★★★★★ Theatre and Art Reviews:

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An exceptionally entertaining experimental theatre piece... I urge you to arrive with an open mind and be prepared to become involved in some way if you want to... Hunger has to be one of the most bizarre yet brilliant performances I have watched, no experienced, this Fringe.

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theatreandartreviews.com/2025/08/23/hunger

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★★★★ Counter Culture UK:

 

"Hunger is both a brutal endurance test and a strangely exhilarating work of theatre. It strips away comfort, forcing the audience to confront the raw edges of desperation and the dangerous allure of artistic obsession. Reynolds holds the stage with a performance of fragile brilliance, while Bagley, Lopez-Silva and Zinovieva conjure a city that both feeds on him and reflects his collapse. It is not a pleasant experience, but it is a powerful one, and it lingers long after the lights fade. As if to underline that impact, Richard Demarco himself was in the audience, shouting “Bravo!” at the end—a fitting endorsement from a man who has championed challenging art for decades. It is a mirror held up to anyone who has ever felt unseen, or consumed by the need to create, and it leaves you shaken by its honesty."​
 

https://countercultureuk.com/2025/08/21/artistic-obsession-and-despair-in-hunger/

 

★★★★ Lothian Life:
 

"It’s a grab bag of theatrical styles – German Expressionism, Butoh, the art of Munch – and the action on and off stage is relentless, just like the Writer’s experience of poverty. There’s a lot of audience interaction, from simply holding props to kissing the Writer’s hand when he dons Ylajali’s clothes. I’m not sure the gentleman in front of me expected to be kissed on the head and leave the theatre with a big lipstick mark, but that’s the nature of experimental theatre! The whole experience is unsettling; papier mâché puppets of sailors, fancy women and babies loom as their owners grimace in monochrome clown makeup; internal streams of consciousness are conveyed through a booming radio mic; a man in the front row utters a scream at random intervals as the scratchy gramophone soundtrack plays a mix of classical and jazz music. It’s like nothing the audience has ever experienced before, but the charisma of Roland Reynolds in the main role, and his assistant clowns Zaza Bagley, Angel Lopez-Silva and Anastasiya Zinovieva, keep things interesting to the very last moment... Hunger is a unique Fringe experience that shows the universal themes of Hamsun’s novel in a new, weird light."

 

www.lothianlife.co.uk/2025/08/hunger

 

‘Good Show’ rating from Fringe Review:

"An experimental, clownish piece of physical theatre based on a classic Norwegian novel. With some lovely imagery and imaginative use of colour, mask and costume, it has a range of interesting theatrical influences."

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fringereview.co.uk/review/edinburgh-international-film-festival/2025/hunger

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More information:

 

Returning after a five year hiatus, Fragen Network presents an innovative and hilarious adaptation of Nobel Prize winning novelist Knut Hamsun’s masterpiece, Hunger, running at theSpace on the Mile Space 2, from 18th to 23rd of August. Directed by Roland Reynolds and starring Zaza Bagley, Ángel López-Silva (Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue on MGM+), international stage actress Anastasiya Zinovieva and Roland Reynolds.

 

Adapting one of the earliest stream-of-consciousness novels for the stage, Hunger is the portrait of a starving writer in an unforgiving city. Our nameless protagonist swings from ridiculous delusions of grandeur to fits of existential despair as he battles against his own self-sabotage and a world that cannot understand his gifts. Fragen Network utilize our signature blend of dream worlds, physical theatre and dark humour to create a raw, hypnotic exploration of desperation, obsession and the fragile line between genius and madness.

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Founded in 2014, Fragen Network is a London-based theatre company with an international outlook, dedicated to creating radical, physical and emotionally powerful new work. We use dark humour and a raw physical language of expression to put a slice of life under the microscope of theatre. Our drive is to ask the most difficult questions and leave the answers hanging. Fragen has produced a string of ambitious projects, including Planter’s Island (Platform Theatre, London, 2014), Blush of Dogs (Tabard Theatre, London, 2015), 5 out of 10 men (theSpaceUK, Edinburgh, 2016), Hell Yes I’m Tough Enough (Park Theatre, London, 2019) and Hamletmaschine (Astakhov Cultural Centre, Moscow, 2019).

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After a five-year hiatus, we are thrilled to return to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025 with two brand-new projects. Abhorrent Little Scrotum and Hunger will be running in sequence for one-week each.

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