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…
If recent productions are anything to go by, the RSC of 2025 season will be characterised as the summer of great spectacle.
This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a handsome production.
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…
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…
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, not included in the First Folio and generally considered as authorially dubious, has only ever been staged in Stratford six times.
The story of the ugly duckling is well-known; and entirely apposite for our strange times.
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…
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.
Long Distance is a new play which explores intimacy and connection through a series of text messages.
Claude Monet’s works are some of the most immediately identifiable of art history.
Shows like this are the absolute heart of the Fringe.
This is the perfect Fringe show.
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…
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 is a dreamer.
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 unfolds in a Portland Anorexia Rehabilitation Centre where Ce, a long-time anorexia struggler, confides in her audience about her treatment journey.
This is a beautiful play.
The name of Leni Riefenstahl is destined to echo forever down the years as one of the facilitators of Nazism.
As artfully dishevelled studios go, Arthur’s is on the more organised side of shambolic.
Vietnam veteran Jimmy lives an okay enough life, poking around his garage in rustbelt Michigan, enjoying the gruff banter between friends and customers.
Lubna Kerr is a chatterbox.
Emma-Louise Howell will go far.
In this brief installation piece, Darkfield conjure a range of realities for the audience aboard their Airbus 320.
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.
Agent Blonde, Jane Blonde, has to save the world from an evil, criminal genius.
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…
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.
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 …
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’s ALL TALK political interviews have in recent years become something of a regular fixture of the Fringe circuit.
Christopher Marlowe is forever fated to be associated with his peer and likely chum William Shakespeare.
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.
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…
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 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…
This is a strange one.
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…
Best friends Santi and Naz live in pre-partition India.
The works of Tennessee Williams rank as some of the greatest and most iconic plays ever written.
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…
There are many things which conjure up the spirit of the Fringe.
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.
Friend, fan, or foe of Gyles Brandreth, there’s probably one thing upon which all can agree: the man simply cannot stop talking.
Emily’s life is falling apart.
This is a brilliant show.
'I need tae make ma ain decision, even if it's wrang.
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.
This is how theatre should be.
Grace Campbell is a one-woman manifesto for body, sex and mental health positivity.
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 …
This show revolves around a fairly well-trodden premise: idealistic young creative seeks similar to make beautiful art with.
Three Women and Shakespeare’s Will is is a nice little premise for a play.
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.
There are some things as regular at the Fringe as Biblical downpours and overpriced street food.
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…
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 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…
Marrow is a love letter to memory and to what makes us: us.
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…
Billed as a ‘queer manifesto against Grindr’, Looking for Fun is one of the new plays showcased at the Paradok Platform.
We’ve all been there.
Pip Utton really is extraordinary.
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.
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…
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 …
Theatre has proved one of the greatest allies of those seeking to speak to truth to power throughout the ages.
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…
This is an engaging exploration of the friendship of two of the most iconic British Prime Ministers of all time.
This is really special.
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…
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 …
When well done, the biographical show is one of the purest theatrical events known to man.
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.
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.
The central conceit of this production is that Johan Christensen and Ian McKellen slip symbiotically between being Hamlet’s inner voice and outer actor.
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…
This twelve-strong company are enthusiastic, bright young things who sing, sway and beat-box with great spirit.
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.
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…
Fringe roulette is part of what keeps us coming back year after year.
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…
There are a handful of stories which truly stand the test of time.
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.
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…
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 …
“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…
Lying not too far beneath the CV19 surface of 2020 lie a series of news events that seem to epitomise our times.
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…
In Nia Williams’ upcoming new musical, Lady Macbeth is a creepy life coach who takes advantage of the collective incapacity of lockdown to bring her own particular brand of… we…
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…
The chaos of a house move.
Conceived, written and acted by Timothy Quinlan, this short film features some of the better acting on offer at the Fringe, and like so many others, is inspired by the strange real…
Written by Nicholas Wright for the Chichester Festival, Rattigan’s Nijinsky explores sexuality, privacy, autonomy and unconditional love within the central conceit of why the dyi…
Whatever else the history books will make of UK politics in 2019, it can at least acknowledge some impressive feminist credentials, with women leading parties right, left and centr…
Let’s not mince words – this is a hard watch.
Just yards from James Boswell’s Edinburgh birthplace and subsequent residence on the Lawnmarket, MHK Productions & Rhymes with Purple present his famed friendship with Samuel…
Molly Brenner’s one-woman show about her pursuit of an orgasm is an endearingly-performed trundle through her long search for sexual fulfilment.
This.
The Artists Collective Theatre consider what could prompt an eighteen year old girl to create one of the most lauded, feared, impressive and appalling tales of the overpowering nee…
Living in Kent - Maxwell tells us – he is surrounded by the sort of puce-faced, fake WWII heroes who seem to think that having once watched a film with John Mills in it automatic…
Matt Forde’s reputation as one of our finest political satirists moves into even more assured territory with this caustic and superbly angry hour of impressions and observations.
Those not lucky enough to have enjoyed the naff golden years and dubious social content of 1970s and 80s television may not immediately understand the appeal of a one-woman show ab…
Tucked away upstairs at The Gilded Balloon, nestling right at the heart of comedy central, is an absolute gem which is a must-see for any devotees of real theatre.
Rebecca Perry’s one-women tribute to four icons of the Golden Age of cinema is a cheery and bouncy hour celebrating Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton and Lucille Ball.
The National Trust Fan Club is what happens if you imagine a Dave Gorman show delivered by your bouncy Auntie Joyce and her preoccupation with how to pronounce ‘scone’ (to rhym…
In one of her most famous novels, Dodie Smith begins the adventures of Cassandra Mortmain with the line, “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink”.