Reviews
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Casting the Runes / The Return / WoodhillSaturday, 12 August 2023
Casting the Runes, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ A viciously critical review gets its unfortunate writer driven mad and sent to an untimely death in this adaptation of a macabre MR James chiller. In that case, I’d better be careful what I say... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Rob Auton / Laura Davis / Matt FordeSaturday, 12 August 2023
Rob Auton, Assembly @Roxy ★★★★ Rob Auton has previously done shows around a theme – the colour yellow, hair, the sky, to name a few - because, he says, he can become a little bit obsessed with a subject. Now, though, he wants to do his most... Read more... |
Trojan Women / Thrown, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 reviews - passionate all-women productionsFriday, 11 August 2023
Trojan Women, Festival Theatre ★★★★★You can feel the white-hot intensity radiating from the stage virtually from start to finish of this remarkable, hypnotic production from the National Changgeuk Company of Korea and Singaporean director... Read more... |
Schiff, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer / Emmanuel Ceysson & Friends, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 review - Hungariana and harpFriday, 11 August 2023
You’d feel short-changed if an orchestra like the Budapest Festival Orchestra came to the Edinburgh Festival and didn’t play some Hungarian music, so why not put together a whole concert of the stuff? The musicians of the BFO are fiercely proud of... Read more... |
Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe review - uneven production of intermittent powerFriday, 11 August 2023
That Shakespeare speaks to his audiences anew with every production is a cliché, but, like so many such, the glib blandness of the assertion conceals an insistent truth. The Thane of Glamis has had some success in life, gains preferment from those... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Groomed / Let the Bodies PileFriday, 11 August 2023
Groomed Pleasance Dome ★★★★“How can a truth be told? How can a secret be spoken?” Patrick Sandford asks in Groomed, his searingly honest account of his experience of abuse by a teacher at primary school several decade ago. Over 50 minutes he... Read more... |
Ilker Arcayürek, Malcolm Martineau, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 review - vocal tension saved by poetic pianismThursday, 10 August 2023
It’s an everyday story of festival folk. The festival’s Queen’s Hall concert on Wednesday morning was meant to be a song recital from Günther Groissböck, but he cancelled at (I’m told very) short notice due to illness and the festival team had to... Read more... |
Masha Karp: George Orwell and Russia review - dystopia's realityThursday, 10 August 2023
The war in Ukraine, which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists on calling a “special military operation”, may have given fresh urgency to George Orwell’s warning in Nineteen Eighty-Four of the dangers of totalitarian newspeak. Yet, as Masha... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2023 reviews: FOOD / DuskThursday, 10 August 2023
FOOD, The Studio ★★★There’s no denying it: Los Angeles-born Geoff Sobelle is a theatrical magician (quite literally – it’s how he began his career). Through a string of visually spectacular shows on the Fringe and more recently at the... Read more... |
L'immensità review - enigmatic portrait of a trans teen in an unhappy familyThursday, 10 August 2023
Emanuele Crialese’s latest, L’immensità, is an oddity. It’s perfectly formed, yet still feels as if its final reel went missing. Its title – usually translated as “infinity” – is typical of this enigmatic quality. “L’immensità” turns out to be... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Amos Gill/ Lorna Rose Treen/ CrizardsThursday, 10 August 2023
Amos Gill Gilded Balloon ★★★★Amos Gill used to be a human rights lawyer and describes himself as a lefty progressive. But some of his views – or at least those delivered here to great comedic effect – might suggest otherwise. In his hour... Read more... |
Album: Laura Groves - Radio RedThursday, 10 August 2023
“Sky at Night” begins Radio Red. Its brooding atmosphere is shared with Saint Etienne’s “Hobart Paving.” Also, a sinuous sense of melody is at one with Todd Rundgren’s finest ballads. Melodic filigrees suggest Laura Nyro or Brighton band The Mummers... Read more... |
