Suzanne Black

The Arthur Conan Doyle Appreciation Society

Feel-good show mixing broad comedy strokes with narrative tomfoolery

Doyle is the father of arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes yet he also believed fervently in the supernatural. Peepolykus play these two opposing worldviews against each other in a feel-good show that mixes broad comedy strokes with narrative tomfoolery…

Waiting for Stanley

Keep calm and carry on clowning

A woman with a red clown nose waits on a luggage-filled railway platform for her wartime sweetie to return. As her wait grows, she raids the suitcases around her, each contributing props to a captivating series of tales drawn from the experiences of…

Simple Matters

Clowning around becomes a comedy of errors despite clear talent

This international troop of clowns present mime and physical comedy and, though skilled, grossly misread the audience to a less than comedic effect. Relying on 'volunteers', interaction that could work with a boozy, up-for-it Saturday night crowd comes…

Thread

Poignant site-specific evocation of life and loss

After the success of last year’s Allotment, Nutshell Theatre returns with an immersive evocation of nostalgia, memory and love as the forces that bind us together in the second part of their thematic trilogy. The audience is invited to the Burntisland…

Boy in a Dress

Thought-provoking and fabulous drag-related cabaret

Androgynous, third-gendered, ginger beauty La JohnJoseph makes a show-and-tell of the idea that all identity is a performance, and none more obviously than that which occurs on the stage, with his conflagration of gender theory, drag performance and…

Blake’s Doors

Existential grappling that overreaches its capabilities

Revolving Shed, from the London School of Economics, offers a bleak meditation on the human condition. A neat framing device sets up the idea of human life being something between everything and nothing, existing in the momentous and the mundane before…

Hearts on Fire

Immersive recreation of 2009 sweat lodge deaths

The Fringe guide makes this sound like a participatory event, but it's not any more so than any other performance. It is immersive, though, with a setting inside a heated sweat lodge at the top of C's most recently commandeered venue. Recreating the…

The Trench

Pitch-perfect evocation of the theatre of war

Les Enfants Terribles have built a formidable reputation for playfully macabre tales mixing drama, music and inventive staging to create gothic fantasies reminiscent of Tim Burton’s oeuvre. The latest from the company’s writer Oliver Lansley draws on…

The Girl With No Heart

Children's storybook on loss of innocence fails to come to life

The Girl with No Heart is based on a short story book written by performer Louisa Ashton. A children’s parable about the loss of innocence, Sparkle and Dark’s Travelling Players use puppetry, silhouettes and origami to narrate the tale of a girl who…

Danny McLoughlin: The Truth, the Half-Truth and Nothing Like the Truth

Lies, damned lies and comedy

At the top of the show Danny McLoughlin promises two things. The first is that the purpose of his show is to examine the role of 'enhancing' the truth for comedic effect. The second is an admission that not all of what he says during the next hour will…

Dave McNeill: Canoe Ride 3000

Surreal silliness that goes for the easy laugh

Dave McNeill works hard. After an hour the vast amount of sweat dripping from his shirt is matched only by the volume of jokes he tries to wring from his surreal material. Describing a journey to China in a canoe, the plot of the show definitely falls…

Jim Campbell: Nine-Year-Old Man

Wonderful timing, whimsical narrative

On the wrong side of 25 and facing the less exciting parts of contemporary life (mortgages, babies, failed dreams of being a rock star), Jim Campbell muses on the themes of growing up and assuming responsibility. It’s hardly unique subject matter and…

Kemble’s Riot

Political intrigue with superbly engaging performance from Richard Hansell

Kemble's Riot recreates 66 nights of rioting in 1809 when the Covent Garden Theatre increased its ticket prices. With the audience drafted in as the rioters, split pro- or anti- theatre manager John Kemble, sitting on the fence is not an…

Chris Ewan - Safe House

A credibly intricate crime thriller from the author of the Good Thief guides

Chris Ewan is best known for The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam / Paris / Vegas / Venice series of postmodern novels narrated by a thief who just happens to be a crime writer. Safe House is his first standalone thriller and this time the narrator is…

Rufus Wainwright - Out of the Game

Mark Ronson-produced album's expanded instrumentation feels misplaced

(Polydor) Releasing career retrospective House of Rufus last year and now drafting in ubiquitous producer Mark Ronson, all signs point to reinvention for Wainwright. Never one to shy away from the idiosyncratic in his operatic and multi-genre-infused…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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…