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- What makes acts such as the Blue Man Group and Stomp! so effective and impressive is their incredibly tight and rigorous performances, with everyone involved knowing what is coming next. This kind of ...
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- This imaginative piece of writing weaves its tale of the devastating effect of dementia in amongst the childhood fairytales using a traditional cottage setting, aided by the damp, musty air of the Bab...
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- There is a sense in which a performance with a high risk-factor, such as acapella close harmony singing, is engrossing mainly due to the boldness on display. We are enraptured because, depending on ou...
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- Mawilla walks into the wasteland which used to be the shopping centre of his town, Itsoseng. He is dragging a metal case, containing all his belongings, and he is carrying with him his blue suit, whic...
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- What impresses most on hearing Will Self talk for an hour is the man's ability to maintain his sardonic verbosity at all times. The North London writer is in Edinburgh promoting his new novel the Butt...
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- ‘We interrupt this music to warn you that this material may not be suitable for those with a weak heart'. Or apparently those over the age of 18, as my friend Andy and I surveyed the 2000 or so ...
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- Complete with pink and blond mohicans, the well known faces of Japanese comedy duo Gamarjobat are back for another show of physical comedy and audience interaction. Their style is cheeky and charming ...
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- Geeky can be endearing but Sandling misses the mark and his show is uncomfortable, lacking in structure, and decidedly lacking in laughs. He ponders whether this third part of his VHS trilogy will be ...
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- Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens make for a welcome sojourn from the city centre's streets crammed with frazzled Fringe goers and persistent promoters. Nestled among the beautifully landscaped and pl...
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- This suavely dressed 11-person ensemble all the way from the States offers its audience a lot, not a little, of everything from dancin' on our feet to swayin' in our seat . After only a tiny bit of ta...
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- The stage, as it appears before the start of The Third Condiment, gives audiences a good idea of what to expect. Three bean bag chairs rest on the floor while behind them on a small ikea table sit an ...
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- Playing in the darkness of the Pleasance Courtyard Cavern, the Reduced Edinburgh Impro Show, are marking themselves out as one of the best improvised comedy groups at this years festival.
The premi...
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- This year the International Book Festival have pulled off a coup, stealing Mark Watson from the funny lot up the road. However, putting a comic on the bill is no sign of dumbing down; the affable Wels...
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- Deborah Frances- White new offering this year teaches us how to attract the opposite sex, in a highly amusing show which combines stand up with a masterclass in the rules of flirtation. The performer ...
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- Bouncing out to Jus' A Rascal, Dizzee met the expectant Liquid Room crowd on Thursday and the chants of ‘Dizzee, Dizzee, Dizzee F**ing Rascal' that became more and more frenzied as his arrival b...
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- Mark Watson's 2007 show, Can I Briefly Talk To You About The Point Of Life?, was one of the best shows I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Starting from within the audience and charming the 300 stro...
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- ‘It's a book reading' Hall explains to a slightly bemused audience. I thought I came here for stand-up. Rich Hall, it appears, is feeling a pang of ‘comedic pressure' in his life, and find...
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- Having never been on one of Edinburgh's Tour buses it's hard to tell how interesting they'd be - and how quickly the idea of an open-top bus on the East coast of Scotland would be exposed as lunacy. P...
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- Potency is a fast paced and slick site-specific play in Edinburgh sports club. The disconcerting power of both America's largest private army in Iraq and the media combines and contrasts with an energ...
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- It's a sign of a burgeoning genre that the Shrimps use the abbreviated ‘Improv' in their title, safe in the knowledge that they will be understood by a public increasingly aware of the comedy fo...
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- Few comedians can exude the wit and charm of Clive James. In his typically laid back fashion (and M&S stylish ensemble) we are guided through his thoughts about a variety of subjects; from the Olympic...
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- Felix promises to stick to what he knows. What he knows is middle-of-the-road comedy for middle-aged people, by a middle-of-the-road-and-middle-aged man. Never edgy or interesting, he skirts over stab...
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- Slick and stylish sketch-comedy troupe Idiots Of Ants (marvellous pun intended) return to Edinburgh fresh from a string of TV appearances including the best sketch about Facebook you're likely to see....
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- Exuding charm and with an abundance of charisma, Tom Allen is our host for an hour of storytelling. His relaxed and inoffensive delivery is certainly a brilliant remedy to the abundance of abrasive co...
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- The Golden Ticket Winner has been announced!
Congratulations to Charles Manson from Edinburgh who enjoyed the following prizes
Fringe -Two tickets to the if.comedies awards ceremony, featu...
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- Whew! Russell Howard's chatty laugh extravaganza is absolutely exhausting, in a good way. He's scarily at ease as he tirelessly zig-zags his audience in a rollercoaster of random tales, interupting th...
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- Dublin's Project Arts Centre commissioned David O'Doherty to write something for kids that wasn't “crappy” and ‘I Can't Sleep' was the result. Audiences can look forward to nearly an...
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- Being a keen historian, and alleged descendent of James Watt, Andrew O'Neill's Totally Spot on History of Britain held great promise for your reviewer. Unfortunately the show served as a good warning:...
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- Special School, hats on jam jars and sneezing during oral sex: Fabbri's material is a lot of things, but it is not intelligent. This is one of the main ideas in a show exploring stupidity. Why is it, ...
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- Arriving at the suitably stale Appleton Tower you would be forgiven for feeling a little nervous of what you've let yourself in for on a rainy Tuesday. Office Party is intimidating and awkward, hilari...
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- A powerful piece of theatre telling the stories of volunteer members of the SS, Ruhe has all the more impact because of the very banality of its verbatim accounts. Interwoven with the music of Shubert...
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- It must be daunting for rehearsed acts to see this show and be confronted with the sheer energy and imagination produced with such finesse by an improvised show, made up on the spot night after night....
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- If.comedy's 2007 winner Brendon Burns returns to Edinburgh and the gentile surroundings of the Assembly Rooms with a show that features a pointless and overblown beginning like no other you're likely ...
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- It has become rather du jour for comedians to integrate video footage into their shows. At times, this can create very funny and clever moments (see Idiots of Ants or Glen Wool) but Pam Ann takes this...
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- Leaving the Pleasance Courtyard and being taken to an underwhelmingly sterile conference centre down the road does not normally make for a promising start to a show. Luckily, what awaits the small aud...
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- Steam is a brash and showy musical rehash of the classic 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and I can only assume the origin of the title stems from the fact that steam rhymes with dream, with the rest of th...
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- Class Enemy left me with a headache. No, not a metaphorical one, a real one, because I've just spent the best part of two hours staring at a small screen instead of watching a piece of theatre.
Br...
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- A high-octane, snappy hour of sketches all taking place in the same hotel room, this show restored my faith in the genre after having seen several disappointing attempts elsewhere. Four young men play...
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- What a shame if you went to this show under any misapprehension that it had anything at all to do with the celebrated film and TV show. Apart from the choice of name for ‘Hotlips', the missing f...
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- Trite, forced rhyming language and rigid, two-dimensional acting were what was on offer in this duologue. A couple escape the city with its dirt, stress and terrorism and move into a dream house by th...
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- Comedians often strut around the Fringe being offensive for the sake of it. Much of the time this provokes an audience reaction funnier than the actual joke, or simply grabs a headline. Thankfully Nic...
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- Francesca Beard is a known poet and runs workshops and master-classes in creative writing for school children and adults. Obviously a very creative and capable woman, why then has she created a childr...
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- As men and women glided and writhed around each other's bodies and glitter wafted and pulsed into the air around them, this promised to be a stunning show. And, for the most part, it really was. Dance...
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- In these troubled international times, with Russia resurgent and recession looming, we would do well to remember how little things change. In the west for example, there is often a Whiggish tendency t...
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- Loosely based on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, this dance duet represents an older man's infatuation with a younger man, their concern for beauty and youth, and the young man's spiralling ...
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- This is an astonishing and eclectic music odyssey by the Bostonian jazz musician, Stan Strickland. Strickland takes the audience on an imaginative and intense journey through his past memories. His st...
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- Harry! is based on Hamlet in much the same way that West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet. When Harry, an art-loving dreamer, hears about his father's death he finds himself drawn back into the...
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- When Sarah Kane's final play premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, only months after her suicide, her rambling, poetic text of undefined characters still had the power to shock (and scandalize) theatr...
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- Being Yerma is a daring adaption of Lorca's 1934 folk tragedy, performed by the Italian ensemble Teatro Dei Borgia. This is a play which brings to life the sense of danger and creative energy which un...
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- This gory tale of a vigilante murderer dishing out justice to priests who abuse children is well told in an engaging and confrontational performance by Owen O'Neill.
O'Neill's style is slick, bol...
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- The publicity for this show sells it as something rather more exciting and unusual than it is – “a climber hangs halfway up a Siberian rock formation. His name is Hal. And he's screaming.&...
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- A comic-book style tale of intrigue, politics and corruption centred around a new, terrifying, cure for cancer this darkly funny and original adventure story oozes playful wit and panache. Admittedly...
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- Company, one of Stephen Sondheim's best loved and most successful musicals, is both musically and stylistically very hard to pull off. The songs are technically difficult as well as being nuanced and ...
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- Johnny Depp: Renaissance man, pirate, sex god and less than adequate barber. He can even play the guitar! What a guy! No doubt he will one day get his rightful place in the pantheon next to Dante, Sha...
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- Saunders is now a celebrity – he played on Sky Poker this year and almost won. He uses this as the start of his show, mentions the lump on his testicle that made him feel a little too aware of h...
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- The Angel and the Woodcutter is a traditional Korean folktale. An angel comes down to earth and is found by a woodcutter and his besotted mother. The angel and the woodcutter fall in love, making the ...
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- So energetic he's exhausting to watch, Monahan is a confident – to the point of being cocky – performer. He rushes onstage giving high-fives left, right and centre and looks like the cat t...
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- Rarely do the titles of comedy shows correspond in anyway with their content. It is rarer still to have a comedian that has not only done his research, but has helpfully provided us with a bibliograph...
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- It was always going to be a brave move to cast such a controversial celeb
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