Issue 638

Idiots of Ants

Glitches mar a slick show from comedy savants

20 Aug 2009

Idiots of Ants aren’t having the best of nights: their projector is on the blink and their performance feels rushed. Killer lines are mumbled through and some of their sketches fall flat with this audience who are rightly expecting something a little…

Sammy J: 1999

Swapping puppets for pubescence

20 Aug 2009

Melbourne’s smutty answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber returns with a tongue-in-cheek one-man musical set in the run-up to the millennium. With explicit references to the Y2K bug, Tamagotchis and Toy Story 2, he’s swapped puppeteer partner Heath McIvor (with…

The Best of the Rest: Film

Paul Dale on the best of the rest out this autumn

20 Aug 2009

Adventureland There’s no more fitting tribute to the late, lamented John Hughes than Gregg Superbad Mottola and writer Jesse Eisenberg’s bittersweet tale of crappy fairgrounds, misplaced allegiances and crazy love in the late 1980s, an age seemingly…

Lee Breuer on Peter and Wendy

The Mabou Mines director discusses bringing his critically acclaimed play to the EIF

20 Aug 2009

Mabou Mines’ innovative, bittersweet adaptation of JM Barrie’s fantastic tale is brought to vivid life by performer Karen Kandel and seven puppeteers, accompanied by Johnny Cunningham’s original musical score, played live on stage by a seven piece band.

Two Tribes: Xplicit and Musika

The two big club events bringing the festival to a suitable climax

20 Aug 2009

The closing weekend of the Festival Fringe has become a traditional highlight in Edinburgh’s clubbing calendar. And this year doesn’t disappoint, with dates from Vegas!, Optimo, Tackno, Taste and more across the bank holiday weekend, but it’s two…

Glasgay! Film Festival

Sorting the wheat from the chaff at the upcoming festival

20 Aug 2009

Faced with the same dreary bunch of films that have already passed through Aberdeen and Edinburgh and soon to go on to Inverness it's difficult to get excited about the Glasgay! Film Festival programme but there are a few bits of rough worthy of your…

Are you being served?

Food & Drink editor, Donald Reid becomes maitre d' for the day

20 Aug 2009

‘Is everything OK with your meal?’ I heard the words and they seemed to have emerged from my lips. I was trying to do what maitre d’s do. With little else by way of qualifications, talking the talk seemed a good start. Reassuringly the team at…

The Generation Game: Douglas Coupland

18 years after his breakthrough, the Generation X author, provides us with a sequel. Of sorts.

20 Aug 2009

Fans and critics have known it was coming for months, with rumour and misinformation clogging up chat rooms and columns. Now that Generation A is finally set to be unleashed upon the reading public, we’ll see if the furious debate will have been…

Admeto Re’di Tessaglia

Getting a handle on Handel

20 Aug 2009

Scorned lovers, jealous tantrums and furious outbursts are all in a day’s work for conductor Nicholas McGegan. As he explains, ‘There’s not a great deal of difference between opera and soap opera – they are all about love, jealously and ambition.…

Odyssey

An old story well told

20 Aug 2009

The origins of the Odyssey lie deep in the mists of time and academic wrangling, but it is generally agreed that it was an oral epic, recited at feasts and firesides by bards who journeyed from place to place, retailing to their hearers time and again…

Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich

American soprano is mobbed, but not in the mob

20 Aug 2009

Dawn Upshaw is up to her elbows in batter. She’s in the kitchen of her New York home, making pancakes with her son. It’s a very domestic scene, but then the American soprano couldn’t be further from the diva-ish stereotype. She’s just returned from the…

David Levin talks The Testament of Cresseid

The Israeli director discusses adapting Burns for the stage

20 Aug 2009

Robert Burns might be the subject of many Homecoming events this year, but Jonathan Mills’ decision to focus on the lesser-known Scottish poet Robert Henryson as part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s 2009 programme could prove a rewarding one.

Planet of the Shapes: Susie Orbach

The bestselling psychotherapist on body fascism

20 Aug 2009

In 1978, psychotherapist Susie Orbach wrote the bestselling Fat is a Feminist Issue, warning against dieting, and outlining the compulsive behaviour linked to eating disorders. Fast forward 30-odd years, and have we paid heed to her warnings? In her…

The Doubtful Guest

The Gorey details

20 Aug 2009

That Hoipolloi’s staging of the Edward Gorey fable is entertainingly done is without question. It is not only an adaptation of this story about a pointy-faced creature in white canvas shoes who takes residence in a grand country mansion, but also an…

Twisted and Brainfire: Ten Years

20 Aug 2009

Despite not being the most critically-acclaimed genre, hardcore has a long history of popularity in Scotland, and a still-strong fanbase. Possibly the style’s biggest monthly parties in the country are run by Glasgow-based promoters Alan Robertson and…

Labels of love: Bubblegum Records

20 Aug 2009

Based in: Partick, Glasgow. Roster: Hyperbubble, Lean Tales, Silly Boy Blue, Tesco Chainstore Mascara, Starshy, Electric Needle Room, Syye, Mammoth Life, Your Elders and DP Le Odd. Boss: Gary O’Connor. Sounds like: ‘I think you’d describe us…

Improv Round-Up

Seasoned pros come up short in the improv game

20 Aug 2009

As a genre, improvised comedy has an innate disposition to failed jokes and constant changes of direction, so if you’re after a belly-laugh you have to be prepared to keep up and gloss over the cracks. The best improv shows on the Fringe aren’t…

Alter Ego

Profile of the German dance duo

20 Aug 2009

Name: Alter Ego Also known as: German duo Roman Flugel and Jorn Elling Wuttke. Occupation: ‘The Pet Shop Boys of techno’, asserts their MySpace. It’s hard to argue. Where did they come from? Longstanding legends of the German techno scene in all its…

Controlled Falling Project

Australian act wows with an elegant mix of physical theatre and acrobatics

20 Aug 2009

The muted colour scheme of the 1930s laboratory instruments cluttering the stage make a charming backdrop for the agile performers in Controlled Falling Project, a theatrical display of acrobatics from Australia’s This Side Up. Speaking few words, the…

The Overcoat

Warm and beautiful visual theatre

20 Aug 2009

For anyone feeling trapped within a workplace, shackled by social convention and oppressed by materialism this collaborative adaptation by Gecko of Gogol’s short story will perfectly express your discontent. Amit Lahav’s production is a technical…

Hans Teeuwen

Certified genius or just plain certifiable?

20 Aug 2009

For the uninitiated and the unprepared, putting yourself in the hands of Dutch absurdist Hans Teeuwen is a strange, hypnotic and unsettling experience. He strolls onto the stage looking like the clean shaven brother of Nick Cave and launches into the…

Hitlist: Clubs

Where to go and what to dance to this week

20 Aug 2009

David Holmes, Modern Lovers, Elextric Frog Street Carnival, Million Dollar Disco, Club For Heroes, Eyes Wide Open, Tokyoblu, Melting Pot, Second CIty

Frank Gardner

A travel journalist like no other

20 Aug 2009

Frank Gardner is not your average two-weeks-by-a-pool-in-Majorca kind of fella. Words like ‘wanderlust’ and ‘globetrotter’ don’t really do justice to a life spent doing what the BBC Security Correspondent describes as ‘epically hard travelling’.

Electric Frog Street Carnival

The Notting HIll spirit comes to Glasgow

20 Aug 2009

‘The Street Carnival came about from us deciding that we’re the north’s version of the Nottinghill Carnival in London,’ explains Jack Revell, aka Numbers DJ Jackmaster and one of the people behind The Electric Frog Street Carnival, a new all day event…

Hitlist: Theatre

Our pick of the week's theatre

20 Aug 2009

Faith Healer, The Yalta Game, Afterplay, The Overcoat, Controlled Falling Project, The Hotel, The Tartuffe/The Trial, Trilogy