Articles by Catriona Scott

Shakespeare Catalysts

Before I begin this review, I would like to clarify, as James Beagon (co-director and actor) did at the start of the show, that Aulos Productions’ Shakespeare Catalysts is a work in progress...

It is frightening how Orwell’s nightmarish dystopia continues to ring true, year after year. From Winston’s colleague Syme (Liam McKinnes) exclaiming delightedly ‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words’, to the proletariat being described as subhuman, those who go against the Party as a stain to be wiped out, even Winston’s desire to sexually violate Julia before murdering her...

Holy Sh*t

Hearing a couple of priests swearing will always be amusing. Hearing a couple of priests swearing whilst digging up the body of a dead parishioner so they can sell the corpse to raise money for the church takes the humour to a whole new level...

Marie

With the aid of a tea towel, a glass, and a stool, Sarah MacGillivray skilfully portrays a wide variety of characters in a modern re-telling of the story of Mary, Queen of Scots – sort of...

Legacy: The Story of Martin Luther

In the beginning was the Word, but I honestly don’t know which word to begin with when trying to describe this production. It is epic in scope, travelling from Germany to Rome and covering the sixty two years from Martin Luther’s birth to his death, yet intimate at the same time, with a cast of five taking on roles from Pope Leo X to the Devil himself...

Grace

Nigel (Jonny Davidson) and his wife Sarah (Ella Dorman-Gajic) are sitting down to a dinner of soup and parsnip wine when they are interrupted by a knock on the door. The couple are initially hesitant about answering in the midst of a storm, with Nigel worried that the stranger may be a robber or a "loony"...

I, Sniper

I Sniper, appropriately enough, starts with a bang. A group of Red Army soldiers march on stage as commands are barked at them in Russian, culminating in a chorus of ‘The Red Army is the Strongest’...

Romeo and/or Juliet

Ryan North’s hilarious choose-your-own-adventure-style version of Hamlet, To Be Or Not To Be, first published in 2013, proved so successful that in 2016 Romeo and/or Juliet followed...

Greyhounds

Set in the small village of Shuttlefield, Greyhounds sees the local amateur dramatic society attempt to raise money for a Spitfire fighter aircraft by putting on a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V...

Rik Carranza: Charming

Rik Carranza tells us he has been doing stand up comedy for five or six years and one word that has been continually used to describe him in reviews is ‘charming’. In his show, therefore, he intends to test whether this is a good or bad thing using his handmade Charm-o-meter 3000 to gauge his audience’s reaction...

The Cambridge Footlights International Tour Show 2015: Love Handles

I’m not entirely sure where the title of the show came from, as love handles are never mentioned or a part of any of the sketches that The Cambridge Footlights perform but, frankly, it doesn’t matter...

Cariad & Paul: A Two Player Adventure

Through their use of improvisation and mime, backed with a fantastic live band (The Glue Ensemble), Cariad and Paul bring to life a series of hilarious stories, based solely on one word from the audience...

The Amazing Sketch Show

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C
26th Aug, 2015

The description of The Amazing Sketch Show states that their sketches are ‘some of the funniest, silliest and zaniest sketches’ to be found at this year’s Fringe. This is a bold claim to make, and unfortunately the show does not quite deliver on this promise, although the potential is there...

The Humble Quest for Universal Genius

Trying to find a new Renaissance Man (or Woman) in an hour is no easy task, but it is one that The Humble Quest for Universal Genius attempts with great enthusiasm. Over the course of the gameshow’s ten performances, host Matthew Crosby pits two comedians a day against each other to compete in a series of rounds ranging from Art to Mathematics, Wit to Hunting (yes, really), to see which of them is a ‘true genius’, showing greatness in a variety of different fields...

25 Stories

The premise of 25 Stories is simple enough; Alex Watts is bored at work and so comes up with short stories to keep himself entertained. 'Make of your brain a toy box,' he advises us, to be filled with stories and characters you can play with to keep boredom at bay...

The Exeter Revue: Sketchup

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Ciao Roma
24th Aug, 2015

Four students, a full house and a series of clever sketches make for a very enjoyable hour in The Exeter Revue: Sketchup. Using minimal props and costumes – a coffee cup here, a plastic crown there – these performers bring to life a fantastic and strange set of scenarios...

Tiff Stevenson: Mad Man

Speaking to those of us in her audience who have never seen her perform before, Tiff Stevenson says ‘You’re so lucky… I remember seeing me for the first time. I was amazing.’ Stevenson is a confident, assured performer, who is not only confident in herself – ‘I’m a sexually confident woman in my thirties!’ – but in her ability to tackle big issues...

The Bristol Suspensions in: A Suspension of Disbelief

A group of seventeen students from Bristol University that formed in September last year, The Bristol Suspensions are fairly new to the a cappella scene, but that does nothing to diminish their talent...

Edinburgh Renaissance Band at St Mark's

It isn’t just through watching the plays of the Bard that you can get a taste of culture here at the Fringe; the Edinburgh Renaissance Band are bards of a different sort. Collaborating with the Polyhymnia Dancers, this seventeen piece ensemble boasts a repertoire of songs from the thirteenth century to the early eighteenth...

Heads

When two precocious, self-important students uncover a student-teacher relationship scandal at their private school, they plan to exploit it for their own gain and, in so doing, hope to gain places at Oxbridge by winning a prestigious journalism competition...

The Jeremy Kyle Show Does Shakespeare

A young girl swears she will kill herself if her parents won’t let her date her boyfriend. A man slept with another man’s wife. A child wants to find out who her father is. Is this an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show, or the plot of a play by Shakespeare? This is, in fact, The Jeremy Kyle Show Does Shakespeare, in which the plots of four Shakespeare plays are cleverly adapted to fit the talk show’s format...

Chaos Theory

Three performers and twenty five sketches, presented in a random order each night. In an ideal world Dreamgun would like to perform every variation of the show but, as they explain before the show commences by means of a complex equation, there are at least fifteen septillion variations and it would take quite some time...

48 Minutes / Free Festival

I am not entirely sure why comedians Ben Shannon and Mike Reed decided their set should be forty-eight minutes long, rather than a full hour, but it actually doesn’t really matter as they deliver plenty of laughs in the twenty-four minutes they each have onstage...

Pierre Novellie is Anxious Peter

The title of Pierre Novellie’s show is somewhat misleading. Novellie is anxious about many things – his name not suiting him, his unusual multicultural background and his insomnia, among other things – but the way in which he presents the trials and tribulations of his life is anything but uncertain...

Jon Cozart – Laughter Ever After

With over two million subscribers to his YouTube channel and fifty two million views and counting for his first Disney parody video After Ever After, Jon Cozart is something of a sensation as a singer and songwriter online...

Ben Russell: The Tokyo Hotel

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Pleasance Dome
19th Aug, 2015

This show begins with the sound of drums and then a dreadful storm and so gives its audience certain expectations of what is to come but, as Russell himself exclaims, “prepare yourself for the unexpected”! When he emerges through the black door that serves as his set it is not as some monster or a strange character but a seemingly ordinary, if somewhat flamboyant, man who serves as a sort of narrator for the events that take place within the hotel...

Wojtek the Bear

Wojtek was an extraordinary bear, and this play that tells his story is an equally extraordinary piece of theatre. Bringing together ethereal live violin music and a script that veers between the naturalistic and the poetic, Wojtek the Bear shows the relationship between the bear who became a soldier with the Polish army(played with spectacular agility and power by James Sutherland), and the Lance Corporal who mothered him, Piotr Prendys (played by Gavin Paul)...

Christian Talbot is Shite at Being Irish

At the Fringe last year, some members of Christian Talbot’s audience got up to leave part-way through his show, explaining that they thought he would 'be more Irish'. This year, Talbot is back to try explain what that means, how he fails to be Irish, and how he succeeds...

Vladimir McTavish: Scotland, 45 Events That Shaped a Nation

Vladimir McTavish’s cynical look back at Scotland’s past spans from the fourteenth century to the present day, examining the successes and failures of kings and governments, as well as such varied topics as the sinister origins of the names of Edinburgh pubs and the state of television programming past midnight...

Hell Hath No Fury

Offering “a modern, alternative view to the story of Lady Macbeth”, Hell Hath No Fury certainly has an intriguing premise. However, it is a premise that the show doesn’t quite manage to live up to...

Death by Shakespeare

“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale”. This quotation from Richard III encapsulates the nature of this aesthetically powerful performance; a chorus of spirits, bruised and bloodied, gather to re-enact their deaths and, while some stand out as characters, they work as an ensemble to do so, with every member of the group a part of every tale — a murderer, a victim, or standing by, observing and mocking the action...

BOBBY WINNER

Richard III

I have seen several performances of Richard III; Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellen on film, and Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic, but Emily Carding’s portrayal of the king who murders his way to the English throne is in a league of its own...

Shit-Faced Shakespeare

In Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3, the Porter states “Drink [...] is a great provoker of three things...nose painting, sleep and urine”. When it comes to Magnificent Bastard Productions, however, drink provokes a fourth thing - a fantastic night out...

Shakespeare's Avengers Assembleth: Age of Oberon

When William Shakespeare is kidnapped by Oberon, the fairy king, it is up to his team of Avengers to rescue him and keep Oberon from re-writing his plays (and the sonnets. Especially the sonnets)...

Method in Madness

New writing and Shakespeare, dance and physical theatre, all accompanied by the evocative music of Laura Marling; Method in Madness is a truly mesmerising show. Although the piece’s narrative takes place in London in 1941, concerning a young Hollywood actress struggling to play the role of Ophelia, it is so much more than a piece of contemporary writing, incorporating Shakespeare’s text, dance and music in this innovative look at one of his most beloved heroines...

The Potter Trail

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Meeting Point at Greyfriars Bobby Statue
11th Aug, 2015

The Potter Trail, beginning opposite the Greyfriars Bobby statue, is proud to say that it is perfectly magical, thank you very much. Joining a robed, wand-wielding guide, this tour takes us from the grave which inspired the true identity of Lord Voldemort (I’m sorry, He Who Must Not Be Named), to the street that inspired Diagon Alley, and many other locations besides...

Hamlet

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
11th Aug, 2015

It wouldn’t be the Edinburgh Fringe without multiple adaptations of Hamlet all vying to make their mark, but this production by the English Repertory Theatre, directed and adapted by Gavin Davis, is certainly one of the most unusual...

Tubular Bells for Two

With over twenty different instruments played by only two men, this performance of Mike Oldfield’s masterpiece Tubular Bells is an astounding, explosive, truly incredible feat. Daniel Holdsworth and Aidan Roberts, returning for their third Edinburgh Fringe, should be commended not just for their diverse musical talents, with both often playing two or three instruments at once, but for their sheer stamina, as this expansive almost hour-long composition is not for the faint hearted, changing from soft to edgy to sinister over the course of two parts, with recurring motifs tying these very different sections together...

Laughing Horse Free Pick of the Fringe

A compilation of comedic talent from across the Fringe, two shows a day, and all for free – the Laughing Horse Free Pick of the Fringe showcases some of the best comedic talent the festival has to offer...

The Quentin Dentin Show

The Quentin Dentin Show is an extraordinary and eccentric dark comedy rock musical, which sees main characters Nat and Keith’s relationship on the rocks and their lives in a rut. Enter Quentin Dentin, an otherworldly doctor in shades of white and gold, part David Bowie, part Christ figure, who along with his friends emerges from Keith’s broken radio with the intention of fixing their lives and making them happy again...

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