Natalie Woolman

2008 Merchant City Festival

18 Sep 2008

Anyone who has cast their eye over the website for this year’s Merchant City Festival will have found the photograph of Baillie Gordon Matheson flicking through the festival programme while a pair of parkour performers jump around him. In suit and tie…

Cashing in

15 Sep 2008

With the ominous credit crunch upon is, Natalie Woolman, investigates the ways to make your money work for you. By now, you've all heard at least one horror story about student finances. The one about the guy who spent his entire loan on an expensive…

Sex and Chocolate

4 Sep 2008

A 50th birthday. Alone. In your office while your colleagues are out on the razz. This tripartite hell sounds like the stuff of a depressing dramatic monologue rather than a fantasy romp, but life-affirming comedy is precisely the aim of writer Rona…

Hydro Connect Festival - Eco-friendly

How green is my valley?

21 Aug 2008

Carbon neutral is a precise cocktail. It is a recipe that Geoff Ellis, director of T in the Park and creator of the Hydro Connect Festival, has learned by heart. He committed to making T in the Park carbon neutral in 2006, transforming it into the first…

The Terrible Infants

Edible dark fairytales

21 Aug 2008

There are no happy endings in this collection of delectably dark fairytales: cannibal boy Tumb eats his mum, the unloved Thingummyboy evaporates and fibber Tilly grows a tail that lengthens with every tall tale she delivers. Writer Oliver Lansley’s…

Kids events

Getting arty and yucky, all in the same week

21 Aug 2008

If you suffer from Crayola on the carpet and finger-painted furniture, The Big Picture Event (24 Aug) should be the destination of choice for your little ‘uns. Chairman and Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen leads an exquisite event of drawing and…

The Censor

21 Aug 2008

Hands flicking towards each other's groins, two actors circle one another in the basement office of the film censorship board. Prudishness and sexuality are explored in Anthony Neilson's electrifying text. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the central…

Slap, Tickle and Squeak

21 Aug 2008

If this show carries any profitable message for its audience, it's that all improvised comedy performances should carry a warning. Using every drama teacher's game in the book, the trio present sketches and freaks in a poor adaptation of Edwardian…

66a Church Road

21 Aug 2008

Sitting amid an array of suitcases as if he has been thrown out onto the street, Daniel Kitson creates a tragicomic riff on his old flat. At first the imaginative conceit successfully taps into the sentimentality people invest in their homes, but the…

Barbershopera

Slapstick moments and lyrical buffoonery appear effortless

21 Aug 2008

There a couple of pre-requisites for attending Barbershopera: an appreciation of musical comedy and a passion for a cappella are essential. A penchant for false facial hair is helpful. That said, Toni & The Guys put on an almost seamlessly tight show…

Free comedy

A Pandora's Box of PowerPoint and pointlessness

14 Aug 2008

There is a rebellion at the Fringe this year. High venue costs have caused some artists to take matters into their own hands. Doug Stanhope is charging £7349 for a one-off show in someone's living room and the Free Fringe organisations have brought more…

5 Reasons To Go See - Alanis Morissette

14 Aug 2008

She’s massively popular Before we get to any of the juicier reasons for re-igniting your mid-90s fervour for Ms Morissette, let’s lay out the bare statistics of her success. The angry songstress has sold over 55 million albums worldwide, and has scooped…

Medusa’s Snakes: The Aftermath

14 Aug 2008

Posing the question of what happened to Medusa’s snakes after her death, this play introduces us to Monstrous and Sinclair who, rooted to the decapitated head, plot how to take vengeance for their ‘lady’. The inventive costumes and set cannot compensate…

You Don’t Need to Know That

14 Aug 2008

Gonzo Moose presents a farce based on Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, in which an innocent man is accused of an unknown crime. Some exceptional spoof thriller moments arise from the metallic filing cabinets that comprise the set even if, overall, the…

Beyonce – Stop Punching Robbie!

Re-establishes the comic potential of the dramatic monologue

14 Aug 2008

Being a nursery teacher in Tower Hamlets is no picnic, especially when you have a divorce and the under-fives numeracy skills development programme to contend with. Cecilia Delatori re-establishes the comic potential of the dramatic monologue with…

Pot Noodle The Musical

Song and spoofs about the saucy snack

7 Aug 2008

With unexpected Hamlet undertones, Pot Noodle The Musical spins the story of the dastardly Alan Little, who kills his noodle-farmer brother Barry in order to get his mitts on prostitutes and cars. The plot is a happy blend of clichéd musical (Barry's…

Mould and Arrowsmith

7 Aug 2008

Who knew that PowerPoint could be anything other than the cornerstone of a drab IT lesson? This duo reveals it as surprisingly slick and surprisingly funny with sketches mocking presentation workshops, personalised marriage vows and cover letters. The…

Diary of a Nobody

7 Aug 2008

The minutiae of life in Victorian suburbia is the subject of this gentle social satire, but the script does not maximise its wry potential and constant costumes changes slow up the action.

All day hip hop event

31 Jul 2008

Banksy’s subversive street art sells for millions, Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre are basically musical royalty and films such as Step Up 2 continue to popularise break-dancing and battling. Hip hop and street culture couldn’t be having more of a moment. Funny…