Edinburgh Festivals, Kirstin Innes

Scottish Dance Theatre

Two very different displays of talent

21 Aug 2008

It’s not bombastic patriotism to suggest that some of the most accomplished and satisfying contemporary dance on the Fringe is homegrown. These two works performed by Scottish Dance Theatre are an excellent showcase for the jaw-dropping versatility of…

Scaramouche Jones

21 Aug 2008

Scaramouche Jones, the white-faced clown, has lived a century and wants to tell you the story of his life. Bring a cushion, because it's gonna be a loooong ride. An energetic performance from writer Justin Butcher doesn't hide the fact that this…

The Vanishing Point

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

14 Aug 2008

The Vanishing Point is sheer delight. The stilt walkers, communicating to each other through some sort of primeval whale song, trace a pattern of evolution from dinosaur-like creatures and sexually charged tribal people to, briefly, dead-eyed office…

Mudfire

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

14 Aug 2008

I picked the wrong day to go and see US acrobatic company Carpetbag Brigade's two Fringe offerings. After 48 hours of rain their outdoor performance space at Sweet ECA had turned swamp and the company was making do with a hastily-converted studio space.

Borderline

Repetitive beat poetry

14 Aug 2008

The Stone Roses come on, and over in the corner there’s always one monged fella pivoting off the wall. He starts monkey-dancing closer like he thinks he’s Ian Brown, gurning and chewing his face off with the pills. He’s pointing at you. He’s looking you…

By The Way

On a road to nowhere, for no reason

14 Aug 2008

There’s obviously a lot of talent behind this little two-hander, which follows a pair of friends on a road trip through a dystopian France, where an unnamed plague is killing off everyone’s mothers. The actors are likable and clearly talented, and for…

Lie of the Land

Two go mad in the countryside

14 Aug 2008

Him and Her move to the country on her family’s money. Mostly. He contributed, though. He’s not as rich as her, rather lacks her breeding. But he’s kind, and she is trying to civilise him. The important thing is, it’s their house. All theirs. Away from…

Spirit of the Samurai

Swordplay blunted by repetition

14 Aug 2008

This display of Samurai skill comes with a weighty pedigree: company director Tetsuro Shimaguchi not only appeared in Kill Bill 1, but choreographed the sword fighting scenes. He's working with hugely skilled performers here, and they know their target…

Damned Beautiful

Dorian Gray does discordancy

7 Aug 2008

One of many pieces pivoting on The Picture of Dorian Gray at this year’s Fringe, this duet pares down the complexities of Wilde’s novel to focus on the obsessive sexual relationship between Basil Hallward and his beautiful boy. There is some beautiful…

Holdin' Fast

The mathematics of sexuality

7 Aug 2008

As we file into the UK debut by the Czech Republic’s only professional contemporary dance company, we’re confronted by the body of a young man, draped over a blackboard covered in mathematical equations. Upstage, under a half-raised curtain, running…

New Electric Ballroom

Ladies night or Groundhog Day?

7 Aug 2008

From the secret teenage worlds of Disco Pigs to last year's The Walworth Farce, Enda Walsh's work has been preoccupied with the private codes and languages of insular groups. Here he focuses on three sisters who have effectively locked themselves away…

Pierrepoint: The Hangman's Tale

7 Aug 2008

The story of Albert Pierrepoint, the most prolific chief executioner of the 20th century, has fascinated audiences for years. This stark, sobering, well-written and excellently acted new play, low on production values but strikingly effective as a…

The Judgment of Paris

Can Can, corsets and high camp

7 Aug 2008

With sculpted, Harlow-platinum wigs, gorgeously gilded corsetry and tongues in cheeks firmly set to ‘high camp’, this riotous piece of dance theatre by Company XIV merges Baroque dance forms, Can Can and contemporary ballet to music by Offenbach and…

Tim Minchin

7 Aug 2008

Like an Enlightenment Man in eyeliner channelling Michael Hutchence, Minchin wriggles Puckishly about the stage, genre-hopping between brilliant riffs on the mathematics of attraction, Shakespeare, beat poetry and one-man stadium rock. Some of his…

A healthy dose of Edinburgh Festival skepticism

Kirstin Innes' festival blog

31 Jul 2008

Today and tomorrow are the sort-of starts of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Although of course the official opening is Saturday. I think. The Art Festival opens tomorrow, properly, as does the newly-minted Comedy Festival, and the Book Festival kicks…

Finished With Engines

Attack Mode

31 Jul 2008

Stephanie Viola and Drew Friedman, draped sleepily about a rehearsal room, don’t look much like wisecracking sailors with the power to blow up the world. It might be the jet lag. The New York-based actors, best known as founder members of the multi…

Interrupt

Relationship drama on the dancefloor

31 Jul 2008

The bustle of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is not necessarily the ideal place to premiere a new piece by a new company. But David Beer, of still wet-behind-the-ears classical/contemporary dance company, Collisions, is letting the experience shape his…

Pericles Redux

Getting physical with the Bard

31 Jul 2008

‘Putting Shakespeare to dance is a dangerous thing to tackle,’ says John Farmanesh-Bocca about his ‘wild retelling’ of Pericles. ‘People are like, “well, are you going to make it a dance or are you actually going to speak the language properly?” We’re…

Social networking

Single files

31 Jul 2008

Recent Pixar smash Wall-E imagines a future in which lumpen humans only engage with each other through computer screens. Worryingly, this seems all too plausible a prospect. Online interaction and social networking are two of this year’s Fringe hot…

The Lighthouse Keeper

31 Jul 2008

‘Clowning has an ageless appeal,’ says Clive Nicholas Andrews, of his new one-man show, The Lighthouse Keeper. ‘When I was a kid I grew up loving people like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton. I’d call my style clowning with added…

Real gone kids - Architecting

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

Fringe favourites The TEAM return to Edinburgh with a reimagining of Margaret Mitchell’s iconic Southern drama. Kirstin Innes caught up with them to discuss everything from Barack Obama to Scarlett O’Hara.

Room with a view - Ingleby Gallery

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

From much-missed nightclub space to the biggest commercial gallery outside of London, Kirstin Innes goes behind the scenes at the new Ingleby Gallery

Ballerina Who Loves a B-Boy

16 Aug 2007

Although it’s been crammed into a hotel function room better suited to the cringey frugging of a wedding disco, this gleeful little production is the most assured and exuberant of the cluster of Korean breakdance shows infesting the Fringe this…

Desert Island Dances

16 Aug 2007

This year, a proportion of the Fringe dance programme seems to be backing away from huge, political themes, focusing instead on small, personal moments of introversion. Desert Island Dances by Wendy Houston, whose Haunted, Daunted and Flaunted triptych…

Leitmotif

16 Aug 2007

Andrew Dawson is excitedly telling us about a company who film train journeys; no commentary, just a camera stuck to the front of the engine. He plays us the video – Bognor Regis to Victoria – and hops excitedly into the frame to point out the corner he…

Natasha Wood: Rolling With Laughter

16 Aug 2007

Natasha Wood likes to move. She rushes you through the story of her life at breakneck speed, mimicking her parents, her doctor, her lover and her brother. Her monologue flows in and out of family holidays and past conversations and across continents…

Popsicle’s Departure, 1989

16 Aug 2007

It's 1989. Seattle’s mighty Sub-Pop label dominates the grunge scene, Dido can’t get hold of her dealer, and tonight Jeremy’s band have totally got a gig supporting the Lemonheads. On film these characters would be played by Matt Dillon and Winona…

Siamsoir: The Battle for Eire

16 Aug 2007

Their name comes from the Gaelic word for ‘entertainer’, and that’s precisely what young company Siamsoir’s fusion of traditional Irish and contemporary dance sets out to do. Trawling the misty myths of ancient Eire for subject matter…

A Glance at New York

9 Aug 2007

Another year, another excellent off-Broadway New York company debuts on the Fringe. Unlike their predecessors The Riot Group and T.E.A.M, however, Axis Theatre Company aren’t blazing trails with their original scripts. They’ve managed to create one of…

Brendan Hunt

9 Aug 2007

Warning: don’t have sex with this man. Maybe think twice about employing him, too, and do not sleep with his girlfriend. After a merciless autobiographical trawl through the Boom Chicago star’s mucky linen that builds to a frenzied climax (literally) in…

Killer Joe

9 Aug 2007

Comedians doing serious theatre is a Fringe staple these days; this year, they’ve moved from cinema adaptations to filmic plays. Still, Tracy Letts’ script, in which an impoverished, lazily-drawn trailer park family strike a Faustian pact with local…

Maximum Crew

9 Aug 2007

Korean breakdance has evolved away from the po-faced machismo that can pervade Western scenes, so while the dancers may still occasionally come across as cocky show-offs, they’re not afraid of self-parody or knowing camp. Over there the b-boy crews…

Simon Munnery

9 Aug 2007

Watching someone ponder the potential of an idea or flail around improvising a punchline is easier when you’re sitting on the carpet, paper cup of wine in hand as they play pool than when they’re spotlit onstage. Munnery’s baggy, genial AGMs are much…

Sorry, Love!

9 Aug 2007

Isobel works in PR, Ramon’s a hotel bellboy. They fall in love and get a mortgage. Her boss calls too often; she’s sad when he comes home late. It’s interesting to see a piece of dance theatre using ballet and the sexy flourishes of tango to express…

Game Theory

1 Aug 2007

In Slope, Pamela Carter’s 2006 writing debut, the audience peered down, godlike, on the messy sexual relationship between Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

Incarnat

1 Aug 2007

In French, incarnat is a colour somewhere between red and pink, the colour of the flesh just under the skin.

Moving Landscape

1 Aug 2007

In video clips on her website, Neel de Jong stands in an empty studio space.

Natasha Wood: Rolling With Laughter

1 Aug 2007

Talking to Natasha Wood is a bit like having a conversation with Rory Bremner. Answering even the most straightforward questions, she’ll shift from her bra salesman dad’s doughty Nottingham accent to the gushing California-speak of a Hollywood dating…

Spin Odyssey

1 Aug 2007

The winners of the 2006 Tap Water Award for Dance, Last For One, will be all over Edinburgh this year.

Subway

1 Aug 2007

Scottish company Vanishing Point excels at this sort of storytelling; small, glowing moments of human truth woven into huge imaginative concepts.

Truth in Translation

1 Aug 2007

South African television is polyglottic. Characters in ‘soapies’, puppets on Sesame Street and even newsreaders skip fluently between the country’s eleven official languages, sometimes in the middle of sentences.

Free stuff

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

This year’s Fringe programme includes a record 304 free shows. Kirstin Innes looks at why a lack of funds needn’t hinder your Festival experience