Steve Cramer

3rd Ring Out: the Emergency

An intelligent audience-led thriller

23 Aug 2011

If it’s not perfect in execution, this piece is both intriguing and thought-provoking. The audience is ushered into a container functioning as an emergency response room and required to make life-and-death decisions about an ecological catastrophe in…

The World According to Bertie

A well performed, interestingly staged production

23 Aug 2011

Alexander McCall Smith’s prose is brought pretty niftily to the stage as part twee New Town soap opera, part mild satire. An 11-strong cast bring to vivid life the various dramas amidst the chinking tea cups of Edinburgh’s bourgeoisie, centring on the…

Llwyth (Tribe)

Overlong play with little to say about contemporary life

22 Aug 2011

Dafydd James’s text deals with issues of home and relationships, of both blood and fraternity, as well as the responsibilities these bring. Thirty-something Welshman living in London returns home to Cardiff and hooks up with his old friends from the gay…

Federer Vs Murray

Geopolitics, war and tennis

17 Aug 2011

Any illusion that the tennis match of the title will be at the centre of Gerda Stevenson’s production of her own text is quickly dispelled in this transfer from Oran Mor’s admirable Play, Pie & Pint lunchtime theatre strand. Yet the game plays a…

Lol

Touching humour in suburban comedy, but no new ground broken

16 Aug 2011

A middle-aged housewife, lonely spinster and posh man-eater find they are romantically involved with the first woman’s husband via a dating site. Rosalind Adler gives a lively performance as all three from her own text, with some touching humour in this…

I, The Dictator

Enjoyable one-man performance on encounter between Charlie Chaplin and Hitler

14 Aug 2011

One can’t help but reflect that Romuald Wicza-Pokojski’s production which speaks of Charlie Chaplin’s (Krystian Wieczynski) encounter with Hitler’s henchmen while he struggled for money to complete The Great Dictator, loses a little in translation from…

Snails and Ketchup

Dynamic one-man Calvino adaptation

11 Aug 2011

This version of Italo Calvino’s story The Baron in the Trees dispenses with the verbal action and substitutes physical theatre, multimedia and acrobatics to tell its story. Ramesh Meyyappan gives a dynamic performance, transforming into several…

What Remains

Plenty of creep, not enough deep

8 Aug 2011

There is something in all of us that relishes a scary story, and Ben Harrison’s production for Grid Iron certainly doesn’t stint in this regard. Set at the medical school of Edinburgh University, this piece alludes ceaselessly through music and visuals…

A Slow Air

Nationhood explored and deplored

8 Aug 2011

In David Harrower’s new play a struggling middle-aged builder (Lewis Howden), haunted by an entirely inadvertent contribution to the Glasgow Airport bombing, is provoked into reflections about his estranged sister (the performer’s real-life sister…

Spent

Razor-sharp agit prop satire

8 Aug 2011

If you live in the UK, you’d never know it, but agit prop is alive, well, and indeed thriving in the world of theatre. An impressive exemplar exists in the shape of this sharp-as-a-tack satire, which incorporates clowning, physical theatre and…

A Celebration of Harold Pinter

Pinter wonderland manages not to sink beneath the hype

8 Aug 2011

The danger that accompanies any theatre event accompanied by movie star hype is that the piece itself becomes lost under the brouhaha surrounding its presenters. With John Malkovich directing Julian Sands for this piece, that was always the danger, but…

The Oh Fuck Moment

Uneasily entertaining afternoon of reflection on human frailty

8 Aug 2011

We’re ushered into a boardroom where two performers join us in discussing horrifying human errors, from the embarrassingly rude, through the sexually ill-fated, and on to the physically terminal. This is an uneasily entertaining afternoon of reflection…

Ten Plagues - Mark Ravenhill musical inspired by London Plague of 1665

Marc Almond stars in anticipated 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show

27 Jul 2011

There’s something about apocalypse that has run through the human psyche, and a great deal of art, for over a century. Be it HG Wells’ Martian invasions or Ballard’s Great Droughts, these scenarios are often about moments where everyday life and our…

Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

Stands alongside Suspiria as one of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films

2 Feb 2011

(18) 121/100min (Arrow) Deep Red stands beside such work as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria as the most interesting of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films. Its captivating visuals, all clean lines, whites and chromes contrasting…

Ving Rhames gives compelling performance as Sonny Liston in Phantom Punch

Poor supporting performances dog gangster movie by numbers

2 Feb 2011

(15) 100min (Metrodome) Perhaps the most duplicitous aspect of Robert Townsend’s account of the life of heavyweight champ Sonny Liston is the title itself. Liston’s rematch with Mohammed Ali ended early with a punch that simply didn’t look like a…

National Theatre hit The Habit of Art set for Glasgow Theatre Royal

Alan Bennett’s play explores artistic relationship between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten

15 Nov 2010

From Picasso’s vaguely prurient late work, to Yeats’ references to tits and bums in his later poems, great artists have often taken great pleasure in alarming their audiences by entering into a second childhood with alarming sexual references. In Alan…

Lucy Prebble's play Enron deals with financial crisis

Celebrated play on UK tour, including run at King's Theatre, Edinburgh

3 Nov 2010

At last year’s Edinburgh Festival, only the National Theatre of Scotland’s Caledonia, an enjoyable if not completely successful production based around the Darien misadventure of the late 17th century, addressed the current financial crisis. The reason…

Nic Green’s Trilogy and David Leddy’s Sussurus among highlights of IETM

Umbrella group assembles Glasgow theatre festival bill

27 Oct 2010

At a time when the threat of cutbacks hangs over Scottish theatre, it might be wise to take a good look at this theatre arts conference, for much of the work being showcased will not – if the auguries are true – be seen again on this scale for some…

New Dundee Rep production of Ibsen's A Doll's House

Jemima Levick directs new version of play by Samuel Adamson

29 Sep 2010

In an era where the term ‘banker’ has become disparaging rhyming slang, certain great classics of the theatre can be viewed with a new slant. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the profession of husband and implacable patriarch Torvald implies the utmost…

I Was There: The Mahabharata

The List's 25th Birthday Special

16 Sep 2010

Peter Brook brings his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to the Tramway, 13 Apr 1988. By theatre critic Steve Cramer.

Punk Rock

New writing preview

10 Sep 2010

There’s a great tradition in British theatre of using schools, be they the privileged public school system or the local comp, as metaphors for the various ills that have beset the whole country. The latest foray into this territory comes from one of the…

A Play, a Pie and a Pint

200th anniversary

10 Sep 2010

Since its inception in 2004, Oran Mor has become rather like a mobile phone to the Scottish theatre: you managed to cope fine before you had one, but these days it’s hard to imagine how. Sustaining itself on box office takings, support from the venue…

Roadkill, The Author and 30 Days to Space worthy 2010 festival winners

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

7 Sep 2010

I know it’s not quite over, but with respect to the last couple of shows of the International Festival, now might be the time for the Festival’s final report card. This year’s Festival, if it has shown some good work, still creates the uneasy feeling of…

Myth of the far-left agenda in Alastair Beaton's Caledonia

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

1 Sep 2010

In my last blog, I accused many of the companies engaging in the Fringe of lacking courage, and I’m sticking by it. You can always tell when there’s a political elephant in the room at a fringe, since invariably the more pusillanimous companies visiting…

Tales From a Cabaret

A series of increasingly sinister jokes and songs

25 Aug 2010

In the underground vault of Fingers Piano Bar two actors in white face, bowler hats and shabby suits first give us a history of cabaret culture. They go on to a series of increasingly sinister jokes and songs, reminding us that the history of…

Pornography takes centre stage at Fringe 2010

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

23 Aug 2010

There are three steps down into the auditorium at the Traverse St Stephens. It’s not entirely at random that I warn you. As I entered said space I failed to spot this natty architectural folly, and launched myself, instead of into Apples, into thin air.

Caledonia

History repeating itself

23 Aug 2010

There is a moment in Alistair Beaton’s new play that creates a collective audible intake of breath from its audience. It is the point where Paul Higgins’ deluded huckster of a banker announces that his private corporation is now bigger than the state…

Apples

23 Aug 2010

Adam and Eve, in this council estate reinvention of the myth, are two teens struggling (with four friends) to survive their sex, drug and violence-heavy environment. A series of rites of passage, from unwanted babies begat from equally unwelcome sexual…

Italia ’n’ Caledonia

Unpretentious tales of the family history behind Valvona and Crolla

23 Aug 2010

Two amiable old boys (Mike Maran and Philip Contini) sing and gag their way through the history of the families that formed Edinburgh culinary institution Valvona and Crolla. Along the way we hear of their struggling starts as entrepreneurial emigrants…

Keepers

Lighthousekeeping meets the Odd Couple

20 Aug 2010

Two lighthouse keepers (Fionn Gill and Martin Bonger) keep their vigil over some obscure crag of coast in 1801, with a sense of incrementally increasing tension. Tom and Thomas are very different people, the younger something of a daydreamer who spends…

Why The Sun Also Rises is the least successful transatlantic crossing since Titanic

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

19 Aug 2010

I suppose the one compensation of sitting through the unforgivable The Sun Also Rises at the Lyceum was that it provided a little relief from the endless prurient sex obsessions of the Traverse next door, where one leaves every other show with the…

The Author

Outstanding show exploring voyeurism in art

19 Aug 2010

In a festival with a good deal of verbatim theatre, Tim Crouch’s new play deals in a timely fashion with the difference between pure reality and authenticity. The tale told is self evidently untrue, yet its truth feels increasingly more believable than…

Pas Perdus

Delightful family-friendly clowning

19 Aug 2010

The booming voiceover that introduces this charming piece of physical theatre is that of a hypnotist inducing the calm of sleep on its audience. What then transpires is the appearance of a dream world, though the night visions we experience are far from…

The Sun Also Rises

Overlong and unsympathetic Hemingway adaptation

15 Aug 2010

This bloated, gargantually overlong production from US company Elevator Repair Service should, at over three and a half hours, really provide its audience with a shower and a change of clothes as part of the ticket. An adaptation of Hemingway’s classic…

Wednesday

Some interesting observations about violence

15 Aug 2010

In a grimy Manchester basement, we discover a young woman tied to a bed, and a man bound equally firmly to the floor next to her. They’re victims of a released felon, who wants them to re-enact a sex crime from their shared past. Ian Winterton’s play…

Threshold

Disturbing examination of ritual and primality

14 Aug 2010

This three-hour theatre experience begins with a gorgeously shot, if largely inaudible, film which alludes to sexual repression in a menacing manner. A coach trip ensues, during which a soundtrack is played which intercuts classic love songs with a…

Sex emerging as theme running through 2010 Edinburgh Fringe theatre

Steve Cramer's Festival blog

13 Aug 2010

My first significant encounter this fringe, a week ago as I write, occurred at the door of the Traverse theatre with Jane Ellis, my esteemed fellow hack and wife of another much beloved colleague, Mark Fisher. As I made to enter the building, she seized…

While You Lie

Brave exploration of identity, the body and sexuality

12 Aug 2010

Sam Holcroft’s first piece for the Traverse, Cockroach, explored the interplay of genetics and politics. In this new play the conversation is continued, but here more specifically in the realm of sexual politics. Ana (Claire Lams), a young emigrant…

Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones

Your plastic friends

12 Aug 2010

There’s something delightfully primal about a shadow-and-light show; it makes us all into children again. This piece, a light comic novelty of the kind only seen in fringe festivals, is an exemplar of its kind, with the delicate touch required for a…

Pedestrian

Fishy tale from an engaging performer

12 Aug 2010

Tom Wainwright’s monologue, which he performs with simple but effective animation creates a man haunted by the surreal vision of a giant goldfish. Said Piscean apparition appears in a recurrent dream, while its narrator walks through the shopping…

The Sum of it All

Ghostly tale of grief

11 Aug 2010

In a creepy old cemetery, a figure rises from his grave and speaks of the process of death in macabre tones. He then goes on to describe the life that preceded his demise. He proves to be a lonely young man who has ended his life in delusion after an…

Emma Thompson Presents Fair Trade

Verbatim ad nauseam

11 Aug 2010

This is, perhaps, not the place to go into the ethics of celebrities lending their names to worthy causes in the shape of theatre productions identifying social ills, but Emma Thompson might at least have chosen more carefully. This piece, taken from…

The Not So Fatal Death Of Grandpa Fredo

Frenetically-paced Vox Motus show lets fly with the satirical dartboards

9 Aug 2010

The notion of faith – whether intractable or questioning – is a motif that gradually makes itself known as this amusing and rambunctious ragbag of a show proceeds through its tricksy, playful paces to its conclusion. Along the way there are gleeful…

The Silver Darlings

Strong, unflashy retelling of classic Scottish novel

9 Aug 2010

Peter Arnott’s adaptation of Neil Gunn’s classic Scottish novel, telling the semi-mythic story of a people driven from their North-Eastern lands into the early, often dangerous fishing industry is a nuanced and moving (if necessarily truncated) version…

Mussolini: A One Man Political Farce

Fascinatingly detailed piece about the man to keep audience intrigued

9 Aug 2010

Ross Gurney-Randall brings a distinctive energy to this self-penned role, tracing the life of Il Duce from childhood, through early days as a teacher, then editor, to his flight and demise at the collapse of his empire. If the humour of the piece fails…

My Romantic History

Inventive, funny observations of contemporary relationships

8 Aug 2010

In DC Jackson’s new play we meet two pretty ordinary West of Scotland thirtysomethings who, having drifted from a drunken sexual contretemps after an office night out into a slightly uncertain relationship, are thrown back into reflection upon their…

The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Challenging, intelligent exploration of neurosis, guilt and obsession

8 Aug 2010

Anyone who has reflected on the capacity of words to slip loose from meaning somewhere between speaker and listener will also have realised that this ambivalence in language can easily be exploited in power relationships. This idea is explored to…

Kafka and Son

Goodies and Daddies

8 Aug 2010

The fascination of the reading public with the inner psyche of Franz Kafka shows no sign of abating, perhaps because the neurosis he showed reflects many of our own quiet obsessions writ large.

The Cage

Gun play and fourth-wall rupturing

8 Aug 2010

The prison that love and obsession can become is familiar enough territory in the theatre to need little preamble, and here, if the kind of situations that might arise are predictable, they’re no less entertaining for that.

David Benson's Unfinished Business

3 Aug 2010

Award-winning performer David Benson talks to Steve Cramer about a powerful new piece of theatre that explores the Lockerbie tragedy from the point of view of a grieving parent Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic froth at the mouth about the…