Reviews
David Kettle
Ordinary Decent Criminal, Summerhall ★★★★★ Frankie learnt a thing or two about the police and how they work from his years as an activist. Fighting for crucial political causes, however, never seemed at odds with a sideline in drug-dealing – which, when the authorities got wind that the chocolate bars he was importing from Spain weren’t exactly Cadbury’s, earned him a few years inside. Once banged up, however, Frankie finds himself immersed in prison feuds, struggles for power, conflicts and unexpected connections.Ed Edwards’s vivid, vibrant solo play fits its performer – comedy legend, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Emmanuel Sonubi, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★This show – Life After Near Death – is not about dying, it is about living, Emmanuel Sonubi tells us. Well, actually it’s about both, as in his case he nearly died of heart failure but, thankfully here he is.A physically imposing figure, the comic – an ex-nightclub bouncer – certainly looks good, but then he has always been fit. But not fit and healthy, as we learn he had a taste for big nights out that would include “party sugar”. There’s only so long you can cane it before the Grim Reaper starts taking an interest.Sonubi Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979 was an all-time sci-fi/horror classic, and even an endless stream of sequels and spin-offs – Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, Alien vs Predator, Prometheus, Alien: Romulus et al – hasn’t diluted the electrifying impact of the original.Now FX and Disney have shovelled a shed-load of money into this glossily-produced series for TV, written and directed by Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion etc). But can it boldly go where no Alien-related product has gone before?Er... not really, it's more a case of reshuffling themes from previous incarnations. Alien: Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“When have you ever gone off alone?” scoffs Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) when his wife, Maria (Mirja Turestedt), expresses the wish to go to England rather than Morocco for their joint sabbatical. Famous last words.Caroline Ingvarsson’s debut feature, adapted from Swedish writer Håkan Nesser’s complex psychological thriller The Living and the Dead in Winsford, is big on atmosphere but leaves too much to the imagination, skimming over the surface of the book, which is well worth reading, and extracting only bare, unsustaining bones.Something bad goes down in a bunker, but it’s hard to tell Read more ...
David Kettle
Kinder, Underbelly, Cowgate ★★★ Drag artist Goody Prostate (yes, I know) receives a call from a local library. Garbed in lederhosen and sporting a preposterous German accent, she was expecting a brutal, no-prisoners-taking drag roast battle. Instead, she finds that she’s actually been booked to read to a bunch of kids.Okay, the starting point for Melbourne-based actor/writer Ryan Stewart’s solo show might not be the Fringe’s most convincing, but it nonetheless offers up plenty of opportunities for a dissection of current moral panics, and of the rights and wrongs of introducing children Read more ...
Gary Naylor
I have two guilty secrets about the theatre – okay, two I’m prepared to own up to right here, right now. I quite enjoy some jukebox musicals and I often prefer schools-oriented, pared back, slightly simplified Shakespeare to the full-scale Folio versions. There – I’ve outed myself!So when I read that Joanna Bowman’s production of the rarely staged The Two Gentlemen of Verona was "a new 80-minute edit that’s the perfect introduction to Shakespeare for families" staged in The Other Place, where the history and iconography of Stratford Upon Avon hangs less heavy in the air, I was intrigued. Read more ...
Simon Thompson
There’s a lot to shout about in this Orpheus, especially the way it looks. In a thin year for staged opera at the Edinburgh International Festival, they’ve gone for an eye-popper with this staging of Gluck’s most influential work. Premiering at Australia’s Opera Queensland in 2019, its star attraction is the Brisbane-based Circa Ensemble, a group of acrobats, circus artists and physical performers whose antics light up the stage.As the opera begins, we see a solitary female performer suspended from the top of the proscenium who gradually dances, rotates and levitates her way to the stage Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Eric Rushton, Monkey Barrel ★★★★ Everything about Eric Rushton is lo-fi. His delivery, his movement about the stage, his interactions with the audience. Even the subject matter of this show – mental health, lost love – is low-key. Yet with his deadpan delivery and finely wrought gags, he commands the audience and delivers a lot of laughs.He tells a personal story, although one or two set-ups may have some comedic licence. But the core of Innkeeper – about how Rushton has come to handle his sometimes fragile mental health – has the imprimatur of lived experience.He takes us back to Read more ...
David Kettle
The Horse of Jenin, Pleasance Dome ★★★★★ Alaa Shehada bounds onto the stage, all muscular energy and swaggering self-confidence, for what’s effectively a cross between stand-up and solo theatre. Is it wrong to joke about Palestine? Definitely not, the larger-than-life, matey Shehada clearly thinks, finding plenty that’s funny, or certainly much that’s bleakly ironic, in his native city of Jenin in the West Bank, its cast of flawed, colourful characters, and its strange and awkward ways of life. With the threatening spectre of Israeli occupation constantly in the background.In many ways, Read more ...
James Saynor
Andrew Garfield was 29 when he played the teenage Spiderman and Jennifer Grey was 27 when she took on a decade-younger-than-her character called “Baby” in Dirty Dancing. So you’d think that directors and casting experts could find actors to advance on the screen through that kind of age gap readily enough.But this French kissing-and-clobbering epic opts to recast its romantic leads midway through as they jump from teens to twenties, and it’s one reason why the Hauts-de-France Romeo and Juliet – directed by Gilles Lellouche – wrings few tears or heart-skips over its two-and-three-quarter-hour Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
You can't explain stage presence like Anoushka Shankar’s. It just "is". When she steps out in front of a completely packed Royal Albert Hall, and utters a welcoming, exploratory, London-ish “Hi... welcome to my Prom… Oh, my God!”, a friendly connection with audience is made. Instantly and with disarming ease.Then come memories: she thinks back to having participated with her father in the Ravi Shankar Prom in 2005 and her further three appearances since then, notably one in 2020 with no audience: “It’s so much nicer to have you guys all in here.”And then, from the moment she starts to play, Read more ...
Simon Thompson
Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynyuk crafted a fine programme for their EIF recital, centring around Brahms’ relationship with the Schumanns. He famously met them in 1853, when Robert Schumann declared him the next great thing in German music. The following year, however, Robert attempted suicide, launching a decline that lasted until his death. Brahms stayed close to Clara until her death in 1896, in response to which he wrote the Vier ernste Gesänge. The only “originally scored” thing on the programme (★★★★) was Brahms’ Second Cello Sonata, which Grynyuk and Elschenbroich Read more ...