Lockerbie, Kitson & Refugees Win Fringe Firsts

David Benson wins for Lockerbie Unfinished Business (Gilded Balloon), in which he plays a campaigner whose daughter died in the terrorist airline bombing 22 years ago. The Scotsman’s Joyce McMillan describes the piece as “a mighty and unanswerable indictment of cover-up and injustice”.

Daniel Kitson’s win for It’s Always Right Now, Until It’s Later, about two ordinary people born in the 1930s, follows his recent wins for The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church (2009), 66a Church Road (2008), C-90 (2006) and Stories for the Wobbly Hearted (2005).

Kitson’s is one of another three wins this week for the Traverse; the others being Druid Theatre’s production of Enda Walsh’s new play Penelope, which transfers to London’s Hampstead Theatre in February, and sex-trafficking play Roadkill, in which the audience board a bus with two young Nigerian women forced into prostitution.

Also receiving Fringe Firsts in this second round are: Bound, Jess Briton’s new play about cash-strapped fishermen (Zoo Southside); Running on Air, in which five audience members only join performer Laura Mugridge in a camper van (Pleasance); and Beyond Border’s Do We Look Like Refugees?, based on interviews with Georgians fleeing South Ossetia after the Russian invasion in 2008 (Assembly).

The Fringe First Awards were established in 1973 when there was concern that the Fringe was not attracting the right quantity and quality of shows. The awards are announced weekly during the festival, with the final round winners being announced next Friday 27 August 2010. There is no fixed number given and the only requirement is that the work must be new – having had no more than six performances in the UK, prior to the Fringe.