Issue 664

120 Birds

Glamorous homage to dance gone by

What a treat this invented slice of dance history is. Inspired by the international touring of such dance legends as Anna ‘The Dying Swan’ Pavlova early in the 20th century, Liz Lea has mounted a fabulously ambitious little show for which she…

Seann Walsh

Making the humdrum hilarious

If you were to sit down and read a full synopsis of Seann Walsh’s debut hour, it might come across as the dullest thing ever. The subjects he takes as his inspiration for comedy would make Michael McIntyre seem like the merged resurrection of Bill Hicks…

A Drawback

The phenomenon of drawing has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, with many artists now returning to producing, exhibiting and selling contemporary drawings. This exhibition by Perennial Art celebrates the diversity and richness of the practice and…

Be-Dom

Joyous fun with Portuguese drums

As the huge white screen they’ve been playing behind in silhouette collapses to reveal what appears to be a junkyard full of cavorting, hunky (and fairly well-scrubbed) crusties, the tone is set for an hour of shambolic play. Switching fairly…

It's nice that 'It's Nice We Could Do This' could do this

Board Meeting: It's Nice We Could Do This

It's Nice We Could Do This is at the Canon's Gait, on the Royal Mile (Part of PBH's Free Fringe). 1.15pm until 29 Aug (not 12,19, 26). Free, donations appreciated. Cast members are also involved in...

Sex emerging as theme running through 2010 Edinburgh Fringe theatre

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

My first significant encounter this fringe, a week ago as I write, occurred at the door of the Traverse theatre with Jane Ellis, my esteemed fellow hack and wife of another much beloved colleague, Mark Fisher. As I made to enter the building, she seized…

Extinguish

One man stares down several abysses

Ezra LeBank is one of those people who it might genuinely be pretty entertaining to watch reading a phonebook: his voice is musical, finely-timbred, and he uses it like an instrument, and his physicality is awesomely controlled: muscles don’t move on…

Lorca is Dead

A lament in the key of surrealism

Belt Up’s eulogy for Federico Garcia Lorca is anything but a stately affair. So much happens, and continues happening, all at once, in such a short space of time, that it’s impossible to pay attention to it all, and frequently difficult to know what is…

Zaiba Malik

Attempting to dispel a few myths about Islam

Zaiba Malik’s experience of her Muslim faith has been one of humility, humour, exploration, and horror. It has taken her from the comedy and anxieties of a childhood in Bradford to imprisonment in Bangladesh for ‘anti-state activities’, while filming a…

Kronos Quartet

So many strings to their bow

They’ve worked with David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails and Nelly Furtado, and had their music featured in movies such as Requiem for a Dream. The dance world adores them, leading to collaborations with Merce Cunningham; lest we forget the extraordinary band…

Emily Mackie

Delving into some dark places

One of the most talked-about British debuts of 2010 was Emily Mackie’s And This is True. It featured a 15-year-old boy Nevis and his author dad Marshall who carried on their passive existence living in and out of a white Ford Transit van. Since his…

Joseph Stiglitz

Helping us mend our economic ways

Can money make us happy? This timeless question, made all the more pressing by the brassic ‘financial climate’ we’re shivering through at the moment, is to be addressed by celebrated thinkers in the Meaning of Money strand at this year’s Book Festival…

5 Questions - Xplicit

Xplict are Scotland’s prime purveyors of hard drum & bass and they don’t disappoint with their Festival date as they are joined by Shy FX, who helped to transform early hardcore into the drum & bass we know today with tracks such as ‘Jungle Love’ back…

Caroline Rhea

Flirting with fame and audience patience

When Sarah Silverman played London in 2008, there was much outrage when she clocked off for a heavily-priced event some 40 minutes in. Last year, Carol Leifer, the inspiration for Seinfeld’s Elaine, graced the Fringe by reading straight from reams of A4…

Camille O’Sullivan – Chameleon

More of a purr than a growl

There’s a sense of great expectation with Irish charmer Camille. The sexy chanteuse has long wooed us with her brand of sultry, ballsy theatrics and whether rock, blues or ballads, Cave, Waits or Bowie, she can belt them out like the best of them. This…

Dommett & Lapaert

Material tossed aside for engaging tomfoolery

The bubbling confidence of manic youthery shines through this knockabout gig as Joel Dommett and Eric Lampaert take turns in undermining the other’s half-hour(ish) set. Sending slickness home for the night with a tenner in its back pocket, this is a…

Emo Philips

Over-familiar but still funny

EMO PHILIPS Over-familiar but still funny Possibly the finest purveyor of paraprosdokians since Groucho Marx uttered his last quip returns to the Fringe for the first time since 2001. For those of you familiar with Philips, the face has aged and the…

Mike Keat

A massively talented and very entertaining tool

You may know Edinburgh boy Mike Keat as one third of the creosote-tanned Cuban Brothers, and here he delivers a homecoming hero act in this first solo show. Actually, it’s hard to describe him as a hero really, watching him lunge and prance around in…

Like You Were Before

Home movies and movies about home

Walking in off a dark, rainy Marchmont street to the dimly-lit cinematic wonderland of Alphabet Video after hours, the stage is already set for cosy personal revelation. Debbie Pearson, Canadian emigrée, and former Alphabet employee-turned playwright…

My Hamlet with Linda Marlowe

That’s the way to be or not to be

This reinterpretation of Hamlet is interesting on several levels beyond the marketing tagline (‘Linda Marlowe does Hamlet! With puppets!). Yes, it’s essentially a one-person show, with Marlowe doing all the voices, but then perhaps there’s an argument…

Pappy's

Bringing you sketch sunshine

Now streamlined to a three-man act and with a shortened moniker to boot, Pappy’s bound onto the stage and launch into All Business with a big musical number. The flimsy premise that they need to impress impresario ‘Four Foot Freddy’ to gain funding is…

Jim Jefferies - Alcoholocaust

Vitriolic rants from the bottom of his LA-based heart

Jim Jefferies is now a full-on comedy superstar, living in LA, with the HBO seal of approval. He’s even been asked to write a sitcom (although if the letter he reads out from one channel’s legal standards department about the issues they have with the…

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Body horror has always been one of the queasiest of cinema experiences. Films like Tetsuo, The Thing and the work of David Cronenberg have attacked our fragile human form with viruses, parasites, deformity and medical experimentation. Now Dutch…

Delete The Banjax

Hyped foursome not quite there yet

Having won over the crowds at last year’s Free Fringe, much was expected of Delete the Banjax with this, their debut paid-for August show. But as much as the quartet try, and boy do they try hard, their Pappy-like mucking-about and wild-eyed enthusiasm…

Paul Chowdhry - Not PC

Self-censorship blunts some impact

‘I’ve got more fans than audience members,’ jokes Paul Chowdhry of the ratio of people in the room to cooling devices. ‘You could have one each.’ Granted, it’s not ideal circumstances in which to perform a show but Chowdhry, allowing himself censorship…