Revivals always run the risk of not resonating with a contemporary audience, or relying wholly on nostalgia, but Michael Mayer’s touring production of the Fanny Brice story, m…
Nostalgia is big business.
Everyone has a story about Tom, says the narrator.
Like the first, the final play in Rona Munro’s James Plays is part family saga, part love story.
Day of the Innocents takes place on the same set as the first James play, but it feels somewhat different thanks to subtle changes of dressing and lighting.
There’s the feel of a gladiatorial arena to the staging of Rona Munro’s trilogy of James Plays, not least because some audience members seated on a raised area above the sta…
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II didn’t shirk from social issues within their musical theatre productions: racism (South Pacific), transient/absent fatherhood (Carouse…
Australia is home to many curious creatures; a place where men are macho, except when they put on a frock, heels and make-up to sing along to disco classics.
If you grew up in the 1970s it was almost compulsory to know the music of Burt Bacharach and lyrics of Hal David - Alfie, Anyone Who Had a Heart, Look of Love and What the World N…
Billed as “a story of women’s courage, of sisterhood and pride”, A Bench on the Road is a work in progress based on the true experiences of Italian immigrants, Scottish-bo…
With the death of the last surviving veterans a few years back, the so-called Great War of 1914-18 slipped from living memory, but some records remain preserved none-the-less, n…
Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre always has a Christmassy feel to it, with its gilded pillars and Arabian Nights ceiling, and this enchanting adaptation feels like an early Ch…
Last year I bought myself a ukulele but I have to confess that most of the time it looks really cute hanging on my wall.
PHB’s Free Fringe often uses some odd venues and this one, in the small disco downstairs at The Street, is cramped with awkwardly-shaped seating making it difficult for the whole…
The tiny venue was packed so tight for the opening performance of Burton no one in the audience dared breathe.
Is it really 20 years since the publication of Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting? This immersive stage version adapts Danny Boyle’s celluloid presentation of the novel brings…
Bud wants to leave home, but when doing so breaks the tradition of four generations of farmers in rural West Wales, it is a tough decision for the aspiring artist.
A few years ago I took my children to a circus.
Don’t be put off by the title: this is a completely fresh reworking of the 19th century story by the Brothers Grimm.
American song and dance man Movin’ Melvin Brown is not content to have just one show at the Fringe (The Ray Charles Experience), or two (an interactive workshop Tap into Health -…
Each time a mountain rescue is reported in the media, it is difficult not to think ‘Why would they climb that alone/in that weather/at that time of year?’ But the truth for som…
Kershaw has had a lot of bad press over the last decade for his personal life but he’s back on track and promoting his autobiography No Off Switch at the Auditorium, Ghillie Dhu …
As part of the American High School Theatre Festival at Church Hill Studio Theatre in Bruntsfield, Van Buren High School brought to life the colourful and well-loved characters fro…
The Edinburgh Academy makes for a spacious yet slightly odd choice of venue for music and comedy due Kit Hesketh-Harvey and James McConnel.
In a society where the older generation is generally ignored and marginalised by the media, Two Old Gits comes as a welcome change.
TTMOOTV Theatre & Film Company’s Journos is the new play by producer/actor Jamie Alexander Eastlake and co-writer/actor Adam Donaldson who did rather well at last year’s Fringe…
Last year I regretted not taking my junior reviewers to see the Three Half Pints.
This tense drama, nominated for two best new play awards in 2010, centers around the lives of seven young people as they sit their mock ‘A’ Levels at a public school.
As a writer I am always keen to find out how other writers tap into their creative process, and the opportunity to delve into the mind of such a prolific writer as Val McDermid in …
About as far down the opposite end of the spectrum from disappointing as you could get, McCabe’s set is an insight into her coming out at the age of 17 (her dad asked, ‘Susie, …
Vanessa Knight is the most glamorous thing to come out of Birmingham since Duran Duran.
Head of Drama at Trinity College London, John Gardyne does not lecture in the art of playwriting, yet he makes an engaging host for this one-hour workshop encouraging the craft.
Despite being described in the Fringe brochure as a ‘walk and talk exhibition’, the audience of the Arthur Conan Doyle Experience was sat in a lecture room upon arrival and a s…
How do you stop people from getting scared by the word ‘feminism’? Why do we live in a world that presents the size zero as the bodily ideal, and any normal, curvaceous figure …
Sam Brady ushers us into his gig and then darts behind the curtain to announce his own entrance.
The rise in popularity of Burlesque at the Edinburgh Fringe means there is sometimes no telling what is tacky and what is classy.
It’s true: All the nice girls really do like a sailor.
Any single live performance can be affected by many things; a cold venue, a small audience, a slightly fidgety child in the second row (BBR8, sorry!), but when a performer is bille…
This series of free events gives the public a chance to see, listen to and meet Scottish literary performers, from poets to crime novelists, folk musicians to a-capella singers; a …
I’ve never been a huge fan of improvisational comedy for its sheer clever-dick-ness and the prospect of spending an hour with five testosterone-fueled young guns filled my heart …
Shadow puppetry has delighted people for about 1,000 years and little has changed.
The thoughtful touch at this venue was two rows of weenie seats at the front that my petit companion Olivia (4) announced she was going to sit in, next to the girl at the front.
A soggy Sunday afternoon spent in a cosy tent with the rain pitter-pattering on the roof felt much better than the battle of brollies it took to get there.
To say that the audience was full of women of a certain age at Colours of Tango would be slightly unfair.
The last time I ‘did Greek’ was the NTS’s production of The Bacchae with Alan Cumming.
If I were an anthropologist or a linguist I could write a thesis on non-verbal communication through shared laughter.
The connection between traditional Scottish music and Chinese music is something I had given no thought to until this concert, but the Harmony Ensemble changed all that with their …
Given that I am Welsh and probably genetically hardwired to love close-harmony singing, I do not normally go out of my way to find it.
There’s a definite buzz on George Street.
The host for this chat show is Mark Olver, a stand up who has supported Russell Howard on tour and is the warm-up for such television favourites as Deal or No Deal and Vicar of Dib…
There’s a familiar traditional-northern-comic style about Kevin Dewsbury as he welcomes the audience to the room above the Meadows Bar, mixed with a bit of laddish banter.
It promised to be a fun show.
Two women, one food queue and one unlikely friendship.
Simon Egerton is already playing the electric piano when we enter the bar.
It’s been nearly two years since The James Plays made their considerable impression at the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival and today audiences have the opportunity to spend...