Edinburgh Fringe

Dizzee Rascal joins Edinburgh Fringe

Music Gossip

10 Jun 2010

Dizzee Rascal has been added to this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe line up. The 'Dirtee Cash' star will be among the performers at the annual Scottish arts event, along with Flawless - a dance troupe who found fame winning UK TV talent show…

Comedy Day Planner

29 Jul 2009

Not sure what do you with your time, but really want to see some good comedy? Brian Donaldson helps sketch out your mirthful itinerary between lunchtime and the witching hour, from The Early Edition to Late ‘n’ Live

Breast in show: WitTank

Among the best new sketch acts around, WitTank are more than just a dodgy pun.

29 Jul 2009

When you’re gathering up your all-shiny new comedy group, a few key questions have to be posed. Do we go for silly or scary sketches? How many members are too many? And most crucially of all, what the hell do we call ourselves? Whatever you may think of…

Mike Wozniak

Portsmouth Pole ponders perspective, pressure, penis pain

29 Jul 2009

Whether you happened to be members of Mike Wozniak’s family or complete strangers, there’s a chance that on viewing his debut solo set last August, much of your time would have been spent clenching or crossing some part of your body. The Wozniaks would…

Mini Profile: Simon Munnery

29 Jul 2009

He's been a fringe regular for 15 years, and lauded by Stewart Lee amongst others, but he's yet to break through into the mainstream. Just who is this hidden talent?

Comedy Hitlist

Who's making us laugh at the Fringe?

29 Jul 2009

Die Roten Punkte - Robot/Lion Tour, Janeane Garofalo, Laura Solon: Rabbit Faced Story Soup, Mark Thomas: The Manifesto, Rhys Darby: It's Rhys Darby Night, WitTank

In vino veritas: Grid Iron's Barflies

Steve Cramer meets the team behind Barflies, Grid Iron’s new piece about drinking and creativity

24 Jul 2009

‘An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you.’ Dylan Thomas’s observation about alcohol abuse and the selective moralism that goes with it, seems an apt way in to the new show from Grid Iron in which the work of another tippler…

Laura Solon: Bunny Girl

The last ever Perrier winner returns to the Fringe

24 Jul 2009

As a comedian who performs with a great deal of poise and has a taut, controlled quality about her, I wonder if Laura Solon is going to prove a somewhat distant subject for interview. My apprehension is soon dispelled in our small talk during which she…

Tuning in: music's influence on theatre

Miles Fielder asks what inspires theatre-makers to create plays based on popular music

24 Jul 2009

The Fringe always arrives with a ready-made soundtrack composed of musicals, opera and gigs as well as the tuneful accompaniments to theatre shows, to say nothing of the raucous racket generated morning, noon and night by street performers. This year…

Taking flight: Rhys Darby

Free from managing New Zealand's third hottest folk-comedy duo - Darby returns

24 Jul 2009

It’s 9am New Zealand time when Rhys Darby answers the phone. His three-year-old son had just left for day care, and finding the house suddenly peaceful again, Darby was signing up for Twitter. ‘I wasn’t planning on doing Twitter,’ he explains, those…

The beast in Philberto

24 Jul 2009

Portugal’s reality TV legend Philberto is gracing us with his presence while exploring his inner animal this Fringe. Here he picks his top five reality stars

Serf abuse: Jamie Kilstein

The US firebrand comic on mixing politics with comedy

24 Jul 2009

If you haven’t yet, it’s probably time to start getting excited about Jamie Kilstein. For a while, the American has been the comedian that other comedians get excited about: beloved beardie stand-up Daniel Kitson called Kilstein one of 2009’s Edinburgh…

Frisky and Mannish

Pop song parodies and mash-ups from anachronistic vocal duo

24 Jul 2009

Popular music is a serious matter, with the risk of ridicule for those who don’t know the Sugababes from the Sugarcubes, and Flo Rida from Tinchy Stryder. Luckily, singing duo Felicity Fitz-Frisky (Laura Corcoran) and Hansel Amadeus Mannish (Matthew…

Patrick Monahan

Family-friendly performer exploring our differences

24 Jul 2009

‘My mum’s Iranian, my dad’s Irish and I’m the only one in my house with a northern accent,’ says Teessider Patrick Monahan, explaining how he’s spent his whole life trying to ‘fit in’. Even now, preparing for his eighth year at the Edinburgh Fringe…

Alex and Helen's Radio Nowhere

Footlights duo with Facebook-inspired character tale

24 Jul 2009

Alex and Helen are naive. Their plan to find stardom by broadcasting a radio show to a hamlet of only ten people forms the basis for Alex and Helen’s Radio Nowhere, which, as the writers/performers explain, is off the map in more ways than one. ‘They’re…

Clever Peter

Rude sketch troupe sticking eggs into the appropriate baskets

24 Jul 2009

Despite a widely praised debut, the thrusting chaps of sketch troupe Clever Peter are back at the Fringe with greater ambition, tighter writing and less sexual gratuity, if not crudity. Dental torture and primate anal rape are the abiding memories of…

Marcel Lucont

Gallic arrogance with a passion for the female

24 Jul 2009

‘I am France’s premiere misanthropist and lover,’ persuades Marcel Lucont. ‘You can expect everything that’s important to be covered in my show. Life, love, sex, death, cheese, wine.'

Edward Aczel

Solving the world’s woes in a pleasingly shambolic way

24 Jul 2009

Having performed essentially the same critically-acclaimed non-show for the last two years, anti-comic Edward Aczel is planning something a little different for this Fringe, as he ambitiously Explains All the World’s Problems … And Then Solves Them.

Edinburgh Festival theatre day-planner

23 Jul 2009

Keen to see some great theatre but not sure where to start? We help you map out your Fringe-going day, from morning to midnight

Crime or reason in Orphans

Dennis Kelly and Roxana Silbert, talk about a more thoughtful urban crime thriller

23 Jul 2009

In Sydney, it’s not uncommon to hear of people being beaten up for their wallet. Even in its new zero tolerance incarnation, New York still sees its share of muggings, while Johannesburg continues to see a good deal of robbery with violence.

Interactive theatre at the Fringe

Yasmin Sulaiman talks to Adrian Howells about crossing the third wall

23 Jul 2009

While site-specific productions such as the public toilets-set Waiting for Godot might have chins wagging, interactive shows promise to provide the more meaningful experiences in 2009.

The Girls of Slender Means - Spark of genius

There’s much more to Muriel Spark than Miss Jean Brodie

23 Jul 2009

Muriel Sparks talents are paraded this festival with performances from two of her works, including her most celebrated one of course.

David Leddy - in context

The theatrical experimentalist explores what makes good men do bad things

23 Jul 2009

As writer/director David Leddy’s body of work grows, certain recurring themes become apparent. This is common enough to all writers, but what marks Leddy out is a kind of largesse of spirit to his work, a generosity about the people portrayed that…

Man for all seasons - Phil Nichol at the Fringe

Mark Fisher finds Phil Nichol mining two rich seams of comedy at this year’s Fringe

23 Jul 2009

One is a Restoration farce typically performed by seasoned rep actors on grand proscenium-arch stages. The other is a scabrous heist comedy in which a middle-management executive is kidnapped in a Fife factory.

Belt Up bring Tartuffe and Trial to the Fringe

The award-winning physical theatre company provide an inspired spin on some enduring classics

23 Jul 2009

If the Fringe is about anything, it’s about an inexhaustible ability to surprise an audience, whether it be with a crazy venue space, a thrilling new script or a suitably memorable performance. Step forward - Belt Up.

Precious Little Talent

Playwright Ella Hickson is living proof that Scotland’s got talent. She meets Anna Millar.

23 Jul 2009

It may be the title of her latest show, but Precious Little Talent is not a description you could apply to last year's Fringe darling, Ella Hickson. 2009 should be her year again.

Naked ambition - Nic Green's 'Trilogy'

Mark Fisher meets the theatre-maker who’s still proud to call herself a feminist

23 Jul 2009

Nic Green was leading a discussion recently when a young man questioned her use of the word ‘feminism’. ‘No one wants to hear that word, can’t you call it womanism?’ he asked.

Stefan Golaszewski is A Widower

Golaszewski returns to the Fringe with a new semi-autobiographical futuristic monologue.

23 Jul 2009

Last year, young London lad Stefan Golaszewski knocked out Fringe crowds and critics alike with his mercurial semi-autobiographical one-man sleeper hit show, Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About a Girl He Once Loved. Unsurprisingly, he subsequently had a…

Surviving the Fringe - Richard Fry

23 Jul 2009

Fringe veteran Richard Fry is performing in a pair of shows in Edinburgh this year. Here he gives up his essential guide to surviving the world’s biggest arts festival

Edinburgh Festival 2009 - Fringe programme highlights

11 Jun 2009

Roll up, roll up. It may just seem like yesterday that the Edinburgh Fringe packed its bags for 2008 but now it’s back with a vengeance. Against stiff competition from its international and national counterparts, this year’s Fringe line-up looks…

5 things you might not know about…Russell Howard

11 Jun 2009

1 Having made a steady name for himself with shows such as Skylarking, Adventures and Wandering, to become an Edinburgh Fringe staple, the Bristolian comic announced last year that he would no longer be doing the August sweatboxes. He felt bad at the…

Alun Cochrane

14 May 2009

The man who used to do stand-up in a comfy sitting down position with a Call My Bluff-style bell beside him and made probably the best joke about unemployed estate agents at last year’s Fringe heads north once more. Here, he’ll deliver a short set as a…

First Word: Miles Jupp

30 Apr 2009

First record you ever bought? The first LP I bought was Tony Hancock’s ‘The Blood Donor’. The first piece of music was possibly Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’. I think I bought that at a fête when I was about seven, I’m not sure why. I’ve…