Edinburgh
Veronica Lee
Chris Turner: Pretty Fly, Pleasance Courtyard ****This is Chris Turner's debut show as a stand-up, although his previous experience in improv group Racing Minds gives him a wonderful assurance on stage and an easy rapport with his audience.Turner, 24, is an impressive gagsmith and Pretty Fly is packed with jokes and puns, and displays his obsession with Roman numerals - “I've got literally MMs of them” - and the Periodic Table. Well he is, by his own admission, a nerdy archaeology and anthropology graduate.He tells an autobiographical story, about growing up obsessed with hip-hop, his student Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Adam of the Riches, Pleasance Dome ****No one is safe at an Adam Riches show from being grabbed to take part in his frantic sketch comedy; each skit in this hour of anarchy involves audience participation, from using someone's mouth as a cocktail mixer (compete with half a banana shoved in his gob) to having gents of a certain age “strumming” each other's hair, as if a harp.The latter happens during a long, multi-layered opening sketch in which Riches is Sean Bean, “Britain's most modest actor” who implores us to support “the straight-to-video market”. Riches creates a nicely cruel overview Read more ...
caroline.boyle
Like a canny political campaigner, the Edinburgh Art Festival offers “something for everyone”. In this singular year for Scotland, the festival weaves together strands concerning the independence referendum, the Commonwealth and the centenery of the beginning of the First World War. It also provides an introduction to a host of other ideas and artistic worlds. It's contemporary art that takes centre stage and its flagship is Generation. This multi-venue show takes over the imposing rooms of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art and is part of a Scotland-wide Read more ...
David Nice
“Ah now, I can’t promise you sun,” says a Scots lady-in-waiting of her native weather to a novice Englishwoman near the start of Rona Munro’s masterly James Plays. It’s the first of many references to make the audience laugh knowingly. Well, after four days of the worst weather Edinburgh Festivalgoers can remember, the sun came out yesterday morning. There’s no better place to be than the airy Queen’s Hall if you want an 11am recital of light and shade – and to say that of yesterday’s duo programme is an understatement. Come late afternoon, and the light was still dappling the green lawns and Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Cuckooed, Traverse Theatre *****Mark Thomas's new show is in the theatre section of the Fringe brochure, but this hour, full of laughs and witty lines as it is, could easily be under the heading of comedy. Indeed, Thomas once made his living as a stand-up, even if his career has long defied any pigeonholing; professional irritant, activist and satirist are just a few job titles that could apply.Cuckooed is a masterful piece of storytelling and in an engrossing hour in which Thomas tells of how he – a master prankster – was duped by "Martin", a former comrade in Campaign Against Arms Trade. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Bridget Christie: An Ungrateful Woman, The Stand *****This is the “difficult second album” show for Bridget Christie, despite her having done 10 years at the Fringe. She finally found her voice at last year's festival, deservedly winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award after a raft of five-star reviews for her avowedly feminist show, A Bic for Her - but how do you follow that? With another five-star show, obviously.An Ungrateful Woman starts with Christie “confessing” that she expected last year's show, about everyday sexism, to fail to attract an audience - so then she would have an excuse to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Rona Munro's history cycle may take some liberties with the facts, as the writer admits in the programme notes, but its broad narrative sweep has been talked about as a state-of-the-Scottish-nation trilogy. It's the first joint production of the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre and the timing of its premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival couldn't be more pertinent – just a few weeks before Scotland votes on 18 September in the independence referendum. The plays, which cover a turbulent period of Scottish history in the 15th century during the reigns of three Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
If you want an image that defines, for this writer at least, the essence of the Edinburgh Festival, it is the sight of Greyfriars Kirk full to capacity at 5.30 pm on a blustery Monday afternoon. At other times of year this sort of event might be hopefully billed as a “rush hour concert”, sparsely attended by commuters en route to the suburbs, but at festival time Edinburgh has a whole new demographic. Fighting its way past the tourists photographing Greyfriars Bobby (pictured below) could be seen an enthusiastic international audience to whom the prospect of an hour-long concert is one sure Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
On paper this was an interesting programme. The Edinburgh Festival traditionally opens with a major choral work, but while the international audience would probably be happy with endlessly recycled requiems and masses, festival directors have often felt obliged to venture into more challenging territory. So for last night’s opening concert the chorus had prominent roles in two separate works on either side of the interval: Scriabin’s Prometheus, The Poem of Fire, and Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien. While there is a superficial resemblance between the hazy tonal landscape occupied by Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Andrew Maxwell (****) tells the Scots in the audience that he’s going to “rip the shit out of everything they hold dear” in Hubble Bubble, his take on the independence referendum. He doesn’t quite do that but it’s a witty and thoughtful take on the issues surrounding the vote.Maxwell points out that the people of the British Islands are about 90 per cent genetically the same – “the rest is just flavourings” – and the show’s title suggests the Irishman finds nationalism a heady, dangerous brew. He says that Northern Ireland may be less than happy to wake up on 19 September to find Read more ...
Peter Eyre
Some years ago I read a piece about a novel of Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew. Bernhard (1931-1989) was perhaps the most famous Austrian writer of his time, but unknown to me. In this article he was described as intense, manically obsessive, addicted to the unvarnished truth, and innovative in his constructions. I read the novel and was hooked. Bernhard’s novels have no paragraphs, and read like the monologues of a man possessed. You almost need to read them in one sitting. I read all his novels available in translation, and rushed to the bookshop every time I heard of a new Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Celia Imrie is admired and loved as a comic actress. Her conversation, just as much as her performances, is full of her trademarks: sudden darting looks, alertness, natural timing, changes of register. They will all be in display in her cabaret show Laughing Matters.Imrie is imprinted on the public consciousness for her TV roles: Miss Babs, the owner of Acorn Antiques (for which she won an Olivier Award when it became a stage musical), Philippa in Dinnerladies; and then there are the films: Una Alconbury in Bridget Jones's Diary, Celia in Calendar Girls (even if the only thing which ever gets Read more ...