Kirstin Innes

The Vanishing Point

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

The Vanishing Point is sheer delight. The stilt walkers, communicating to each other through some sort of primeval whale song, trace a pattern of evolution from dinosaur-like creatures and sexually charged tribal people to, briefly, dead-eyed office…

Borderline

Repetitive beat poetry

The Stone Roses come on, and over in the corner there’s always one monged fella pivoting off the wall. He starts monkey-dancing closer like he thinks he’s Ian Brown, gurning and chewing his face off with the pills. He’s pointing at you. He’s looking you…

By The Way

On a road to nowhere, for no reason

There’s obviously a lot of talent behind this little two-hander, which follows a pair of friends on a road trip through a dystopian France, where an unnamed plague is killing off everyone’s mothers. The actors are likable and clearly talented, and for…

Lie of the Land

Two go mad in the countryside

Him and Her move to the country on her family’s money. Mostly. He contributed, though. He’s not as rich as her, rather lacks her breeding. But he’s kind, and she is trying to civilise him. The important thing is, it’s their house. All theirs. Away from…

Spirit of the Samurai

Swordplay blunted by repetition

This display of Samurai skill comes with a weighty pedigree: company director Tetsuro Shimaguchi not only appeared in Kill Bill 1, but choreographed the sword fighting scenes. He's working with hugely skilled performers here, and they know their target…

Garlands - Falkirk

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…

New Electric Ballroom

Ladies night or Groundhog Day?

From the secret teenage worlds of Disco Pigs to last year's The Walworth Farce, Enda Walsh's work has been preoccupied with the private codes and languages of insular groups. Here he focuses on three sisters who have effectively locked themselves away…

Holdin' Fast

The mathematics of sexuality

As we file into the UK debut by the Czech Republic’s only professional contemporary dance company, we’re confronted by the body of a young man, draped over a blackboard covered in mathematical equations. Upstage, under a half-raised curtain, running…

The Judgment of Paris

Can Can, corsets and high camp

With sculpted, Harlow-platinum wigs, gorgeously gilded corsetry and tongues in cheeks firmly set to ‘high camp’, this riotous piece of dance theatre by Company XIV merges Baroque dance forms, Can Can and contemporary ballet to music by Offenbach and…

Damned Beautiful

Dorian Gray does discordancy

One of many pieces pivoting on The Picture of Dorian Gray at this year’s Fringe, this duet pares down the complexities of Wilde’s novel to focus on the obsessive sexual relationship between Basil Hallward and his beautiful boy. There is some beautiful…

Social networking

Single files

Recent Pixar smash Wall-E imagines a future in which lumpen humans only engage with each other through computer screens. Worryingly, this seems all too plausible a prospect. Online interaction and social networking are two of this year’s Fringe hot…

Finished With Engines

Attack Mode

Stephanie Viola and Drew Friedman, draped sleepily about a rehearsal room, don’t look much like wisecracking sailors with the power to blow up the world. It might be the jet lag. The New York-based actors, best known as founder members of the multi…

Beatrice Colin - The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

HISTORICAL FICTION (John Murray) This is a big, plush velvet cushion of a book, dense with historical detail and already picking up comparisons to Sarah Waters’ weighty, sexy epics. It’s the story of Lilly Aphrodite, an orphan turned silent movie…

Pericles Redux

Getting physical with the Bard

‘Putting Shakespeare to dance is a dangerous thing to tackle,’ says John Farmanesh-Bocca about his ‘wild retelling’ of Pericles. ‘People are like, “well, are you going to make it a dance or are you actually going to speak the language properly?” We’re…

Interrupt

Relationship drama on the dancefloor

The bustle of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is not necessarily the ideal place to premiere a new piece by a new company. But David Beer, of still wet-behind-the-ears classical/contemporary dance company, Collisions, is letting the experience shape his…

The Lighthouse Keeper

‘Clowning has an ageless appeal,’ says Clive Nicholas Andrews, of his new one-man show, The Lighthouse Keeper. ‘When I was a kid I grew up loving people like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton. I’d call my style clowning with added…

Real gone kids - Architecting

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Fringe favourites The TEAM return to Edinburgh with a reimagining of Margaret Mitchell’s iconic Southern drama. Kirstin Innes caught up with them to discuss everything from Barack Obama to Scarlett O’Hara.

Room with a view - Ingleby Gallery

Edinburgh International Art Festival

From much-missed nightclub space to the biggest commercial gallery outside of London, Kirstin Innes goes behind the scenes at the new Ingleby Gallery

Fall

War requiem - Traverse

New director of the Traverse Dominic Hill’s own directorial debut is an unobtrusive choice. Kirstin Innes meets Zinnie Harris, the playwright behind Fall

Overarching drive - Jackie Wylie new artistic director of the Arches

It’s been less than a week since Jackie Wylie was appointed artistic director of the Arches (bringing the grand total of women in that position in Scottish theatre up to three), but the 28-year-old has already jumped in with both feet. ‘I’m excited.

Goldfrapp - Your lovely head

Mildly obsessive fan Kirstin Innes pays a personal tribute to the ever-changing faces of Alison Goldfrapp A confession: I just don't see the point of Madonna or Kylie. Sorry. I don't see that anything they've done past 1990 has had the slightest bit…