Suzanne Black

Bon Iver - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 22 Oct 2011

Justin Vernon's large ensemble fails to capture the albums' spare beauty

16 Nov 2011

To a long since sold-out crowd of ardent devotees, Justin Vernon takes the stage – after the audience impatiently chats through support act Kathleen Edwards’ countrified indie folk. (Vernon helped out with production and instrumental duties on Edwards…

Hotel Methuselah

Stunning and inventive multimedia production

23 Aug 2011

In a war-time hotel night porter Harry delves into his memories in this tense, mysterious multimedia work from Imitating the Dog. A frame around the stage offers limited views of the actors who work in tandem with pre-filmed dialogue and supplementary…

The New Conway Experience

Bringing hilarity to the masses

23 Aug 2011

Appearing haphazard while remaining in control isn’t easy. John Conway is the genial host for an assortment of skits and bits that feels more like post-pub drinks at the house of a funny friend. Balancing the well-crafted with the pleasingly…

Unanswered, We Ride

An emotional portrait of grief

23 Aug 2011

Joe Tippett and Martha Wollner take on multiple roles to flank Joy Barrett’s journey as bereaved mother Reese in a portrait of all-consuming, selfish grief. Despite one jarring attempt at an Irish accent, all aspects collide to create an engrossing…

Cul-De-Sac

Capable garden-fence comedy

23 Aug 2011

Scripted by Matthew Osborn, this natty little three-hander (Alan Francis, Mike Hayley, Toby Longworth) relocates The ’burbs to Middle England. Taking the tested trope of a seeming idyll masking a sinister reality, the deviant Tony Deveraux rules the…

Silken Veils

Tenderly performed memories

23 Aug 2011

We join a Persian woman (Leila Ghaznavi) as she freaks out about her impending nuptials. Using puppetry, silhouette-work and animation to complement live action we are taken on a journey through her memories of Iran, suffused with the poetry of Rumi. A…

Ian D Montfort - Spirit Comedium

Witty send-up of hand-wringing mediumship

23 Aug 2011

Resplendent in the New Age uniform of beads and sandals, Tom Binns takes on an industry that is at best delusional and at worst predatory. While sending up the vagaries of ‘cold reading’, Montfort drops ‘real’ psychic insights. A witty send-up of…

New Art Club: Quiet Act of Destruction

Comedy-dance due don't do their talents justice

23 Aug 2011

War between two English villages provides the narrative for this comedy-dance duo’s latest. Tom Roden and Pete Shenton’s years of working together shows and at moments their previous inventiveness shines through, but an hour that’s light on dance and…

Neil Cross - Luther: The Calling

19 Aug 2011

(Simon & Schuster) Luther was a BBC crime drama fronted by Idris Elba (The Wire) that aired last year and earlier this summer. It followed Elba’s tortured police detective through a series of investigations that foregrounded a battles of wits with…

Russell Kane

Caustic and hilarious self-flagellation

17 Aug 2011

It’s hard to judge Russell Kane’s show because he’s already done it. For the ‘difficult’ follow-up to his Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning 2010 show Kane performs Manscaping as himself, offers up heckles, anticipates critic and audience responses and even…

Beowulf – A Thousand Years Of Baggage

Postmodern interaction with a classic

17 Aug 2011

As Beowulf was pitted against the manbeast Grendel in the Old English epic, NY theatre company Banana Bag & Bodice pits Beowulf the man against Beowulf the text in this clever, stylish interaction with a classic. Seemingly set in a jazz club, three…

The Dark Philosophers

Dark Welsh classic given a postmodern twist

17 Aug 2011

Death is no impairment to being on stage (as being a goat is no impairment to being a stagehand) in this darkly comic delight from National Theatre Wales and Told by an Idiot. Weaving together two novellas from Welsh English-language writer Gwyn Thomas…

Medea's Children

A cautionary tale for divorcing parents

17 Aug 2011

Lung Ha’s Theatre Company is known for its use of performers with learning difficulties. Teaming up with Swedish company Unga Klara they bring us an exploration of the psychic trauma felt by children affected by divorce. The script, originally…

The Time Out

Interactive theatre with a motivational aspect

17 Aug 2011

An interactive piece for 12 players who get to don swimming caps (with headphones inside) and become a water polo team. If this fills you with trepidation, it’s meant to. The focus shifts between Ken, the cliché-spouting coach with motivational tidbits…

Tom Goodliffe

Lightweight autobiographical material, but with lovely rapport

16 Aug 2011

Goodliffe rails, good-naturedly, against middle-class problems like not liking your job, not having a girlfriend and the annoying questions people ask him because of his name. Taking in his love of maths (with an insistent musical riff on the subject)…

Mark Nelson

Straight talker whose profanity is utterly charming

16 Aug 2011

With no narrative arc or gimmicks, Nelson presents himself as a straight talker, not scared of eliciting shocked gasps with his more provocative material. He deals in the controversial with a cheeky grin, as if the words magically appeared in his mouth.

King Lear

Engaging spectacle gives Shakespeare a Jingju interpretation at 2011 EIF

14 Aug 2011

Two artforms, alike in their lengthy traditions and explorations of familial and martial subjects but divergent in their aesthetic, are brought together by their areas of commonality. Wu Hsing-kuo (Contemporary Legend Theatre) adapts aspects of…

Imran Yusuf

Religious perspectives on universal issues

14 Aug 2011

This year Imran Yusuf seeks to Bring the Thunder, playing on the fact that one of the Western media’s biggest bogeymen is Muslims seeking to effect change through conflict. In a shiny suit and oozing charisma, he nudges up against political and…

Free Time Radical

Wryly humorous evocation of mid-life crisis falls short of expectations

14 Aug 2011

After a massive flood wipes out London Jensen (Tom Frankland) seeks refuge in the flat of his rescuer Ali (Sébastian Lawson). Amidst a creatively interactive set the duo muses on surfing, relationships and their place in the world in an often physical…

Are You Happy Now?

Pessimistic two-hander about dysfunctional relationships

14 Aug 2011

First-time Fringe writer and director Sam Wright brings us a pessimistic two-hander about dysfunctional relationships. Mark Booth and Mark Jeary flit between the stories of two gay couples on the outs. The cast make an admirable attempt to convey the…

Lee Camp Is: Yet Another American Mistake

Rabble-rousing American gets mad at current affairs

12 Aug 2011

Lee Camp aims his freewheeling cannon at all the aspects of American (and Western) culture that are easy to criticise: childhood obesity, people who believe in aliens, sweatshops, war as big business, the moon landings, the death penalty, multinational…

Christmas for Two: Friends With You

Variable sketch show of audacious surrealism

12 Aug 2011

This sketch duo’s Friends with You starts with a rape joke. The way they treat the topic that has become a shibboleth of contemporary comedy is a statement of purpose, signalling their intent to sidle up against the profane, nudge things into the…

Blood and Roses

Multi-sensory journey with history’s courageous women

11 Aug 2011

Edinburgh’s tendency towards the wet would seem an admonishment against a promenade performance. The northeast’s Poorboy, whose raison d’être is the site specific, doesn’t shy away from the less sunny sides of life. Listening via individual headsets…

Anton's Uncles

Chekhov remixed as a highly entertaining divertissement

11 Aug 2011

Four dapperly dressed men cavort with the stage dressings, dance with each other and utter one-liners with a Wildean frivolity. The members of LA’s Theatre Movement Bazaar are so diverting with their antics that this play’s relation to Anton Chekhov’s…

Thirsty

Powerful physical evocation of the relationship between women and alcohol

9 Aug 2011

In a bathroom, on a hen night, two boozed-up young women dance, shriek and hector the audience, the epitome of Booze Britain. In one of the three toilet cubicles Shane Durrant sits astride the porcelain throne surrounded by music-making accoutrements.