A solo play written and performed by West Mainland writer John Casey is on again at the Edinburgh Fringe for three weeks.

This is the third year in a row 11:87 Theatre Company has performed at the Fringe and the second time with Heimatmann.

Said John:

Heimatmann is about German Georg Elser’s lone attempt to stop WW2 in 1939 by blowing up Hitler and his henchmen. He came within minutes of succeeding but was subsequently arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and finally, after years in Sachsenhausen, executed in Dachau in the last few weeks of World War 2.

Georg was an ordinary guy, a carpenter, who saw his country being taken over by a bunch of fascist criminals who he knew would lead it to disaster and stood up to them. He had the skills to meticulously plan an assassination which would have altered the course of history and saved over 60 million people. A quirk of fate robbed the world of its success.

Last year the play was dimly perceived as relevant but this year how Georg felt about the disintegration of his homeland (his Heimat) is being hammered home to us day in day out with our own horror story of Brexit. We too have now experienced the shock and fear of how easily a cultured, modern country can be so quickly up-ended.

It is not to say that there is not a lot of fun in the show- I play Georg as a beer swilling joke telling ghost and there are a host of other characters who pop in an out of the narrative. But the grief and fear millions of us feel over the trashing of the UK I think means we will empathise more with Georg this Fringe and with the generation after generation of German children, European citizens like us, who have to face and shoulder the burden of their country’s history lest we all forget.

Heimatmann has a three week run with the PBH Free Fringe (download the PBH app for more free shows.)

Bar Bados complex (7 stages and 2 bars) in the Cowgate.

Aug 3-24 every day at 16.15pm. The show lasts 55 minutes.