Articles by Aron Penczu

Bazaar and Rummage

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C nova
31st Aug, 2014

Bazaar and Rummage was written by Sue Townsend, best known for her Adrian Mole series, and incorporates some of the wry humour typical of those books. Its plot is simple: a group of agoraphobic women leave their houses for the first time in years to put on a rummage sale...

Shaggers

Shaggers’ premise is simple: a couple of comedians make sex-related jokes. For the right kind of person, in the right kind of (probably well-lubricated) mood, it promises raunchy, unpretentious entertainment...

IndieRound (Fool Members Club) with Bob Slayer & Tim Fitzhigham

Some way into a verbal onslaught directed at yours truly, Bob Slayers makes an unexpected allusion to the observer effect in particle physics. You can’t review the show, he proclaims, because your presence has changed it...

The Unholy Trinity

I’m not quite sure why The Unholy Trinity calls itself horror. “Be warned,” says the programme, “the sights you are about to see are not for the squeamish or the delicate of stomach...

Story Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

The Year Out Drama Company’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing begins with a game of charades and its brisk humour quickly melts away my scepticism. ‘Story Shakespeare’ is a misnomer: this is definitely a play, and almost - with its wittily-chosen songs and impressive harmonics - a musical...

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Goethe’s best-known novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, finds elegantly concentrated expression in this short one-man performance. Don’t be put off by the surtitled German: the production makes an immensely influential work accessible, and Pascal Groß is riveting as Werthers...

Soften the Grey

The first half of Soften the Grey is near-perfect. Pitched at the ideal point midway between dramatic appeal and thoughtful profundity, rich with humour, it wins over viewers effortlessly...

Old Gristle

There is a character in Old Gristle who carries a bin bag and, within it, the liquefied remains of his dead dog. Like everyone else in the play, he seems to teeter on the edge of insanity...

The Return of Savonarola

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
31st Aug, 2014

Trevor Smith’s An Evening with Dementia, which has captivated audiences and critics alike in its three runs, seems set to become one of the valued mainstays of the Edinburgh Fringe...

Moonshine, Medicine and The Mob: Whisky Theatre

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Valvona & Crolla Scottish Foodhall@Jenners
19th Aug, 2014

Part history lesson, part guided whisky-tasting, Moonshine, Medicine and the Mob offers a fascinating insight into a key period in American history: Prohibition. If that seems a little rough-and-ready, it’s also buoyed by John Mark’s energetic delivery, museum-worthy artifacts, and impressive whisky expertise...

King Ubu

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C
19th Aug, 2014

King Ubu was performed only once in playwright Alfred Jarry’s life. It provoked a riot and moved Yeats, who was in the original audience, to make his famous pronouncement on the future of the literary avante-garde: “After us the Savage God...

Shakespeare's Greatest Hits

Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits does pretty much what it says on the tin: runs through some of the Bard’s best-known monologues and soliloquies, from Jaques’ “All the world’s a stage” to Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”...

Cushion

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
16th Aug, 2014

Cushion is a very short (thirty-minute) piece which begins much as it ends: two middle-aged women are seated before us and converse.They ruminate on the past, on achievements and failures, and a shared friend they lost to breast cancer...

Tender Napalm

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C nova
16th Aug, 2014

Tender Napalm is a two-hander by Philip Ridley, best known for his controversial 2005 play Mercury Fur. Its nameless pair — the script’s ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ carry an Edenic flavour — kiss, argue, clutch each other, and brawl across the studio stage as they narrate stories...

Unsung

Unsung, a tender, devastating domestic drama by Ayndrilla Singharay, draws on her experiences at the ASHA woman’s refuge. It explores an unusual British-Indian family composed of two brothers, Ash and Rhana (Niall Ray and Amit Dhut), and their wives, Joy and Megh (Rajneet Sidhu, Bhawna Bhawsar), who share an apartment in contemporary London...

Clever Peter: The Dreams Factory

A madcap romp through its creators’ bizarre imaginations, Clever Peter may be the weirdest sketch show you’ll ever see. Roman, Andy and Charles (Richard Bond, William Hartley, Edward Eales-White respectively) form advertising team ‘The Dreams Factory’...

The Canon: A Literary Sketch Show

Anyone might be forgiven for apprehension about a literary sketch show. Few things are quite so bad as a bad pun; surely an invitation to obscure allusion can only make things worse? But audiences need not worry...

Dogs of War

There’s a lot going on in Dogs of War. Assembled from scenes out of eight Shakespearean histories, together with new text by David Blixt, it makes use of projection, a live camera, sixteen actors, a chorus and over forty characters...

And the Horse You Rode in On

And The Horse You Rode In On begins with the easy unfolding of soldiers’ badinage. It’s the Great War; these are the German trenches. A man polishes his spyglass obsessively. Another nurses his eye-socket, bruised from hours on the watch...

Strange Resting Places

Italy, late World War II. Allied bombers approach a hilltop monastery sheltering refugees. A Māori soldier is billeted with a family near Naples. Another steals from camp to track down a pair of chickens and encounters an Italian deserter in a barn...

All Through the Night

Shirley Lauro’s drama All Through the Night opens badly, but it gets better. It begins with clumsy exposition: a stern teacher’s every lesson tells us only about the Third Reich...

The Zulu

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Hall
8th Aug, 2014

In early 1879, the British Empire suffered its worst ever defeat at the hands of an indigenous people. Armed only with assegai spears and cow-hide shields, a Zulu force exterminated a British column equipped with modern rifles and artillery...

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