Adam Riches: The Captain review – the extraordinary glory of a ‘half man, half fish’ Victorian hero

Summerhall, Edinburgh An endurance test for a standup already starring in a fringe hit, this show resurrects the man who drilled the first ever cross-Channel swimmer ‘Who are these people that do what [the rest of us] cannot?” Adam Riches ’ solo play The Captain teases at the daredevil spirit, incarnate here in Capt Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the Channel unaided.

Riches plays Fred Beckwith, a swimming coach who trains the young Webb for his tilt at greatness.

The show takes the form of a lecture-cum-eulogy to the “half man, half fish” Webb, whose body lies under a shroud on a table in the apt surroundings of Summerhall’s Anatomy theatre.

A comedian by trade, Riches offers up a version of the true story here that’s as funny as his comedy elsewhere on the fringe, The Critic’s Way .

The gentle sendup of Victorian values is droll.

The swimming workshops and cheerleading of Webb’s channel crossing, to which the audience is co-opted with gusto (this is an Adam Riches show, after all), are stirring good fun.

And there’s a real relish for the story’s bizarre details – such as Beckwith’s “mystical fifth swimming technique”, the sidestroke.

Or the American rival to Webb who completes the crossing before him, albeit in a rubber suit that strongly resembles a boat.

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