There are Fringe shows you admire, shows you enjoy, and occasionally shows that remind you why actors act and why people like me continue to write about theatre. Nesting is one of those.
Peter McCormick’s new play, directed by Ben Standish, places Billy Mack’s Francis, a man living with motor neurone disease, alongside his pregnant daughter Emma, played with extraordinary emotional commitment by Francesca Hess. As the disease progresses, daughter increasingly becomes carer, until into this painfully recognisable world comes something altogether stranger.
Michael Guest’s Gull offers Francis an extraordinary escape. Allow the bird to nest inside him, inhabit his body and somehow release father and daughter from what is coming.
It sounds almost impossible on paper. Guest makes it work.
His anthropomorphic Gull is funny, unsettling and strangely believable. We tend to think of gulls as scavengers, flying rats aggressively circling our chips, but they also possess a fierce maternal instinct. Anyone who has been swooped upon after wandering too close to a nest will understand that. Suddenly the metaphor becomes beautifully clear. Nesting is about our instinct to protect our young and, eventually, about our young desperately trying to protect us.
The emotional centre arrives with a magnificent monologue from Hess about the brutal inadequacy of care provision. Two and a half hours. What does two and a half hours of care actually mean to somebody living with MND, or to the family member expected to fill the remaining twenty-one and a half?
Hess delivers it tear strained but without sentimentality. It hits the nail squarely on the head. Around me there is audible sobbing.
Which raises an uncomfortable question. Is this entertainment at all?
Perhaps sometimes theatre is medicine. A way of making us look directly at something we might otherwise avoid and understand the impossible position illness creates for both the person dying and those desperately trying to keep them living. Even when they don’t want to live any more?
Mack gives Francis dignity without turning him into a symbol, while McCormick himself appears as the sombre faced Dr Bell, playing him deliberately straight within the extraordinary world he has written.
With Sonia Killmann’s sound and Benny Goodman’s lighting supporting Standish’s direction, this is brave, committed and deeply compassionate theatre.
I don’t need 400 words on this one ed, just one.
Magnificent!
Playing until August 31st 2026, https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026NESTING
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 8th August 2026
North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:
Running Time – 1hr 5mins