Edinburgh
David Nice
"Mitsuko Uchida plays Mozart" might have been the marketing tag to sell out this first concert in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's 2017-18 season (despite student and free under-18s take-up, the Usher Hall still wasn't full). "Dvořák Symphony No. 8" was in fact the headline, marking the launch of Robin Ticciati's last series as the SCO's hugely successful Principal Conductor. As it turned out, Berlioz's early Overture Les Francs-Juges offered the real shake-up of the evening, the shock of the new as good as a contemporary work – better than most instances – with an unusual complement for Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Oh dear. I thought that this was going to be one of those exciting fantasy films that livened up TV on weekend afternoons in my childhood, and that there would be kitschy special effects and ludicrous dialogue. But no, it's not 20,00 Leagues under the Sea, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or even Dr Doolittle. It's a turgid plough through a Jules Verne yarn which doesn't even introduce a freaky creature until almost 50 minutes into the storyline, and then it's just some poor old lizards matted into a drab seaside set. Journey to the Centre of the Earth frankly doesn't deserve the full Read more ...
David Kettle
You’ve got to hand it to David Greig. The artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre has shown quite a knack for surfing the zeitgeist with his programming – and more importantly, tackling urgent political issues in a properly theatrical way.He did it with last year’s season opener, Aeschylus’s The Suppliant Women, and its parallels with today’s refugee crises. He did it in August with Rhinoceros for the Edinburgh International Festival (a production that returns to the Lyceum in February), Zinnie Harris’s new Ionesco adaptation as a thinly veiled critique of Trump and how easily people Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s a tricky thing to get right, musical comedy. For every Victoria Wood, Tim Minchin or Bill Bailey, there are others – plenty of them at the Edinburgh Fringe, in fact – who find it more of a challenge to meld together the two forms so that they complement each other rather than compete.Comedian and composer Vikki Stone – trained at London’s Royal Academy, and a respected purveyor of comedy songs (as well as presenter of the BBC Proms podcasts) – is nothing if not ambitious in her Concerto for Comedian and Orchestra, which was given a one-off Fringe performance with the crack young Read more ...
David Kettle
“An affectionate look at different nationalities through their horses.” That was the memorably bizarre description by harpsichordist/conductor Richard Egarr of Telemann’s Les nations suite, with which he opened his second Queen’s Hall concert directing the Academy of Ancient Music at the Edinburgh International Festival.And indeed, there was a certain clippety-clop rhythm to much of Telemann’s writing, certainly brought out in Egarr’s wonderfully vivid, theatrical account, which made a convincing case for the piece referring to our equine friends.In fact, Egarr’s humorous introduction served Read more ...
theartsdesk
Wondering what on earth to choose between as you tramp the streets of the festival? These are our highlights so far.STANDUPAthenu Kugblenu, Underbelly Med Quad ★★★ Strong debut hour of political and identity comedyCally Beaton, The Caves ★★★★ Single motherhood, autism, sex with women, the corporate world: original and cleverDad’s Army Radio Hour, Pleasance Dome ★★★ Scripts of born-again sitcom classic delivered with real light and shadeDarren Harriott, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★ Extrovert with strong material on politics and personal historyElliot Steel, Gilded Ballroom ★★ Slacker lad's tales Read more ...
David Kettle
Skeletal horses; piles of newborn babies smothered in a bloody sheet; a whole garden centre of prickly pears. There’s no denying that Italian director Emma Dante’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, which Turin’s Teatro Regio brings to the Edinburgh International Festival, is visually dazzling, even at times hallucinatory.There’s a nagging concern, however, about what all the visual flamboyance actually adds up to – those perpetually procreating witches, seemingly modelled on the long-haired ghoul from Japanese horror film Ring; the imposing crown-formed decors; the circus fire eaters and Read more ...
David Kettle
Meet Me at Dawn ★★★★★ Edinburgh-based playwright Zinnie Harris is the subject of a particular focus at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, with three productions in collaborations with leading Scottish theatre companies. Her blazing adaptation of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros has been pulling crowds at the Lyceum Theatre, and her searing Aeschylus reboot This Restless House, created with Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland, opens next week.It’s another Greek myth – that of Orpheus and Eurydice – that simmers in the background of Meet Me at Dawn at the Read more ...
David Kettle
It was an intriguing, contrast-filled programme that Swiss-born pianist Andreas Haefliger brought to Edinburgh for his Queen’s Hall recital at the International Festival. Two masterpieces of musical picture painting – Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and the smaller but equally evocative St Francis of Assisi’s Sermon to the Birds by Liszt – alongside two far more abstract works: Berg’s compact but punchy Sonata Op. 1 and Beethoven’s Op. 101 Sonata.You might have expected two entirely different musical approaches, then – one all hot-headed, vivid musical storytelling, the other cool and Read more ...
David Kettle
Pike St ★★★★ London-based theatre company Paines Plough’s pop-up touring venue Roundabout has been a regular Edinburgh Fringe fixture for the past four years, nestled in nicely among the redeveloped veterinary buildings of Summerhall. And it’s been home to some of the Fringe’s most exciting new writing, too, both from Paines Plough itself and visiting companies. Pike St is a near-miraculous solo show featuring a tour-de-force performance by New Yorker Nilaja Sun, who also wrote its very funny and very moving text. Miraculous (or near miraculous at least) not only because of Sun’s uncanny, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Allen ★★★★ Tom Allen is celebrating his 10th year at the Fringe, and he appears to be having a ball – and so do we. He bounds on stage full of energy and does a fantastically strong 10 minutes' interaction with the audience, and when he finds comedy gold in the front row with a management consultant, a nurse on a liver ward and a judge, he dextrously weaves details of their lives into the show.Absolutely is more of the conversational comedy that Allen has honed over the past decade, and there's a pleasing touch of the television host about him (someone please give this man Read more ...
David Kettle
A society that segregates men and women, prescribes what women can learn, read, wear, even which words they can say. A society willing to sacrifice its own people to maintain its repressive theocratic orthodoxy. Sound familiar?There are plenty of contemporary resonances in The Divide, the mysterious new Alan Ayckbourn creation unveiled to the world at the Edinburgh International Festival, a co-production with London’s Old Vic and travelling to the capital at the start of 2018. And as they say, it’s Ayckbourn, but not as we know him. This is a massive, six-hour, two-play event that plays out Read more ...