Mark Fisher

Alison Peebles on how theatre show Dirty Paradise was inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Alison Peebles tells Mark Fisher how a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story opened up a world of auditory hallucinations

Creator of Trilogy returns with new play Fatherland, Motherland

New play from Nic Green at Arches Live

Ask Nic Green where she thinks of as home and she has an immediate, if surprising, answer. ‘Nowhere,’ she says. ‘This is the problem.’ The creator of the celebrated Trilogy (returning to the Arches in November for a brief run) which prompted feminist…

Porgy and Bess

French company take Porgy and Bess to the Deep South

When Opera de Lyon’s Porgy and Bess is remembered, it will be for the extraordinary multimedia staging by the directorial double-act of Jose Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu. It isn’t only that we get 50-odd performers on stage - the dancers giving it…

The avant garde planet of Boguslaw Schaeffer

An 80-year-old Polish polymath is set to be the discovery of the Fringe, says Mark Fisher

Boguslaw Schaeffer reckons he’s living in the year 2048. It’s as plausible a claim as anything else you could say about this extraordinary Polish octogenarian. His name might not be widely known, yet he has led a breathtakingly creative life. As a…

The Edinburgh Fringe shows taking human trafficking as a theme

Roadkill and Lost Boy amongst Fringe shows telling refugees' stories

A celebrity endorsement works wonders for your box office and all power to Shatterbox for getting Emma Thompson to put her name to its production of Fair Trade. But that show is only the most high profile in an unprecedented wave of Fringe productions…

Little Black Bastard deals with horrific Australian childhood

Noel Tovey puts disturbing past of poverty and crime on stage

It is the ultimate rags to riches story. Yet the tale Noel Tovey tells about himself is more distressing than any version of Cinderella. It is a narrative that shocked even his closest friends when he chose to tell it to the world in Little Black…

More Light Please delivers emotional take on economic migration

One-woman Fringe show drawn from experience of moving from Poland to Ireland

Natalia Kostrzewa is sitting in the courtyard of Warsaw’s Teatr Praga, enjoying the early evening air. She’s just performed her one-woman show, More Light Please, drawn from her experiences of moving to Ireland, and is delighted to have delivered it in…

Freefall captures mood of bewilderment moments before death

Dublin theatre group's Fringe show captures mood of the times

It would be misleading to say the latest play by Dublin’s Corn Exchange was about the credit crunch, the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and the scandals within the Catholic church, but those events were playing out when Freefall was created last year and…

Diciembre finds dark humour in Chile's Pinochet years

Teatro en el Blanco go back to basics with politically engaging EIF production

The Pinochet years continue to leave a deep scar on the Chilean psyche. Playwright Guillermo Calderón tells Mark Fisher why Diciembre tackles some dark memories but still finds humour in his nation’s tortured past

Ontroerend Goed bring Teenage Riot to the Edinburgh Fringe

Renowned Belgian theatre group explores teenage angst

Everyone who visits Alexander Devriendt in the rehearsal room says he must be crazy. He is 33 years old, yet he thrives on working with the most exuberant of teenagers. ‘It’s not about wanting to stay young, I don’t think about it,’ says the Belgian…

Five theatre shows from the continent at the Edinburgh Fringe

More Light Please Polish actor Natalia Kostrzewa stars in her own one-woman play (co-written by Jerzy Lach) about economic migration. The production by Teatr Praga is in English and features music by the Tiger Lillies. New Town Theatre, George…

Jen Olive - Warm Robot

(Ape) Putting the quirky into Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Jen Olive creates a delightfully skewed folk-pop hybrid that matches Marina Diamandis robot for robot and has hooks to spare. A typical Olive track takes a hypnotically repeated acoustic guitar…

Peter Brook's 11 and 12 marks director's return to the Glasgow and Tramway he transformed

Let’s start with some history. Throughout the 20th century, Glasgow was as dangerous as it was dreich. You couldn’t leave your tenement slum without being stabbed. It was a bonus if you avoided a head-butting. A trip to the steamie or even to your…

The National Review of Live Art 30th anniversary

It all seems wrong. The National Review of Live Art has built its reputation on change. It never looks back and never stays still. The annual bonanza of what used to be called the avant garde has doggedly embraced the disconcerting, the deviant and the…

Primary School Musical

Fed up with the me-me-me narcissism of High School Musical? Hankering for the chutzpah of Bugsy Malone? Longing to see a song-and-dance show that has a built-in call to political action? Well, the opportunity is here with Primary School Musical, a…

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

Right, pay attention at the back. You boy, straighten your tie. Now, you all know why you’ve been called back for detention with Professor Dawkins and, frankly, you’ve only got yourselves to blame. He explained it all very carefully in The Selfish Gene…

The Silver Darlings

There’s something cinematic about Kenny Ireland’s staging of the Neil M Gunn novel, adapted here by Peter Arnott. It’s in the sepia photographs of crofts, brochs and cliffs that form a backdrop to Hayden Griffin’s open set of layered coastal rock. It’s…

If That’s All There Is

Cynical piece of work

Less a play than a series of sketches, this show created by Inspector Sands is about a couple of maladjusted professionals approaching their wedding day. Wittily staged, it has some good gags about the bureaucratic mindset, but it is ultimately a…

The Doubtful Guest

The Gorey details

That Hoipolloi’s staging of the Edward Gorey fable is entertainingly done is without question. It is not only an adaptation of this story about a pointy-faced creature in white canvas shoes who takes residence in a grand country mansion, but also an…

East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House

Three storeys of NYC stories

Edgar Oliver will not be the only actor taking on the Everyman persona this August. Like innumerable stand-up comics and solo performers, he presents himself as the still centre of a chaotic world. By identifying with him, we can share his strange…

The Hotel

The suite smell of success

If Punchdrunk, the fashionable London site-specific theatre company, gave the job of artistic director to Arthur Smith, the comedic genius behind the Fringe’s Arturart exhibitions, the results would look a lot like The Hotel. Throw in a touch of Fawlty…

Beachy Head

Suicide brings on many changes

Like its predecessor, Mile End, Analogue’s Beachy Head is as much about the way the story is told as it is about the story itself. No scene goes by without a screen being wheeled on, a video camera being focused or an actor tottering in front of a…

Sea Wall

Pray silence for an exquisite performance

Alex does not voice the cruellest words he ever spoke. We don’t actually hear the dreadful phrase he utters to his father-in-law. But we can imagine it. Playwright Simon Stephens is too subtle a craftsman to allow his central character to blurt it out…

Bourne to be wild - Mark Ravenhill interview

New show based on flamboyant gay theatre icon Bette Bourne

Mark Ravenhill is making a habit of redefining what a Fringe play can be. Two years ago, his Ravenhill for Breakfast offered ever growing crowds a chance to see a daily changing programme of short plays written almost as fast as they could be performed…