Edinburgh Festivals, Mark Fisher

I Went To The House But Did Not Enter

First person peculiar

21 Aug 2008

Edinburgh favourite Heiner Goebbels returns to the Festival with the world premier of his collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble, I Went to the House but Did Not Enter. Mark Fisher catches up with him The scene is Lausanne, Switzerland where a…

In a Thousand Pieces

21 Aug 2008

No one should rush to the Paper Birds company in search of an incisive analysis of human trafficking. Despite drawing on verbatim material, In a Thousand Pieces tells you nothing you didn't already know about Eastern European women being sold into…

4.48 Psychosis

Painful journey into despair

16 Aug 2008

Having seen Grzegorz Jarzyna's mesmerising production of this Sarah Kane play on the intimate stage of TR Warszawa in Poland, I was concerned the playwright's sad mediation on suicide would lose its intensity on the bigger stage of the King's. I needn't…

Jidariyya

Palestinian end game

15 Aug 2008

There's a sad irony that a play about mortality should open in Edinburgh only days after the death of its author. Mahmoud Darwish was a major Palestinian poet and his Jidariyya was a response to a life-threatening heart attack a decade ago. It was…

Bite the Dust

Polish satire lost in translation

14 Aug 2008

First there is the show that should have been. Originally staged in the late-70s, Bite the Dust is a satirical sideswipe at the military mindset. It proved so controversial in Poland that playwright Tadeusz Rólewicz withdrew the performance rights.

Class Enemy

A different class

14 Aug 2008

When Nigel Williams’ Class Enemy made its debut at London’s Royal Court in 1978, hip hop was still a phenomenon of the American underground. It would never have occurred to a director to incorporate it into this portrayal of a bunch of teenagers in a…

Surviving Spike

The taming of the Goon

14 Aug 2008

He was a maverick, a one-off, a free-associating comedy anarchist. So what’s the point in paying tribute to Spike Milligan with a bio-play that is safe, conventional and cosy? The tone of Surviving Spike by Richard Harris has far more in common with the…

Dybbuk

Jewish ghost story fails to haunt

11 Aug 2008

The idea to combine two different treatments of the Jewish myth of the dybbuk is inspired. In sandwiching together the play by Szymon Anski, a traditional drama about a woman possessed by the spirit of her dead lover, and a modern story by Hanna Krall…

A Drunk Woman Looks at The Thistle

Scotland in a Mina key

7 Aug 2008

If Liz Lochhead had continued the opening speech of Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off for another hour, it could have sounded a lot like A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle. Written by crime novelist Denise Mina as a response to Hugh…

Global Warming is Gay

Heggie raises the temperature on saving the planet

7 Aug 2008

Lifestyle choice? Ethical dilemma? Or is going green just a bit gay? These are the questions posed by playwright Iain Heggie as he gently satirises our responses to the new eco-orthodoxy. For opportunistic Green MSP Graham Orbison, the drive to save…

Terminus

Mesmerising monologues create filmic theatricality

7 Aug 2008

There are those who think Mark O'Rowe's style of writing does not constitute theatre at all. Certainly, his preference for interlinking monologues over conversational exchanges has more in common with storytelling than drama. Yet, the more his passages…

The Tailor of Inverness

Stitching up the 20th century

7 Aug 2008

Matthew Zajac's father used to tell a story about how to catch a fox. The method is to get the creature in the open then circle it. As long as you complete the circle, the fox will stay grounded. Then you spiral inwards and take your prey. Zajac does…

Teenage kicks - Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen

5 Aug 2008

Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed climbs down from the roof to show the positive side to adolescence, finds Mark Fisher. Alexander Devriendt has been hanging out with the kids. The Belgian director has been working with 13 teenagers on a show for grown-ups…

Terminus

Angels, demons and reincarnation from the master of the monologue

31 Jul 2008

‘I still like the Catholic religion even though I don’t believe in God,’ says Mark O’Rowe, the Dublin master of the monologue. That may or may not explain why the latest play by the author of Howie the Rookie and Crestfall is what he calls a…

Early mourning - 4.48 Psychosis

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Nine years ago, uncompromising playwright Sarah Kane ended her own life. In an old Warsaw variety theatre, Mark Fisher is shaken by a mesmerising staging of her final work.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Tension-filled hour of Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological chiller. Barrie Kosky made his mark last year with the vulgar extravagance of Poppea, a show that blended Monteverdi opera with the songs of Cole Porter. Now he’s back with an altogether more…

New Electric Ballroom

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

If Karl Marx was right that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce, no one told Enda Walsh. He’s done it the other way around. After the riotous surrealism of last year’s Fringe First-winning The Walworth Farce, the playwright is back…

Night terrors

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

A traumatic childhood accident inspired Adam Rapp’s latest play, Nocturne. Mark Fisher chats to the US writer about death, drama and decapitation

Peter Oborne

22 Jul 2008

Is the strife in Iraq a conflict that can ever end? At the start of 2006, Peter Oborne was unequivocal. ‘The invasion of Iraq is the greatest foreign policy disaster since Munich,’ he said at the start of his damning Dispatches documentary Iraq: the…

When worlds collide

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

A collaboration between artists and comedians suggests that aliens want to know about supermarkets, science and the Welsh. Mark Fisher hears the spin on The Golden record We were banking on the aliens having hi-tech record players. That way, they’d be…

DT Max

23 Aug 2007

Three things compelled DT Max to set about writing The Family that Couldn’t Sleep. Firstly, as a science writer for the New Yorker and New York Times, he had an interest in prions, the rogue proteins behind mad cow disease. The second was personal: he…

La Didone

16 Aug 2007

‘I developed special software for the last couple of pieces,’ says Elizabeth LeCompte, artistic director of New York avant-garders the Wooster Group. ‘Final Cut Pro and Isadora, you know, I was the initial developer.’ Actually, she was nothing of the…

Richard Dawkins

16 Aug 2007

These are combative times to be a God-denier. It’s not only loopy Christians who are trying to make us believe the world was made in a week, now certain Muslims are jumping on the creationist bandwagon. Turkey’s Adnan Oktar, writing as Harun Yahya, has…

Girl and Dean

1 Aug 2007

These days everyone wants to use the Fringe as a springboard to fame and fortune. Sketch comedy double act Girl and Dean (aka Jess Ransom and Sarah Dean) may well have their future sorted as they’ll surely be the only Fringe act to be playing the UK…

Hippo World Guest Book/Longwave

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

When Chris Goode called his company Signal to Noise he was thinking about the nature of communication. The two shows he’s bringing to the Fringe this year are a case in point.

Lacrimosa

1 Aug 2007

The hit of the 2004 season at Aurora Nova was Chronicles: A Lamentation. Performed by Poland’s Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat Theatre) it was one of those rare performances you wanted to watch again the moment it had finished.

Part of the furniture

1 Aug 2007

It’s the kind of thing any band could have dreamt up on a boozy night after a gig. ‘Instead of playing our guitars and drums,’ one musician would say, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we all played one big instrument?’ Everyone would agree and, of course, they…

Stilted performance

1 Aug 2007

Festival Fringe Stilted performance Mark Fisher goes outdoors in Warsaw to find a Polish Macbeth with the taste of Iraq and the roar of a motorbike

The Walworth Farce

1 Aug 2007

Enda Walsh has a lot to thank the Edinburgh Fringe for. It was here in 1997 that the Traverse Theatre hosted a production of his play Disco Pigs.

Auto Auto

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

Christian Von Richthofen likes a vehicle to sound good. ‘In Germany it’s the Opel,’ he says. ‘The way the bonnet swings is like an Indian drum. On one side, the mudguards sound like a bass drum and on the other, a conga.’ None of this would interest…

England

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Art of the matter Tim Crouch tells Mark Fisher that England is about many things, but they don’t include warm beer and nostalgia

La Didone

19 Jul 2007

For over 30 years, the most unlikely elements have been combined in the Wooster Group’s work. Everything from creaky old B-movies to cutting edge technology have been spliced together to create arresting pieces of theatre.

Ravenhill for Breakfast

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

Perhaps if he hadn’t been asked to write a column for the Guardian, Mark Ravenhill would never have set himself the challenge of Ravenhill for Breakfast. For each of the 17 morning performances, the author of Shopping and Fucking and, er, Dick…

The Bacchae

Edinburgh International Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Festival Countdown to ecstasy There’s more to me than fluff and frivolity, insists Perthshire lad Alan Cumming, as he prepares for his most hedonistic role yet. Mark Fisher raises a glass to the god of good times

Tommy Sheridan

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Boxing clever Solidarity leader Tommy Sheridan is full of fighting spirit as he prepares to enter the Fringe fray, finds Mark Fisher