Peggy Hughes

Michael Ondaatje - The Cat's Table

An adventurous coming-of-age tale

24 Aug 2011

(Jonathan Cape) ‘Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.’ From the decks and holds of the Oronsay, as seen by a Michael and his two mischievous young friends…

Lights! Camera! Improvise!

Invention, energy and singing show where audience chooses the theme

23 Aug 2011

Invention, energy and singing are all rolled into one fun-flecked show, in which the audience chooses the theme, location and title of a movie and the talented Scat Pack improvise the rest. Here, we were transported to a rom-com in a Scunthorpe…

Slim in Wonderland

Anecdotes amusingly and conspiratorially shared

23 Aug 2011

Men and women, children today (‘spoilt’), his former life driving buses in London and the time he suffered from a penile fracture are all amusingly, conspiratorially shared. Sadly for Slim, his wonderland is a cavernous raked venue, but with fulsome…

Daljit Nagra - Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!

Second collection is something very exciting indeed

19 Aug 2011

(Faber) Daljit Nagra’s second collection, with its lavish title, shouty cover art, abundant exclamation marks, italics and CAPS, marks another fine display of showmanship. Nagra swaggers through the ‘gyres and galaxies’ of the English tradition…

The Boom Jennies: Blowout

An exhilarating and surprising blowout

18 Aug 2011

‘Three ambassadors of fun’, the tannoy voice intones as we await the parting of the curtain. ‘A joy strudel to stuff in your faces!’ The Pleasance’s continuity announcer didn’t lie, and it’s easy to compare these funny, endearing, dynamic girls to Smack…

Bella Bathurst - The Bicycle Book

New literary vehicle for Lighthouse Stevensons author

16 Aug 2011

Bella Bathurst’s The Bicycle Book navigates the past and present of two-wheeled travel. From the suffragettes who recognised it as a ‘freedom machine’ to the huge rise in cycling’s popularity in Britain since the millennium, it features a cast of…

Stephen Carlin: Guilty Bystander

Unsettlingly funny with flashes of greatness

16 Aug 2011

Performing in front of a photofit of his own Yorkshire Ripperish face, Stephen ‘not obsessed with snooker’ Carlin’s Guilty Bystander is unsettlingly funny. Best when he’s being bitter – railing against cheating women or family Christmases – or riffing…

John Lynn

Affable comic story-telling with a neat turn of phrase

15 Aug 2011

No matter his subject material, which ranges in profundity from colonoscopies to making the perfect tomato and cheese sandwich, the roguish Lynn is able to mould it into a melodious, charming yarn. An affable, natural performer, he’ll send you away with…

Casual Violence

Versatile cast perform cherfully absurd sketches

14 Aug 2011

‘Six bastards meet their death’ in this cheerfully absurd sketch show. Lively and loud, it’s an excellent instance of what wonders can be achieved with a lilo, George Michael and a depressive, vodka-swilling clown. Though the result is not quite the…

Jen Brister is British(ish)

Wonderfully madcap look at identity

12 Aug 2011

Jen Brister has got it all going on in this splendid hourful of laughing till your face hurts. As a half-Spanish, ‘sepia’-tinged lesbian from London, the question ‘yeah, but where do you come from originally?’ led her to consider what it means to be…

Francesca Martinez

A charmingly caustic look at ‘normal’

8 Aug 2011

She may be ‘the world’s wobbliest comedian’, but the force of Francesca Martinez’s convictions and the energy with which she puts them across never falter in a show that’s as hard-hitting as it is caustically funny. She takes to the stage with this…

Alistair Green: Outpatient

Entertaining riffs in illness-themed show not for the squeamish

8 Aug 2011

Outpatient retells Green’s experience of having life-threatening kidney disease diagnosed, and is as hard to stomach as Henoch-Schönlein purpura is to pronounce. Not for the squeamish or hypochondriac, though ‘technically interesting’ with some…

Miranda France - Hill Farm

Rural drama is a lot better than the blurb would have you believe

15 Mar 2011

‘It was the summer that everything changed’ the dust jacket intones. For farmer’s wife Isabel Hayes (mid-thirties, with three children, adventureless in a small farming community and a stale marriage), something had to give. We are promised ‘a handsome…

Nina Conti

A vast talent for voices and timing

22 Aug 2010

‘First rule of performing: make it look easy; second rule: don’t fuck the elephants.’ Since there are no elephants in this show, Nina Conti succeeds in following monkey’s advice impeccably in prising apart the elderly art of ventriloquism in another…

Adam Vincent

Enjoyably oddball

18 Aug 2010

Adam Vincent doesn’t want to be a nurse, and with the cut of his comedy jib, why bother with the arduous hours, the inflamed hypochondria and the sick people that the job entails. Sometimes preachy, his is an otherwise enjoyably oddball set that…

Lach

Minutely referential and full of pithy asides

16 Aug 2010

This frenetic, guitar-wielding New Yorker laces together humorous vignettes and songs with long titles about growing up, including tributes to Kiss and meandering paeans to pot. Minutely referential and full of pithy asides, Lach’s particular skill is…

Joseph Stiglitz

Helping us mend our economic ways

13 Aug 2010

Can money make us happy? This timeless question, made all the more pressing by the brassic ‘financial climate’ we’re shivering through at the moment, is to be addressed by celebrated thinkers in the Meaning of Money strand at this year’s Book Festival…

Giacinto Palmieri

This stilted performance was a pile of sweaty meatballs

10 Aug 2010

Due to Palmieri’s comically strong Italian accent and the manic whirring of several fans, it was hard to determine precisely how funny this gentle narrative about nationality and language was or wasn’t. Respect to the man for his charm, and attempting…

Scott Agnew proves himself as storyteller with eye for absurd

Devilish entertainer with broad appeal

8 Aug 2010

Powerhouse Scott Agnew returns to the Fringe with this seamlessly laidback and funny narrative about the lengths he – and by extension, we – have gone to for love. This popular ‘anti-queen Glasgow poof’ isn’t squeamish when it comes to dissecting odd…

Gemma Goggin - Get Laid or Die Trying

Hilarious and graphic sex tales

8 Aug 2010

Bridget Jones meets Victoria Coren in the formidably busty and bright-eyed form of Gemma Goggin, a woman in her 30th year seeking desperate and dubious routes to love.

Natasha Walter's fight for women's equality

She presents her new book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

6 Aug 2010

Following sold out events at Brighton, Dublin, the South Bank and Latitude, writer and campaigner Natasha Walter is hitting the Edinburgh International Book Festival to stress that the struggle for women’s equality is as important as ever. To some…

Candia McWilliam will discuss her memoir at the EIBF

The festival veteran considers her own difficult story

6 Aug 2010

‘I have loved the Edinburgh International Book Festival all its 22 years,’ says Charlotte Square Gardens veteran Candia McWilliam. ‘It makes an annual conversation about books and about thinking, about what it is to share in the examined life. It is…

Maile Chapman - Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto

23 Jul 2010

(Jonathan Cape) Crackling with a fitful nervous energy, Maile Chapman’s novel is the arrestingly titled Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto. It concerns a convalescent hospital set among Finnish pinewoods in the 1920s, harbouring women with…

Derek Walcott - White Egrets

10 Mar 2010

(Faber) Derek Walcott’s White Egrets was years in the writing, its publication coming after last year’s Poetrygate which resulted in his reputation smeared through allegations of sexual harassment. If there was one way in which Walcott could get the…

Lorenza Foschini - Proust’s Overcoat

Short, slight but fascinating tale on obsession and status

16 Feb 2010

(Portobello) In Proust’s Overcoat lies an intriguing and dainty little tale of a man who finds his vocation in preserving items of a lost time. Jacques Guérin is a wealthy perfumier and bibliophile who started to read the works of Proust at the age…