Surrey-based company LynchPin Theatre is heading to the Edinburgh Fringe this year with Jennifer Fawcett’s play Apples in Winter, which centres on a mother whose son is on death row and about to be executed. Through their work the theatre company focuses on expressing seldom-heard voices and over 20 years on from the last time the company brought a one-woman show to the festival, they are about to share the fictional Miriam’s story. I recently had the opportunity to ask company co-founder and performer Edie Campbell some questions about the central character, the play and how they are finding bringing such thought-provoking themes to life on stage.
What can you tell me about the origins of LynchPin Theatre?
LynchPin was born because of my panic attacks! They were so bad that I was unable to get to auditions, so we decided to make our own work and perform locally. Theatre director Jack Lynch and I founded LynchPin in 1999 – we had a venue for our first one-person play Emily Dickinson & I: The Journey of a Portrayal and thought we’d better have a company to go with it! Since then we’ve created, produced and toured theatre. For ten years we also produced ScripTease – monthly rehearsed script readings with professional actors of plays old and new, often working with local playwrights.
Jennifer Fawcett’s play Apples in Winter focuses on a mother, Miriam, whose son has been on death row for over 20 years and is due to be executed in a few hours. What is it about this piece of writing that made you want to stage a production?
Jennifer’s script is so beautifully written, powerful and spare, deeply compassionate and heartbreaking, that we knew we had to produce it in the UK. Witnessing the play’s effect on the audiences who came to the initial rehearsed readings convinced us that this was a play worth doing. The role of Miriam is a gift for any actor, and I feel extremely fortunate to be able to portray her. Roles like this don’t come along very often and this one feels like the role of a lifetime. I’ve lived with Miriam since 2019 and it’s a privilege to be able to explore a character over such a long period, to keep coming back to her story. Claire Parker, the play’s director, and I continue to find new depth and nuance and subtlety in Jennifer’s script, which is a joy.
How does the play approach the subject of the hidden victims of violent crime?
With great compassion. As The Blog of Theatre Things concurred, Jennifer’s writing is ‘both sensitive and brutal in its exploration of a difficult topic’. We witness Miriam’s grief and anger, denial, fear and love as she struggles to understand how her beautiful little boy turned into someone who could kill. What is often eye-opening for audiences are the reactions to Miriam from her family, strangers (‘people who think they know me because of what they read in the papers’), and the parents of the victims. So often, the families of perpetrators are isolated, ostracised, silenced. The play allows Miriam to speak for many. Through her experiences we witness the catastrophic impact of being one of the hidden victims of violent crime. Some, such as Sue Kibbold, mother of Dylan Kibbold, one of the two gunmen responsible for the Columbine High School shootings, manage to become advocates for change in the criminal justice system, intervention and mental health awareness. That takes great courage. As one mother of a perpetrator said to us, ‘visibility means stigma, blame, shame and threat.’
Why is now the right time to bring this production to Fringe?
We’re living through a time of such division and hate, judgement and polarisation within society, communities and families. Miriam’s story reminds us that ‘there but for grace go I’ and of how close we each are to being in anyone else’s shoes; that so little divides us from those we label ‘other’ and onto whom we project our fear of difference, our anger and hate.
There is space at the Fringe for serious theatre, and LynchPin is not alone in believing that theatre is uniquely placed to give voice and perspective to experiences and emotions that are rarely exposed and often silenced. Apples in Winter provokes conversations about love, forgiveness, compassion and justice. It has consistently demonstrated its power to start dialogue and open hearts in post-show discussions and audience feedback and we know that Fringe audiences will be similarly impacted. Apples in Winter asks questions and invites audiences to consider different ways of being, of living, both with themselves and with others and in so doing, to make the world we live in a better, more compassionate and just place.
How did it feel to be an OFFIE Award Finalist for your performance as Miriam in 2023?
It was a wonderful surprise – first to be nominated, then to be named a finalist for best solo performance, and then to experience the Awards ceremony. As always, what the audience sees on stage is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the many creatives involved who make any performance possible. I wouldn’t have been nominated if it wasn’t for the insightful, incisive and empathetic direction of Claire Parker, pushing me out of my comfort zone, determined to tell Miriam’s story as well as we possibly could, as well as set, lighting and sound design, voice and accent work. As a company, we were thrilled to be nominated and to be in the illustrious company of the other four finalists (including Maureen Lipman, who won). It was affirming of our work and our belief in the power of this play. Attending the OFFIE Awards ceremony at Alexandra Palace with the LynchPin team was a blast (though getting there and home again was not!).
What are you hoping audiences take away from watching this hard-hitting play?
We hope people will walk away feeling compassion for those in Miriam’s situation, questioning our reactions and judgements and the current state of the criminal justice system, and asking what we can do to prevent people entering it in the first place. At a post-show discussion in Corby, Dr Lucy Baldwin, who’s worked in criminal and social justice for 30 years and is a qualified social worker, probation officer and associate professor at Durham University, said that by the time a young person enters the criminal justice system there have been at least 14 missed opportunities for intervention in their life. That was shocking. Where and how can we each intervene, or support those who do? Our Fringe theatre programme will include links to organisations that are doing great work in providing services, further information and ways to give support and get involved.
Catch Apples in Winter at the 2026 festival
Edie and the LynchPin team are clearly aware of the significance and sensitivity of the subject matter and passionate for the piece to have impact beyond the Fringe. Apples in Winter sounds like it has the power to spark conversations and highlight underexplored perspectives. The play is based at The Annexe at Paradise in The Vault (venue 29) from 8th – 30th August (not 16th and 23rd). Performances start at 10:30 (1 hour), with the show on sale via the EdFringe website now.
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