In the lavish surroundings of the Assembly Rooms, Guardian journalists Polly Toynbee and David Walker dive straight in at the deep end. This event, part of the sparkling line up of the Speakers with Attitude series, introduced a new book by Walker and Toynbee posing the opinion that David Cameron and his cohorts have staged an anti-state coup...
Being a teenager is not easy. These Are The Best Days captures this down to a tee, examining both how this has always been true, and how it is specifically exacerbated by the modern world – camera phones and tweeting featuring more than once...
Four men and a duck make up AsaNisiMasa’s Going Out West. These four men are Gabriel Farnese, Alan Grant, Eamonn Hearns and Jake Sharp. This production is a tour de force of play-fighting and philosophy...
David Crawford is dressed in HP Lovecraft’s favourite outfit for this one-man storytelling. It suits its cosy setting of ‘Edinburgh’s Smallest Pub,’ but you can easily imagine it on a spot-lit Victorian stage in front of a rapturous audience...
Gately the G.I. is trying to fix a broken radio. The radio is a metaphor. This is James McLure’s Pvt. Wars, competently produced by The Cheshire Actors Studio at theSpace at Symposium Hall...
Opening with a strong rendition of ‘Daisy Daisy’, McAlister in Wonderland takes us on an all-singing, all-Scottish reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s classic. In this production commemorating 100 years since the start of the First World War, the cadet McAlister is posted on the western front and encounters some unusual characters, beginning with a puffin who is very late...
Et Tu Elvie takes two of the most popular cultural figures from history– Elvis and Shakespeare– and turns their pairing into a surprisingly niche musical. Macbeth’s witches accost Elvis with a prophecy; he will be Thane of Tupelo, Thane of Memphis and, yes you’ve guessed it, The King...
This comedy from the Z Theatre Company centres around the Broken Vows marriage guidance centre, where three couples have been court-ordered to attend therapy. Sadly, this piece of new writing from Nathan Brawn lacks originality and the play is forced to rely on gratuitous swearing, clichéd characters and generally wooden acting...
Five insomniacs can’t go to sleep in the Z Theatre Company’s cleverly named Chasing Zeds. This perfectly perfunctory example of devised theatre explores physical representations of their various forms of suffering to a well-chosen contemporary soundtrack, opening with the arresting I Can’t Get No Sleep by Faithless...
Performed by the award-winning Side by Side Theatre Company for actors with learning disabilities, Illyria on Sea takes Twelfth Night to a 1950s seaside resort in this refreshing and enchanting interpretation of Shakespeare’s carnivalesque comedy...
Inviting us into an office adorned with a giant map of Australia and piles of unfinished scripts and screenplays, Clare Pickering embarks on the energetic and meandering story of her life...