Theatre
| 30 August 2009
Zoo @ 140 The Pleasance
24-29 August, 20.25
An examination of masochistic, co-dependent lesbian relationship, inspired by ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ and ‘Lassie Come Home’. What?!
| 30 August 2009
The Space @ Venue 45
6-29 August, 16.10
Wide-eyed pioneers turned settlers. The hopes and dreams that founded a nation. A model of the Empire State Building; each window the gate to a story, a dream.
| 30 August 2009
The Vault
28-31 August, 17.45
I’ve been trying to work out what it was about this production that made me so angry because, to be fair to ‘Two Shades of Blue’, the Fringe is all about this type of student-led light entertainment. They are its irreverent, innovative beating heart, and – when done right - what makes this festival such a magnificent bloody mess.
| 29 August 2009
Assembly @ Assembly Hall
6-31 August, 17.25
Transfixing in its ring of truth and through the stellar performance of solo actor Liam Brennan, Djupid (The Deep) is breathtaking, life-affirming theatre.
| 29 August 2009
Stand Comedy Club
7-30 August (ex. 17), 13.00
If Scotland ever produces a film equivalent of Reservoir Dogs the starting point must surely be Gagarin Way. It’s a performance sweating with tension, frustration and violence.
| 29 August 2009
St Peter’s
26-29 August, 19.45
A basic text that sparkles is complemented by some witty modern additions to make this a thoroughly enjoyable, community-spirited evening.
| 29 August 2009
Underbelly
23-30 August, 13.45
This exploration of life as the outsider, told by a black man who never knew another black person until he was 18, is a humorous and timely look at contemporary attitudes to race.
| 29 August 2009
Traverse Theatre
19-30 August, times vary.
This year's production by 'Inspector Sands' theatre company had a lot to live up to, following last year's sell out debut of 'Hysteria'. Continuing the theme of 21st Century obsessions with self-fulfillment, 'If That's All There Is', seems a little darker than most problem-comedies.
| 29 August 2009
Edinburgh University Medical School
22-31 August, 19.30
A tall, strong, tuxedoed character strides smoothly and silently past me and into the backlit doorway in front of a gasping audience.
| 28 August 2009
Theatre Workshop
24-29 August 12.00
The post show party of CAODS’s 1970 amateur dramatic production of The Sound of Music proved to be a beginning for some (it was here his parents’ romance began) and the end for others (another actor collapsed whilst playing the guitar, eventually dying that same evening). His father was a Nazi, his mother a nun.
| 28 August 2009
Assembly @ George Street
6– 1 August (ex. 10, 17 and 24), 14.50
Following the lives of a group of young women in the post-war era of austerity, Muriel Spark’s novel is set in a period of thrift, mending, making do and getting by. Contrasting the earthly pragmatism – even cynicism – of characters like Selina Redwood, with the pious distance of Joanna, a clergyman’s daughter, Spark depicted a Britain pregnant with the seeds of social and political change.
| 28 August 2009
Zoo Southside
7-31 August (ex.11, 18, 25) 17.00
Two writers stretch towards each other across the ether. In the 21st Century, Bret’s romance-radar is blocked. A writer of pornographic plays, he is unable to evoke true love, floundering instead in an embarrassment of felching, fellatio and tumescent phalluses.
| 28 August 2009
Underbelly's Hullabaloo
7-31 August, 20.10
The audience rolls into the Hullabaloo circus tent to the sound of Sinatra, welcomed by Megan Riordan ("Kim", as she will be known to us), looking every inch the casino hostess in her black cocktail dress. Her auburn hair is immaculately curled, she wears a red sash tied round her waist and is holding a tray of "Vegas cheese balls", which she busily offers around the crowd.
| 28 August 2009
The Space @ Venue 45
24-29 August, 14.25
A penal colony in late 1780s Australia is not a merry place, but between floggings, hangings and madness comes an opportunity to celebrate what many consider to be humanity’s greatest achievement: art. In this case the form is theatre, performed by convicts, in a double-edged attempt to civilise and liberate.
| 27 August 2009
Assembly @ George Street
6–30 August (ex 18), 19.30
More than another mere event, this is The Event. But don’t expect fizzling fireworks, lacy legged dancers, or acrobats. Instead The Event is a monologue told through the third person.
| 27 August 2009
University of Edinburgh Drill Hall
20–29 August, 22.30
Distant dull voices crackle over loudspeakers sending orders to the audience. Lights flash and alarms pulsate. A deep ambient drone wraps itself around the audience as they walk along the concrete floor to designated standing areas. A youthful enthusiasm, also seen when watching A Bridge Too Far or Where Eagles Dare, was evident in certain members of the audience.
| 27 August 2009
C Adams House @ C Venues
16-31 August, 19.30
“... it’s like that car advert...!”
Like a mother-of-five lost in Tesco on a Saturday morning hysterically looking for marmite, this thought kept dashing in and out of my mind throughout Brocante Sonore’s hour-long set.
| 27 August 2009
Assembly @ Assembly Hall
6-30 August (ex.17, 24) 18.20
“Isn’t it amazing how superficial things can make you feel so good?” asks Robyn Peterson, former couture model, primetime actress and star of this new one-woman exposé of the world of 1970s High Fashion.
| 27 August 2009
C Venue
23–30 August, 12.00
You go into mind out, sit down and scratch your head. You realise that the performance is playing with your expectations of a play, and is scripted as the previous two sentences have been. You are intrigued.
| 27 August 2009
The Zoo
7-31 August (ex.17) 17.45
Othello from Iago’s perspective: the vision of its playwright tossed aside, with one of the world’s most fascinating villains left to run amok? Good on you, Louise Hill, you genius!
More Articles...
- Metamorphosis
- Beachy Head
- The Sound of My Voice
- The Chronicles of Irania
- Anomie
- The Trial
- Snatch Paradise by Van Badham
- Billy Budd
- Durang/Durang by Christopher Durang
- A Life in Three Acts: Act Three
- The Rap Guide to Evolution
- Year of the Horse
- Precious Little Talent
- Metamorphosis
- Been So Long
- Meesterlijk-Showcasing the Best of Dutch Theatre
- East 10th Street
- Barflies
- David Leddy’s ‘Susurrus’
- Lola: The Life of Lola Montez
- Stand By Your Van
- My Life with the Dogs
- His Ghostly Heart
- Generation F
- Home of the Wriggler
- The Lamplighter's Lament
- The Hotel
- Chauntecleer and Pertelotte (A Beastly-Babel-Fable)
- Pythonesque
- Icarus 2.0
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Lochhead and Laula – Love, Love, Love
- Hou Hou Shahou’s Chorus of Descent
- Lord of the Flies
- Poets' Corner
- Internal
- Blondes
- Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Survival of (R)evolutionary Theories in the face of Scientific and Ecclesiastical Objections: being a Musical Comedy about Charles Darwin
- The Hotel
- The World’s Wife
- The Bitter Belief of Cotrone the Magician
- Hitler Alone
- The World Is Too Much: Theatre for Breakfast
- Little Gem
- The Palace of the End
- Go To Gaza, Drink The Sea
- David Leddy’s White Tea
- The Vagina Monologues
- My Darling Clemmie
- Our Country’s Good
- The Lady Boys of Bangkok
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- The Tale of Lady Stardust
- 21 Girlfriends
- Stefan Golaszewski Is a Widower
- Trainspotting
- Sylvia Plath- Three Women, The First Revival
- Sea Wall
- Midsummer (A Play With Songs)
- God: A Comedy by Woody Allen
- Muriel Spark
- Morecambe
- Denise Van Outen
- Cabaret
