Choosing to adapt a fairly obscure Greek text like The Battle of Frogs and Mice (also known as the Batrachomyomachia) as a storytelling show for children would be a bold choice for…
There are times when a particular title will jump out at you and niggle in the back of your brain.
All-female Australian group Essential Theatre present their own gender-swapped take on Shakespeare’s classic.
Back for another year, Adam Meggido and Sean McCann of Showstoppers! fame return to wow us with what is possibly the most impressive improvisational feat at the Fringe.
You would be forgiven for thinking that a production of The Tales of Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck performed in a circus tent might involve people dressed up as the character…
Both faithful and frantic, young company Flying Pig Theatre have produced a very satisfying version of Euripides’ Bacchae with a deft touch.
Magician Paul Nathan returns to Edinburgh once more with The I Hate Children Children’s Show for an hour of interactive magic, name-calling and the occasional glass of champagne.
Gentle and well-meaning, The Wonderful World of Lapin is a good attempt to introduce young children to the French language.
Interrupt the Routine returns as 1940s radio group The Misfits of London for another highly enjoyable adventure of The Gin Chronicles.
From the team behind Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs comes a brand new adaptation of David Walliam’s children’s book The First Hippo on the Moon.
Tall Stories return to Edinburgh for their 20th birthday with an updated version of Future Perfect.
Incognito Theatre’s adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front is a solid, if predictable, production which ticks all of the necessary First World War boxes.
Powerful and demanding, Red Ladder Theatre Company’s production of The Damned United is every bit as belligerent and uncompromising as the protagonist of its story.
Billed as a “psychological drama conflating classical Greek mystery with jazzical profanity”, Medea: Greece Meets West contains very little Medea and not much more jazz.
Though there are plenty of shows designed for children at the Fringe, finding shows aimed at the youngest can always be tricky.
UCLU Runaground’s James and the Giant Peach is a fresh, fun and frantic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic.
School group Centaurs of Attention have an excellent company name and a rather good Fringe show to boot.
After their great success last year, Interrupt the Routine are back with a brand new episode of The Gin Chronicles.
Ossining High School have delivered a solid and enjoyable, if somewhat flawed, production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses.
This production of Mary Poppins draws heavily from Disney’s 1964 film, but fails to conjure the same magic.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Gotham is exactly what it says on the tin.
ShakeShakeTheatre present the tale of a man named Bumblegrum in a quirky and enjoyable puppet show for children.
Opera Mouse is a pleasant Canadian import presented as a one-woman puppet show by Melanie Gall.
Champs Mêlés’ production of Iphigenia in Tauris is a two hour, French language translation of J.
Trundling into view as part of C Theatre’s 25th anniversary is The Snow Queen.
Arriving fresh-faced from Dorset, young sixth-form group Harpoon present their take on Oliver Lansley’s hilarious play Immaculate.
Swapping her musical trappings for the theatre, Horse McDonald takes to the stage to present an undeniably intriguing and raw, if occasionally sensational, biopic of her own life.
Story Pocket Theatre bring Michael Morpurgo’s novel about King Arthur to life with a solid and enjoyable production.
Ribbet Ribbet Croak is a gentle and successful piece of theatre for younger children, as well as being very suitable for PMLD and ASD family groups.
There comes a time in most good plays when you realise you’ve become completely lost in a moment due to its sheer brilliance.
Joyous in every way, The Snail and the Whale by Tall Stories is a textbook example of how to do theatre for children right.
Lancaster Offshoots have created an enjoyable and surprisingly funny offering with their take on Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit and Other Tales.
The link between Greek myth and a deprived district of Cardiff is not an obvious one, and Iphigenia in Splott raises this intriguing question tantalisingly.
Potemkin’s People is one of two shows performing on alternate nights under the joint title of Elysium Fields from B-Land Productions.
Ferdinand from Tasty Monster Productions is genuinely one of the nicest productions I have seen.
Antiwords is a piece inspired by Václav Havel’s play Audience, featuring an awkward dialogue between a dissident playwright and a drunken brew master.
Delving into the short life of 20th century photographer Francesca Woodman, Francesca, Francesca.
The Glass Menagerie is a hard play to get wrong.
The Letter J’s production of Grandad and Me is simple, moving and effective.
The Dream Sequentialists is a show about dream goblins.
From Georgia State University comes a wonderful reimagining of the Medea myth, reset in the colourful trappings of Trinidad’s carnival.
Part of the American High School Festival, Antigone Now is nothing if not endearing in its attempts to impress.
Napier University Drama Society presents a musical retelling of the Trojan War as their offering to the gods this festival.
We May Have To Choose is a one-person show performed by Emma Hall.
Trick of the Light presents a charming and an enjoyable addition to your afternoon in the form of The Bookbinder.
The Venn diagram containing those who enjoy watching football and those who enjoy watching theatre might not have the largest overlap in the world.
Of the two offerings of Julius Caesar that the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School are offering this year, this review concerns the all-male version: a show brimming with great ideas ye…
It’s amazing how much you can get out of the word ‘Ak’ – the only word in the troll language.
Jetting in from Toronto come clown sisters Morro and Jasp, masters of their craft and hilarious to boot.
Returning for their fourth Fringe, Sparkle and Dark bring their own fascinating and fantastical take on experiences of death and loss.
Jetting in from Dublin, Pilgrim is a unique exploration of the maturity in valuing what you possess rather than clinging onto vain dreams of the future.
“Good girls should be seen and not heard”.
The Secret Garden from Not Cricket Productions is a faithful and on-the-whole, effective, adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic tale.
‘One-man Titus Andronicus for Kids’ sounds like one of those joke titles you suggest to late-night improv troupes.
This year, Squint presents Molly – a show investigating the mindset of a sociopath with eerie echoes of the things you might see in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.
Haste Theatre’s new take on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is one full of charm and humour.
Hungry Wolf presents an energetic and enthusiastic offering for children at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
This offering of Peter Pan from the American High School Theatre Festival never reaches the heights of the Second Star to the Right.
Despite a fun-sounding premise, A Race of Robots unfortunately does not live up to its name.
With such an intriguing name, the cynical part of me was almost prepared to be let down.
Updating Greek myths and tinkering with texts is a finicky process; how to maintain the spirit of the original while providing an audience with something new? Yet this new produc…
Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society have brought their leisurely afternoon stroll Sunday in the Park with George to this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Cambridge Shortlegs and Pembroke Players return to the Edinburgh Fringe with their production of The Penelopiad, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novella.
Before this show, I had not heard of Patsy Cline.
With such a wonderful title, it’s a shame that The Bee-Man of Orn is not as thrilling as it sounds.
Uncommon Productions Staffordshire should be commended for their bravery in presenting their debut effort at the Edinburgh Fringe.
The word ‘rap-dragon’ might simultaneously spark intrigue and a sense of unease, but fear not.
It’s a rare show that can successfully entertain children of all ages.
Patch of Blue return to the Edinburgh Fringe with their scrumptious offering of Beans on Toast: a triumph of simplicity which still captures the imagination and the heart.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; so quotes or paraphrases every production of Medea ever made.
Flying High Theatre Company’s adaptation of The Jungle Book is a charming lunchtime production, faithfully recreating its source material and providing entertaining moments of ph…
Mike Belgrave is a brave man.
I didn’t expect to be hearing hard-hitting political satire this afternoon, but wow, that was actually quite a good Tibet joke.
This is a show about poo.
You wake up at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Not be confused with the Milton epic, Leodo: Paradise Lost follows the story of a young girl lost at sea and transported to a magical island beyond the horizon, Leodo.
Triumphantly sailing into Edinburgh come Audacious Productions with their frankly magnificent production The Odyssey: An Epic Musical Epic.
Bouncing into Edinburgh from Australia, No Mate Productions have arrived with their enjoyably infectious offering Jungle Bungle.
Sometimes in this show, there’d come some songs like this.
With a free croissant and tea in hand, Shakespeare for Breakfast almost had me sold before kick-off.
It takes a brave soul to attempt to tackle ancient Greek comedy with a modern audience.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (from here on mercifully abbreviated to APCSP) follows the trials and tribulations of six young spellers, along with some extremely fortu…
A one-man show scheduled for over an hour and a half can be a daunting prospect for both performer and audience.
To choose Seneca over Euripides (thus making this a Roman rather than a Greek tragedy) is a brave decision by Kudos and one that occasionally backfires.
Discussing the topic of abortion in a church venue may seem like a controversial and edgy thing to do.
It’s difficult not to enjoy yourself watching Pirates of Penzance and this production from Durham is no exception, although it does occasionally feel like it’s trying to undo i…
Hosted at the Edinburgh Christadelphian Church by the local community group there, Inquiry into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ purportedly sets out to examine evidence …
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
No in-depth knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons lore is required to appreciate the excellent comedy this show provides.
In Static, a man in his early twenties describes growing up.
That’s an awfully good-looking prop, I think to myself as a character takes a knife to an apparent rabbit carcass.
Hush Theatre is on a mission ‘to deliver a comparable experience to both deaf and able hearing audiences.
SWEARING?! LESBIANS?! DRUG ABUSE?! HOW TERRIBLY AVANT-GARDE! Apologies for the shouting but Facehunters seems keen to stress that if you have a message of any kind, you’re best o…
Satisfying energetic children can be a task for even the most patient of adults, but CeilidhKids seem to have found a simple but effective solution to combine family bonding with c…
The Cambridge University team behind Oresteia have achieved many things I would have considered impossible with Aeschylus’ source material.
Fresh from the Namat Theatre in Cairo, Human and Other Things offers a select glimpse of Egypt, albeit in a rather frustrating manner.
Recast in a WWI bunker, claustrophobia is the order of the day as you watch events unfold in a very small room from an even smaller bench.
The title is probably the most interesting thing about this adaptation of Lysistrata, but any potential that it implies is sadly missed by the show itself.
Never before has a kazoo been blown with such gusto; so far so good as the two performers began the show with a confident song.
I knew three things about the show before it started; that there are horror stories, that there are three of them and that they are presumably related to Poe.
Congratulations to Byteback Theatre for presenting a splendid physical show and going some way to alleviating my, not-uncommon, instinctive scepticism for the genre.
Flamenco dancing is perhaps not the first thing I would associate with the legend of the Minotaur and indeed neither is the idea that the conflict between the monster and Theseus h…
Neither hilarious nor haunting, the claim this play makes to such titles falls as flat as the claim that it is a comedy.
If the title has somehow not given it away already, a warning should be given to the unenlightened.
Searching for words to describe Fabled is difficult, which is appropriate as Lois Tucker does not utter a single one for the entire hour she is on stage.
Zennor is not, as it turns out, a distant alien empire, but a small fishing village in Cornwall.
Writing a show is a difficult enough task; to then both act and direct said show is worthy of a titan.
At some point in the creation of this production, somebody decided that they were better at writing than Euripides.
What happened in this hour long show is still not quite clear; there was singing, nudity, drag, and a large cupboard to be sure.
Weirdly, the house lights come on as the show begins and by house lights, I mean the ordinary light-switch for the room.
Before the lights had barely dimmed, the main actor confidently strode on stage and began the central monologue of how his life in Hull was bad.