Lizzie Mitchell

How It Works: Spotify

Deconstructing the phenomenon

1 Oct 2009

Spotify is a streaming program which lets users listen to music online for free. There are currently about 3.8 million tracks available to a user base of over one million. You can ‘stream’ as many tracks as you like, and unlike the download sites which…

Homecoming at Henderson's

Graceful homecoming at a fine old Edinburgh powerhouse

17 Sep 2009

Henderson’s is an Edinburgh stalwart whose vegetarian power base, begun on Hanover Street in the early sixties, has slowly but surely expanded to dominate an entire street front. There are reasons for its success. It’s a business built with love, and…

Admeto, re di Tessaglia

Exit, pursued by a butoh sheep

11 Sep 2009

Opera is a medium well placed to embrace the ridiculous, and sometimes to render it sublime. Strained voices, high drama, grand sets, expensive costumes and expensive tickets: they all have their place, and it can be a fine line between spectacular and…

Student finances - The colour of money

10 Sep 2009

The most fearsome university budgeting I have ever come across was a group of Edinburgh girls who (and this was last year, not back in the hazy mists of 70s yore) worked out that they could do all their food shopping for the year for £10 per week per…

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

10 Sep 2009

Tim Burton has set his sights on the strangest story of them all. Seemingly on a quest to reinvent all our childhood totems in line with his own macabre visions, his next film will venture into a wonderland so mad in its own right that it's hard to…

John McCracken

Exhibition from the contemporary sculptor

3 Sep 2009

The comments in the visitor’s book are a mixed bunch, and if you don’t know John McCracken’s work already then they might help you gauge in advance whether you’ll enjoy this exhibition: ‘The emperor has no clothes’. ‘I agree’. ‘Dull’. ‘A very lazy…

Agnes Martin (part of Artist Rooms)

The Canadian-American artist's later works offer calm reflection

3 Sep 2009

A late addition to the Artist Rooms series is a room of eight paintings by the Canadian-American artist Agnes Martin. The exhibition features late works, dating from 1994–2002, when Martin was in her late 80s and no longer able to manipulate the…

Il Ritorno Di Ulisse In Patria

Austere, beautifully performed homecoming for a not-so-wily Ulysses

1 Sep 2009

It's hard at first to know where to look on this stage. The story of Ulysses' return, as written by Monteverdi, is played out by puppets, but close behind them are their puppeteers, their heads only a few centimetres apart and a few centimetres larger…

Or[f]unny

Sibling power games with willies and mustard

1 Sep 2009

The blurb promises a story which ‘asks something of everyone: to rediscover the meaning of our existence’. Whether this is indeed the most obvious question raised by Or[f]unny is perhaps a matter of opinion, but if you want to psychoanalyse, there's…

Austen's Women

If you aren’t a fan you’re unlikely to be converted

24 Aug 2009

An enthusiastic roll-call of Austen moments. If you aren’t a fan you’re unlikely to be converted, and Rebecca Vaughan might want to go for subtlety over squeals more often, but she’s good at the character parts and it’s a pleasant romp through the…

The Return of Ulysses

And they all lived happily ever after. But what happened next?

23 Aug 2009

Homeric purists will be disappointed here. This is a tale of Penelope, not Ulysses, and it takes place almost entirely after the return of the hero – in narrative terms, after the end of the Odyssey. By the end of the scene one Ulysses has returned…

Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience

Excellent impersonations but no Waldorf salad

21 Aug 2009

Unsurprisingly, dining at Faulty Towers is a tense experience. From the moment we arrive at B’est restaurant, Basil, Sybil and Manuel (but alas no Polly) are on hand to ensure that our meal is anything but straightforward, and by the time we reach the…

I Don’t Live Here Anymore

Poignant rather than heavy

21 Aug 2009

Emma’s dying, David’s wondering how to move on. We see scenes from the beginning and end of the relationship. The audience might feel weighed down were it not for interruptions from two jocular narrators, who extrapolate subtexts and keep things…

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…

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…

Diary of a Madman

Gogol adaptation which hasn’t quite found its feet

20 Aug 2009

The action takes place in a small and shabby rented room in 19th century Petersburg. A small-time civil service clerk is losing his sanity, and we follow him through the days and months of developing madness. As the calendar on the wall takes us from 3…

Rough Cut Nation

Graffiti warriors v neo-Gothic architecture

18 Aug 2009

‘No one notices your pointless actions’, read the letters cut out of the floor. That’s not entirely true nowadays. Graffiti culture has entered the mainstream art world. Largely due to Banksy, art that was once firmly associated with lawless…

Optimism

Lazy and ill thought out stage version of Voltaire’s Candide

17 Aug 2009

While still at an impressionable age, Candide comes under the influence of a forceful teacher with an inclination to the philosophical, and meanders out into life convinced that ‘Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’. Whatever…

Subject in process

Symposium on feminism and art set for CCA

14 Aug 2009

Lizzie Mitchell finds out about an upcoming day of film, music and vigorous discussion on feminism and art.

Site Specifics: Glasgow Science Centre

14 Aug 2009

Three futuristic protrusions rising from the south bank of the Clyde, filled with whizzes, bangs and musical fish beyond your wildest imaginings.

Rewind: Artists’ Video In The 70s & 80s

Audience-unfriendly presentation of a tricky medium

14 Aug 2009

In 1968 the portable camcorder was invented, and the decades which followed were a period of impassioned invention and experimentation in a fertile new medium. Rewind contains fine examples of video art. There are classic videos like David Hall’s ten…

Power Plant

Hallucinogenic sound and light display at the Botanics

14 Aug 2009

Even without special effects, the greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens are among the most magical spaces in Edinburgh, and however badly the organisers of this show had mangled their work they’d have had a difficult job to spoil the surreal and…

Kids Events at the Book Festival

The events and authors for the younger generation

14 Aug 2009

Old favourites for kids include Michael Morpurgo (22 Aug), Malorie Blackman (22 Aug), Jacqueline Wilson (23 Aug), Anne Fine (23 Aug), Julia Donaldson (24 Aug), and Terry Deary of horrible history stardom (28 Aug), but there’s a whole lucky-dip of events…

The Trial

Disorientating, triumphant nightmare from Belt Up

13 Aug 2009

Reader beware. The best advice I can give you is not to read a review of The Trial – this or any other – but just to book your tickets now and trust the company to deliver an amazing show. Any review of this play is going to contain plot spoilers, and…

The Stronger

Two women in one

12 Aug 2009

From time to time the American accent goes awol, and sometimes this monologue feels a little too LAMDA to really grip the audience, but overall Laura Pradelska carries off her one-woman version of Strindberg’s two-woman play convincingly. Sustained by a…