fri 04/07/2025

Reviews

Shetland, Series 7, BBC One review - Douglas Henshall is back for the last time as Jimmy Perez

The last couple of series of Shetland (BBC One) brought the previously much-loved series alarmingly close to shark-jumping territory, converting the remote and thinly-populated Shetland archipelago into a war zone teeming with people-trafficking...

Read more...

Eiffel review - sensuous secret history

This is a romantic historical epic with elan, giving sensual immediacy to a fanciful secret history of the Eiffel Tower, here inspired by a forbidden, rekindled romance between Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) and Arlette Bourgès (Sex Education’s Emma...

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Temping / Work.txt

Temping, Assembly George Square Studios ★★★★Sarah Jane is away in Hawaii. But don’t worry – she’s left plenty of instructions for your day temping in the actuaries’ office, checking voicemails, answering emails, updating spreadsheets. After all, it’...

Read more...

Nope review - more a nope than a yep

Writer/director Jordan Peele’s first two features were horror films with bells on, their genuinely creepy chills accompanied by sharp, satirical social comment. Both were so good that there seemed absolutely no reason to doubt the next. And for...

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Afghanistan Is Not Funny / Yippee Ki Yay / Eh Up, Me Old Flowers!

Afghanistan Is Not Funny, Gilded Balloon ★★★★ Henry Naylor’s Arabian Nightmares trilogy - about the West’s misadventures in Syria and Iraq and how we have learned nothing - were hits at previous festivals; now he presents this new show,...

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Every Word was Once an Animal / Tim Crouch: Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel

Every Word was Once an Animal, Zoo Southside ★★★★Ghent-based theatre company Ontroerend Goed have been prodding and provoking Fringe audiences for years, sometimes forcefully – as in 2001’s controversial, confrontational, crowd-baiting Audience – or...

Read more...

Rusalka, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - sumptuous rendition of a watery fable

The last-minute indisposition of your leading lady is enough to give festival directors palpitations, let alone their audiences, now forewarned by the dreaded email thudding into inboxes. And so it was that Andrew Moore, Head of Music at the...

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Kiri Pritchard-McLean / Lou Sanders / Snort

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Monkey Barrel ★★★★Wearing a heavily sequinned leotard - she thought this was how we’d all dress after “living in trackies during lockdown” - Kiri Pritchard-McLean wants to address some very serious subjects, such as...

Read more...

Prom 31, Alder, Ulster Orchestra, Rustioni review - a summer night's dream

The Ulster Orchestra’s Prom finished early to accommodate a late-night concert by the esteemed Tredegar Band – but by then, we’d already enjoyed one spectacular brass showcase. Under its justly-praised chief conductor Daniele Rustioni (formerly...

Read more...

All of Us, National Theatre review - revelatory, but problematic

Has the pandemic made us more angry? Although Francesca Martinez’s debut play, which is at the National Theatre, was programmed before COVID, its belated opening has not dampened the playwright’s fiery criticism of the effects of Tory government...

Read more...

Edinburgh Fringe 2022 reviews: Colin Hoult / Nick Helm / Susie McCabe

Colin Hoult: The Death of Anna Mann, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★★ Anna Mann – actress, singer, welder (you’ve got to have a back-up in this business, darling) – is the monstrous creation of Colin Hoult.She was last seen at the Fringe five...

Read more...

Gustav Metzger: Earth Minus Environment, Kestle Barton review - an illuminating glimpse of a visionary activist-artist

In later life Gustav Metzger appeared a marginal, eccentric figure. The diminutive, white-bearded artist, was often to be seen round London’s galleries in the early to mid-2010s, dropping off piles of hand-produced fliers urging his fellow artists...

Read more...
Subscribe to Reviews