Posts Tagged ‘edinburgh’
Can I Stop You There?
In this show, the compères interrupt the comedians. Several times over. And every night, it’s a new set of comedians and a new set of interruptions. Add to this the fact you’re in an intimate venue, it’s after 11pm, and many of the audience are ‘quite receptive to laughter’ or ‘a wee bit drunk’ and…
Read MoreJo Caulfield – Pretending to Care
I’m not sure Jo cares about show reviews. And I’m not sure this reviewer cares that she cares. But I have to report that her show is tight, funny, focused, and may occasionally make you snort, titter, wet yourself or cause you to cast your spit on the person in front of you. That is,…
Read MoreChristine Bovill – Paris
It’s a good job it’s dark inside the Spiegeltent, because nobody could see the tears that kept appearing out of the corner of my right eye. Hrumph. Must have been a bit of grit in there. Christine Bovill. Photo by @nazipova Christine Bovill is probably best known for her iconic Piaf perfromances, where she devastates…
Read MoreViv Groskop – Be more Margo
For those young enough not to have seen the TV series ‘The Good Life’, which ran from 1975-1978, this is the Wikipedia entry for Margo Leadbetter. “Margo cannot understand her neighbours’ lifestyle, but their friendship is important to her. As a child, Margo Sturgess, she was bullied at school for having no sense of humour.…
Read MoreTiffany Stevenson: Seven
It’s Tiffany Stevenson’s seventh solo show, and so it’s called Seven. That might seem to lack imagination. But there’s definitely plenty of imagination at work here, and plenty of provocation, insight, mocking and acid observation. Seven is instead a riff pivoting around seven potential tweets that Tiffany considered making after the Battaclan attacks in Paris,…
Read MoreJena Friedman – American C*nt
Dark, dangerous and unexpected. Expect yourself to be shocked by this performance, because Friedman’s humour takes dark, sharp turns and does not flinch from using the word cunt in its full Shakespearean crudity. Friedman apologises from the start about the offensive word in her show’s title – that word of course, she whispers, being ‘American’.…
Read MoreJo Caulfield – Awkward Conversations
Well this is awkward… Jo Caulfield picked me out of the audience and lampooned my lovable, hangdog Humphrey Bogart / Droopy good looks. And then got other people to pick on me. And only later as I left did I whisper that I was reviewing her show. Awkward! But then, that’s what happens when you…
Read MoreLiterary Death Match
This is not an ordinary Fringe show. Four writers read their own work for five minutes or less, and are then judged by three all-star Judges. Two finalists are chosen to compete in the Literary Death Match finale, a vaguely-literary game to decide the ultimate winner. And there’s of course a different line-up every night.…
Read MoreBakersfield Mist – Arkle Theatre
Maude Gutman is an unemployed ex-barmaid who lives in a trailer park. Lionel Percy is a former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who works for an art foundation to authenticate disputed works of art. Think for a moment about your first assumptions about those two characters. Then imagine them thrown together. This is…
Read MoreMuch Ado About Nothing – Arkle Theatre
All the boys are dressed as girls, and all the girls are dressed as boys. This is the first surprise from Arkle Theatre – they bend the gender of every member of the cast to add a twist to this Shakespeare classic, which was in its day controversial for challenging accepted gender stereotypes. The venue…
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