THE COMPUTER COUNTESS It’s a topical, Tim-Hunt-tastic moment to celebrate one of the forgotten women of science, and the Edinburgh University Theatre companyhave hit on a cracking good story. Ada Lovelace (her married name, she was a Countess) was Lord … Continue reading →
SIRO-A – Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly George Square Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe; 8th August 2015 If circus is about taking physical human skills and presenting them in surprising and entertaining ways, then Siro-A is the realm where digital skills and dance combine, in a series of performed ‘acts’. It is also very much about us as the audience being amazed, and […]
NELL GWYN: AN EPILOGUE – Edinburgh Fringe
✭✭✩✩✩ Insufficiently fruity:
Lacking nothing in energy, Nell Gwyn: An Epilogue is nevertheless lacking in focus and fails to convince as a result.
COMFORT SLAVES – Edinburgh Fringe
✭✭✭✩✩ Unsettling:
Not for the fainthearted, Comfort Slaves performed by Immersive Acting Movement deals with horrible issues that have become part of our society.
SWALLOW – EDINBURGH FRINGE
✭✭✭✭✩ Human:
There is a strongly beating human heart behind the Traverse Theatre Company’s Swallow. The cleverly staged production from a largely female team has a spiky exterior hiding a warm and resonant core.
AN OAK TREE – Edinburgh Fringe
GRIEF, ILLUSION, PLAY… You can’t label this extraordinary two-hander by Tim Crouch as “experimental” theatre, even though it uses a different – wholly unprepared – second actor every time, involves secret audio and audible muttere briefings and a handing over … Continue reading →
JURASSIC PARK – Edinburgh Fringe
DINOSAUR-TING OUT FAMILY LIFE.. A school backpack suddenly yawns like the jaws if a Tyrannosaurus Rex, devouring an actor’s head. A toy helicopter overflies three herding brontosauri. Human velociraptors hop and hiss: a sudden umbrella is the menacing crest of … Continue reading →
DEAD LETTER OFFICE – Edinburgh Fringe
A Dead Letter Office (DLO) is a curious place. It’s a place where undeliverable and lost mail ends up. The end of the line for a thousand lost moments, lost memories, lost sentiments that have been left unsaid. But what if they could be said? What would happen to them then?
TINA C: HERSTORY – Edinburgh Fringe
THE RHINESTONE COWGIRL RIDES AGAIN I first saw this cabaret-theatre character here in 2002, drawn by curiosity because the theme was “Tina C’s Twin Towers Tribute”. Under a year on, it could have been the car-crash acme of Fringe tastelessness. … Continue reading →
SOMETHING – Edinburgh Fringe
Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh Festival Fringe; 8th August 2015 Something is a comic flickbook of everyday fantasy, presented by Italian company Liberi-Di. The seven performers each have a natural humour in their presentation, and excellent physical technique – including superb tricking skills that, somehow, always seem cooler than the traditional acrobatic repertoire. I am transfixed for […]
NEWS: Edinburgh Festival and Fringe Open
Almost 20,000 people witnessed the opening event of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival when The Harmonium Project lit up the outside of the Usher Hall.
Designed to celebrate 50 years of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, the free outdoor animated performance saw artworks designed by 59 Productions projected onto the hall, in synchronisation with John Adams’ mesmerising choral work Harmonium.
HEALTH UNDER FIRE – Greater Manchester Fringe Festival
Health Under Fire is a fast-paced comedy. It could be described as Monty Python meets An Inspector Calls or somewhere in the realm of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker spoof comedy films of the 1980s; think Airplane and The Naked Gun and you’re almost there.
Love Birds: How to cast penguins and parrots in a new musical
How do you cast a new musical that requires a cast of parrots and penguins? After 14 years of casting films, TV dramas and plays, seasoned casting director Stephen Moore makes his musical theatre casting debut with Love Birds, a family musical by Robert J Sherman (son of Robert B Sherman of the Sherman Brothers fame) which premieres at next month’s Edinburgh Fringe.
NEWS: An Audience with Jimmy Savile transfers to Edinburgh Fringe
Jonathan Maitland’s AN AUDIENCE WITH JIMMY SAVILE, which recently broke the all time box office and attendance records at Park Theatre in London, and is playing there until 11 July 2015, will transfer to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 11 to 22 August 2015.
4 x 4 EPHEMERAL ARCHITECTURES – Touring
4 x 4 Ephemeral Architectures invites two beautiful, but integrally different, art forms to share a stage for the first time. Directed by internationally renowned juggler Sean Gandini and with choreography by Royal Ballet dancer Ludovic Ondiviela, Gandini Juggling return to The Lowry to collaborate with classical ballet dancers.
I WENT TO A FABULOUS PARTY – King’s Head
Fridays aren’t serious reviewing nights and the friend who suggested this piece to me described it as “some shit for gays” which despite our shared and enthusiastic homosexuality is the shorthand we use for frothy-to-filthy comedies of the sort often presented at venues in Vauxhall. But the King’s Head was on the way to a nice restaurant, so what the hell, and it’s a preview for the Edinburgh Fringe which may save me the bother of two urticarious weeks in midge-ridden Scotland.
The Letter Room debut Five Feet in Front at The Lowry ahead of Edinburgh
Newcastle based company, associate artists at Northern Stage and Edinburgh Fringe 2014 favourites, The Letter Room are bringing their new show Five Feet in Front to the Lowry Studio next week. The Letter Room will debut Five Feet in Front…
BETA TESTING – Udderbelly, Southbank
With August looming over the horizon, there comes a time when the critic needs to harden up, sit on some prickly astroturf leaning on a dustbin, eating a falafal wrap and staring up forebodingly at an enormous upturned purple inflatable cow. Just to remember that it’ll soon be time to brace up for the Edinburgh Fringe. Luckily, London has its own Udderbelly season now, with every kind of oddity and adventure and show-off and physical-theatre explosion. So down I went to see the Circus Geeks explain the nature and psychology of juggling.
What makes Edinburgh a cultural success? Desire Lines survey published
Publication of Call to Action:
Desire Lines, Edinburgh’s city-wide conversation about the cultural and creative future of Edinburgh, concludes today with the online publication of its Call to Action.
WAVES – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
✭✭✭✭✩ A bigger splash:
Diving into a world she makes so real that you can’t tell where her story ends and reality begins, Alice Mary Cooper tells the tale of Elizabeth Moncello – creator of the Butterfly stroke.