Issue 611

Nude

Non-gratuitous meanderings for art’s sake

21 Aug 2008

Don’t worry, there is no gratuitous nudity in Nude, just two actors flexing and posing their naked bodies in close proximity to the front row. But it’s all done in the name of art, and the context of a life drawing class, in which the reluctant audience…

Tea-leafs ahoy!

21 Aug 2008

Rumours abound that a Tracey Emin polaroid was pinched from the Gilded Balloon Loft Bar, last week. The untitled display of ten self-portraits, consisting of enlarged Polaroids of the artist were hung up by pieces of velcro in the bar. Now only nine…

Take 5: Fabulous festival nudes

21 Aug 2008

New Electric Ballroom - Ladies, have we not all dreamed of having our very own fishmonger stripped bare, hosed down and scrubbed by our older sisters before he is presented to us in a glittery blue suit? And there's even a post-nude song to commemorate…

Jubilee

21 Aug 2008

You can’t dispute the talent involved in Jubilee, featuring Aaron North (Nine Inch Nails/The Icarus Line) on vocals and guitar; Michael Shuman (Queens of the Stone Age/Wires on Fire) on bass and vocals and Jeff Lynn (Wires on Fire) guitar. However they…

Michael McIntyre

The accent is on over-familiarity

21 Aug 2008

Last year, Michael McIntyre apparently harangued two judges on the if.comedy panel for doing this nation the great disservice of not handing him the award on a plate. Still, he could at least reassure himself of his genius with all those flattering star…

Foreskins Lament

21 Aug 2008

This dodgy production of New Zealand playwright Greg McGee's landmark 1980 play is played out in the locker room of a local rugby club changing room. A couple of really appalling performances and some less than inspired direction derail things. Still at…

Joseph Smith - The Wolf

21 Aug 2008

‘OK, you’re a wolf, it’s winter, you’re hungry and desperate and hunting for food. Now go away and write something.’ You can picture the creative writing class and the half-baked stuff you might get handed in, can’t you? Welcome to The Wolf, a debut…

Festival Books - Mark Watson

Eco-friendly, my dear Watson

21 Aug 2008

According to Mark Watson, saving the planet would, at the very least, ‘look pretty smart on all our CVs’. With an already sterling comedy résumé, Watson takes on environmentalism in his latest book, Crap at the Environment, which through the author’s…

Simon Callow - A Festival Dickens

A rich performance of moving, entertaining tales

21 Aug 2008

Having taken his celebrated one-man show The Mystery of Charles Dickens around the world, British thesp Simon Callow is no stranger to the Victorian writer and philanthropist. Here, Callow performs his second solo Dickens show under the sure-handed…

Chad McCail

Puberty, print, perversion and compulsory education

21 Aug 2008

What a remarkable and strange artist Chad McCail is. By his own admission half of his output tends to be peopled by ‘robots, zombies or wealthy parasites’, while the other half looks like loose leaves from a particularly perverse Ladybird book. Both…

Five reasons to go and see: Tam White & The Dexters

21 Aug 2008

They’re an Edinburgh Institution - the mere mention of the name brings a warm glow to the hearts of Edinburgh music fans of a certain vintage. The band’s legendary residencies at the Preservation Hall and Platform 1 (both now gone as music venues) back…

Family

Martial arts and B-boy battles

21 Aug 2008

Head spins. Body spins. Spinning hand stands. Spinning kicks. Spinning on one hand. This energetic show from Korea makes outrageous martial arts and breakdance moves look so effortless that you begin to believe you could do it all yourself.

Hardeep Sing Kohli

21 Aug 2008

As multi-tasking multi-media cultural polymaths go, writer, cook, broadcaster, columnist and all-round top bloke Hardeep Singh Kohli is pretty much up there in the can do stakes. Taking a short interlude from waxing lyrical in the papers or throwing in…

Nam Le beams into Book Festival

21 Aug 2008

Vietnamese-born celebrated Australian writer, Nam Le is set to be beamed in live from the Melbourne Writers Festival, as part of an addition to the Edinburgh International Book Festival line-up. Le will talk about his debut collection of short stories…

DJ Marky

21 Aug 2008

Think of Brazil and you think of music. It’s a country that lives and breathes to its own unique rhythm, a rhythm which DJ Marky has followed to the top of his profession. Inspired by the Sao Paulo clubs he partied in as a teenager, Marky started out…

Regal king size

21 Aug 2008

Karol Szymanowski considered himself an outsider which is why he identified with Sicily’s King Roger II and why his opera has become a gay favourite, finds Carol Main The Edinburgh International Festival’s staged opera programme is swinging from one…

Jim Rose Circus

Flat return for Fringe legend

21 Aug 2008

The return of the Jim Rose Circus to the Fringe has been heralded with all the fanfare of a second coming - a strange deification, considering the show is set in Hell. Sadly, the carnivalesque sideshow atmosphere of yore has been obliterated in…

Step Brothers

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY ‘Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream’ is the George W Bush quotation which opens new Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers. Such crude expression sets the tone for a sporadically funny but generally gross comedy in…

Two Drummers Drumming

Where’s the six geese a laying and the five gold rings?

21 Aug 2008

Have you heard the one about the drummer? Maurice Bacon and Mathew Priest have, and they’re sick of it. Stick-bashing veterans of two notable bands of the 60s and 90s, they’ve brought their ‘Two Drummers Drumming’ show to this year’s Fringe to dispel…

Pagagnini

Giving clowning a modern twist

21 Aug 2008

After five minutes of classical music in a strictly straight-faced, show-off virtuoso style, from a string quartet in coat-tails and white bow-ties, the first signs of slapstick start to appear. It’s from the Spanish mime and physical theatre troupe…

Hils Barker

Fanciful but flaccid exhibitionism

21 Aug 2008

Sinister social network sites are under precision attack in Hils Barker’s character exposé Exhibitionist! which links four lonely souls to ‘Profile Me’, an invention more Orwellian than Facebook. Barker attempts to draw parallels between billionaire…

Under the Bombs

21 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE This piece from former documentary maker Philippe Aractingi speaks loudly of his own artistic origins in reportage. In it, a mother returns to Lebanon at the end of the Lebanese-Israeli war of 2006 in order to find her son, who has…

Budapest Festival Orchestra

Folk and gypsy influence evident in programme of two concerts

21 Aug 2008

Starting off with a programme inspired by gypsy music and Hungarian folk melodies, the Budapest Festival Orchestra give two full orchestral concerts in the last week of the Festival plus two presented by some of their soloists. Featuring some rather…

Ryan Quigley - Laphroaig-ian Slip

21 Aug 2008

Ryan Quigley is a familiar figure on the Scottish jazz scene, not least through his long tenure in the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. The trumpeter’s love of the classic hard bop and post-bop styles of the 50s and 60s is always apparent in this…

Jo Spence: Self Portraits

21 Aug 2008

She may not be a household name, but the influence of Jo Spence, who died in 1992 from complications arising from leukaemia can be found in work by the likes of Cindy Sherman and Tracey Emin. This small but powerful retrospective includes works from…

Robert Hood

21 Aug 2008

It’s another quality night of techno at Monox as the team are joined by special guest Robert Hood, one of the founding members of the legendary Underground Resistance collective alongside Mad Mike Banks and Jeff Mills, who added industrial and acid to…

Hydro Connect Festival - Glasvegas

City limits

21 Aug 2008

It’s hard to think of a band that sums up the Glasgow experience as succinctly as Glasvegas. Primal Scream and The Fratellis may have captured the hedonism, Biffy Clyro the anger and Franz Ferdinand the art, but Glasvegas are the streets of Glasgow writ…

Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray

Thoroughly modern Oscar

21 Aug 2008

Although no one would bat an eyelid today, Oscar Wilde’s gothic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray caused shock and outrage when it was published in 1890. The tale of an impressionable young man who becomes obsessed with his own image, had a little too…

Paul Auster - Man in the Dark

21 Aug 2008

In addressing the increasingly threadbare myths that America tells itself about 9/11 and the ensuing war, Auster has shed the dazzling hyper-reflexive post-modern narrative trickery he’s known for like an empty skin, revealing something tender and…

See the person, not the age

21 Aug 2008

The Scottish Government has launched a campaign that tackles negative perceptions of older people. It will highlight the positive and valuable contributions that older people make to life in Scotland today. It also looks at the similar negative…

Glasgow Pride

Out and proud

21 Aug 2008

It’s that time of year again. Dig out the cowboy hats, the feather boas and anything whatsoever with a rainbow on it. Oh, and dig out your conviction about your sexuality because this is one of the best days of the year to make a statement, celebrate…

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

21 Aug 2008

Fresh from the critical and commercial success of his Oscar-feted Spanish horror-fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro returns to Hollywood with a second blockbuster adaptation of Dark Horse Comics’ cult supernatural title. A…

The Wackness

21 Aug 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA Jonathan Levine’s follow-up to the surprisingly good horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is another voyage into nostalgic romanticism and teenage growing pains. This time Levine is pining for his lost youth with a film set in 1994…

Treasure Hunt

Rosalie Doubal leads a team around the city on a scavenger hunt in the name of art

21 Aug 2008

9am City Art Centre Equipped with a bike, a laptop, a compass, eight sandwiches and some anoraks, my team – a dyspraxic researcher, a father-of-one, a diehard Buckfast drinker and a token ginger – joins a long queue of eager scavengers. Neither the…

Kate Davis

Outside interests

21 Aug 2008

This is the first time that New Zealand-born, Glasgow-educated artist Kate Davis has returned for a second exhibition within the same gallery space, and she’s eager that her latest show takes advantage of the fact. Where the original show with Sorcha…

Killer of Sheep - Charles Burnett

Sheep of the just

21 Aug 2008

Google Charles Burnett’s name and you will come across ecstatic proclamations such as ‘considered one of America’s greatest filmmakers’. That may come as a shock to the many who have never heard of the African American filmmaker or seen any of his…

Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip

Electrifying collaboration brought together by MySpace

21 Aug 2008

Opposites attract, right? That certainly seems true for Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, the former being a short, stocky, shy beatmaster while the latter is a tall, skinny hyperactive wordsmith. ‘We both bring the best out of each other,’ says Pip, aka…

Scott Capurro

A mix of the inspired and the obnoxious

21 Aug 2008

It’s been said that the older people get, the less worried they are about causing offence. Scott Capurro, veteran of some 15 Fringe summers, has clearly decided to go for broke this year, trampling all over every sacred cow and totem of political…

Kristen Schaal & Kurt Braunohler

Schaal and pal delve into surreal corners

21 Aug 2008

A warning is gently dispatched: Double Down Hearts will break our minds. Co-written in reverse chronological order by Kristen Schaal, of Flight of the Conchords fame, and Kurt Braunohler, her ‘gift’ of a comedy partner, the play pastiches the melodrama…

Bryan Talbot

Graphic detail in the finest strips

21 Aug 2008

Bryan Talbot is a bit of a legend in the UK comics industry. He’s provided art for the likes of 2000AD, Sandman and Batman but you can still see the influence of underground comix artists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton even in his most…

Simon Armitage

Pop poet turns wordy rock star

21 Aug 2008

Simon Armitage is a very modern poet, as happy to ruminate over Arctic Monkeys’ lyrics as he is to translate 14th century romantic poetry. During the 15 years since he handed in his notice as a probation officer to concentrate fully on his writing, he’s…

Koko the Crocodile

A little touch of Africa

21 Aug 2008

Mara Menzies is fairly new to the storytelling game, but has taken to it like a duck to water. Or rather, like a crocodile to a riverbank – much like the wriggling, paw-waving one that appears in her charming new show. Based on Menzies’ recently…

The Strangers

21 Aug 2008

THRILLER/HORROR Even in 2008, sleeper hits (low budget, low forecast films that become box office hits) still happen. Take writer-director Bryan Bertino’s taut thriller The Strangers which cost ten million dollars to make (a paltry amount in today’s…

Ben X

21 Aug 2008

Mock-documentary Ben X introduces us to teen Asperger’s sufferer Ben. Moving backwards and forwards between his so-called life of bullying and high school torture and his escape into online role-playing games, the film’s doom laden narrative is led by…

College Road Trip

21 Aug 2008

Aiming for the generational conflict of Freaky Friday, director Roger Kumble’s family-comedy-drama focuses on trust issues between high-flying teen Melanie (Raven-Symoné) and her over-protective father, police chief James Porter (Martin Lawrence). When…

Pierrepoint

21 Aug 2008

DRAMA Every now and again, the general public, as represented by the reactionary tabloid press, will rise up and demand a debate on the return of capital punishment. Fortunately, the process has never gone any further than some screeching headlines…

Miniprofile: Jay Brannan

Sound sugar-coated acoustica with crystal clear swooping vocals and an edge of stark sexuality.

21 Aug 2008

Was it terrifying releasing your first album Goddamned yourself? It seems like the natural order of things to me because I’m such a weird person with very specific ideas and opinions and beliefs. It’s a lot of work, for sure. I’m like, ‘do I get to…

Janey Godley

Family tale from straight-talking Glaswegian

21 Aug 2008

The title of this show, Domestic Godley, doesn’t refer to the cooking, cleaning, dinner parties ‘domestic goddess’ stereotype. Janey Godley’s candid stand-up is specific to her east end of Glasgow upbringing and subsequently eventful life. With a…

Scottish Dance Theatre

Two very different displays of talent

21 Aug 2008

It’s not bombastic patriotism to suggest that some of the most accomplished and satisfying contemporary dance on the Fringe is homegrown. These two works performed by Scottish Dance Theatre are an excellent showcase for the jaw-dropping versatility of…

5 Questions - Irvine Welsh

21 Aug 2008

Give us five words to describe Crime? Crime is an existential thriller. Which authors should be more famous than they are now? I used to say Ron Butlin, but I think that’s changing now. I think Doug Johnstone will soon be very famous. If I have…