Jumper Bumps
★★★☆☆ Empowering
Gilded Balloon Appleton Tower (Venue 140): Wed 30 July – Sun 24 Aug 2025
Review by Julia Amour
Massive relationship issues are handled with a confident comic touch in Jumper Bumps, an empowering debut play by women, for women, at Gilded Balloon’s Appleton Tower all Fringe.
This authentic new writing from Amelia Rodger is fully credible in achieving its goal of speaking to young adults having to make difficult decisions without knowing all the facts. If that means it is still working towards finding the right audience in the right place at the right time, this Fringe presentation is hopefully a key step to the wider success it deserves.
Katrina Allen and Amelia Rodger in Jumper Bumps. Pic: Ella Hallgren.
Flatmates and best friends Eris (Rodger) and Atlanta (Katrina Allen) have very different views of motherhood. Eris sees it as a chance to create a better version of herself, while Atlanta sees it as a trap. When Eris finds herself pregnant by a coercive boyfriend, how can she weigh up the big decisions that confront her? Can Atlanta support her without Eris feeling judged?
In the opening scene, tightly written banter flows and there is a hilarious bit of business with Eris finding Atlanta’s knickers down the back of the sofa from another one-night stand. This is not Eris’s style – she needs to be needed, and yearns to commit to someone so she can create the perfect life for a mini-me.
Atlanta has serious reservations about Eris’s boyfriend, though, when he begins to police her clothes and friendships. Eris remains unhappily loyal to him, and Rodger’s acting is at its most expressive when she is at crisis point trying to reconcile her dreams and insecurities with the reality of a guy who Atlanta instantly labels Dickhead.
When Eris confides she is pregnant, she looks like she has taken on the weight of the world as she says she will ‘sort it’. At moments of high emotion throughout the play, the feisty female pop on the soundtrack gives way to ominous creaking sounds – like the walls closing in, or the floor giving way – it is unsettling, giving a sense of the claustrophobia in her mind.
predictably useless in a crisis
Dickhead is predictably useless in a crisis, but in the aftermath Eris feels so deeply inadequate and undeserving that she starts seeing him again. Atlanta loses it and says he turns her into a scared little mouse.
Here, and later in her own moment of doubt, Allen shows the impressive range of her performance from confident feminist cheerleader to brittle loner, so angry that Eris feels she can’t do any better but worried that she has pushed her away in a moment of need.
Katrina Allen and Amelia Rodger in Jumper Bumps. Pic: Ella Hallgren.
They quickly apologise to each other, and Eris confesses that she doesn’t know how to say no to him or how to prevent an accidental pregnancy. This is a point of tonal shift in the play: ‘I’m here to educate’ proclaims Atlanta, and then it all goes a bit ‘here comes the message’. There is heartfelt dismay about the global attack on reproductive rights too – which has a rightful place here, of course, but feels odd coming from Eris who has been so innocent about her own reproductive choices, rather than from campaigning Atlanta.
The piece moves back to surer ground as it shows Eris’s journey towards understanding that she can’t be happy trying to channel all her love through someone else, and is sick of shrinking herself to fit in with the male gaze.
Producer and Director Emma Ruse is to be congratulated for bringing this production to the Fringe alongside three other early-career playwrights, since the creative conversations and networks here could bring so much value to the next stage of its life.
It is all too rare that debut plays get this level of support and development to nurture their potential, including from the wider team of Assistant Director Rebekah Smith; Assistant Producer Abbie Craigmyle; and Technical Designer & Stage Manager Abbie Lowe.
There is already an irresistible warmth and solidarity to the writing and performances, which will have the inner 16-year-olds of the audience punching the air in recognition.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Gilded Balloon Appleton Tower (Ruby), 11 Crichton St, EH8 9LE (Venue 140).
Wed 30 July – Sun 24 August 2025.
Daily (not Tues: 5, 12 & 19): 4.20pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on EdFest.com.*
*affiliate link.
Producer website website: www.emmaruse.com/
Instagram: @jumperbumps_play
Linktree: @jumperbumps_play
X: @emmaruseprod
ENDS
