Posts Tagged ‘edinburgh’
Twelfth Night
Gender-bending, gloriously psychedelic, and deeply, madly groovy. This is a riot of music and colour carried off by a stellar cast, bringing this complex story to life with an energy and flair that is jaw-dropping, and includes the most show-stopping second half opener I have seen in years. The action opens in a debauched 60s /…
Read MorePassionate Machine
The evidence about the reality of time travel builds steadily in this engrossing, fabulous story: the book about Mayakovsky really was written by Doctor Rosy Carrick, she really does have a tattoo with a Bowie lyric on her wrist, and she really is wearing a CERN t-shirt. Could all of these seemingly impossibly surreal facts…
Read MoreViv Groskop: Vivalicious
A show about self-help in the coming age of President Oprah Winfrey. Everything seems to be about reinvention, and Viv Groskop wants to be the best possible version of herself. So why is that so hard? Does there come a time when you should just give up and accept you are not that great a…
Read MoreJo Caulfield: Killing Time
Jo Caulfield walks on to stage, sizes up the audience in moments, and proceeds to question, mock and taunt them. The venue offers a welcoming bar at the side of the room, and is packed out even this early on in the run – early booking would definitely be prudent to make sure you catch…
Read MoreMore Moira Monologues
Bisset, male, author. Plays Moira, female, cleaner. Completely straight. And she’s a foul mouthed, deeply funny, chain-smoking delight. It’s easy to see why this show won a Fringe First in 2017. This is deeply confessional, but still light as a meringue, and all at the same time, covers acres, hectares of difficult, sensitive and tricky…
Read MoreThe Moira Monologues
Falkirk. Or tae be mair exact, Fawkirk. This is a sheer classic, and is both theatre and comedy, making a welcome return 8 years after its first appearance at the Fringe in 2010. And it’s still fast, fresh and very funny. The language is explicit lowland Scots, Fawkirk variety, and Bisset plays Moira Bell, a…
Read MorePreview: The Sacrifice Zones by James O’Brien
A small, intimate venue, a healthy crowd, and an understated, eloquent performance of searing political poetry. O’Brien is not new to stage performance, but is best known as a theatre director, having brought his legendary GIRO Theatre Company to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the company performed internationally…
Read MoreMeeting Jim
I’ve invited myself to Sunday dinner at Jim Haynes’ Montparnasse Atelier several times. Hold on. What kind of jackass invites themselves to dinner? Well, since he first started his dinners in 1978, there have been about 200,000 such jackasses visiting Paris by Jim’s reckoning. He says he has a mission to introduce everyone to each…
Read MoreThe hour we knew nothing of each other
This was almost absurd in its ambition: nearly 100 members of the Edinburgh public play almost 500 parts, with dazzling costumes, and often bizarre props, and for 90 minutes, nobody speaks a word. It was a dadaesque town square with a succession of movements in and out and a variety of characters from the everyday…
Read MoreCreditors
I really wanted an interval. And I was not alone: one audience member, at the end of the first act, when the stage went dark, started to clap hesitantly before realising that they were all alone, and the lights went up again on stage. An hour and fifty minutes is not an eternity to sit…
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