Articles by Maria Hagan

Beats North

“Being a DJ is like being a storyteller,” we are told at the opening of Beats North, a heartfelt celebration and exploration of the powers of music. This performance highlights how you can trace your life through the series of songs that accompany you through it...

The News at Kate: Leftie Cock Womble

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Viva Mexico
24th Aug, 2014

Amidst the moustachioed revolutionaries that don the walls of Viva Mexico restaurant, Kate Smurthwaite takes the mic for a thought-provoking hour of comedy. She blends anecdote, social commentary and the political with a perfect balance of intelligent and wit, making her an invaluable contribution to the female stand up scene...

Soweto Spiritual Singers

The Soweto Spiritual Singers greet their audience with the Lord’s Prayer, sung in perfect harmony. From the outset, the spiritual tone is set for the colourful, uplifting and wholesome African gospel experience to come...

Give Take

Give Take’s Musical Remedies are an exploration of the healing powers of the natural world. Inspired by Dr Edward Bach’s Flower Remedies, Andrew Morris has composed a series of pieces featuring piano, saxophone and bass...

Romeo and Juliet

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C cubed
21st Aug, 2014

Take a Shakespeare play and strip it of all of the aspects that make it a timeless sensation. Cut up the script, stick it back together again and hope for the best when you sell it back to the audience under the same title as the original...

Spoken Word Sundays

Just off the Royal Mile, down along the cobbles and between the narrow walls of Jackson’s Close, Appletree Writers and Friends gather every Sunday of the Fringe to celebrate spoken word...

Tubespotting

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Electric Circus
20th Aug, 2014

How long would it take to go via every single one of the 270 stations on the London Tube map? Most of us would shrug at the question, having no desire whatsoever to even consider spending enough time within the claustrophobic, sweaty confines of the Underground to find out...

Back Out from the Outback

The Edinburgh Fringe is brimming with acts from Down Under, but you probably won’t witness any more authentic than Susie and Mel in their storytelling show Back Out From The Outback...

Wuthering Heights

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
19th Aug, 2014

“We are not going to tell you a story,” the cast disconcertingly warns the audience in the opening minutes of Wuthering Heights. Kate Bush supercedes Emily Brontë as the overarching voice of Peter McMaster’s all-male performance of the novel...

Tis Pity

Natalie Audley’s ‘Tis Pity is a clever retelling of John Ford’s 17th century incestuous drama ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore. Set in 1950s England, the performance provides the gore and suspense of the original play while associating its tragedy with a playful and witty script...

Belfast Boy

One man is all it takes. No fuss, no frills. When Martin Hall is faced with a silent, empty space to talk to, his memories finally run free. Belfast Boy relates Martin’s story as told by none other than himself...

Noughts and Crosses

Shakespeare’s School brings Malorie Blackman’s much loved novel Noughts and Crosses to the stage in a performance that falls disappointingly flat despite the potential of the well-adapted script...

Forever Young

The Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre’s Forever Young is a heartfelt portrayal of the damaged, tormented and stolen youths of the First World War through drama, poetry and song. Stories of individual experience are heightened by the incorporation of passages from the poetic writings of Sassoon, Owen and Brooke which were compiled in the midst of the conflict...

Spring Awakening

The Italia Conti Ensemble’s rendition of Spring Awakening is a well-directed and expertly performed take on Frank Wedekind's controversial play. Sexual repression and erotic fantasy are evoked by the large cast, every member of which is constantly present and involved in creating the symbolism or atmosphere of each scene...

Movin' Melvin Brown: The Ray Charles Experience

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C
13th Aug, 2014

Movin’ Melvin Brown: The Ray Charles Experience is an entertaining soirée of song and dance in homage to the great soul music pioneer of the 1950s. Brown’s rendition of Charles’ greatest, most varied hits is a convincing effort; his vocals are similar and forceful...

Monkey Poet: Shit Flinging - Free

Monkey Poet: Shit Flinging is a show much more savoury than its name suggests. Monkey Poet Matt Panesh, is a talented poet-come-comedian whose perspective on society, life, nationalism and sex are conveyed in an extraordinarily infectious blend of rhythm and wit...

Antidepressants Are Not Overprescribed!

Come gather in the yurt at the Stand in the Square for another in the series of The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas. The university-sponsored events present a range of talks on various topics over the course of the month...

Voca People

“Everything you are about to hear is pure human vocals,” a voiceover announces before the show begins. It’s well that the audience is given this warning or you would no doubt question the possibility that such a wide-ranging array of sounds could be authentically produced by a group of eight mere human beings...

Frank Skinner: Man in a Suit

‘Knob jokes with depth’ are the words that fifty-six year old Frank Skinner himself uses to describe his new stand up show Man in A Suit. The West Midlands comedian, former lad, is now hitting middle age reluctantly...

The HandleBards: Macbeth

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - West Gate
10th Aug, 2014

Fishing rods, bike bells and shuttlecocks likely did not feature on the Elizabethan prop list for Macbeth. These are only a few of the strange and wonderful objects that make complete sense in the HandleBard’s production of the play...

Animal Farm

The Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre Company present George Orwell’s Animal Farm in a remarkable, poignant enactment of the dangerous rise of tyranny in a state where ideals of freedom and equality are distorted by figures of authority...

Afrobeat from Poción de Fe

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
The Jazz Bar
9th Aug, 2014

When afrobeat makes prime-time at the most renowned jazz club in town, you know you’re in for the good stuff. Edinburgh-based seven-piece band Poción de Fe draw in a big crowd despite the fact that it is their very first public performance...

Faulty Towers The Dining Experience

Come and meet the Faultys, the Fawltys’ delightful doppelgangers. It’s a national outrage that the BBC Fawlty Towers series was limited to a mere twelve delightful episodes...

Awhile with Seamus Heaney

The world gasped in shock when renowned Irish poet Seamus Heaney passed away in August of last year. Larry McCluskey’s sensitive amalgamation of readings and recitals of Heaney’s poetry with music and anecdote provides an experience that encapsulates Heaney’s significance as writer, friend, husband, thinker and prominent national figure...

Victorian Vices – The Picture of Dorian Gray

The moment you step into this showroom, I can guarantee you’ll wish you had worn your suit or gown. Leave your 21st century self at the threshold as lords and ladies abound to greet you into Victorian England...

Hamlet

Horatio may be played by a girl in a school uniform, yet this is the only aspect of Hamlet that gives away the fact that the performers are all high school students. The American High School Theatre Festival production is anything but amateur...

Chris Turner: Pretty Fly

Bandanas, braces and £16 patchouli hand soap are just a few of the afflictions that British comedian Chris Turner has had to suffer in life as a skinny, middle class white boy. Knowing this, his passion for gangster rap comes as a surprise to the audience, to say the least...

15% of The Seagull

Directed by Tim Schulz and written by Liberty Martin, Cheryl Mayer and Lauren Stapleton, 15% of The Seagull is a humorous glimpse into the world of theatre adaptation and casting. Keeping their own names, Liberty and Cheryl are the stars of the show...

George Orwell's 1984

Taking on the literary giant that is George Orwell’s 1984 is a notoriously difficult task, and The Stevenage Lytton Youth Thursday Group have bitten off a little more than they can chew...

Frankenstein: UnBolted

Mary Shelley is likely turning in her grave at Last Chance Saloon’s rendition of Frankenstein, but no doubt she’s also struggling to stifle a giggle at their heartfelt whack at adapting her masterpiece for the modern stage...

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