Edinburgh Festivals

Edinburgh Fringe set for administrative reform

21 Jan 2010

FROM a homosexual Jesus to Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography, the Fringe has never been short of controversy when it comes to its acts. There was disappointment then, last year, when the headlines still focussed on the Fringe’s administration over the…

Will Self - Liver And Other Stories

Moments of brilliance are too often lost

17 Sep 2009

'If you are offended by a certain four letter word beginning in 'c' and ending in 't',' Will Self addresses his salt-and-pepper Edinburgh Book Festival audience, 'I suggest you leave now. If you are of a nervous or emotional disposition, I suggest you…

Homecoming at Henderson's

Graceful homecoming at a fine old Edinburgh powerhouse

17 Sep 2009

Henderson’s is an Edinburgh stalwart whose vegetarian power base, begun on Hanover Street in the early sixties, has slowly but surely expanded to dominate an entire street front. There are reasons for its success. It’s a business built with love, and…

Peter and Wendy

A Caledonian Pan with puppets

17 Sep 2009

Perhaps the weightiest problem that confronted Mabou Mines in bringing this long-established production (first conceived in the mid-80s and running for 14 years) to Edinburgh was the issue of how many tons of coal Newcastle could take. Putting up a…

Stuck in a rut

Utter nonsense

17 Sep 2009

For many of those students graduating in the centre of recession, the prospect of unemployment and mountains of debt to repay is a very real and current problem. This show is very loosely based on the dire situation much of the class of '09 are facing…

Admeto, re di Tessaglia

Exit, pursued by a butoh sheep

11 Sep 2009

Opera is a medium well placed to embrace the ridiculous, and sometimes to render it sublime. Strained voices, high drama, grand sets, expensive costumes and expensive tickets: they all have their place, and it can be a fine line between spectacular and…

Actus tragicus

Bach in a dolls house

11 Sep 2009

'I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.' Virginia Woolf's sentiment is one the characters in Actus tragicus might well understand - though her black humour would probably be lost on them. Filling the stage is an impressive…

The World is Too Much: Posthuman Satire Slash Romance

Fresh writing taking on stale language

10 Sep 2009

In an island of lamplight bounded by the dull beat of a nightclub’s ‘throbbing ego’, a drug-dealer, his blind wife and a mate shout, shag and think their way into a tangle of words. This is Chris Hannan’s contribution to the Traverse Theatre’s early…

Afterplay

Haunting Chekovian elegy

3 Sep 2009

Over the years, there have been a number of examples of dramatists borrowing characters from other writers’ works and giving them life elsewhere, but no version of this kind of experiment could be as striking as Brian Friel’s reflection on the later…

Bedtime Stories

A fun tribute to an essential piece of furniture

3 Sep 2009

One double bed and nine darkly comic vignettes form the basis for this show, which has returned to Edinburgh with a brand new cast. A talented team deliver stories as diverse as a stressed bed salesman, to an unbelievably embarrassing one night stand…

Visual Art hitlist

3 Sep 2009

Agnes Martin, Alan Davie, Cerith Wyn Evans with Throbbing Gristle, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Henry Coombes, Agnes Martin, Dani Marti, Thomas Hirschhorn

Ward No. 6

Entertaining and tragic adaptation of Chekov's work

3 Sep 2009

Chekhov’s classic tale of insanity and ruthless ambition is brought to the stage in this slick and energetic interpretation by DogOrange. Highly physical and original, this adaptation is both entertaining and tragic as the concepts of alienation and the…

Warehouse 364

Clichéd and flat

3 Sep 2009

A case of mistaken identity leads a part time prostitute to the doors of Warehouse 364, a place where ‘good things happen to bad people.’ Clichéd and flat from the very beginning, this piece is let down by its underdeveloped and repetitive plot.  This…

Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

Author launches new work at Edinburgh Book Festival

2 Sep 2009

The Flood which Margaret Atwood brings to an already soggy Charlotte Square gardens is, in fact, a waterless one. It is not sent by a punitive, Old Testament God but rather by scientists of the near future playing Him. Two isolated women, Toby and…

Bamboozlement

Audience interaction with much charm and wit

1 Sep 2009

Not the first act to blend comedy and magic in the same show, although they may just be the youngest. Unusually dressed in lapels and dinner jackets along with finely tended facial hair makes these boys look more like Amish school kids than magical…

Breakfast with Burns

Finally, a few words from the lassies in his life

1 Sep 2009

250 years after his birth, more Scottish girls than ever have got the hots for The Bard. Alicia Devine sure does. The triumph of this raucous one-woman show is that as we hear from Burns’ mother, wife, and lovers. And from all the blethers between…

Catch

Finding love is not as easy as buying it on the internet

1 Sep 2009

A show surrounding the upsurge in the mail order bride industry is, if nothing else, an bizarrely original concept. The show incorporates comedy, dance, acting and ,ahem, simulating oral sex with a suitcase, in an attempt to understand why people resort…

Dan Atkinson: Death by One Thousand Pricks

Compelling and entertaining thesis on the current state of Britain

1 Sep 2009

Dan Atkinson is sick of pretending. He's through with being nice, kaput with repressing his desires, and done with right-wing 'pricks' that moan and whine on radio call-ins. Charmingly presenting the stage as a realm in which the truth runs free, and…

Il Ritorno Di Ulisse In Patria

Austere, beautifully performed homecoming for a not-so-wily Ulysses

1 Sep 2009

It's hard at first to know where to look on this stage. The story of Ulysses' return, as written by Monteverdi, is played out by puppets, but close behind them are their puppeteers, their heads only a few centimetres apart and a few centimetres larger…

Or[f]unny

Sibling power games with willies and mustard

1 Sep 2009

The blurb promises a story which ‘asks something of everyone: to rediscover the meaning of our existence’. Whether this is indeed the most obvious question raised by Or[f]unny is perhaps a matter of opinion, but if you want to psychoanalyse, there's…

The Testament of Cresseid

Classic Scots poem, recited with a modest touch of theatre

1 Sep 2009

If broad strokes of theatricality are to your taste this new translation of Robert Henryson’s 15th Century Scots riposte to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, directed by David Levine, might not be entirely to your taste. There’s a strong sense of the…

The Yalta Game

Love story in duologue

1 Sep 2009

The giddiness of love, as well as the dark cynicism that can sometimes undermine it, is a thematic concern to which Brian Friel’s work frequently returns. In this loose theatrical adaptation of Chekov’s short story ‘Lady with Lapdog’, we see an…

Tim: Against All Odds

Truly entertaining and adventurous show

1 Sep 2009

Having reached the conclusion that the Tim's of the world tend to be a little boring, unnaturally unlucky and generally have little to boast about; our hapless hero Tim is relentlessly determined to buck the trend and make a credible name for himself…

Unknown Album

New play promises much but delivers little

1 Sep 2009

Four disparate characters’ lives are briefly touched by one song. It’s a simple premise that could deliver much, but this production of Fred Gordon’s play lacks direction and ultimately loses its way amid one too many clever stage manoeuvres. Themes…

Miles Jupp: Telling it Like it Might be

Mr Nice Guy is generous with the laughs

28 Aug 2009

Playing on his persona as a harmlessly posh good egg, the sort you’d happily leave your kids with, Jupp crafts tales of his failings and faux pas, mishaps visited on him and his own ineptitudes into a rolling onslaught of rib-tickling yarns. Designed to…