Issue 609

Working into retirement can bring a new lease of life

13 Aug 2008

What do you see in your future? A cosy retirement? Make it to 60 and then you’re free for sand, sea and sangria? Well, not everyone feels quite the same. A growing number of people choose to work past retirement age because they don’t want a ‘quiet’ life.

Kristin Hersh

After the flood

7 Aug 2008

To the casual observer, Kristin Hersh is a bundle of contradictions. Just seconds into our conversation she is gabbing away like an old friend, expounding on her one-woman show Paradoxical Undressing, the tale of a tumultuous teenage life when, in the…

Desert storm

7 Aug 2008

‘The disease in question had, as its main deleterious effect, the fact that it renders its victims perfectly unable to write anything but 500-page books about the civil war in Sudan.’ The ‘victim’ in this case is US author Dave Eggers, but the…

Dybbuk - Bring out the dead

7 Aug 2008

Steve Cramer flies to Jerusalem to talk to Polish star Magdalena Cielecka about ghosts, obligation and tradition as explored in a new version of the Jewish classic, The Dybbuk

Kristen Schaal - Heart of daftness

7 Aug 2008

Kristen Schaal merges sinister and sweet with terrifying success. Claire Sawers chats to her while hoping she doesn’t do that angry, erotic sheep thing.

The Idiot Colony

Beautiful, shocking indictment of an all-too recent past

7 Aug 2008

The opening scene of this intense, beautifully constructed piece of physical theatre lingers, unsettlingly, for days afterwards. Three girlish figures in pretty white dresses, perfectly in sync with each other, sway to a ragtime number, their faces…

Deep Cut

Powerful take on true-life tragedy

7 Aug 2008

Thirteen years after Cheryl James died at Deepcut barracks, the young army private's parents continue to campaign for a public enquiry. No longer solely concerned as to whether she committed suicide, as the army originally claimed, Des and Doreen James…

Children of the Khmer

Cambodian song and dance

7 Aug 2008

This is as inspiring as it gets. An ensemble of young talented performers from Cambodia delivering perfectly orchestrated dance routines that are soulful, funny, enthusiastic and set against a powerful musical backdrop. It starts off on a mellow…

Brendon Burns

Award winner is back and still pretty angry

7 Aug 2008

What do you get when you take an aggressive Aussie comic with a history of psychosis, substance abuse and vitriolic rants about every sector of humanity and award him the if.comeddie main award? Gladiator costumes, Schwarzenegger impressions and a…

Ladies in Waiting

Getting Brownie points for this show

7 Aug 2008

Anyone who has broken their childhood promise to 'do their best' will find this show pleasingly subversive. The Brownie leader, Brown Owl, starts the show with a finger pressed to her pursed lips and the audience is told to be 'quiet as mice'. The…

Mark Watson

Lightning fast, likeable wit from not quite Welsh wizard

7 Aug 2008

Most 55-minute comedy shows, explains Mark Watson, use 50 minutes of material then allow five for laughter. But being a pessimist, the self-slagging, nervy wonderboy has prepared an hour. Based on audience reactions, the wiry, fake Welshman should have…

Pot Noodle The Musical

Song and spoofs about the saucy snack

7 Aug 2008

With unexpected Hamlet undertones, Pot Noodle The Musical spins the story of the dastardly Alan Little, who kills his noodle-farmer brother Barry in order to get his mitts on prostitutes and cars. The plot is a happy blend of clichéd musical (Barry's…

The Echo Chamber

Underground antics

7 Aug 2008

Part history lesson, part scary story, this atmospheric show from En Masse Theatre is a great way to start your Fringe day. Descending down into the bowels of Edinburgh, you find yourself in one of the many caverns and passageways that run beneath the…

Jackie Leven

Scottish outsider brings home his extensive back catalogue

7 Aug 2008

It’s the stuff on your doorstep that always goes unnoticed. While we heap plaudits on underground legends from across the pond, Scotland’s own talented outsider Jackie Leven remains unheralded. ‘I can’t get arrested in this country,’ Leven laughs…

Tracey Emin: 20 Years

Emin thrills… and disappoints

7 Aug 2008

Tracey Emin seems to polarise opinion – just check out the online comments on her column in The Independent. One of Britain’s most recognisable YBA artists, she’s been nominated for the Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but…

DJ Sneak

7 Aug 2008

The Telefunken team are joined by an acknowledged master of Chicago house in the form of DJ Sneak, for his first Edinburgh show in five years. Moving to Chicago from his native Puerto Rico in 1983 he quickly soaked up the sounds of Frankie Knuckles…

Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design

Of human bond-age

7 Aug 2008

It’s strange, considering how conservative a character James Bond is, that his presentation and marketing seems to fall so readily in step with the times. From Sean Connery throughout the smooth, swinging 60s, to the more cartoonishly lurid 70s and…

Caring for people

People with dementia are learning to live their lives to the full

7 Aug 2008

When people consider retirement they often think of all the fun things they’ll be able to do that they’ve never had time for before. This dream is occasionally cut short when someone close to them discovers they have dementia but that is not to say the…

Dr Sketchy’s Anti Art School

7 Aug 2008

I blame after-school ‘buff club’ for the prudish apprehension I felt on entering Dr Sketchy’s Anti Art School. The life drawing class of my youth utterly succeeded in repressing my schoolgirl giggle. Week after week the models’ towelling gowns would…

Ingleby Gallery

All change

7 Aug 2008

Edinburgh’s Ingleby gallery has gradually developed a solid reputation for showing emerging and established contemporary art in a domestic Georgian setting, but their art collection has grown along with their status, prompting directors Richard and…

Last Word - Manda Rin

7 Aug 2008

First record you ever bought It was a seven-inch of the Bangles’ ‘Manic Monday’ in RS McColl’s in the Pollok Centre. Last time you were chatted up I never feel like I get chatted up, but am always told that I am by friends (and my boyfriend!). I…

Âme

7 Aug 2008

‘It’s pronounced “am”,’ says Kristian Beyer, one half of Karlsruhe electronicists Âme. ‘All the time people pronounce it “ami” or “Amy”, but it’s “am” – the French word for soul.’ In which case the duo are well-named, because Âme produce a beautiful…

Calvin Johnson

7 Aug 2008

When Calvin Johnson plays a booze-free all-ages show in a church hall in Glasgow this week, he won’t be attempting to be cute. Rather, it’s just one more wilfully skewed strategy in this most single-minded of mavericks’ ongoing mission of DIY…

Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

7 Aug 2008

They may be only four in number but there are times when the collective voices of the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir soar as strong and pure as a 100-strong ensemble. While they make us guess at the tendency of their religious beliefs there is no…

Wagner Moura - Elite Squad

7 Aug 2008

Girls swoon when Wagner Moura wanders through his old haunts in Sao Paulo. The 32-year-old graduate in journalism with boyish good looks is in the process of going global thanks to his role as the captain of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later elite…

Garlands - Falkirk

7 Aug 2008

What does the richest man in America in the early 20th Century have in common with the Cocteau Twins? Falkirk. Or more specifically, the area around Falkirk and Grangemouth, birthplace of Captain Robert Dollar, Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie. They…

Edinburgh Interactive Festival

7 Aug 2008

Now in its sixth year, the Edinburgh Interactive Festival is offering even more for gaming enthusiasts. To complement the usual conference, the games screenings are expanding with sneak previews of videogames. Expect hands-on exhibits, a recruitment…

Giffnock Ivy

7 Aug 2008

For the price of a £5 train ticket, Glaswegians can enjoy a dining experience to rival those found in the stylish restaurants of Paris. Well, according to the new management of the Giffnock Ivy, that is, which aims to ‘bring the tastes, smells and…

Freeze! - Cold comfort

7 Aug 2008

Tom Basden may be an award-winning comic but, he tells David Pollock, that doesn’t stop him from being tormented by a fellow-Coward ‘I just didn’t want to rush a follow-up to the show I did in Edinburgh last year,’ says comedian Tom Basden, current…

Health Warning

7 Aug 2008

Simon Singh has upset many people with his damning views on holistic treatment. Claire Sawers asks if he has his finger on the pulse of alternative therapy Don’t get Simon Singh started on reiki massage. And as for ear candles or oxygen therapy, that’s…

Architecting

The history of catastrophe

7 Aug 2008

As the UK slips into a free market-induced recession, the idea of apocalypse, be it environmental, economic or cultural, is bound to play on many a mind. It's timely, then, that TEAM, the vigorous and zestful young American company who brought…

Danny Wallace

Ghostbusters-obsessed yes man with another voyage of self-discovery

7 Aug 2008

The trailer for a Danny Wallace movie biopic might go something like this: ‘In a time of global terrorism, credit crunching and general fatigue with social networking sites, one committed tea drinker’s relentless optimism in the face of cynicism and…

New Art Club - Festival virgins

7 Aug 2008

What with the smelly costumes and saunas, it's been a mixed debut week at the Fringe for New Art Club. They take us through the highs and lows of their first Festival pillaging. Reasons to be cheerful - Being accosted by a multi-coloured…

Song and Civilization

Chants will be a fine thing

7 Aug 2008

If a singing nun conjures up images of The Sound of Music or Sister Act, then it’s time to get real and listen to the exquisite beauty of Sister Marie Keyrouz. Appearing as part of the EIF’s fascinating Song and Civilization series, the Lebanese-born…

Capital venture

7 Aug 2008

Travis set to open new live music venue in the capital while Tennent’s Mutual gathers pace Words: Anna Millar The Scottish music scene is in rude health this month with The Tennent’s Mutual introducing Conversations, a series of exclusive films and…

Fall

Grimly powerful exploration of the consequences of war

7 Aug 2008

The dark poetics of Edward Bond have, with the exception of a couple of productions over the last year, been unjustly banished from the British stage, yet live on in the work of writers who have been influenced by him. One such writer is Zinnie Harris…

Elegy

7 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 112min Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living writers (and certainly one of the major chroniclers of middle class ennui), hasn’t been well served by adaptations. Goodbye, Columbus (1969), Portnoy’s Complaint (1972) and The…

Charlie Victor Romeo

Tense slice of cockpit-set verbatim theatre

7 Aug 2008

The cockpit of an aeroplane is one of those intriguing but concealed nooks – like the vestry of a church or the wings of a theatre – generally forbidden to lay people, but which provide endless fodder for the imagination. What exactly is going on behind…

Married Life

7 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (PG) 90min Suburban America, 1949. President Harry S Truman has just unveiled his Fair Deal plan and the People’s Republic of China is in the process of being born. As befits his business class status, mild-mannered Harry Allen (Chris…

Slick - Head bangers

Kirstin Innes gets behind the squidgy bodies of Vox Motus

7 Aug 2008

Remember when you were a kid, and you would put on plays where one of you would put your arms behind your back and the other one would pretend to be their hands? It’s an unlikely premise for a piece of theatre targeted at adults, but Glasgow-based…

Interview - Alexander Hamilton

Travels without my camera

7 Aug 2008

It might seem laughably low-tech in a digital age, but the camera-less cyanotype, one of the earliest and simplest forms of photography, still enthrals Edinburgh artist Alexander Hamilton. ‘It’s just two chemicals mixed together and applied to…

Circus Oz: 30th Birthday Bash

Acrobatics with an Aussie accent

7 Aug 2008

Characters in colourful costumes exchange banter with the audience, the live band plays a constant stream of Gogol Bordello-like polka and one act involves a dramatic take on Frankenstein's monster. This isn't your average circus. Far more theatrical…

Oh water night!

7 Aug 2008

Happily the rain didn't spoil this year's List Festival Party - if anything it enhanced the tropical atmosphere. Burlesque stilt-masters waded through the crowd as Clarkson & Crouch provoked giggles with their slick comedy, topping off a dazzling…

Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Action-packed Big Top Shakespeare

7 Aug 2008

Making their first ever appearance at the Fringe, the travelling company that started life in a Cornish barn succeeds in proving that there's no such thing as too much when it comes to Shakespeare. Firmly entrenching the view of the Bard's comedies as…

Roy Walker

The King of deadpan says what he sees

7 Aug 2008

The crappy pixels. Mr Chips. The triumphal opening strains and the arrangements accompanying each clue. Who could forget Catchphrase, one of the most durable game shows of its generation, as famous for all of the above as for host Roy Walker's own…

Dan Antopolski

Truth-seeking weirdly magical stuff

7 Aug 2008

After three years break from the Fringe, Perrier nominee Dan Antopolski returns with more of his brainy brilliance. As a new dad, his daughters make up a large chunk of material, but his status as someone who now 'tries to get girls into their knickers…

Festival News In Brief

7 Aug 2008

The Performing Rights Soci ety (PRS) has announced plans to give more new talent the chance to perform in front of a Fringe audience on Sunday 10 August at this year?s Fringe Sunday festivities. A small group of musical types from the worlds of rock…

Elite Squad

7 Aug 2008

THRILLER (18) 114min Between the wars the French anti-democrat, arch monarchist and writer Georges Bernanos wrote that: ‘The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.’ Foreseeing France’s defeat…

Celine Curiol

French author celebrates the outsider

7 Aug 2008

Young Parisian author Céline Curiol laughs when I tell her of the proliferation of post-Carla Bruni articles seeking to define the particular character of the French woman, and then makes her apologies for a lack of further insight. ‘I’m going to have…

Paul Gravett

Fighting the anti-comics brigade

7 Aug 2008

Paul Gravett is an acknowledged expert on comics, who started off with comic-marts, before moving into publishing (with titles including Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Violent Cases in the 80s) and writing hundreds of books, articles and columns on…

The Golden Record - Sounds of Earth

7 Aug 2008

If the truth really is out there, the prospect of aliens landing on a planet populated by posh comedians would be enough to send them zapping back beyond Uranus in double-quick hyper-drive. The comedy aspect is one of the more worrying premises of this…

Richard Wilson

Feats of engineering and derring-do

7 Aug 2008

A man burrows his way out of the back of a black hackney cab that’s still in motion, looking like he’s tunnelled his way out of Wonderland to avoid paying his fare. The same hole-in-the-wall gang appears to have turned the brutalist façade of an office…

Richard Hamilton: Protest Pictures

Incomplete display of anti-establishment works by a British master

7 Aug 2008

While this exhibition gives a flavour of just how iconic the work of pioneering British pop artist Richard Williams has been, particularly in relation to the authority-subverting subtexts at work within them, the impression upon leaving is that only…

James Frey - Bright Shiny Morning

7 Aug 2008

SOCIAL DRAMA (John Murray) Contrary to the promise of its title, Bright Shiny Morning will not lighten up your day. The thought of reading it will not fill you with delight, nor with longing to live the lives of those between its covers. None of which…

Josie Long

A logic-defying show about science

7 Aug 2008

The queen of lo-fi is back with kitsch artefacts all around and a scattery mind deep within. This year her comedy patchwork has Josie Long fiddling around with science, a subject she studied at school (for 'studied' read 'sat with her head on the desk…

Helen Fitzgerald

Gruesome tales from Glasgow-based Aussie

7 Aug 2008

Currently writing her fourth thriller, ex-parole officer and social worker turned screenwriter Helen FitzGerald was in perpetual ‘movie development hell’, until her latest rejection prompted her to transform the story into a debut novel. ‘Dead Lovely…

Helen Walsh

Warrington author cleanses the past

7 Aug 2008

If Helen Walsh’s Betty Trask Award-winning debut Brass came from the guts, its follow-up Once Upon a Time in England comes from the heart. Set in the author’s native Warrington, the book charts two decades of English/Malaysian family the Fitzgeralds…

Gledinbow

A Tale of Two Cities

7 Aug 2008

Glasgow and Edinburgh: what a pair. Like errant brothers at a wedding, you can bet they’ll be brawling on the dance floor before the end of the night. The roots of this mutual antipathy are too numerous to mention, yet they extend into all aspects of…

Laura Marling

The Mercury Rev

7 Aug 2008

Laura Marling is infuriating. Not her music, which is sublime, heartfelt, folky genius, but rather Marling herself, who’s so bloody talented and still only 18 years old. She got started early, brought up by a gardener mother and a father who was an…

Andrew Grassie: Painting as Document

7 Aug 2008

This survey exhibition of recent and new work by Andrew Grassie, his first major solo show in Scotland, exhibits a selection of the artist’s paintings from the past ten years. When first viewed together, this output appears terribly uniform. The…

Kapka Kassabova

Travel memoir about Bulgaria from Edinburgh-based scribe

7 Aug 2008

Kapka Kassabova likes to travel. You can tell, because the writer’s accent is all over the place: there’s Eastern European, Antipodean and a hint of Scottish in there as she chats away. Kassabova was raised in Bulgaria before living in New Zealand for…

Thomas Glavinic

Telling a tale about the very nature of being

7 Aug 2008

From Mary Shelley’s The Last Man to I Am Legend, the idea of being the last person alive would seem to have an abiding fascination. Thomas Glavinic’s take on it, Night Work, tracks Jonas, who awakens one morning to discover he has, for reasons that are…

Alan Johnston

Life-enhancing event from ex-hostage

7 Aug 2008

When Alan Johnston was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gaza and held in solitary confinement for 114 days, he used an imaginary wooden life raft and a mind-game called the River of Time to keep himself sane. As the last western journalist who had stayed to…

James Meek

Johnny Depp-friendly author and journo

7 Aug 2008

As well as writing novels, James Meek has spent a lot of time as a journalist reporting from conflict zones, and this experience fed into his latest fictional work, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent. A global book, it ranges from London to rural America…

5 Reasons To Go See - Orkestra del Sol present The Moveable Feast

7 Aug 2008

Their music is famously euphoric. Their riotous live shows are packed with hot brass-driven melodies, 100-mile-an-hour polkas, seductive waltzes, driving percussion and roguish charm. They’ll make you grin from ear to ear on the night, and they’ll put…

Also Released - Film

7 Aug 2008

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (12A) 111min • Chunky, old-fashioned explorer Rick O’Connell returns, and this time he’s off to check out the catacombs of ancient China. Joined by his son Alex (newcomer Luke Ford), wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) and…

Ziauddin Sardar

Seeking to redefine British multiculturalism

7 Aug 2008

‘The immense diversity of British Asians even surprised me,’ admits author and journalist Ziauddin Sardar, who has spent the last three years investigating the many identities of Asians in this country. Named after the fabricated ‘Indian’ dish which…

Norman Lebrecht

Cataloguing the classical music industry

7 Aug 2008

Journalist, writer and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht is a long familiar name in classical music criticism. Known to be controversial, what he says is not always to everyone’s liking, but his knowledge of the classical recording industry is undoubtedly…

Side Dishes

7 Aug 2008

Gourmet Glasgow, the annual promotion run by Glasgow Restaurateurs Association, kicks off this week and runs through to Sunday 31 August. Over 40 restaurants around the city are participating in the Dine Around scheme, which features fixed priced menus…

Various - Fabriclive 41: Simian Mobile Disco

7 Aug 2008

ELECTRONICA (Fabric) By rights Simian Mobile Disco ought to be detestable. The production and remix team are responsible, after all, for the post-’We Are Your Friends’ decree that every NME-reading first-year university student to start an indie disco…

Top 5: Blur Moments

7 Aug 2008

With Alex James coming to chat about his past life as a Britpop superstar, we reflect on the bits of Blur that we remember ‘There’s No Other Way’ As much of a Madchester rip-off as it was (those guitar lines ride in the slipstream of The Stone…

Hitlist: Festival books

7 Aug 2008

Mohammad Hanif The mysterious death of Pakistan’s President Zia is the start-point of a splendidly silly debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Certainly wins our vote for book title of the year. 12 Aug, 7.30pm, £6 (£4). Danny Wallace The…

Idiots of Ants

Messing about with form and content

7 Aug 2008

To the rousing theme of Grandstand, this quartet of white-shirted, black-tied lads (still not sure whether they're more idiotic or antlike?) race into the venue. For the previous few minutes, we've been looking at them on screens prancing around London…

5 Questions - Leon Conrad

7 Aug 2008

5 things you think good children’s theatre should do: Make it magical – make it funny – make it witty – make it fun; and make it pretty difficult for people not to lose themselves in the story. 4 reasons why people should come to Aesop The Storyteller…

Martin Wishart

Michelin star chef preaches accessibility in the kitchen

7 Aug 2008

It’s hard to believe that next year will mark the tenth anniversary of Martin Wishart’s arrival on Leith Shore. Then, a young Scottish chef opening a small fine-dining restaurant with his own name above the door seemed, well, confident. But Martin…

Andrew Mawson

Social entrepreneur takes matters in hand

7 Aug 2008

When Andrew Mawson walked into Bromley-by-Bow Centre in 1984, the voluntary organisation was neglected, under-used and falling apart, much like the East London community surrounding it. Yet both were filled with enormous potential and today, the centre…

The Mozart Question

One man's moving memories

7 Aug 2008

Putting a target age range on a show's publicity material never guarantees who you'll find in the audience. But when the producers of The Mozart Question say suitable for ages 8+, you really ought to listen to them - because this is not a show for…

What the guide books don't tell you about Edinburgh in August

7 Aug 2008

Don't stay out past 3am You may arrive rejoicing in the 5am bar extensions but a night spent witnessing the sweaty, monstrous creeps that emerge after the conservative 2.55am mark will dissuade forever more. And they were the friends you came with.

Hitlist: Festival comedy

7 Aug 2008

Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler ‘Bona fide kooky monster’ Schaal offers more of her surreal blend of the dark and the utterly wholesome in the company of comedy partner Braunohler.

Free Outgoing

Struggle against the double standard

7 Aug 2008

India's conservative views on sex are placed under scrutiny in Anupama Chandrasekhar's culturally-damning drama, Free Outgoing. The show opens on a comical note when Malini, a widow with two teenage children, shows off her homemade jewellery cleaner to…

On The Waterfront

Stylish re-imagining of a screen classic

7 Aug 2008

The English National Theatre didn't know what to do with this project: a stage adaptation of the Budd Schulberg-scripted film that cemented Marlon Brando's status as the actor of his generation and scooped eight Oscars. Never one to shy away from a…

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…

Take 5: Festival people

7 Aug 2008

The Agent: 'Oh but isn't he just hil-ar-i-ously funny daahling? We're lining him up for his own Friday Night Project series. He's on Mock the Week next month, y'know...' The sacred golden comic cash cow's agent coos down the phone. If only she could do…

Adventures of Butt Boy and Tigger

Polished insight into the joys of online dating

7 Aug 2008

Anyone who has dipped their toes in the choppy waters of internet dating will find this sparky, well-observed two-hander from Australia's Out Cast Theatre enjoyably close-to-the-knuckle. Butt Boy (Jamie) and Tigger (Matt) meet in a chatroom late one…

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…

Jonny Woo: International Woman of Mr ‘E’

Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show

7 Aug 2008

Moving and darkly comic one-(wo)man show. Jonny Woo, drag queen darling of the London alt.queer scene appears onstage beneath sequined butterfly make-up and various costumes. He knows that the act of wearing a mask is designed to reveal rather than…

The Time Step

Mother of a tragic-comedy

7 Aug 2008

The monstrous showbiz mother has a time-honoured pedigree in popular culture, from the ambitious Mama Rose in the stage musical Gypsy, to Faye Dunaway's outrageously camp turn as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. In Matthew Hurt's claustrophobic chamber…

Death By Chocolate

At least there's chocolate

7 Aug 2008

This interactive murder mystery looks great on paper. The audience, cast in the role of student police officers, are charged to sift through trays of evidence at a murder scene, interview the suspects, and solve the case. Not only is this a chance for…

Death Defying Acts

7 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/THRILLER (12A) 97min Freely mixing historical fact with fictionalised biography, this Brit-Aussie co-production turns on a fascinating premise: a battle of wits and wills between world-famous escapist and sceptic of all things supernatural…

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…

Mommie and the Minister

High-camp B-movie gothic horror schlock-stravaganza

7 Aug 2008

Gerard Anthony has created a monster. The titular Mommie of this Hammer Horror homage is part drag queen, part Methodist preacher, part Bride of Frankenstein. Anthony's range runs from shrill unctuousness through pious browbeating all the way to…

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…

Hitlist: Festival theatre

7 Aug 2008

The Idiot Colony. Terrifying insight into the penal system that branded women ‘moral defectives’ for crimes such as homosexuality or having children out of wedlock.

Lucky You

Carl Hiaasen novel translated into slick madcap romp

7 Aug 2008

If redneck losers Chub and Bode are going to fund their confederate militia they need JoLayne's winning Lotto ticket. But nature-loving JoLayne (who happens to be black) needs it to save local woodland. The church needs her help to legitimise their…

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 Expert at the Card Table

Biographical trickery

7 Aug 2008

Never play cards with Guy Hollingworth. Concentrate as you may, those hands are too darned quick. As the crafty conjurer exhibits his prodigious talent at card chicanery, he employs an affable Englishness Hugh Grant would be proud of to relay the life…

Wheels of Life

From Russia – via Glasgow – with love

7 Aug 2008

It’s hard to call Wheels of Life, the new production by Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, a ‘play’ as such. Huddled in the intimate Theatre Workshop venue, the audience is confronted with a macabre toy box of intricate artistic contraptions; a captivating maze…

The Space Between My Head and My Body

Sophisticated drama from a young company

7 Aug 2008

Seven people take a plane journey, but something has gone wrong. Has the plane landed? Is the journey still underway? Is it real or imagined? Flitting between dreams, memories, and future visions, the characters are followed by the ominous sense that…

The Aluminum Show

The secret life of metal

7 Aug 2008

Wonderfully inventive and gripping throughout, The Aluminum Show is a mixture of puppetry, dance, magic and general mucking about with silver stuff that has the audience gleefully cheering the newly discovered potential of lightweight metal tubing. You…

Ecstasy

MDMA-fuelled love story

7 Aug 2008

Based on ‘The Undefeated’, one of three stories from Irvine Welsh’s 1996 novel Ecstasy, this piece centres around Lloyd (Jack McGowan), an ageing clubber who wants more out of life than living for the weekend. In the meantime, though, he’s content to…