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…