Theatre
David Kettle
Refuse, Assembly George Square Studios ★★★★Maks works as a bin man in a small Ukrainian town. His little son might get picked on at school and told he’s smelly because of his dad’s occupation, but Maks is content with his lot, his soulmate of a wife Valentyna, his sense of connection with the community and its colourful characters, and also the feeling that he’s actually contributing something to their lives. Even to that of flirty, lonely Yelena, whose isolated house sits at the very end of his run.There are moments early on when writer Lucy McIlgorm’s touching drama looks like it’s heading Read more ...
David Kettle
What new light can the age-old legend of Faust selling his soul to the devil shed on colonialism in Africa, slavery, the rape and destruction of the natural world, the exploitation and murder of the continent’s people? It’s a question you may well still be asking yourself after experiencing the visually spectacular but thematically opaque Faustus in Africa! from Cape Town-based Handspring Puppet Company and director/designer William Kentridge.There’s a lot to admire in the show, which arrives at the Edinburgh International Festival in a reworking of the company’s original 1995 production – Read more ...
David Kettle
Imprints, Summerhall ★★★★Keep your wits about you for this appropriately tricksy, sometimes elusive but beautifully put together show from young company the Palimpsest Project. For a work that’s ultimately about memory, Imprints is just as unreliable, misleading and red herring-filled as its subject matter, and it takes something of a clear head to work your way through its maze of figures, objects and incidents from a barely recalled teenage encounter at a Christian summer camp.Charlie’s back home from art school, which means awkward conversations with former schoolmates from whom she’s Read more ...
David Kettle
The Ode Islands, Pleasance at EICC ★★★★ I might be going out on a limb here, but you’re unlikely to encounter anything quite like The Ode Islands elsewhere on the Fringe – perhaps anywhere, to be honest. That’s both in terms of form and content. Let’s get the first of those out of the way: Irish-born, Hastings-based solo performer Ornagh (yes, she’s single-named) dances, acts and lip-synchs sandwiched between two screens, interacting with intricate CGI both as a backdrop of psychedelic landscapes and in the foreground as monsters, demons and more. The effect isn’t always 100% faultless, Read more ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
David Kettle
The Fit Prince (who gets switched on the square in the frosty castle the night before (insert public holiday here)), Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★They’ve created an affectionate but merciless send-up of Princess Di; they’ve lampooned Gwyneth Paltrow, her lifestyle brand Goop and her (ahem) unfortunate skiing collision; and they’ve even got their claws into the horror show that was the movie version of Cats. Awkward Productions – aka real-life couple Linus Karp and Joseph Martin – have a well-rehearsed arsenal of tried-and-tested techniques for skewering those who deserve it (or, in many cases, don Read more ...
David Kettle
As shockingly beautiful as it is horrifyingly brutal, actor Armando Babaioff’s deeply Brazilian adaptation of thriller Tom at the Farm leaves a rancid taste in the mouth and harrowing images seared on the retina. It’s a show to shock and provoke, but also to deeply disorientate, blurring the boundaries between pain and pleasure, desire and repulsion in a way that stays with you, whether you want it to or not.And it’s quickly become something of a classic text, beginning life in 2011 as a play by Canadian Michel Marc Bouchard, before being filmed by Xavier Dolan in 2013. Babaioff returned it Read more ...
David Kettle
With the sheer density of theatrical creations jostling for attention across Edinburgh’s festivals, there’s no shortage of arresting stagings, innovative visuals and powerful, memorable design. (Just take Cena Brasil Internacional’s shocking Tom at the Farm as one particularly epic, raw example.)The sheer scale of the theatrical ambition on display in Works and Days from Antwerp theatre collective FC Bergman, however, might just make your jaw drop again and again. But it’s a fitting theatrical response to a particularly epic subject: nothing less than the history of civilisation itself, told Read more ...
Every Brilliant Thing, @sohoplace review - return of the comedy about suicide that lifts the spirits
Helen Hawkins
The Fringe piece Duncan Macmillan devised with Jonny Donahoe in 2014 has since been round the world and back, finally landing in the West End. It feels as freshly minted as ever.The premise is simple: a performer takes an audience through the story of his mother’s three suicide attempts, the last one fatal, calling on them to participate when he gives his cues. An assistant director has cased the joint before curtain up, choosing people and giving them numbered cards; some will play a significant part in the story. For the play’s current run, five different performers are leading the Read more ...