Crush

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It's been six years since Paul Charlton's Edinburgh debut, Love, Sex and Cider, won a Fringe First. Now the playwright and actor is back with Crush, a play that deals with the unravelling of a couple's marriage seven years into their relationship, amid the strains of recession and outside temptations. It promises quite a change from his 2003 play, which dissected the lives of four disaffected teenagers in Charlton's native north-east England.

Six years is a long time in Fringeworld, and whether audiences will remember Charlton's debut—which has toured the UK since 2003—remains to be seen. But his pedigree speaks for itself. At just 16, Charlton was one of ten writers commissioned to write a short play for acclaimed theatre company Paines Plough – a work that eventually became Love, Sex and Cider. More recently, his efforts with the Live Theatre in Newcastle and London's Tristan Bates Theatre have attracted notice, and every indication suggests a strong return to the Fringe.