Issue 581

Sounds of the City

Hey You Get Off My Pavement

1 Aug 2007

Fed up wading through the mud and the crowds at major music festivals? Karin Goodwin gets the lowdown on an innovative alternative and finds there is a whole lot going on in Glasgow this summer

Fuerzabruta

1 Aug 2007

With its mix of acrobatics, dance, theatre and club, Fuerzabruta is impossible to define. Claire Prentice visits South America for a sneak preview. The DJ whacks up the volume on the decks and suddenly the whole audience erupts. Fifteen hundred people…

Just an illusion

1 Aug 2007

Ask most people what they think of magic, and you’re likely to be greeted with snorts of derision. The British public’s perception of stage magic is still recovering from the glitter-festooned nightmare of spinning plates and disappearing rabbits that…

Dizzy Heights

1 Aug 2007

Being a cult figure in a beloved sci-fi sitcom hasn’t harmed Hattie Hayridge’s career. Doug Johnstone catches up with her. Just don’t mention Red Dwarf. Actually, it’s not a problem, mainly because Hattie Hayridge is such a laid-back character. A more…

Punch Lines

1 Aug 2007

Jim Jeffries isn’t the only comic on the receiving end of trouble from their audience. Brian Donaldson compiles some tales of terror. At a late-night Spank! show, Andrew Lawrence (pictured) foolishly challenged a heckler to a duel. As Lawrence unpopped…

Picture perfect

1 Aug 2007

From international stars like Andy Warhol and Picasso to Turner Prize winners and home grown talent, Alexander Kennedy finds rich pickings in the Edinburgh Art Festival

Glasgow Smiles Better

Hey You Get Off My Pavement

1 Aug 2007

Don’t want to spend August sitting in front of your TV? You don’t have to, as Karin Goodwin brings you some of the weird and wonderful events taking place in and around Glasgow this month

The battle for hearts & minds

1 Aug 2007

Steve Cramer goes behind the headlines to preview a selection of Fringe shows exploring terrorism, war and the media

Show girl

1 Aug 2007

Ex-art student Candie Payne became the most promising young pop singer in the country ‘by happy accident’. The happiness, it transpires, is all ours. Her debut album, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, is an immaculate, cohesive 21st century spin on…

Holland sauce

1 Aug 2007

While Germany is still perceived as humourless, its neighbour is rocking with laughter. The Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective tell Brian Donaldson about anal sex, racism and hookers

Answer Machine

Shantha Roberts

1 Aug 2007

She’s the face of BBC Scotland’s music programmes, who puts her success down to imagining the camera is a friendly robot. But Shantha Roberts would love nothing more than to be part of a gang of talking wildlife, even if she can’t make up her mind about…

Different strokes

1 Aug 2007

Having written one of the UK’s finest ever sitcoms, Sean Lock is back pounding the beat on the stand-up stage. Brian Donaldson talks to the man who has finally left bitterness behind

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

Golden Balls

1 Aug 2007

Mark Dolan’s comedy debut was as a child in front of some drunks. Yet Camilla Pia finds that a love of the audience helps drive him on

Resurrection man

1 Aug 2007

Murray Lachlan Young went from being a poet with a huge record deal to playing imaginary gigs in a barn. Julian Hall discovers how he got his mojo back

The great outdoors

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

Festival Fringe The great outdoors Epic adventures are a common theme at the Fringe this year. Steve Cramer investigates

Orphans in the storm

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

Festival Fringe Orphans in the storm Steve Cramer talks to monologist James Braly about love, loss and eccentric women

Enough is enough

1 Aug 2007

Festival Fringe Enough is enough Iris Bahr, the multi-talented star of US comedies Curb Your Enthusiasm and King of Queens makes a dramatic change of direction with her politically potent one-woman play, Dai

Kapow!

1 Aug 2007

Henry Northmore talks to project curator Mel Brimfield about the cross-genre, multi-platform Comic Book Project

Urban Cowboys

The Optimo Barn Dance

1 Aug 2007

If you have been lucky enough to enjoy one of your favourite club nights’ boat parties over the summer, you will already know how good it feels to dance to your favourite tunes in the open air. Optimo may have exhausted their supply of boats but, worry…

Immaculate collection

The work is serious

1 Aug 2007

Alexander Kennedy strays from the beaten track and discovers some hidden cultural gems at Glasgow’s studio warehouse

Prime Movers

The Dead 60s

1 Aug 2007

They’re on their way to conquering America, but The Dead 60s are still the unsung heroes on Deltasonic. Claire Sawers finds out why that’s about to change

Top Gere

1 Aug 2007

Outside the Hotel de Russie in Rome there’s an army of screaming women interspersed with Roman youths feigning curiosity. Film star Richard Gere appears mildly astonished at the state of siege. You suspect that all this attention could not fail to…

It's playtime

Children's Clothing

1 Aug 2007

Ethical, stylish, alternative, interesting and educational? Kirstin Innes meets the designers behind the saintliest children’s clothing companies in the country

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…

Parallelogram

1 Aug 2007

The Acoustic Music Centre has become the focal point for folk music on the Fringe, but one gig in particular stands out in this year’s programme as offering something a bit out of the ordinary...

Fear of flying

1 Aug 2007

She came largely unscathed through the first series of Survivor, but a quivering Zoe Lyons tells Robin Lee about the thing that terrifies her the most

Happy as a Sandbag

Interview

1 Aug 2007

A decade ago when La Vie de Jésus premiered at Cannes French filmmaker Dumont was hailed as the second-coming – the bastard love child of Robert Bresson or Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In rude health

1 Aug 2007

With larger than life characters, Alyssa Kyria’s set was a sleeper hit from 2006. She tells Marissa Burgess that this year’s show is all about getting down and dirty

Exits and Entrances – Athol Fugard

1 Aug 2007

Athol Fugard is perhaps the poet laureate of South African theatre. Since the 1950s his work has stood as a testimony to resistance to tyranny, with pieces such as Master Harold and the Boys, The Island and Sizwe Bansi is Dead winning multiple accolades…

Romeo and Juliet

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

‘Maybe Romeo and Juliet was such an old warhorse we needed to put a bomb under it.’ It’s fighting talk to some, but it’s the kind of statement you’d let through from Peter Meineck, co-founder and joint artistic director of Aquila, one of the USA’s most…

Comedy of Errors

1 Aug 2007

Al Pitcher’s show Idiot Wind is based around a rather unfortunate incident involving a woman, an aeroplane and some flatulence. Here, he gives us his top five social faux pas

Rebel ink

1 Aug 2007

With his first book due out and the premier league of poets joining him at the Fringe, Luke Wright tells Brian Donaldson that the key to more success is having a rapport

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.

Planet of the Grapes

1 Aug 2007

Whether it’s toffs in Bordeaux or bums at King’s Cross, everyone loves a rich claret. To preview his corking new show, James Dowdeswell brings us the reasons why we should all be quaffing on wine

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.

Spawn and Die

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

We may be the last two civilised people in America,’ says Susan McIntosh, as she lights a cigarette. We’re in the middle of a park in uptown Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon, and as the sun beats down on us, it’s at first difficult to imagine the…

Alex Hartley

1 Aug 2007

London-based artist Alex Hartley has covered the stern exterior of the Fruitmarket with a photographic replication of itself, containing maps of the many routes he recently managed to trace across it.

NEWS - Getting the Kelvingroove on

1 Aug 2007

Festival insiders have revealed potential plans to expand Kelvingroove, following the high volume of interest in the project. Hopes are high that the eco-friendly event, which kicks off this Sunday, will expand over time into a two-day event, emulating…

Will Adamsdale

1 Aug 2007

As befits someone who plays, by his own admission, ‘mad adults wrestling with technology and the modern world’, Will Adamsdale has asked me to read the press release for his new show back to him.

Joanna Neary

1 Aug 2007

Joanna Neary is perhaps the most industrious character comedian on the circuit. While lesser mortals such as Steve Coogan and Barry Humphries can only stretch to a handful of roles in an entire career, Neary has enough offbeat and grotesque personas in…

Klimt

1 Aug 2007

Chilean Raul Ruiz is one of the most remarkable avant-garde filmmakers working today. Having exited Chile after the Allende assassination he found a home in Paris and made a series of films that played with narrative structure and form in a manner…

Kids are alright

1 Aug 2007

The new uniforms are hanging in the wardrobe, that fortnight away seems a distant memory, but there are still two weeks to go before the kids return to school. Even if you’ve exhausted all your bright ideas, there are plenty of activities for kids of…

Druthers

1 Aug 2007

Last year, Bristol-based company Precarious Dance proved that dance, physical theatre and technology can work together in perfect harmony.

Bang on!

1 Aug 2007

Saucepans and wooden spoons may form the backbone of the average kitchen, but for Katie Stephenson and Dave Smith, they’re musical instruments. For the past five years, the duo have been wowing the crowds on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile with their unusual…

Singles and Downloads

1 Aug 2007

Plaudits from Bono are to credibility what salt is to a slug, although his favourite Dublin ‘sleazy-funk’ outfit Republic of Loose’s windin’n’grindin’ stinker ‘Break!’ (Loaded Dice) is actually rubbish enough without the old Il Papa-bothering one’s kiss…

Hitlist - The best Festival theatre

1 Aug 2007

Romeo and Juliet, Fuerzabruta, England, Life in a Marital Institution, Damascus, Exits and Entrances

Incarnat

1 Aug 2007

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

Hitlist - Festival Clubs

1 Aug 2007

I Fly Spitfires More indie malarkey as I Fly... team up with T on the Fringe to bring you the punk folk/rock of Make Model (live). Dogtooth The electro punk funk party has been on hiatus since May but hits the ground running here with a live set of…

Hitlist: Escape

1 Aug 2007

• Truckfest Scotland See trucks crush cars! See trucks roar! Drink beer! Eat meat! Beat chest! Insert your own ‘... and that’s just the girls’ joke here! Royal Highland Centre, Sat 4–Sun 5. • Dr Sketchy’s Burlesque Art Salon Pack your pencil case…

Chongbin Park

1 Aug 2007

South Korean born artist Chongbin Park moved to London in recent years, and the sense of fragility and alienation he feels as a foreigner within the city has formed the backbone to much of his recent practice.

Hitlist - The best music

1 Aug 2007

Edinburgh’s festivals report massive rise in early sales

1 Aug 2007

Festival fever went into overdrive this week with the Fringe, Jazz and Book festivals each reporting impressive sale hikes on last year. A spokesman for the Fringe said they were up 10% on their 2006 figures, having already smashed previous records on…

Hitlist - The best kids

1 Aug 2007

Hitlist - The best dance

1 Aug 2007

Leitmotif Andrew Dawson follows up 2005’s stunning Absence & Presence with this multi-media one-man show, created with eight different collaborators. Assembly Aurora Nova, 623 3030, 4–27 Aug (not 7, 14), 6.05pm, £12–£13 (£9–£10). Previews 2 & 3 Aug, £5.

James Campbell’s Onomatopoeia Society III and Spinistry of Moonerism

1 Aug 2007

James Campbell is the guy that does stand-up comedy for kids, and has carved out a very nice niche for himself in entertaining the harshest critics on the planet.

Extropia/A Day In Dig Nation

1 Aug 2007

The idea of multimedia incorporated into theatre has become a pretty common notion these days. Too often this means placing a video monitor on stage to tick the ‘contemporary’ box. Magic Carpet Theatre Company want to push the boundaries further.

The Last Breath

Denise Mina

1 Aug 2007

Bookended by two brutal slayings, this third novel in the Paddy Meehan series does everything possible to suggest that Denise Mina remains one of Scotland’s finest crime writers.

Conflict Zone: Closing Time

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

The young Israeli director, Michael Ronen is not cowed by the traditional inhibitions that most people would have about the mixing of conflicting cultures. The young company he’s formed, Conflict Zone Theatre, is in fact geared to creating theatre…

Michael Craik

1 Aug 2007

Modernism isn’t going anywhere, it seems. Maybe we were too quick at dismissing it through prefixing the term with ‘post’. Deconstructive approaches to Modernism muddy the waters, reinforcing the notion that Modernism is more of an attitude, a pose.

Former Perrier nominee with a comedy campaign

Jimmy Tingle

1 Aug 2007

Last year, US comic Doug Stanhope told The List how he was going to stand for the Libertarian Party in the 2008 Presidential Election.

Hitlist: Festival Art

1 Aug 2007

The best exhibitions in the Edinburgh Festival

Johnson and Boswell – Late But Live

1 Aug 2007

In 1773 Samuel Johnson, the portly curmudgeon of English letters, accompanied James Boswell on a tour of the Scottish Highlands.

Glenn Wool

1 Aug 2007

Having missed Glenn Wool in Ireland on a day that he played three gigs and one football match, I eventually track him down to Amsterdam, where he’s spent two days balancing stand-up with the sit-down distractions of beer and ogling Dutch women.

Music Hitlist

The best pop, rock, jazz and folk

1 Aug 2007

Make Model, My Cousin

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…

Psister Psycho

1 Aug 2007

The path to true love never runs smooth, but it’s a bumpier road than usual in unconventional love story Psister Psycho. ‘The eponymous villain is a psychotic arms-dealing lesbian robot nun,’ says Danielle Ward, who last year performed…

Hit List: Visual Art

1 Aug 2007

The Best Exhibitions

Fatboy

1 Aug 2007

It’s not often on these pages that we guide you in the direction of a play that isn’t a premiere, yet this smash hit of 2004, here substantially reworked by author/director John Clancy of Americana Absurdum seems well worth flagging up.

Night Time

1 Aug 2007

When you think back, you might feel regret for some of the choices you made in your life. Careers are one thing, but choices made about love are perhaps even more significant.

Richard Herring

1 Aug 2007

Life may be said to begin at 40, but judging by the pained expression upon Richard Herring’s face on the poster for this year’s show (entitled Oh Fuck, I’m 40), he may be entering his next decade with some degree of scepticism.

Tales from Earthsea

1 Aug 2007

The familiar Studio Ghibli look is there, but Tales From Earthsea, based on the books by writer of speculative fiction Ursula K Le Guin, is directed not by the great Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son Goro.

NEWS - News in Brief

1 Aug 2007

Leith Film Festival this Monday, Mannequins to play Sziget music festival in Budapest, Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art (Gi) to go bi-annual, Franz Ferdinand announce Scottish shows next month.

Nick Doody

Challenging double standards

1 Aug 2007

Nick Doody’s debut show last year was a deeply passionate affair. Losing his Catholic faith, American politics and scary clown nightmares were all eloquently dissected and the critics lauded it.

Stephen Grant

1 Aug 2007

‘Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely,’ Woody Allen once said. He didn’t, however, reckon with Stephen Grant whose self-proclaimed mission this August is not only to ‘obliterate untruths and punish inaccuracies’, but to solve…

Forgotten Voices

1 Aug 2007

What might seem familiar to one generation often seems a surprising omission to the next, so actress Belinda Lang, who you might remember from the 90s television series (or not, if you’re very young) 2.4 Children makes a valid point about Forgotten…

Woody Sez

1 Aug 2007

How do you represent a legend on stage? American actor and musician David Lutken has wrestled with the problem of playing the legendary folk singer and political activist of the depression era and beyond. And he thinks he’s come up with a solution.

Killer Joe

1 Aug 2007

‘It’s about a corrupt family in a trailer park who try to escape their desperate situation. In a very 90s way, it’s a black comedy.’

Phil Nichol

1 Aug 2007

We’ve all got our heroes, and perhaps they provide us with life models. Or perhaps not. Phil Nichol’s new show throws into question the nature of our obsession with celebrity, and other forms of worship we see in contemporary society.

Out of Their Box

1 Aug 2007

Think you’ve seen that person before? Then they’re probably off the telly. Brian Donaldson picks five folk going from screen to stage

Stonewall

1 Aug 2007

Stonewall, that little corner of New York that created such controversy, is synonymous with the fight for gay equality. ‘The perception is that gay rights have moved forward but it’s not far enough,’ says writer/director Ricki Beadle-Blair who has…

Emergence - See!

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

It’s hard to know which is more inspiring about Daniel Beaty – his own story, or the one he tells. The young African American poet and performer was plucked from impoverished obscurity in the third grade of primary school, where his essay about…

Mrs Barbara Nice

1 Aug 2007

Janice Connolly is a lady whose character’s fame far exceeds her own. Her creation, the ever-cheerful Mrs Barbara Nice, is returning to the Fringe with Hiya and Higher, and all the actress who manufactured her can do is allow herself to be swept along.

Stoopud F**ken Animals

1 Aug 2007

Currently biking from Suffolk to Edinburgh, ambitious and energetic playwright, Joel Horwood (Food 2006), takes a well-earned break from the saddle to discuss his new play, which he describes as ‘a Western set in Suffolk.’

A Glance at New York

1 Aug 2007

Melodrama is usually evoked as a novelty these days, a kind of exercise in high camp. But there’s more to it than this, according to Randall Sharp, director of Axis Theatre’s A Glance at New York.

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.

Tony Blair: The Musical/Tony! The Blair Musical

1 Aug 2007

You knew it was coming! More colourful than Derry Irvine’s wallpaper, more expensive than a peerage, but a bit less fictional than the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Yes it’s the musical version of old Pinocchio’s political life. Or two versions, in fact…

Happily N'Ever After

1 Aug 2007

Although its makers claim they conceived Happily N’Ever After long before that big green ogre Shrek took over the box office swamp, animation filmmakers Paul J Bolger and Yvette Kaplan’s procrastinations mean that this contemporary take on olde fairy…

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…

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.

Evan Almighty

1 Aug 2007

That the most expensive comedy ever made should be a sequel to a disposable Jim Carrey timewaster, with Carrey not even featuring in the cast, suggests an error of biblical proportions in the judgement of Universal executives...

Méli Mélo II

1 Aug 2007

To parody something, you have to know it inside out, which is why The Chicos Mambo are so good at what they do.

Abroad appeal

1 Aug 2007

Could this be the year of the European comedian? Brian Donaldson cherry picks some continental comics, both real and made-up

Dan Clark

1 Aug 2007

Poor Dan Clark is worried he might be deluded about the Fringe. Not only is he hoping that he will manage August without the help of alcohol, he’s also aiming to forget about reviews and interviews and just ‘enjoy doing shows and leave feeling happy’.

Into The Hoods

1 Aug 2007

One of the undisputed hits of last year’s Fringe is making a welcome return to Edinburgh.

Hugh Hughes in . . . Story of a Rabbit

1 Aug 2007

After contemplating the logistics of travelling to Edinburgh in a tractor, Hugh Hughes moves on to describe his new show for this year’s Fringe. ‘In it, I’m comparing and contrasting the death of my father, with the death of my neighbour’s rabbit.’

Claytime

1 Aug 2007

Watching a performer play with a fun prop can be a frustrating business for children.

Teenage Kicks

1 Aug 2007

‘If hero worship were sex, they’d all be carrying my babies‚’ said John Peel of punk rockers The Dwarves in a quote that sums up Teenage Kicks writer Paul Hodson’s personal attitude towards the enigmatic Radio 1 DJ.

Sorry, Love!

1 Aug 2007

The dance world is full of labels, styles and genres. But sometimes, pigeonholing just isn’t possible.

The Bitches' Ball

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

History is usually served with complimentary rose tinted glasses allowing us to wipe out events we don’t wish to remember. It can do the same to people and it’s these individuals that Penny Dreadful are trying to make sure we can’t erase.