Theatre, Reviews
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Return of the Close Up Magician
22 Aug 2012
Phenomenal close-hand tricks from a consummate performer
Close-hand magician Lewis Barlow is a likeable performer. Unlike Derren Brown and his ilk, Barlow creates a show where magic is not swamped by the overbearing personality of the performer, but rather one where magic takes the centre stage. Beginning…
Seeing Double: Figures
24 Aug 2012
High concept two-pronged show is the perfect slice of Fringe fun
Seeing Double: Figures and Vision are a pair of thoroughly modern farces playing out different sides of the same story. While the Pleasance Hut and Baby Grand are rather small venues for the large audiences the shows have been drawing, their proximity…
Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores)
24 Aug 2012
Théâtre du Soleil's debut production at the Edinburgh International Festival is a coup de théâtre
The first ever Edinburgh International Festival production by the great French company Théâtre du Soleil promised to be an unforgettable event. And so it proves. The brainchild of Théâtre du Soleil’s founder and director Ariane Mnouchkine, Les…
Grit
24 Aug 2012
Powerful and quietly moving depiction of children in conflict
The new show from Scotland’s Tortoise in a Nutshell is barely three-quarters of an hour in length. Yet the journey it takes its audience on, both geographical and emotional, is extensive. The piece draws on real-life accounts by war correspondents to…
Planet Lem
21 Aug 2012
Sci-fi spectacle is impressive to watch but lacking in story
Based on the science fiction stories of the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, Teatr Biuro Podrozy’s new outdoor extravaganza, Planet Lem, presents the tale of a nightmarish dystopia, where machines rule people and people are completely reliant on machines…
Bigmouth
20 Aug 2012
Enthralling roller-coaster through history and its (in)humanity by Valentijn Dhaenens
‘History not merely touches on language, but takes place in it.’ This quote from the German philosopher Adorno could summarise the underlying themes of SkaGeN’s Bigmouth. The show makes the (perhaps not obvious connection) between figures of great…
Gulliver's Travels
19 Aug 2012
Savage and funny adaptation of Swift’s satire
The Victorians considered Gulliver's Travels a kid's book, chortling at the notion of a big man in a tiny world and quietly omitting Gulliver's horrified realisation that the bestial Yahoos are in fact human. That uncomfortable final part of the book is…
Angels
19 Aug 2012
Powerful monologue with a stunning central performance
Save for a single hanging strip-light, the studio space at the Traverse is so utterly bare that you begin to suspect the audience has been the victim of a cruel practical joke. But then actor Iain Robertson appears and strikes up the opening passages of…
Songs of Lear
17 Aug 2012
A sublime version of the Bard’s tragedy, in its purest form
Imagine King Lear in pill form, the Shakespearean equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum. Or contained in a single firework. What about Lear: the new fragrance from Christian Dior? Baffling as this all sounds, it’s pretty much what…
Love Letters to the Public Transport System
21 Aug 2012
Life-affirming monologue celebrates society’s unsung heroes
The premise of Molly Taylor’s monologue sounds, in summary, so precious you wouldn’t expect it to work as a piece of drama. In 2009, following a painful break-up and the loss of her permanent job, Taylor travelled by bus to London where a chance meeting…
How to Start a Riot
19 Aug 2012
Nifty political piece that fizzes with questions and ideas
Mark Duggan’s death at the hands of the police sparked last summer’s riots: four days of violent disorder and looting all over the country. But, as Worklight Theatre point out, sparks don’t catch without fuel and flames don’t spread without…
The Rape of Lucrece
23 Aug 2012
Bold interpretation of Shakespeare's poem from Edinburgh favourite Camille O'Sullivan
It’s not every performer at the Edinburgh International Festival that enters to applause and finishes to a standing ovation but, then, Camille O’Sullivan is not just any performer. Having built an impressive following over the years as a mesmerising…
Macbeth on Inchcolm Island
23 Aug 2012
Production transcends limitations through spectacular and unique location
To sacrifice five hours of your evening for one festival show it has to be something pretty special. Fortunately this unusual production Of Macbeth on Inchcolm Island does not disappoint. Packed on to a coach with excited, anorak-clad festival goers you…
Daniel Kitson: As of 1.52 GMT on Friday April 27th 2012 , This Show Has No Title
22 Aug 2012
Stand-up playwright returns with meta-play monologue
A week after this new play from Daniel Kitson opened, The Telegraph ran a two-star review, describing it as ‘a sorry waste of his undoubted talent – and our time’. Kitson knew someone would do that though. At one point in his one-man play – a…
Tam O’Shanter
22 Aug 2012
Earthy, energetic riff on Burns’ masterpiece
‘When chapman billies leave the street / And drouthy neibours, neibours meet’. It’s the best-kent pair of opening lines in Scots poetry, but if you were hoping for a straight rendition of Burns’ masterpiece, Communicado theatre company are more than…
Comedian Dies in the Middle of Joke
22 Aug 2012
Unusual Fringe play in which the comedian keeps on dying
It’s November 1983 and Britain is in turmoil. Ruled over by the Tories, the country is still reeling from participation in a war that no one can properly justify and the charts are full of bland drivel. Sound familiar? In a dingy London comedy club, the…
Miriam Margolyes - Dickens' Women
22 Aug 2012
Appealing biographical show in the company of a true pro
Yelling with that unmistakeable voice and accompanied by the oh-so-refined tinkly piano of Benjamin Lee, Miriam Margolyes staggers onto the stage in the person of sozzled layer-out of the dead Mrs Gamp, from Martin Chuzzlewit. It’s a charming, gentle…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
21 Aug 2012
Shakespeare adaptation barely scratches the surface of the play’s comic potential
In detention with Mr Goodfellow, seven secondary-school pupils are forced – as if by magic – to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream for some misdemeanour. However, the school setting is quickly dropped, forgotten for a bog-standard staging, and it starts…
Wuthering Heights
20 Aug 2012
Emily Brontë adaptation by young Cardiff players is a praiseworthy production
Rarely has fiction portrayed the negative as well as positive emotions of love than in Emily Brontë’s masterpiece. Heathcliff and Cathy's passionate, never harmonious yearning is, of course, at the heart of the story, yet the novel's complex narrative…
Monkey Bars
20 Aug 2012
Kids say the profoundest things
‘Sometimes adults don’t really listen to children,’ suggests the actor playing dialogue artist Karl James at the start of Chris Goode’s masterful new verbatim play. And that’s exactly what this astonishing piece seems to be telling us – that there’s so…
Mies Julie
20 Aug 2012
Essential adaptation of Strindberg’s classic
Truly great productions of classic texts can reveal the play within the play. Who knew that beneath the staid formality of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie lurked a play as explosive and heartwrenching as Yael Farber’s South African-set rewrite? Like…
Beats
20 Aug 2012
Tremendous recreation of rave culture
Tremendous recreation of rave culture In 1994 the UK Criminal Justice and Public Order Act outlawed gatherings of more than 100 people with a soundtrack of ‘amplified music characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’. In the…
Uninvited
20 Aug 2012
Ambitious production fails to spring to life
Our unnamed protagonist, obsessed by order and routine, returns home from work to discover a stranger in his house. So he makes him a cup of tea. But that’s the least of his worries: the talking wallpaper seems to have opinions on everything, and his…
And They Played Shang-a-Lang
20 Aug 2012
Bay City Rollers jukebox musical is boisterous good fun
If a semi-autobiographical jukebox musical about salad days in Scotland sounds grim -- and it should -- Derek Douglas’ nostalgia fest is surprisingly good fun. Local amateur company Craft Theatre’s 15-strong cast perform with such gusto and evident…
An Appointment with the Wicker Man
19 Aug 2012
A populist comedy success from Greg Hemphill, Donald McLeary and Vicky Featherstone
Of course the idea of a musical version of acclaimed horror movie The Wicker Man is absurd. That’s pretty much the point of the National Theatre of Scotland’s play-within-a-play from writers Greg Hemphill and Donald Mcleary and director Vicky…
