Mark Fisher

Rock ‘n’ droll star: Jon Holmes

Mark Fisher meets the radio presenter and comic satirist

You can’t get the pop stars these days. In the glorious 1970s, it was every musician’s duty to live a life of hedonistic excess, but then we hit a sidetrack on the otherwise straight and narrow road to Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse, and our…

Man for all seasons - Phil Nichol at the Fringe

Mark Fisher finds Phil Nichol mining two rich seams of comedy at this year’s Fringe

One is a Restoration farce typically performed by seasoned rep actors on grand proscenium-arch stages. The other is a scabrous heist comedy in which a middle-management executive is kidnapped in a Fife factory.

Naked ambition - Nic Green's 'Trilogy'

Mark Fisher meets the theatre-maker who’s still proud to call herself a feminist

Nic Green was leading a discussion recently when a young man questioned her use of the word ‘feminism’. ‘No one wants to hear that word, can’t you call it womanism?’ he asked.

Ready for take off

He may have branched out in recent times, but Alistair McGowan is returning to his first love.

There can’t be many people for whom the Wimbledon panto is a life-changing event. Not even the gaggle of Gareth Gates fans waiting outside the stage door for an autograph from their very own Prince Charming would go that far. But for Alistair McGowan…

Mercy Madonna of Malawi

Adopting a view of the Material Girl

It’s reasonable to assume Robert Magasa never expected to land his latest stage role. He is tall, male and black and speaks with a distinct Malawian accent, characteristics that should disqualify him from playing Madonna, a pop star famous for being…

The World's Wife

Visceral poetry from the new laureate

You can't fault Linda Marlowe for timing. No sooner had the original Oh! Calcutta star and Berkoff protégé decided to adapt Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife for the stage, than the Glasgow-born Duffy landed the job of poet laureate. An hour or so…

Fest foot forward

Whatever your taste, Edinburgh has an August event to match

Nowhere does a festival quite like Edinburgh. Spend a year in the city and you can clock up more than a dozen, from horror film weekend Dead by Dawn to the internationally renowned winter Hogmanay event. And that’s before you take daytrips to catch the…

Diaspora with TheatreWorks and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra

Ong Keng Sen's multimedia ode to migration

Anyone living in Scotland understands what is meant by diaspora. The story of the Highland Clearances and the waves of emigration that followed is an accepted part of the nation’s identity. Indeed, the assumption behind the Scottish Government’s current…

Brian Friel retrospective includes Faith Healer, The Yalta Game and Afterplay

Three plays by the Irish Chekov

At the head of the pantheon of Irish dramatists there is JM Synge, there is Sean O’Casey and there is Brian Friel. As far as director Patrick Mason sees it, there is no question: Friel is Ireland’s greatest living writer. ‘It’s an amazing opus,’ he…

Anna Reynolds - Stand by Your Van

Drama about a Texas car dealership's hands-on competition

Stand by Your Van explores the game show where contestants hold onto a vehicle for up to 100 hours. Mark Fisher gets bleary-eyed at the prospect

Daniel Kitson - The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church

A comic known for his bitter-sweet monologues prepares to die

The Fringe has a template for restless comedians with an urge to do serious drama. Find a popular play, call your stand-up pals and throw the show on with a no-frills budget. This year, Bruce Morton and Phil Nichol are doing just that with a revival of…

Talking life and death at Beachy Head

A new drama by Fringe First-winning company Analogue

I’m not saying Liam Jarvis is morbid, but after the co-director’s 2007 Fringe First-winning hit Mile End – the true story of a man pushed in front of a London underground train – he is back with Beachy Head, best known as East Sussex’s most picturesque…

Giorgio Battistelli's Experimentum Mundi and Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair

Revolutionary sonic collaboration between composers and craftsmen

Giorgio Battistelli is demonstrating the rhythm of a conventional piece of classical music. ‘Peak-peak-peak-peak,’ he counts out. By contrast, he says, the beat of a shoemaker’s hammer is altogether less regular: ‘Tic-tic-tack, tic-tic.’ That was the…

Balgay Hill - Simon Macallum

Today we associate Dundee with the enterprising work of Dundee Rep’s ensemble, the world-class art at DCA and the tourist attractions of the City of Discovery. It’s a place the Victoria and Albert Museum can consider setting up a northerly outpost…

The Ducky

Douglas Maxwell better watch out. Until last year the playwright had cornered the market in whimsical comedies about Ayrshire teenagers. Then along came DC Jackson with The Wall – in which a gang of Stewarton youngsters crossed the threshold from…

After Mary Rose

Collaborating with director Nicholas Bone of Magnetic North, playwright D Jones has given JM Barrie’s 1920 ghost story Mary Rose a dust down so it has less of the creaky haunted house about it and more of the privations of war. But in structure and…

Two Voices III – Horticulture Behind the Scenes

PHOTOGRAPHY You can’t quibble with the aim of this small exhibition, the third in a series of collaborations between photographer Rosita McKenzie and illustrator Camilla Adams. It’s laudable to want to widen ‘accessibility for all visitors’ to the…

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

ADAPTATION If you’re in doubt about the Christian allegory lurking behind the Narnian fantasy of CS Lewis, just look at the treatment meted out to Daniel Williams as Aslan in this stage adaptation. Relinquishing power to Meg Fraser’s scarily…

Pantomimes

Earlier this year, I took a trip to Scarborough to check out the headquarters of the Qdos Entertainment empire. This is the organisation responsible for 21 pantomimes in the UK alone, not to mention a handful of theatres, a couple of talent agencies…

Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us

NEW PLAY It’s hard to shake off the feeling that this final production in the National Theatre of Scotland’s series of Traverse Debuts is set in a bygone era. The story of a young man returning home from the seminary, disillusioned with Catholicism…

4.48 Psychosis

MODERN CLASSIC It doesn’t seem right to say you have enjoyed Sarah Kane’s final play. Written not long before her suicide in 1999 and staged posthumously, it is a poetic evocation of the mind of someone in the depths of clinical depression. There are…

Jean Muir

Absolutely fabulous

Jean Muir didn't invent the little black dress, but she made it her own. The trailblazing designer, who established her own label Jane & Jane in 1962 before branching out under her own name in 1966, was loved not for her catwalk extravagance or her…

Cockroach

It sneaks up on you unexpectedly, this full-length debut by Sam Holcroft. At first, she gives the impression of writing a lightweight comedy of high school life; all cat-fights, smashed windows and detentions. But something is afoot in the biology…

Marat/Sade

Call it a testament to the human spirit or the will to triumph in the face of adversity, but for some reason, after the interval, the audience comes back. Perhaps, they are thinking, it is a mistake to imagine the acting is terrible. Maybe, they hope…