Laura Ennor

Bat For Lashes and Yeasayer

HMV Picture House, Edinburgh, Tue 20 Oct 2009

23 Oct 2009

For fans who came to Bat for Lashes' music by way of her mainstream success, Yeasayer are probably a fairly bewildering prospect. Their special brand of gospel-psych-electro-ethno-folk-rock, accessorised with a few falsetto flourishes, seems initially…

Johnny Flynn

Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow, Thu 22 Oct 2009

23 Oct 2009

Supporting London troubadour Johnny Flynn, Anna Calvi is an exciting prospect as she takes the stage - all red lipstick, silk blouse and stiletto heels, picking out an echoing guitar solo that gets faster and more intricate as it goes on. It's an…

The Wave Pictures - Cabaret Voltaire, Sun 18 Oct 2009

20 Oct 2009

As might be expected from a band who are very much part of the collaborative/incestuous London alt.folk scene, a gig billed as The Wave Pictures with Stanley Brinks and Freschard in support becomes much more of a wholesome and endearingly ramshackle…

Kes

Romance and realism combine in this classic of Northern England

15 Oct 2009

Billy Casper shares much more than just a Christian name with stage and screen’s favourite pirouetting Geordie rapscallion: there’s the grim northern hometown, the cruel elder brother with a job down the mines, and the unusual passion with the potential…

The Grapes of Wrath

Steinbeck's classic back on an Edinburgh stage

1 Oct 2009

The relevance of John Steinbeck’s 1939 tale of the Joad family’s enforced odyssey across America in search of work and a place to settle following eviction from their farm is grimly evident in a world of foreclosures and chronic unemployment. Yet in…

Micaela Leon: Kabarett Berlin

An underwhelming tribute to eight 'Weimar Girls'

26 Aug 2009

As Micaela Leon takes you through her top eight ‘Weimar Girls’, you get a real feel for her respect for these women – it’s just unfortunate that her tribute is an underwhelming substitute for the real thing, and her telling of their stories comes across…

A Promised Land

Weighty dramatisation of post-Holocaust Europe

26 Aug 2009

Thought provoking by virtue of its subject matter (post-Holocaust Europe, the early days of the Israel-Palestine conflict), this play is weighty and worthy. Despite much originality and skilful performances from Corinne Harris as two very different…

Sweeney Todd: His Life, Times and Execution!

Enjoyable, atmospheric adaptation

26 Aug 2009

Lashings of fake blood, ample busts and bawdy thrusts characterise this enjoyable and suitably grotesque adaptation. The twist here is that the killings are largely accidental, the killer a meek, clumsy and rather sweet boy. The puppetry is perhaps an…

Weepie

Remarkably assured piece of theatre

25 Aug 2009

For a hard-hitting portrayal of emotional violence and its shocking physical manifestations, this play is awfully funny. For an exploration of how we seek transcendence through love, religion, or acts of murder, it is rooted surprisingly firmly in the…

A Fistful of Snow

The strange but amusing tale of an estranged writer

21 Aug 2009

Danny Alder plays Chester James, a writer who has inexplicably ended up in Svalbard guarding the world seed bank, paralysed by the success of his first novel, and with only an inflatable moose, a pompous budgie and a hungry polar bear for company. It’s…

Forgotten Things

Bittersweet, intelligent family farce

13 Aug 2009

Suicidal teenager Toby, more-than-half-mad granny Lilly and manic, self-centred, bickering parents Philip and Margot form the spectacularly dysfunctional family at the centre of this bittersweet play. All of them have forgotten things, mainly how to…

Faust in the Box

The music quickly becomes tiresome

12 Aug 2009

Giving Goethe’s classic the hand-puppet treatment in just an hour was never going to be a walk in the park, and unfortunately Bridge Markland has strayed far from the path in this cringeworthy adaptation. The use of pop music to express the characters…

Certain Dark Things

Deft and involving presentation of social claustrophobia

10 Aug 2009

Certain Dark Things tells the story of a brief and forbidden affair conducted under the Catholic dictatorship of Franco, and its repercussions as they continue to be felt by all involved decades later. The suffocating sense of a curtain-twitching…

My Life with the Dogs

Charming music and characters mask a flimsy tale

10 Aug 2009

The members of New International Encounter have become quite the Fringe favourites over the past five years, as the long, long queue stretching from the Pleasance testifies, and it is easy to see why audiences love their charming, funny and touching…

Woyzeck

Creative adaptation that disregards the fourth wall entirely

10 Aug 2009

Three actors jump through (and indeed urinate against) the fourth wall, sometimes with a little too much knowing satisfaction, in this creative adaptation of Georg Büchner’s tragic fragment. The good-humoured and unflappable cast excel at portraying the…

T in the Park – Sunday

13 Jul 2009

Laura Ennor gives us her pick of the best acts from the final day at Balado.