Articles by Charlie Ralph

Torch Town

The Edinburgh Fringe exists as a kind of suspended adolescence allowing creatives to live the experience of their art being the most important thing in the world.

Tricky Second Album

In Bed With My Brother spend the largest portion of this, notably their third Edinburgh show, conducting a kind of aural warfare on their audience.

Limbo: The Twelve

Limbo: The Twelve is one of the latest pair of musicals from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, allowing a group of talented young performes the opportunity to perform an origina…

Josie Long: Tender

Review
★★★★
Charlie Ralph
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
The Stand Comedy Club / The Stand’s New Town Theatre
23rd Aug, 2019

Josie Long has spent twenty years being a beacon of hope amongst the cynical cruelty of stand-up comedy.

Tokyo Rose

Tokyo Rose is a complex story, told phenomenally well by a company quickly proving itself to be one of the hottest theatre groups in the country.

Limbo: City of Dreams

Limbo: City of Dreams charges itself with the difficult task of cramming an entire world into its hour-long runtime.

Working On My Night Moves

At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe it can often feel very hard to be alone.

Lucy McCormick: Post Popular

Post Popular is Lucy McCormick's attempt to follow-up her fantastic and hugely popular show Triple Threat.

MARA

Taking on the voices of a group of monumental and important women throughout history, MARA embodies them physically and vocally with stunningly committed and skillful character wor…

The Rebirth of Meadow Rain

Trauma is never an easy thing to talk about.

Heather and Harry

Heather and Harry is a romantic yarn detailing the story of Heather, an angel cast out of heaven by her misogynist rapping boyfriend Zeus, of Greek mythology fame.

Legacy: The Book of Names

At first glance The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's two collaborative productions with the American Music Theatre Project may seem remarkably similar to last year's pair.

Shower Thoughts

The bathroom of a student flat is not a place you'd want to spend 5 minutes, let alone an hour.

Assassins

Assassins is a show of rich thematic complexity, difficult harmonies and challenging characterisation.

Legacy: A Mother's Song

Legacy: A Mother’s Song, one of two devised musicals under the ‘Legacy’ banner at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is the distinctly less crowd-pleasing of the pair.

The Half Moon Shania

Punk and theatre aren't the strangest of bedfellows, but there is something that often feels false when collectives of art school graduates and professionally-trained actors at…

Tessa Waters: Fully Sik

Tessa Waters is an experienced Fringe act, falling into a large group of fantastically-exuberant physical comedians who enliven any number of venues from large to small over the mo…

The Worst Little Warehouse in London

The Worst Little Warehouse In London is crammed into The Box, which appears to be an actual shipping crate housed in Assembly Gardens.

Lucy Pearman: Fruit Loop

Review
★★★★★
Charlie Ralph
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Monkey Barrel / Monkey Barrel Comedy Club
4th Aug, 2018

There are too many shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The Basement Tapes

Cleaning out her grandmother's old basement after her death, amongst the usual detritus a woman finds a tape recorder and an accompanying tape which tells the kind of story usu…

Rose Matafeo: Horndog

As the audience file in Rose Matafeo is playing table tennis with members of the front row, in a gimmick that does not factor into the later story at any point.

Demi Lardner: I Love Skeleton

Demi Lardner feels the need, at one point in their most recent show, to unveil a banner listing their previous accomplishments and awards they have won.

Ciarán Dowd: Don Rodolfo

Don Rodolfo opens his debut fringe hour duelling with an unseen coat rack.

John-Luke Roberts: All I Wanna Do Is [FX: GUNSHOTS] With a [FX: GUN RELOADING] and a [FX: CASH REGISTER] and Perform Some Comedy!

John-Luke Roberts is, for a certaint quotient, one of the staples of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Sarah Keyworth: Dark Horse

Dark Horse covers lots of ground and it is evidently the result of Keyworth tirelessly exploring multiple comic avenues.

Showmanship

At first sight it would seem that Boondog Theatre's latest outing at the Edinburgh Fringe is somewhat ironically titled.

Where the Hell is Bernard?

Dystopia is a tricky subject matter to get right in a world obsessed with its own destruction as our current one.

Elf Lyons: ChiffChaff

Elf Lyons should be feeling pretty good right now.

Kate Berlant: Communikate

A master of audience coersion, Kate Berlant mines her best material from audience response rather than her own resources.

Sheeps: Live and Loud Selfie Sex Harry Potter

Sheeps are officially back, following previous acclaim and an underground status as one of the Fringe's finest sketch groups and then a three year sebatical.

Zoe Coombs Marr: Trigger Warning

Comedians regularly perpetuate the idea that they sacrifice part of themselves for their art.

Sam Simmons A-K

Sam Simmons is a dad now.

Party Game

“What did you expect? This is immersive theatre.

Wild Bore

For a theatre piece to be perfect for some people, it has to be horrible for others.

The End, the End, the End…

The amount a show takes liberties with narrative should be directly compensated by how much it has to say.

The North

The North is as hostile, unforgiving and beautiful as the land to which it dedicates its hour-long runtime.

Atlantic: America and the Great War

There is beautiful music at the heart of Atlantic: America & The Great War.

Steen Raskopoulos – The Coolest Kid in Competitive Chess

Steen Raskopoulos makes no effort to be cool on stage.

Into the Woods

Fairytales don’t really make much sense.

Demi Lardner: Look What You Made Me Do

Despite the title, it’s quite clear from this hour of absurdist comedy that nobody is making Australian cult comic star Demi Lardner do anything.

The Nature of Forgetting

What’s more important when telling a compelling story of human emotion, feeling or narrative? The answer to this is largely dependent on the viewer’s personal preferences as to…

Jane Doe

Nobody wants to be lectured.

The Establishment: Eton Mess

Satire can often be found at the root of absurdism.

Seanmhair

The initial experience one is met with when the lights dim for Seanmhair (pronounced shen-a-var) is breathtaking.

A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad)

A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) is about a woman’s struggle with depression, told through a simple, storytelling format and soundtracked by original music from Fris…

Double Denim

Double Denim haven’t made their fringe debut easy for themselves, starting their show at nearly midnight and performing in perhaps the ugliest room in any of the major venues.

Tessa Coates: Primates

Putting on a Fringe show is, for any performer, a risky endeavour.

Goody

Nestled in what seems, somewhat appropriately, to be a shipping container in the Pleasance Courtyard, two creatures on a journey with no origin point or destination try to figure e…

Butt Kapinski

When a show’s success or failure supposedly rests almost entirely on the skills and willingness of its audience, the trust and confidence placed between performer and viewer is t…