the prospect of radicalism and indoctrination over the internet, against the backdrop of those travelling to Syria to fight for the so-called Islamic State.

The Fall tackles the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, controversial colonialist who had his statue removed from the University of Cape Town's campus in 2015.

Further Fringe First awards will be announced next Friday.

For all our coverage of the Edinburgh Festival click here