wed 18/12/2024

Edinburgh

Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgement

The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: L'Addition / Long Distance / The Sun, the Mountain and Me

L’Addition, Summerhall ★★★★ Bert and Nasi – or, more fully, writers/directors/actors Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas – are virtually Fringe royalty, having carved out a niche in recent years with playful, provocative shows that question...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: REVENGE: After the Levoyah / Puddles and Amazons

REVENGE: After the Levoyah, Summerhall ★★★★★ The Jews have had enough. After decades – centuries, in fact – of suspicion, name-calling, finger-pointing and violent persecution, they can’t even leave their Gants Hill or Barkingside flats, where...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Òran / This Town

Òran, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ Glasgow-based theatre company Wonder Fools are having a particularly busy Fringe. Alongside a revival of their excellent football drama Same Team at the Traverse Theatre, their far smaller, more intimate show...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Ni Mi Madre / Bi-Curious George: Queer Planet

Ni Mi Madre, Pleasance Dome ★★★★ Philip Larkin offered a famously pithy assessment of parents’ impact on their offspring’s future lives. It’s one that Brazilian/Ecuadorian/Italian/Dominican writer and performer Arturo Luíz Soria would no doubt...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Bellringers / Suitcase Show

Bellringers, Roundabout @ Summerhall ★★★★ Dystopian climate-crisis dramas seemed ten-a-penny at the Fringe a few years back, but they’re far thinner on the ground in 2024. Which makes this deliciously elusive, oblique debut drama from Daisy...

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Bostridge, Osborne, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - the heights and the abyss

When you stop to think about it, Schwanengesang is a pretty ridiculous thing. Schubert’s final song cycle was famously put together by his publishers after his death, and so it’s barely a cycle at all. Therefore, unlike Die schöne Müllerin and...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: The Sound Inside / So Young

The Sound Inside, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★ Adam Rapp’s unapologetically intricate, bookish two-hander arrives for its UK premiere at the Traverse Theatre following a successful run in New York, including no fewer than six Tony nominations. It’s not a...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: In Two Minds / My English Persian Kitchen

In Two Minds, Traverse Theatre ★★★★ Mother is finally getting her kitchen extension. It’s a lot of work, though, and it’ll take several weeks. So she’ll have to move in – temporarily – with her Daughter, in her city studio flat, while the work...

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Bach/Mendelssohn St Matthew Passion / First Night at the Hub, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - a reimagining and a joyous celebration

When I first started attending the Edinburgh International Festival in the 1990s, the Opening Concert (capitals intentional) was a grand Usher Hall affair on a Sunday evening; a central work of the western classical tradition to set the festival...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: The Mosinee Project / Gwyneth Goes Skiing

The Mosinee Project, Underbelly Cowgate ★★★★In May 1950, a small US town awoke to hammer-and-sickle flags hanging from lamp-posts, its local newspaper transformed into a Soviet propaganda journal, its citizens’ firearms confiscated and handed...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Jin Hao Li / Sian Davies

Jin Hao Li Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★Jin Hao Li was born in China, raised in Singapore and studied English at a Scottish university. So it’s perhaps not surprising that, in drawing on so many cultural sources, his brand of comedy should be so...

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