Articles by Rebecca Vines

Titus Andronicus

As befits one of his earliest plays, Titus Andronicus has all the hallmarks of a Shakespeare honing his craft in a studenty troupe full of bold ideas, incautious language, over-wee…

Much Ado About Nothing

If recent productions are anything to go by, the RSC of 2025 season will be characterised as the summer of great spectacle.

Hamlet

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a handsome production.

Othello

Review
★★★★
Rebecca Vines
UK Regional & Tours
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Southern Lane
23rd Oct, 2024

Tim Carroll’s Othello, now playing in the main house at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, marks an RSC return to the play after a nine-year hiatus following Hugh Quarshie’s memora…

Can't Stop Carrying On

As an ageing film producer plans to resurrect his past cinematic successes, an audience are invited to share his memories and triumphs as he flicks through his back catalogue of wo…

Eric Liddell: The Chariot of Fire

In more than a century of heroic Olympic feats and sporting glory, the Paris event of 1924 retains a special sort of sepia-tinted reverence.

Pericles

Pericles, not included in the First Folio and generally considered as authorially dubious, has only ever been staged in Stratford six times.

Honk!

The story of the ugly duckling is well-known; and entirely apposite for our strange times.

The Fantastical World of My Uncle Arly

When that I was but a little tiny dot, I would sit with my grandfather and solemnly play both the Owl and the Pussycat whilst he transformed into a pig, a turkey and a runcible spo…

One Man Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum

In his short but eventful life, Edgar Allan's Poe name became a byword for the Gothic horror stories which continue to entice and terrify readers nearly two centuries on.

Eleanor

As the daughter of one of the most influential political and philosophical figures ever to have lived, Eleanor Marx was cursed to travel through life and death shackled by her fath…

Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words

Whilst she may have had the body of a 'weak and feeble' woman, it is hard not to believe that Elizabeth I didn't also possess the heart and stomach of a playwright.

Hagar: War Mother

Hagar is a dreamer.

Whirligig of Time

In The Whirligig of Time, we revisit Malvolio, the much-maligned steward who leaves the stage at the end of Twelfth Night vowing revenge on the whole pack of upperclass nitwits and…

Cringe Effect

Cringe Effect unfolds in a Portland Anorexia Rehabilitation Centre where Ce, a long-time anorexia struggler, confides in her audience about her treatment journey.

Dead Mom Play

This is a beautiful play.

Long Distance

Long Distance is a new play which explores intimacy and connection through a series of text messages.

A Montage of Monet

Claude Monet’s works are some of the most immediately identifiable of art history.

Baby Steps

Shows like this are the absolute heart of the Fringe.

Hunchback Variations

This is the perfect Fringe show.

The Sun, the Mountain, and Me

As artfully dishevelled studios go, Arthur’s is on the more organised side of shambolic.

Leni's Last Lament

The name of Leni Riefenstahl is destined to echo forever down the years as one of the facilitators of Nazism.

Flight

In this brief installation piece, Darkfield conjure a range of realities for the audience aboard their Airbus 320.

Adam Hills: Shoes Half Full

Comedy is highly subjective, but it is hard to imagine how anyone might not find someone as genial and goofy and downright decent as Adam Hills funny.

Spy Movie: The Play!

Agent Blonde, Jane Blonde, has to save the world from an evil, criminal genius.

Born in the USA (Leaving Vietnam)

Vietnam veteran Jimmy lives an okay enough life, poking around his garage in rustbelt Michigan, enjoying the gruff banter between friends and customers.

Chatterbox

Lubna Kerr is a chatterbox.

I Really Do Think This Will Change Your Life

Emma-Louise Howell will go far.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Review
★★★★★
Rebecca Vines
UK Regional & Tours
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Southern Lane
17th Jun, 2024

In the third of three deliciously riotous performances on the main stage in recent months, it is clear that the RSC is not so much changing true rules for odd inventions, but rever…

Love's Labour's Lost

Review
★★★★★
Rebecca Vines
UK Regional & Tours
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Southern Lane
28th Apr, 2024

If Emily Burns’ immaculately realised Love’s Labour's Lost is anything to go by, there is a fresh new breeze whispering through the corridors of the RSC.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Review
★★★★★
Rebecca Vines
UK Regional & Tours
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Southern Lane
28th Feb, 2024

Eleanor Rhode’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the RSC is a child’s-eye Shakespeare; a tale told in either the boring black and white of adult discourse or a …

Here Be Dragons

This is a heartfelt piece, in which a group of intrepid teens set out to discover monsters… and discover them in the last place they thought to look.

Iain Dale: All Talk with Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey

Iain Dale’s ALL TALK political interviews have in recent years become something of a regular fixture of the Fringe circuit.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

The year is 1943 and famed wit Dorothy Parker sits in her New York apartment, sifting through her works and deciding which will make it into the new anthology ‘The Portable Dorot…

Sherlock Holmes The Last Act

With a plethora of Sherlock Holmes shows to catch at this year’s Fringe; our fascination with the super-sleuth showing no signs of abating.

Chopped Liver and Unions

Chopped Liver and Unions tells the story of workers’ activist and trades unionist Sara Wesker, now largely lost to the footnotes of twentieth century history, but in her time a n…

The Real William Shakespeare... As Told by Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe is forever fated to be associated with his peer and likely chum William Shakespeare.

Clive Anderson's My Seven Wonders

The conceit of this podcast is that Clive Anderson invites a different member of the comedy circuit to share with him their own seven wonders of the world.

Dom – The Play

This is a strange one.

Wiesenthal

At at a time when the world has never more needed to heed the whispers of history, when client journalism seeks to sanitise hate speech as a ‘balanced’ opinion, and social medi…

NewsRevue

There are many things which conjure up the spirit of the Fringe.

Anything That We Wanted To Be

When Adam Lenson was diagnosed with cancer in 2019; it caused all past, present and future versions of him to collide in the oncology department.

Gyles Brandreth Can't Stop Talking!

Friend, fan, or foe of Gyles Brandreth, there’s probably one thing upon which all can agree: the man simply cannot stop talking.

Summer Camp for Broken People

Emily’s life is falling apart.

It's a Motherf**king Pleasure

This is a brilliant show.

Alba

'I need tae make ma ain decision, even if it's wrang.

Chatham House Rules

The Chatham House Rule is an agreement which allows those in power to share ideas with impunity: the discussion itself can be reported upon, but names are protected.

Rewind

This is how theatre should be.

Santi and Naz

Best friends Santi and Naz live in pre-partition India.

Tennessee, Rose

The works of Tennessee Williams rank as some of the greatest and most iconic plays ever written.

Matt Forde: Inside No. 10

That humour has rarely trodden a more cobbled path than in recent years makes the mean streets of Edinburgh an especially apposite place for the good, the bad, and the downright ug…

Grace Campbell: A Show About Me(n)

Grace Campbell is a one-woman manifesto for body, sex and mental health positivity.

Battle: A Modern Mystery Play

Battle describes itself as a modern mystery play, and takes the audience on an intricately-plotted historical journey from 1066 to the present day: exploring how women just gather …

The Last Romantic

This show revolves around a fairly well-trodden premise: idealistic young creative seeks similar to make beautiful art with.

Arthur Smith: My 75 Years at the Edinburgh Fringe

There are some things as regular at the Fringe as Biblical downpours and overpriced street food.

Three Women and Shakespeare's Will

Three Women and Shakespeare’s Will is is a nice little premise for a play.

Dear Little Loz

To write that Dear Little Loz is an exploration of one woman’s search for love is to risk diminishing its scope, power and understanding of the human condition.

Marrow

Marrow is a love letter to memory and to what makes us: us.

Paul Sinha: One Sinha Lifetime

Paul Sinha is probably best known as one of Bradley Walsh’s TV team of ‘Chasers’: a characterful crew of six champion quizzers whose aim is to stop four plucky hopefuls getti…

Paradok Platform

Billed as a ‘queer manifesto against Grindr’, Looking for Fun is one of the new plays showcased at the Paradok Platform.

Boy: Looking for Friends

Award-winning Polish performer Piotr Sikora has created a beautiful hour of family storytelling which uses clowning, mime, ukulele and audience participation to paint the journey o…

Luca Cupani: Happy Orphan

The title of this show and the sweet, open and slightly goofy face staring at you from the posters should tell you everything you need to know about this show: and stand-up Luca Cu…

Earwig

Earwig is an engaging and classy piece which tells the story of entomologist Marigold Webb, trapped in a loveless marriage and a society as uncomfortable with her deafness as it is…

Rosie Holt: The Woman's Hour

Rosie Holt is much loved on Twitter for her razor-sharp parodies of the thick Tory politician with Good Hair, haplessly spouting any porkie and defending any porker in the hope of …

Kafka and Son

When well done, the biographical show is one of the purest theatrical events known to man.

Matt Forde: Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

I reviewed Forde’s 2019 show Brexit, Pursued by a Bear and wrote of how his political comedy was as therapeutically valuable as it was satirically satisfying.

Second Summer of Love

Yummy Mummy (and Headmaster’s wife, just for extra grown-up points) Louise runs the school choir and helps her teenaged daughter with her homework.

Sex With Friends (and Other Tiny Catastrophes)

We’ve all been there.

Pip Utton as Dylan

Pip Utton really is extraordinary.

NewsRevue

NewsRevue – the world’s longest running comedy show – is as central to the Fringe experience as overpriced artisan burgers and destroying rainforests with unwanted flyers.

Classic!

Despite Kindles and Netflix and Twitter and Podcasts, our collective love of books will never die; at least, if the audience of Classic! at Pleasance Courtyard is anything to go by…

Surfing the Holyland

Erin Hunter’s Surfing the Holyland is a dynamic and fast-paced one-woman show in which she tells the autobiographical story of her year living in Tel Aviv, the colourful cast of …

Bloody Difficult Women

Theatre has proved one of the greatest allies of those seeking to speak to truth to power throughout the ages.

The Actress

During the bawdy years of Charles II’s restoration to the throne, one of his more shocking choices was to alleviate the perceived threat to the heterosexuality of female-imperson…

Winston and David

This is an engaging exploration of the friendship of two of the most iconic British Prime Ministers of all time.

August Wilson's How I Learned What I Learned

This is really special.

About Money

This is a visceral and vitally important piece in which playwright Eliza Gearty and director Alex Kampfner have wrought an exquisite little nugget of social political theatre: subl…

Hamlet with Ian McKellen

The central conceit of this production is that Johan Christensen and Ian McKellen slip symbiotically between being Hamlet’s inner voice and outer actor.

Bard Heads: The Third Witch from the Left and the Whirligig Of Time

These neat little monologues are a sort of fan fiction inspired by various works of Shakespeare (The Tempest, Romeo & Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelf…

Somebody Special – The Aca-Betrayal

This twelve-strong company are enthusiastic, bright young things who sing, sway and beat-box with great spirit.

1001 Open Mic Nights

This energised group of youngsters bounce about the stage with glee, making a capella look far easier than it truly is and throwing themselves into the Fringe vibe with abandon.

Shakespeare's Fool

Fringe roulette is part of what keeps us coming back year after year.

Friend (The One With Gunther)

As times of heady redolence go, the 1990s lacks the brittle style of the 1920s, sepia-tinted upper-lips of haunted men in WWI uniforms, or groovy pereniorange of the 1960s… And y…

Semi-Toned Presents: A Study in Burgundy

Set in the wonderfully open, socially-distanced and drinks-to-your-seats Garden Theatre of theSpaceuk’s Symposium Hall, the a capella group Semi-Toned return to the Fringe with f…

Jane Eyre

There are a handful of stories which truly stand the test of time.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The year is 1894: three years since the world-famous Sherlock Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty plunged to their deaths in The Reichenbach Falls.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Working with a tight script from Stuart Crowther and some inspired direction from Stephen Smith, Threedumb Theatre have created a wonderfully atmospheric version of The Strange Cas…

I Am Gavrilo Princip

“I lit the spark that burned the world down”, declares Oliver Yellop’s Gavrilo Princip, before a dying trumpet slide suggests the spark may have been, in fact, rather more of…

Iain Dale: All Talk with Alastair Campbell

It shouldn’t be controversial to assume that one’s ability to enjoy this particular interchange may well rest ultimately on personal politics and the level of individual anger …

Lest We Forget By Charlotte Green & Rasheka Christie-Carter

Lying not too far beneath the CV19 surface of 2020 lie a series of news events that seem to epitomise our times.

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE* *But Just The Deaths (and the gory bits too)

This jaunty little potter through the more gruesome elements of Shakespeare’s works really ‘gets’ the tone needed for this strange 2020 hybrid of live theatre / film / desper…

Boom Room

The Boom Room is a sweet little radio play that captures the ennui and idiosyncratic Englishness of lockdown – cleaning out spice racks, a sudden urge to plant potatoes – and p…