Matt Boothman

Julien Cottereau - Imagine-toi

Former Cirque du Soleil performer conjures a spectacle from nothing

10 Aug 2010

The power of Julien Cottereau’s imagination knows no bounds. He has only to imagine a ball to make it as tangible for the audience as for himself. When he imagines an adorable suffering puppy, no one has the heart to put it out of its imaginary misery.

Celia Pacquola

A buoyant performance, surprising and cathartic

10 Aug 2010

If performing stand-up is flirting with humiliation, Celia Pacquola takes humiliation home to meet her mum: having never learned the piano, she ends Flying Solos by attempting a virtuoso piece. She prefaces the attempt by effusively recounting previous…

Paul Zenon - Lounge Wizard

Old tricks with some new twists

8 Aug 2010

Paul Zenon was once a TV regular. Now he’s performing in a Chinese-themed nightclub basement on the Five Pound Fringe. His quips to that effect, while delivered with self-deprecation rather than bitterness, carry an uneasy ring of truth that echoes…

Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl

Look busy, it’s the end of the world

6 Aug 2010

When the human race has all but died out, when the Earth has erased almost all evidence of our existence, the last redoubt of our once great civilisation will be … the back office of a microwave meal manufacturer. As a premise, it sounds half-baked…

Helen Arney delivers Songs of Modern Loving on the ukulele

Ukulele-wielding comic with one eye on the future

29 Jul 2010

When comic musician Helen Arney debuted at the 2009 Fringe with 81/2 Songs About Love (and other myths), she’d already named her 2010 follow-up. ‘Songs for Modern Loving sounds like a lot of things,’ she says. ‘A David Bowie song, a Jonathan Richman…

Operation Greenfield examines the complications of being a teenager

Risky theatre from Little Bulb’s latest Fringe show

27 Jul 2010

It may sound counter-intuitive, but in an environment like the Fringe, where envelopes are being pushed and boundaries broken in every second venue, a degree of restraint can be the best way to stand out. Little Bulb don’t claim that their folksy tales…

Belt Up

Acclaimed audience-centric company returns to the Fringe with nine shows

26 Jul 2010

Remember that unruly rabble that spent last August squatting in C Soco? The ones that kept partying and fighting the nights away with hordes of strangers? Well, they’re back, and this time they’re really making themselves at home.

Me Too – A Sideshow

Would play better somewhere more intimate

24 Aug 2009

Ulrike Quade’s one-woman show, about the outrageous, tragic life of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet, would benefit from a change of space. The Majestic is too large for sideshows, and the play’s dream-logic plotlessness would play better somewhere more…

A Tribute – Gielgud’s Ages of Man

Good, but a poor fit for the Free Fringe

24 Aug 2009

Billed at two hours, George Innes rushes to complete his tribute to Gielgud on time, losing several impatient people halfway through. It’s a shame; while his Romeo lacks youthful vigour, Innes is an imperious Prospero, and reads Gielgud’s letters with…

Parents’ Evening

Interactivity brings the fear of parents' evening to life

21 Aug 2009

This interactive show works best in its first five minutes. Brief one-on-one encounters with the staff of Aultyme High easily recreate the dread of parents’ evening. Group activities follow, and while fun, these never achieve the same kind of genuine…

Oh, My Green Soap Box

Whimsical yet heartfelt

19 Aug 2009

Lucy Foster aims to illuminate why we haven’t yet pulled our collective finger out and saved the planet. We get sidetracked by the trials of everyday living and loving just as her proposed game-changing environmental campaign gets sidetracked by…

Home

Fails to play to the company’s strengths

13 Aug 2009

Berkshire’s Theatre Oikos have their hearts in the right place, but that can’t conceal the fact that on the whole they aren’t particularly good actors or storytellers. The dance elements are the highlight of immigration fable Home. Imagery subtly…

Chronicles of Long Kesh

Martin Lynch’s history of the infamous Irish prison camp

12 Aug 2009

A cappella Motown numbers provide an unexpectedly effective accompaniment to Martin Lynch’s history of the infamous Irish prison camp. The episodic style allows the well-drilled ensemble to cover decades of Troubles – from internment through hunger…

The Bitter Belief of Cotrone the Magician

Package tour theatre is worth it for the scenery

10 Aug 2009

Considering it demands £25 of your cash and nearly five hours of your time, Cotrone the Magician is inexcusably incomprehensible and unsatisying as a piece of theatre. But it’s also impossible to judge independent of its venue – the island of Inchcolm…

Max and Ivan

TV-influenced sketch show with a mission to entertain

28 Jul 2009

‘Last year we opened to no one in the audience,’ says Iván (Ih-vaan), the bearded half of comedy duo Max and Iván. But by the end of August their debut show, Max and Iván Exposed, was routinely selling out. That success was thanks in part to…

The Tiger Lillies' 7 Deadly Sins

21 Aug 2008

You’re all going to Hell. That’s the message the Tiger Lillies are gleefully preaching with the help of a punk Mister Punch and his civil partner Jude. Gogol Bordello and Flogging Molly influence the Lillies’ distinctive sound, which flavours…

Padamme, Padamme

21 Aug 2008

Monolingual Brits will inevitably miss some of Teatr Ecce Homo's captivating ensemble sequences while reading the (frequently frozen) surtitles, in this adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward. Fluid movement work grants…

Reasonable Doubt

Confessions in a Sydney hotel suite

14 Aug 2008

Two former jurors reunite in a hotel room two years after a controversial hung verdict in this smart two-hander from Australian playwright Suzie Miller. Both harbour guilty secrets, and sex – initially top priority – is soon shelved in favour of a…

The Rebel Cell

14 Aug 2008

Rap is the language of rebellion in Babasword Productions’ dystopian futuristic England. The central dichotomy – change from within the system versus rebellion against the system – is essentially a very simple one, which is dissected down to molecular…

Miss Sign-On

14 Aug 2008

Every negative stereotype of musical theatre is confirmed in this attempt at satire. The titular diva on the dole is a work-shy luvvie, her agent is a money-grabbing vampire and her gay best friend is sex-starved and superficial. More worrying still is…

Mommie and the Minister

High-camp B-movie gothic horror schlock-stravaganza

7 Aug 2008

Gerard Anthony has created a monster. The titular Mommie of this Hammer Horror homage is part drag queen, part Methodist preacher, part Bride of Frankenstein. Anthony's range runs from shrill unctuousness through pious browbeating all the way to…

Women of Troy

7 Aug 2008

Belt Up's production casts its audience as Trojan POWs. Being manhandled into a darkened room by Greek officials promises an immersive, Punchdrunk-style experience, but inside the audience returns to its typical spectator role. While the constant…

Auditorium

7 Aug 2008

When Guy finds an audience in his bookshop, he kicks off an ambitious but fatally flawed experiment, which marries farce with audience interaction. The best laughs in this overlong show come not from the script but from devil-may-care audience members.