Articles by James Macnamara

Government Inspector

In this production of Nikolai Gogol’s satirical masterpiece, Sedos, ‘The City of London’s premier amateur theatre company,’ have forwarded the action a hundred years to 1…

Is Your Marmite Watching You?

The point of a thought-experiment is to provide a way of exploring the consequences of an idea, not through a metaphorical prism, but through a literal imagining of what might happ…

Jazz Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring lends itself extremely well to jazz interpretations: those wild off-beats and dissonances must be a jazz artist’s wet dream.

Rachel Stubbings: Doing It for Himself

Rachel Stubbings gave me a Maoam.

Cabaret Nova

Cabaret Nova has undergone a transformation since last year.

West Side Story

Youth Music Theatre Scotland return for another successful year at the Fringe, this time with a remarkably professional and well-executed production of West Side Story, perhaps t…

Title and Deed by Will Eno

Plays by leading contemporary playwrights are becoming more common at the Fringe.

Hamlet

I really hope there wasn’t an adult in charge of this.

Occupied

Harry Buckoke’s Occupied is an intelligent and refreshingly light-hearted dissection of the 2011 occupation of Lady Margaret Hall by students of Cambridge University.

Classical Guitar - Jonathan Prag

Combining an interesting program with an intimate setting and impressive technique, this concert of classical guitar music will be of interest to specialists and those who will enj…

Phill Jupitus is Porky the Poet in Juplicity

Before Phill Jupitus was a panel show staple (but in a good way) he was a performance poet.

Ride of the Wagnerian

There’s nothing I would like to do more than go for a pint with Giacinto Palmieri and discuss Wagner.

Kitty in the Lane

An intense, poetic study of loneliness, cruelty and rural isolation, Kitty in the Lane is a mesmeric continuation of the Irish literary tradition, a reminder that our cousins over …

Demi Lardner: Birds with Human Lips

As a recipient of the Gilded Balloon’s So You Think You’re Funny? Award Demi Lardner belongs to an elite group of comedy talent.

Julius Caesar in Original Pronunciation

Fighting a giggle fit is not what an audience member should be doing during the first half of Julius Caesar.

Sophie Wu is Minging, She Looks Like She's Dead

Hang on.

The Dispute

Who was first unfaithful: woman or man? A scientific experiment designed to recreate the garden of Eden and answer this question “once and for all” is the premise of this he…

Jay Rayner: My Dining Hell

Jay Rayner is a real presence, a big guy with a big voice who is very comfortable with addressing an audience.

Half Baked

Oh, boy.

Pomme is French for Apple

You can sense when an audience is tense even without turning around.

According To His Need

Oddball alert! A guy wearing headphones sits strangely close to me and asks whether I like “communist romcoms.

Tejas Verdes

It was strange returning from Tejas Verdes.

Junk

If the fringe has a competition for ‘the most cool stuff a director can think of and put into a show’, Junk is a shoe-in.

Captive Minds

Review
★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
24th Aug, 2013

Ironic isn’t it? A show about a psychopath and it made me want to kill someone.

How Hard Do You Hum When You Cum?

Review
★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
23rd Aug, 2013

The funniest piece in this collection of performed poems isn’t about the human body.

The Shape of Things

Review
★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
23rd Aug, 2013

Neil LaBute’s 2001 play has big themes: the morality of art; the morality of love.

Comedy, Evolved

Review
★★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2013

Watching Americans do sketch comedy can be painful for the British.

Vanity

Review
★★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2013

On the first night I tried to go to Vanity the tiny room was completely full: I couldn’t even see past people hanging around at the door.

Vernon God Little

Someone once wrote of the novel Vernon God Little that it ‘was a work of unutterably tedious nastiness and vulgarity’, and its author DBC (Dirty But Clean) Pierre ‘a man with…

South Downs

Based on David Hare’s knowledge of 1960’s private school politics from the position of a boy attending on a scholarship, South Downs is an excellent play: funny, intelligent an…

Squidboy

People who have seen Squidboy will be competing to find the best way to describe it.

The Mad Hatter Bum Party

Review
★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
18th Aug, 2013

The Mad Hatter Bum Party confers a false and fairly nauseating dignity on being without a home.

Bristol Improv Presents... / PBH's Free Fringe

Review
★★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
17th Aug, 2013

Watching actors improvise can be the most fun thing ever.

Seann Walsh: The Lie-in King

Though a wayward arachnid hanging from the ceiling threatened to steal Walsh’s show on the night I was there, his genuine reaction to it – ‘HOLY SHIT’ – turned into ten m…

Roughs

Last time someone ‘breathed new life’ into Beckett they were issued an injunction.

Macbeth

Review
★★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
14th Aug, 2013

Director Matt Dann writes that his production of Macbeth is ‘informed, not by an imposed concept, but by the texture of the text itself: lean, taut, bristling with muscular tensi…

Find Me

Review
★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
14th Aug, 2013

Find Me manages to reveal simultaneously how far we’ve come and how far we have to go in our attitudes to mental illness.

Edinburgh Science, Edinburgh Magic!

Review
★★★
James Macnamara
Edinburgh Fringe
12th Aug, 2013

Ron Butlin is the Edinburgh Makar (poet laureate) and he is a skilled and sensitive writer.

Verb Garden: Radical Scotland

Our host Bob Starrett is a cartoonist, writer, trade unionist and political activist heavily involved personally and politically with the history of the Glasgow shipyards.