Issue 582

Stonewall

9 Aug 2007

Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.

State of Matter

9 Aug 2007

The stark lighting and simple uniform of black tailcoats characterise the restraint that permeates this performance by Hereford’s 2FaCeD DaNcE Company. There is no narrative to this show, rather it is a collection of unrelated set pieces, the…

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…

A Conversation with Edith Head

9 Aug 2007

Hollywood costume designer Edith Head worked on almost 500 films in her 54-year career. She dressed Mae West, Dorothy Lamour and Barbara Stanwyck in their most iconic outfits. She played with the big boys at Paramount (and later Universal) and her onyx…

Batman Black & White Volume 3

(DC/Titan)

9 Aug 2007

Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…

Frankie Boyle

9 Aug 2007

In some ways it would be difficult to imagine an encounter between Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, what with them being, arguably, the two finest gag tellers in contemporary British stand-up comedy. How, you wonder, can they have a chat when they must be…

Joyce Carol Oates

9 Aug 2007

The legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau once compared the versatility and precision of Oates’ writing to witchcraft. Oates once said of her own work, ‘I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life’. This perhaps…

Charlotte Hudson & Leila Hackett

Fresh sketches and bouncy tales

9 Aug 2007

Charlotte Hudson and Leila Hackett’s lively performance and British beach setting perfectly reflect a Blackpool-style summer: slightly tacky and full of tongue-in cheek exhibitionism. Fake seagulls call in the distance as a parade of characters accost…

Forgiven

Channel 4, Thu 16 Aug, 10.30pm

9 Aug 2007

FAMILY DRAMA Following in the footsteps of paedophilia drama Secret Life, this is another related single work which will make you feel pain long after the closing credits have gone. Based on a real case, Forgiven stars Derek Riddell (The Book Group…

Seasick Steve

9 Aug 2007

Every now and then pop culture throws something into the public consciousness based solely on quality. It may not be fashionable, it’s not part of a new movement, it doesn’t fit into any scene, it’s just good. This year’s phenomenal anomaly is…

Alice Munro

Canadian legend in LongPen revolution

9 Aug 2007

A standard piece of advice given to budding fiction writers eager for publication is to forget airy fairy, uncommercial notions of publishing short stories and dive headfirst into the novel.

La Femme Est Morte or Why Should I Not Fuck My Son

9 Aug 2007

Britney is in a state of crisis. She split from her husband, shaved her head, drove with her son on her lap and allegedly tried to have his teeth whitened, and of course it’s all the media’s fault, just as they are held responsible for Phaedra’s demise…

Life in a Marital Institution

9 Aug 2007

There can be few more engaging acts on this year’s Fringe than James Braly. There’s a winning, self effacing smile, mixed with the occasional giggle throughout his performance, and despite the, at times, emotionally harrowing subject matter, Braly…

Made in Scotland

9 Aug 2007

Think of Scotland’s most famous traditional exports and what comes to mind? While in reality they may now be as diverse as the people living within its boundaries, Scotland still sometimes struggles to escape the clichés – tartan, whisky, misty…

5 Questions - Fast

9 Aug 2007

Raucous punk club Fast has secured the talents of Michael Dracula and Fake Fang (pictured) for a live double bill of fearsome live acts.

Anthony Holden

Old school poker shark

9 Aug 2007

As a biographer of the Royals, Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky, as well being the classical music critic of the Observer, Anthony Holden has always been a respected writer but it is the less respectable subject of poker that has given him his biggest sales.

Cash In Christ

9 Aug 2007

Leaders of the Sunrise Church, husband and wife team Bob and Fanny Comfort, take us through a sing-along sermon as they try to recruit us into a church where we can get rich in Jesus. Teachings of Sunrise include the need for women to be beautiful, the…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

9 Aug 2007

• Ari-Up She’ll always be best known as the lead singer of seminal grrrrl punks The Slits but now, club night Pretty Ugly welcomes her back witha new band The True Warriors, who will be playing new material plus the songs of The Slits with a heavy…

Hitlist - the best Festival dance

9 Aug 2007

With four programmes and a kids show to pick from, you’ll be spoilt for choice at Scotland’s National Centre for Dance. Contemporary, Indian, hip hop, dance theatre – it’s all here and more.

Lovespring International

Sky One, Sun 12 Aug, 10.30pm

9 Aug 2007

COMEDY Ricky Gervais can be criticised for many things, such as his mad cackle and the popularity of Karl Pilkington. And here’s a third thing. Lovespring International would most likely never have been made had the US not fallen in love with The…

Monster Hits & Does a Monster Live Next Door?,

Kelly Apter

9 Aug 2007

To celebrate the company’s tenth anniversary, Tall Stories has brought two monster shows to Edinburgh – and they couldn’t be more different. Best known for their adaptation of The Gruffalo, Tall Stories has a reputation for creating innovative…

Russel Howard

9 Aug 2007

Russell Howard shows a remarkable amount of restraint against what appears to be a natural inclination to gab with his audience. Other than to mock the odd crazy laugh, he concentrates on his material, which is an ability which the crowd requires in…

Silly Billy Bum Breath Strikes Back

9 Aug 2007

The bad girls of last year’s Fringe are back, and this time they’re even naughtier. As all those who saw Laura Black and Feri Tezcan’s 2006 show, Silly Billy Bum Breath will know, the eponymous hero is in fact invisible – well, to us anyway. Only Black…

Take That

9 Aug 2007

Faced with the prospect of Never Forget, ‘a new musical based on the songs of Take That’, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Mamma Mia, here we go again . . .’

5 Reasons To Go See - Giant Tank vs The Fringe!!!

9 Aug 2007

Edinburgh’s premiere promoters of aktionist noise happenings commemorate a decade of cottage industry chunder with three bloody Sundays of non-Fringe-based hissy fits. Five reasons for their essentialness follow 1 It’s not music. It’s just noise And…

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…

Asobi Seksu

Citrus

9 Aug 2007

ELECTRONIC POP In Asobi Seksu’s world dreamy vocals soar over turbulent guitars and delicate vocals switch between English and Japanese in sweeping psychedelic pop songs. But in the real world the result is somewhat toothless, and, despite its…

Common

Finding Forever

9 Aug 2007

HIP HOP Billed all too regularly as the nearly man of hip hop, this isn’t technically true of Common. Seven albums in, he was, until 2005’s Be an underground doyen, releasing excellent albums such as Like Water for Chocolate, which were scholarly…

Daljit Nagra

9 Aug 2007

Daljit Nagra is very popular with the pupils he teaches English to at a north-west London school. Not because he lets them off with throwing paper aeroplanes across the room or allows them to bunk off early, but because he has injected them with a love…

Eurobeat – Almost Eurovision

9 Aug 2007

Lycra, spandex, cheesy hosts, uber-innuendo and even a recorded welcome from Terry Wogan himself; it is indeed, almost Eurovision. There’s a palpable sense of excitement as badges are distributed, flags and clackers are sold and the cast do a warm up…

Genaro

Genaro

9 Aug 2007

ROCK There is a fine line in the risky profession of innovative guitar music between brilliance and wanksmithery and Benbecula signings Genaro appear to tread this with glee. Still, the majority of their debut sits on the right side of the divide…

Hitlist - Look Who's Talking

9 Aug 2007

Rabbi Lionel Blue: Godly and Gay The much-loved broadcaster talks about his experience of coming out as a gay man in religious circles and a religious man in gay circles. Part of the Festival of Spirituality and Peace. See…

Hitlist: Theatre

9 Aug 2007

• Damascus David Greig’s play will be the toast of the Fringe. A comedy of manners set in the city of the title, the piece involves a Scot on a business visit, and the effects of his cultural assumptions on those he encounters. See review, page 79.

Kristen Schaal

Whispering genius cobbles together a hit

9 Aug 2007

The Assembly Rooms appears to have been putting up a determined campaign the last few years to platform a string of quirky female American comics with offbeat dispositions all of their own. Wendy Spero and Maria Bamford made inroads with varying success…

Lady of Burma

9 Aug 2007

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and lady of Burma to which the title refers, is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to be currently in jail. The country’s ruling military junta is one of the most abhorrent regimes in the world, with its…

Phil Kay

Impish, semi-mental charm

9 Aug 2007

For the uninitiated, the first breathless minutes of the bedraggled, beardy and rambling Phil Kay’s routine are like watching a homeless dope smoker who has accidentally wandered onstage. But as he ricochets through his tales of shoplifting, smuggling…

The Carhullan Army

(Faber)

9 Aug 2007

FUTURISTIC DRAMA Considering the recent spate of unseasonable weather and car bombs, Sarah Hall’s third novel can’t help but have a certain resonance. Set in a not too distant future, where the combination of rising tides and an ongoing fight against…

The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole

9 Aug 2007

Between 1910 and 1912 two competing teams, one British one Norwegian, set out to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Only one managed to return home to tell the tale. Constructed from the diaries kept by the British explorer Captain Robert…

The Mothers Bones

9 Aug 2007

Inspiration can strike in the most unlikely of places, and for Kath Burlinson it was inside a cave in the Dordogne. Surrounded by ancient drawings, she hit upon the idea of The Mother’s Bones, a show which explores three ages of womanhood.

The Terrible Infants

9 Aug 2007

This collection of twisted morality tales for ages 9–14, are sumptuous testimony to Les Enfants Terribles’ collective methods. Yet artistic director, Oliver Lansley, as the trenchcoat-clad emcee still shines bright at its helm. Combining music…

Whiff

9 Aug 2007

Kipper Tie theatre’s tale of how Whiff the big, fat, smelly baby warthog, surmounts his rather unfortunate body odour problem and propensity to attract ‘tickly quickly flies’, to finally find a firm friend, is told without fuss or frills. But the lack…

William Kentridge

9 Aug 2007

One of South Africa’s most highly-regarded artists, it seems somehow appropriate that this first Scottish collection of William Kentridge’s print works should fall in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. Although this show concentrates solely on his…

Jimmy Carr

9 Aug 2007

With his short sharp shocks, Jimmy Carr has outraged and amused audiences around the world. He tells Brian Donaldson why no one has the right to be hurt by a bit of wordplay

Ethan Hawke

9 Aug 2007

Kaleem Aftab talks to actor, writer and now director Ethan Hawke about adapting his novel The Hottest State for the big screen

Bill Callahan

9 Aug 2007

By way of a typically cryptic explanation, the enigmatic American singer-songwriter Bill Callahan once said – in response to what can only have been a helluva lot of queries about his willfully opaque moniker Smog – ‘I live in smog.’ He may have done…

Aesop's Fables

9 Aug 2007

Many children’s shows profess to be ‘adult friendly’, but few deliver to the same degree as this hugely enjoyable new production. Written by former children’s laureate, Michael Morporgo, Aesop’s timeless fables have been fleshed out into sharp, witty…

All Aboard

9 Aug 2007

Take one classic 1970s kids album, a big bag of sweets and two over excited men and what do you get? All Aboard, a new show paying homage to songs such as ‘Two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris and Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie’. Having bought the rights to the album…

Bernadette Lafont

9 Aug 2007

The veteran French actress Bernadette Lafont is casting her mind back 50 years and recalling her first ever film role. It was in a short called Les Mistons (The Brats), made by a tyro filmmaker called François Truffaut. Shot in her hometown of Nimes…

CHAV! IT’S A MUSICAL INNIT

9 Aug 2007

The Debden in which this show is set is the town of David Cameron’s nightmares. Union Jack thongs are flashed, bus stops are vandalised and groups of unemployed teens impregnate each other like Lambrini addled rabbits.

Damascus

9 Aug 2007

Routines based on the business of translation are a pretty well precedented source of humour in the theatre. What gives a rare quality to David Greig’s new play, which amounts to an entire two-and -a-half hours of this schtick, is the subtlety and…

Famished

9 Aug 2007

In this hammed-up musical, as our heroine awaits the safe return of her lover from some faraway land, singing/dancing zombies hit Victorian London.

Hitlist - The best dancefloor action

9 Aug 2007

• Baby Go Boom Taking laughter and dancing just one step further. Basically, it’s a comedy show with Scott Agnew and Hugh Reed & the Velvet Underpants telling the jokes followed by a disco to keep you moving. Genius. The Woodside Social Club, Glasgow…

House of Windsor

Regal sketches with crowning glories to come

9 Aug 2007

With last year’s debut as the Future, Jonny Sweet and Joe Thomas received some rave reviews and an awards nomination before ending the summer being ensnared by one of the country’s powerhouse comedy PR companies. This year that soaring promise will…

Jarlath Regan

9 Aug 2007

Regan is utterly beguiling and likely to be among the most charming men you’ll meet. Self-deprecating, bewildered, and clever, he talks of hopeless government attempts to curb drinking in Ireland, his ineptitude in the workplace and with women, and a…

Jess Weixler

9 Aug 2007

Jess Weixler is so all-American she looks like she’s jumped straight out of a photograph of high school cheerleaders. Her long blond hair and blue eyes make her the archetypal American beauty – just like all those Britney Spears wannabes lusted after by…

John Richardson

Delightful surreal obsessive material

9 Aug 2007

BBC6 radio host Jon Richardson is clearly at home behind a microphone. Charming and self-effacing, he moves through a show that might have been subtitled OCD, Or How Other People Drive Me Insane, segueing effortlessly between the different elements of…

KG Cafe

Star attraction

9 Aug 2007

Too often tourist attractions boast deeply uninspiring cafés. Donald Reid is glad to discover the KG Café at Kelvingrove has culinary ambitions befitting such an important gallery and museum

Les Bof!

9 Aug 2007

There’s a certain ‘I don’t know what’ about this bunch of freakbeat rockers. The French language four-piece may be based in Edinburgh, but they are fronted by a bona fide Frenchy, the sharply dressed show-off singer Laurent Mombel, who left behind his…

Simon Brodkin

A one-man comedy club

9 Aug 2007

In this age of panel gameshows and 15-minute slots on Radio 4, a solid hour of stand-up is simply too strenuous for performers and audiences suffering from an attention span bypass. Simon Brodkin thinks he’s found the answer to this thorny issue. The…

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…

Surf's Up

9 Aug 2007

A reasonable improvement on the heavy-handed environmentalism of last year’s hit Happy Feet, Ash Brannon and Chris Buck’s animation is a colourful parody of surfer movies and Stacy Peralta’s 2004 documentary Riding Giants in particular.

Sword in the Stone

9 Aug 2007

Spotlites theatre company works its fingers to the bone in this adventurous interactive show. Just three actors play ten characters, each with an extensive costume change. But they’re not the only ones hard at work – Sword in the Stone keeps everyone…

The Walker

(15) 109min

9 Aug 2007

‘I’m not naive, I’m superficial’, smiles Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson), the latest in a memorable line of existential loners created by Paul Schrader.

Trippplicate

9 Aug 2007

Allow madcap ‘twins’ Kirsty and Miranda to guide you through the finer points of being a TimeLord. A barmy bonanza, our intrepid ‘superhumans’ zip through the timeosphere, with the help of stolen theme tunes, impressive Flashdance-worthy dance routines…

Waitress

(12A) 107min

9 Aug 2007

Jenna (Keri Russell) is a career waitress. She tends tables in a dead-end town in the deep south of the US.

Woody Sez

9 Aug 2007

Although the pop star world-saving concert is something we have become accustomed to in recent years, the politically aware musician is not a new invention. Long before Sir Bono or Sir Geldof, storytelling songwriter Woody Guthrie had hits describing…

Norman Mailer

9 Aug 2007

Writing about difficult subjects helped turn Norman Mailer into a literary star. Rodge Glass analyses his career and believes only he could have broken the final taboo

Tilda Swinton

9 Aug 2007

Even without her bright beacon of red hair, it would be difficult to miss Tilda Swinton at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Enjoying her inaugural year as patron, alongside the venerable Sir Sean Connery, you can take your pick when it…

Katrin Himmler

9 Aug 2007

Katrin Himmler was born into a family with a dark history, but has only now been able to write about it. She tells Doug Johnstone about reliving the past

Back to basics

Emerging talent in the world

9 Aug 2007

Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is a mere distraction while others see it as a formidable force in the gaming industry despite the odd ‘bad egg’ website devoted to vulgar cartoons and controversy.Flash gaming is a funny beast. For some it is…

AL Kennedy

9 Aug 2007

Delightfully warm and engaging, despite all those dreary press pictures, ALK gives the impression she really enjoys trying to endear an audience to her. It would be easy to dismiss this well-crafted material as the inevitable product of her writing…

Also Published - 5 Food Books

9 Aug 2007

Sid Owen - Life on a Plate Ricky from EastEnders shows off yet another of his many talents with this tome, subtitled ‘The Journey of an Unexpected Chef’. I’ll say. Century . John Dickie! - Delizia The author of Cosa Nostra brings us a book which…

Away

(Granta)

9 Aug 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA Amy Bloom’s latest novel follows the journey of Lillian, a Russian woman who watches her family being brutally killed and then travels to America to escape those memories and her country. Once there, the plot rockets through a number of…

Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered

9 Aug 2007

The recent deaths of art cinema colossi Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni – at the ages of 89 and 94 respectively – led me to wonder about some of the great filmmakers who did not make it to their fifth decade, let alone approach their tenth.

Cape Dance Company

Kelly Apter

9 Aug 2007

Bringing a show to the Edinburgh Fringe is a financial challenge for most people – but when you live over 6000 miles away, it’s a Herculean effort. Cape Dance Company has visited the Fringe twice before, in 1996 and 1998, so a return visit is long…

Cirque de Sabotage

9 Aug 2007

This female three-piece act proclaims itself as ‘heavily character-driven, comprising sketch-based slapstick and silliness, woven together with verbal dexterity and an extensive wardrobe of props and costumes’. True enough, but then so was the…

Dai (Enough)

9 Aug 2007

As daily reports of suicide bombings in the Middle East flood into our homes, it’s impossible not to be desensitised. Figures substitute names, as personal stories take a backseat in favour of a delivery of the death toll. However, Iris Bahr’s one woman…

Daniel Townes

9 Aug 2007

This charming London-based Aussie’s set is built loosely around his detention and deportation from an LA airport for an apparently negligible misdemeanour, an encounter that offers him some considerable mileage. With the air of one of your funnier pals…

David Batchelor

9 Aug 2007

David Batchelor has been a busy man of late, scouring pound shops in London and Scotland for pegs, combs, cutlery, clothes pegs, children’s toys, girly hair accessories and a whole manner of other cheap plastic objects in preparation for this new site…

David Batchelor and Nikolai Suetin

9 Aug 2007

Now in its tenth year as one of Edinburgh’s established independent galleries, the Ingleby has chosen to mark the occasion with a series of 26 small-scale shows which present a work by a well-known contemporary artists alongside another ‘complementary…

David Rokeby

9 Aug 2007

The CCA continues its exploration of the relationship between technology and art, with the first major show and retrospective of Canadian-born artist David Rokeby. The exhibition brings together five of his award-winning installations, new media…

Dick Lee Septet

9 Aug 2007

Clarinetist Dick Lee is a regular at this venue, and leads his seven-piece expansion of Swing 2007, featuring a four-horn frontline in which he is joined by Anne Evans, Duncan Nairn and Martin Foster, a combination that gives him access to a wide…

Druthers

9 Aug 2007

Druthers’ Everyman in the attic is hoisted from his hermitage by an entertaining barrage of multimedia performance from Bristol’s Precarious Dance. The company take the opportunity to showcase their very talented wares, making especially beautiful use…

ENGLAND

9 Aug 2007

Tim Crouch, who has built a strong reputation at the Fringe with his shows My Arm and An Oak Tree has seemed a guaranteed banker in the months since this year’s show was announced. And this piece is worth the wait. It involves Crouch and performer…

Extropia

9 Aug 2007

‘Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one?’ So muses Winston Smith, hero of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the basis for machine-operator ‘August Eight’ in The Flying Carpet Theatre’s sci-fi adventure.

Frank Muir

9 Aug 2007

If Festival visitors were asked where they expect Scottish crime novels to be set, a fair few would probably think of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh first, or Denise Mina’s Glasgow.

Get Smashed

(Hodder & Stoughton)

9 Aug 2007

MEDIA HISTORY This is the story of the 1960s advertising revolution that led to the shedding of jingles and rigid formulae in favour of a certain whimsy, spurred on by the visions of a handful of people who made a tidy fortune. Sam Delaney chronicles…

Hitlist - The Best Festival Clubs

9 Aug 2007

The esteemed Headspin crew are joined by a true pioneer of drum & bass, Marc Mac (4hero, pictured), for a night of D&B, neo soul, nu jazz and breakbeat. The Bongo Club, 558 7604, Sat 11 Aug, 11pm–5am, £10.

Hitlist - the best Festival films

9 Aug 2007

Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s momentous 15-and-a-half hour version of Alfred Döblin’s novel gets a rare outing. A treat. See feature, page 52. Filmhouse, 623 8080, 16–22Aug, 6pm, £30 (no concs). Individual screenings…

Hitlist - the best Fringe comedy

9 Aug 2007

Stewart Lee Still surfing on his own wave of post-Springer glory, the 41st Best Stand-Up Ever delivers a routine would rocket him further up that chart if they had another poll today. Hilarious and confrontational. UdderBELLY’s Pasture, 0870 745 3083…

Hugh Hughes in . . . Story of a Rabbit

9 Aug 2007

Self described ‘emerging artist from Wales’, the endearing Hugh Hughes eagerly addresses the age old question of death: what it is, what happens, and how differently we all react to the inevitable. He intermingles the story of a rabbit’s death with that…

Irvine Welsh

5 questions

9 Aug 2007

5 words to describe the film you have at the EIFF Racism and testicular cancer comedy. 4 of your favourite cinemas in the world Cameo, Edinburgh; Rio Dalston, London; IFI, Dublin; Castro, San Francisco. 3 people you would love to work with…

Ivan Smagghe

9 Aug 2007

Ivan Smagghe has a pretty impressive CV. Along with Mark Colin he formed Volga Select who released records on über fashionable French imprint Kitsune, 20:20 Vision and Output as well as being responsible for the Tigersushi compilation So Young But So…

Jarred Christmas

9 Aug 2007

The Hero Show is a befitting title for Christmas’ latest venture as the Kiwi resembles something between Clark Kent and the Incredible Hulk. He throws himself into storytelling, gripping the audience’s attention with red-cheeked fury, though at times…

Jennifer McCartney

Creative writer isn’t looking back

9 Aug 2007

Jennifer McCartney’s debut is both a joyfully idyllic and strangely dystopian novel. Afloat tells the story of Bell, a student from Minnesota who works as a waitress at an elite resort on Mackinac Island where her initial happiness turns into confused…

Jude Simpson

9 Aug 2007

Performance poetry is making great strides at Fringe 07, and this show, all about growing up (or, more accurately, not growing up) is lunchtime delight. Taking her cue from the audience’s written suggestions, Simpson swoons and sings some stanzas about…

Karen Bayley

9 Aug 2007

They say that the most important thing is having the confidence to give it a go. But decent material and delivery also help. A self-confessed depressive turned optimist after a near-death experience, Bayley’s self-assured demeanour surpasses her…

Kids Events

9 Aug 2007

When you say ‘comic’ to a kid they might think of the Beano or Roy of the Rovers (if you’re a kid over 35) but the event with Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy will open up the eyes of teenagers and any young at heart adults in tow. Graphic novels are something…

Laurence Clark

Raising chuckles and awareness

9 Aug 2007

Thousands hit the Fringe every year with the aim of busting perceptions, but it’ll be hard to find someone who achieves this as thoroughly as the charming Laurence Clark, whose approach veers between being warmly funny and making us feel as…