2 Star Shows

Prairie Flower

Perhaps as a five-part radio serial Prairie Flower might provide some particular interest to crime enthusiasts, but as a two-hour monologue in the Upstairs at the Gatehouse, even with a fifteen-minute interval, it progresses somewhat tediously…

Blood Wedding

Some productions are enhanced when a director changes the contexts of a play. Loncraine’s Richard III set in Nazi Germany; Hytner’s Henry V transposed to the time of the Iraq war; Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet set in corporate New York; but Lorca in London? It’s true that one of the major themes in Blood Wedding is the individual’s fight against the Andalucían Catholic rural culture of the 1930s which suppressed freedom; but in George Richmond-Scott’s re-imagining of the play Spanish migrants in London and beyond – with the inevitable and lamentable struggles migrants may have – offer very little to connect it to the characters in Lorca’s Blood Wedding...

John-Luke Roberts: Terrible Wonderful Adaptations

As a reviewer I'm fortunate enough to get free tickets to many shows. As it was the last Friday night of the Fringe I thought I'd invite some friends along to see John-Luke Roberts: Terrible Wonderful Adaptations...

The Forecast

I’ll start by being honest – it is incredibly difficult to do sci-fi at the Fringe. The ability to use props and set dressing to create a world is limited when your budget is next to zero and you’re working out of a closed-down church...

In Your Own Sweet Way

Hoghead Theatre Company Returns to the Fringe with their devised piece In Your Own Sweet Way. It's performed by six actors who playing six friends in search of a play.Soon they will all be heading off to university or taking other paths...

I Am Orestes and I Am Electra Too

The far future. After 25 years in Spain, Orestes (played by writer and co-director Arif Alfaraz) arrives as a psychoanalyst at a Greek asylum to treat his long-lost sister Electra’s (Marta Ramonet) ‘madness’ that he believes has been misdiagnosed...

From Today Everything Changes

Before Chris’s wife died, she made him promise to be himself. She had known he was gay before he did, but things were different ‘in those days’ and you stayed together. Newly widowed and embracing ‘from today everything changes’, he begins online dating, not really believing he has anything to offer – especially to men younger than his own pensionable age...

Grace

Katie Reddin-Clancy’s solo show has the potential to be fantastic – with a delicious, sharply observed script that is slickly performed. It is a show that appropriately evades simple labels, a mix of character comedy, cabaret, variety, new writing, monologues, solo-show and theatre, all wrapped into one...

Bad Luck

Billed as part cabaret, part wannabe warehouse rave, my expectations were prepared. An industrial soundtrack heralds Black’s arrival on stage, as she opens with a perceptive and political spoken word/rap piece...

Working Class Hero

Working Class Hero’s biggest flaw is that it isn’t about anything. It involves issues but mentions very little about their impact, and even if it did, our main characters are just insufficiently developed or interesting to make me care...

The Fun Club Presents...

I’m not sure how to explain The Fun Club Presents… Three performers – Sara Page, Franny Anne Rafferty and Alistair McPhail – in a room, all in animal face-paint, talk obliquely about themselves...

3am Waitress

3am Waitress by UK company Rogueplay is billed as "merging physical theatre with dance and aerial circus", but may be better described as a duo acro-dance piece since there is little physical theatre or circus to be found...

Bullingdon Revisited

Bizarre is the word that has stalked my mind since watching Bullingdon Revisited. Telling the infamous story of Dave, Boris and a pig, we follow a young David Cameron as he arrives at Oxford and pursues the attentions of the Bullingdon Club...

Plucked

Plucked is a barnyard fable declaring the high ground on animal cruelty, a sermon on cycles of violence from bird to child to wife. However, like PETA’s performative little cousin, this show lacks nuance...

BARK! The Musical... How the Little Dog Found His Voice

The secret life of man’s best friend is pondered in BARK: The Musical. This quirky show from Swansong Productions tracks a day in the life of a group of dogs who congregate in a local park...

Reigen

Some plays lend themselves to radical reinterpretations and stagings while others need handling with more care. Arthur Schnitzler’s critique of Viennese society from 1903 probably falls into the latter category...

Fallen Fruit

Two Destination Language are encouraging audiences to see the personal narrative behind history with their performance Fallen Fruit. Set in 1989 at the fall of the Berlin Wall, Katherina Radeva presents two perspectives on this life-changing moment...

Sarah Keyworth: Dark Horse

Dark Horse covers lots of ground and it is evidently the result of Keyworth tirelessly exploring multiple comic avenues. The hour touches on gender, sexuality, the comedian's childhood, and her current job being a nanny to two children from a very wealthy family, but it is well-structured and never spreads itself too thinly...

I'll Have What She's Having

Millennial anxieties are unpacked and explored in devised comedy I’ll Have What She’s Having. Written and performed by Jess Brodie and Victoria Bianchi, two women who live completely different lives and fake their own happiness around each other...

Skin Deep

This comedy revue is billed as a ‘celebration of (and for) every body’, an admirable theme for our times when people of all genders, persuasions and body types are finding their voice and becoming part of both the #MeToo and #ItGetsBetter movements...

Forget Me Nots

Review
★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
13th Aug, 2018

Forget Me Nots is a new piece of ‘queer theatre’ from Rokkur Friggjar, a collective of theatre makers based in Iceland and the UK, who are contributors to this year’s Army@Summerhall Festival Fringe programme...

Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens

Review
★★
M Johnson
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues – C
13th Aug, 2018

Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is the plastic-and-glitter-wearing spiritual sister of shows such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Durham University Light Opera Group (DULOG) are the team behind this year's version of the classic Fringe musical: although they have brought buckets of enthusiasm to the loopy space opera, sadly overall the show feels unfocused, under-rehearsed and underwhelming...

One Life Stand

After their five star runaway success with All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, Middle Child were always going to suffer from difficult second album syndrome and it’s a real shame that One Life Stand just doesn’t have the same magic spark...

No One Is Coming to Save You

No One is Coming to Save You is an abstract piece of theatre which eschews character development and plot narrative, in favour of exploring recurring images. Glasses of water, a hammer, a television set, and a dawning and dying light...

Framed!

Art and crime collide in a ‘brush with the law’ from Laughing Mirror. In this lively comedy, Ashley Lancaster, a foolish and inept criminal, longs to become a wanted man. Unfortunately, he lacks the skill to catch the attention of the police or the papers...

Love Cycle: Love Chapter 2

Love Chapter 2 by L-E-V, choreographed by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, is a twin-piece to OCD Love, both part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Whereas OCD Love is mesmerising and expresses a deep psychological understanding of the mental disorder, the meaning of this follow-up is so opaque, the movements so repetitive and obscure, its effect is soporific...

Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus, by the Philippe Saire company, didn't live up to its initial promise. This is an ultra-violet light show performed by two live dancers, aimed at adults and children (7+)...

Polaris

Holly & Ted’s Polaris opens with a slow explanation of the characters the two actors will be playing, frustratingly broken up by the use of a tablet to control an impressive soundscape...

Trump'd!

There is such a plethora of Donald Trump-inspired shows at Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, it feels like it should almost become its own genre. From theatrical performances to musicals, there are so many mediums to dramatise the past two years of his presidency...

Demi Lardner: I Love Skeleton

Demi Lardner feels the need, at one point in their most recent show, to unveil a banner listing their previous accomplishments and awards they have won. This is presented alongside a series of self-depracating laughs at technical errors and admonishing of the welcoming audience applauding their routines...

BaseCamp

Fever Dream Theatre’s BaseCamp promises an immersive experience in the rivalry between two world-class mountain climbers preparing for a joint ascent of a Himalayan mountain. The audience is split between their two tents, hearing one side of the multi-faceted story of their relationship and career...

Flies

I was excited about Flies. An award-winning theatre company. A sold-out show. An eager looking crowd. A delicious cheese toastie in preparation. I was ready to be swept away on an absurdist wave...

The Last Straw

People Show have been producing work for more than 50 years which, given the self-indulgence of People Show 130 (or The Last Straw, to give its more Fringe-friendly title), is something of a surprise...

Space Doctor

This November happens to mark the 55th anniversary of the BBC broadcasting the first ever episode of Doctor Who, so it's hardly surprising that several shows on this year's Fringe have again opted to grab hold of this now-iconic part of British culture; indeed, the people behind Space Doctor even touch on some of the aspects which distinguish Doctor Who from other popular British TV shows like EastEnders—its active fandom base, for example...

...and Peggy

Attempting to create a spin-off to one of the most beloved musicals of recent memory is a brave choice, and unfortunately it is a gamble that didn't pay off in this case....and Peggy is a spin-off to the hit musical Hamilton, focusing on the very minor character of Peggy Schuyler, and aims to show her side of the now-famous story behind the American War of Independence...

Jungle

Jungle by the Bernese company Pink Mama under the direction of Slawek Bendraf and Dominik Krawiecki, purports to be about post-colonialism and in particular who survives but how does it relate to post-colonialim? Search me...

Alma, a Human Voice

Review
★★
Sarah Virgo
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
6th Aug, 2018

Alma: A Human Voice is a one-person performance focused on portraying and contrasting two characters from the early 1900s. One of these is painter Oskar Kokoschka, who famously made a life-size doll of his former lover, and muse, Alma Mahler; the other is the main character in Cocteau’s Opera, La Voix Humaine, a heart-broken woman...

Sex Waitress

Sex Waitress catapults us forward to the year 2020, in which a dystopian London has emerged from female empowerment and consent campaigns, to a society in which misogynists and sex offenders- or ‘Keiths’- are shielded, and even promoted...

Home, I'm Darling

Review
★★
Simon Smith
West End
Dorfman Theatre
2nd Aug, 2018

An exquisitely detailed design of a picture box façade-free house. A multitude of circle dresses that swoosh beautifully around Katherine Parkinson as she seemingly dances every step before you...

Pity

Review
★★
Simon Smith
West End
Royal Court Theatre
23rd Jul, 2018

Statistics show that last year the most common reason cited in UK divorce papers was "irreconcilable bathroom habits”. In the same year, a US state approved benefit payment to anyone out of work due to jobs available “being a bit shit really”...

The End of History

The End of History is billed as “a moving and funny site-responsive play with music which uses a chance encounter to explore the impact of gentrification on two radically different individuals”...

Translations

Review
★★
Simon Smith
West End
Olivier Theatre
6th Jun, 2018

It can’t be easy creating a programme that justifies the term National given to the theatres on London’s South Bank, when you know that your most frequent visitors of critics and ‘season ticket holders’ will be harsh and loud and hold you personally to account...

Carol Cates: Lady Carol

If ever there was a show of two halves, this was it. Carol begins by telling us she's bad at starts, and she’s right. In the first half hour there is no flow and the themes she brings to us are too shallow for the length of time she allots to them...

Cooked

With the teaser image of a banana on a plate and a blurb that includes previous accolades listed on its promotional material, Cooked promises to be a darkly comic rom-com where a new beau on the first date meets the new date's ex who has reluctantly agreed to cook them dinner...

Don't Worry Be Yoncé (XS)

Have you ever wanted to be Beyoncé? Well, this 45 minute show is a light-hearted attempt to teach you to. Quite literally. There is no more to it than that.So, how’s it done and does it work?Two young women dressed in sexy black trouser suits posture like Queen B on stage and present the show as a glorified lecture...

Think Outside The Box

A light-hearted, inventive way of exploring the distinctions and limitations of thinking inside the box and thinking outside the box. This show captures the importance of escaping the safety of the rational and the logical, encouraging the creativity and originality that comes with thinking from a new perspective...

Another Fine Mess

Another Fine Mess is a one act play about a Laurel and Hardy tribute act. Phil, played by Philip Goudal, and Steve, played by Daryl Bennett, live and work together with Steve’s recently moved in girlfriend Meg, played by Kirstie Lilleystone...

Passing On

With a plotline exploring important topics like same-sex parenting, surrogacy and genetic history I had high hopes for Passing On. Unfortunately, these were not met, and I was disappointed by this production...

Space Doctor

Have you ever turned up at a party to find yourself surrounded by people you didn’t know who all seemed to be united by an in-joke you didn’t get? That was my Space Doctor experience...

The Erebus Project

The Erebus Project has an interesting premise. Sam, an Aspergic Ph.D. student, is developing a computer programme to eavesdrop on a person’s thoughts. But what if the subject is then wired up at the point of death? Will this reveal whether there is an afterlife? Thus arises The Erebus Project, Erebus being the primordial Greek God of darkness who is associated with death...

There Was a Ship

Located inside the hulking monolith that is St Bartholemew’s church, the veritable belly of the beast, is a wacky art installation by sculptor and spoken word artist Brian Mander...

Art of Printmaking: Open Studio

The Art of Printmaking exhibition features the art of those involved with the Fine Art Printmaking and Photography Cooperative. On the day I visited, six artists’ works were featured, including Angela Cowan, who was watching over the open studio space...

Waiting for Curry

Review
★★
Simon Lovat
Brighton Fringe
Sweet Dukebox
19th May, 2018

The opening premise of Twilight Theatre’s Waiting for Curry, written and directed by Susanne Crosby, runs thus: Rob and his wife Chris have invited their friends Phil and Sue over to their house for a take-away curry, but it fails to arrive...

About A Revolution

The latest production from Windmill Young Actors attempts to explore the spirit of revolution and a multitude of ambitious ideas with varying degrees of success. Sadly, it struggles with tonal inconsistency and creating a unified vision for the performance...

The O.S. Map Fan Club

On paper – cartographical paper by preference – this is the sort of show that is the heart of fringe theatre. A quirky, solo performance with dozens of slightly Blue Peteresque props and a niche theme...

5 Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist

Craigslist, for those unfamiliar, is a site where people can advertise jobs, sell things and also meet people for 'casual encounters' – which basically means no strings attached sex, so I was unsure what to expect from the one man show 5 Encounters On A Site Called Craigslist by Sam Ward...

A Song of Plague

Set in London during the devastating plague of 1665, Lost in the Fog’s A Song of Plague blends music, puppetry and poetry to tell the story of a physician’s attempts to find a cure for the deadly disease...

Gauhar Jaan – The Datia Incident

Looking at a beautifully lit and visually enticing set on a traverse stage, this production of Gauhar Jaan - The Datia Incident looks very promising. The dais at one end is in a red light with luxuriant cushions; there are authentic-looking carpets and muslim symbols painted on the floor...

Is This Thing On?

A difficult look at a physically and mentally abusive relationship, Is This Thing On? uses a mixture of physical theatre and words to take us on an uncomfortable journey through the history of a relationship...

Macbeth

Review
★★
West End
National Theatre
9th Mar, 2018

There’s a moral sense of the inevitable in Macbeth. Man is greedy. Greedy is bad. Murder is badder. Bad men – especially the badder ones – die. Brushing aside accusations of over-simplification, any fan of the Channel 5 Afternoon Movie could predict from the start that things won’t end well for this eponymous antihero, despite the power and fame that the witches predict for him...

Indigo's Pianolympics

Review
★★
Frodo Allan
Adelaide Fringe
The Jade
5th Mar, 2018

Indigo’s Pianolympics is a very silly show. Classically trained pianists India Hooi and Hugo Selles have invented a new genre, the piano-themed sketch show. They spend the duration of the performance telling jokes, playing characters and mugging appropriately and the audience laughs along with them throughout...

The Twilight Zone

Review
★★
London Fringe
Almeida Theatre
15th Dec, 2017

Welcome to another theatrical dimension, beyond which there may be no clear sense of purpose. A dimension that at times is just a fun, semi-respectful staging of a TV Classic, but at others takes itself too seriously to unnecessarily attempt making some other point...

Goats

Review
★★
West End
The Royal Court Theatre
4th Dec, 2017

Set in a village in Syria, Liwaa Yazji’s Goats translated by Katherine Halls directs its focus on the struggles of a community devouring state controlled propaganda deep within the throes of civil war...

Half Baked

Review
★★
Brighton
Rialto Theatre
18th Oct, 2017

It’s rare when the title of a show manages to effectively review itself. Unfortunately, this is the case for Half Baked. As the very first show from new Brighton-based theatre company Covert Accomplice, you might not expect a fully polished performance...

Saint George and the Dragon

Review
★★
West End
National Theatre
16th Oct, 2017

For those who don’t know much about mid-20th century Russian literature – I’m sure there must be one or two – satirical playwright Evgeny Schwartz’s 1943 play, Drakon (The Dragon) is the inspiration for this Saint George and The Dragon, now at The Olivier...

Jane Eyre

Review
★★
West End
The Lyttelton Theatre
2nd Oct, 2017

The year for the National Theatre so far has been beset by the dramas over the dramas on its programme – depending on your viewpoint, it either doesn't contain enough classics or it has far too many revivals; it's too risk averse or it includes too much theatrical pretension for a venue with inclusivity at its heart...

Arbikie Gin Masterclass

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Merchant's Hall
28th Aug, 2017

You are guaranteed to be off to a great start when you step into the gorgeous Merchant’s Hall with a G&T in hand. Seated in banquet style seating, you quickly make acquaintances with those at your table and the atmosphere is light but relaxed...

Alex Smith – Real Man

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Whistlebinkies
28th Aug, 2017

The laws of stand up hold that childhood diaries are always good for a laugh. The whole 'wasn’t I a daft little so-and-so' shtick provides the impetus for Alex Smith’s attempts to come to terms with not being a ‘real man’...

All's Well That Ends As You Like It: A Lamentable Comedie and Hysterickal Tragedie, by William Shakefpeare

Farce has a proud place in British theatre history. From 14th century mystery plays, to Oscar Wilde, through to Alan Ayckbourn and Tom Stoppard, it has tickled and shocked audiences by playing with the boundaries of absurdity, driven by a speed and a vigour one seldom sees in any other genre...

1984

George Orwell’s magnum opus novel 1984 is eerily relevant today despite being published in 1949 and shows us a world of constant war, omnipresent surveillance and propaganda conditioning...

Julius Caesar

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, Julius Caesar is perhaps the best aware of its historical place. It’s a retelling of an event already mythologized at the time of its writing – the assassination of the eponymous Caesar – and takes stock of its own place in the historical canon; it, more than any other Shakespeare play, confronts its own role in future recreations of the story it tells...

Towers of Eden

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
24th Aug, 2017

Exploring the relationship between a brother and a sister growing up in a climate change fuelled apocalypse, Towers of Eden explores many classic dystopian themes as well some more relatable ones around family relationships and connections...

The Sandman

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
23rd Aug, 2017

This Victoriana adaptation of a gothic adaptation of a children’s fairy tale figure is not exactly breaking new ground. It could have come from any number of the white-shirt and braces wearing wacky student troupes here at Fringe...

Lucille & Django's Totally Restorative Yoga Retreat!

Lucille and Django are two young yoga leader characters with a surfer-vegan-spiritual vibe and chirpy Australian accents. Throughout the show, what seems to be a happy duo descends into a passive aggressive (and then actively aggressive) relationship...

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues – C
23rd Aug, 2017

I Love you, You’re Perfect, Now Change is earnestly performed by a youthful and small cast – the reason for scraping the second star – but the uninspired script and the overall piece really struggles to succeed...

Certain Young Men

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace @ Venue45
23rd Aug, 2017

Peter Gill”s Certain Young Men was first performed at the Almeida Theatre in 1999. According to Cambridge University Queer Players this is its first revival. Seemingly it did not occur to them that there might be very good reason why the play has languished for eighteen years without seeing the lights of another theatre...

Red Button

Red Button is a quirky and peculiar piece of science fiction theatre that doesn’t quite find its feet. As it is sadly let down by a messy and ambiguous script.On a floating city above the war-torn land below where the mutants roam, Help Corporation is here for you providing you with drugs, running your radio stations, providing your daily doses of propaganda and giving out buttons that destroy the world out to couples they like...

Salome

In Oscar Wilde’s timeless twist on the biblical story of John the Baptist’s execution, princess Salome lives luxuriously in a bustling Middle Eastern court with her mother and stepfather, the perpetually inebriated tetrarch Herod Antipas...

Ami and Tami

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Underbelly, Cowgate
23rd Aug, 2017

Ami and Tami is a reimagined Hansel & Gretel for the modern day. This musical rendition takes the classic fairytale and catapults it into the 21st Century, making it more relevant and appealing for the whole family...

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None is difficult as a play. The self-serious tone of the novel feels contrived on stage, and actually seeing people thrust into such a contrived scenario in person is patently camp compared to reading it on the page...

Spring Awakening: A Reimagining

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
SpaceTriplex
22nd Aug, 2017

Not the 2006 Broadway musical, but the 1981 play on which that was based, Spring Awakening is notable for its controversies upon original publication. Censored for many years, it dealt with sex, abortion, suicide and homosexuality...

Hands-On Messiah

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
St Patrick's Church
22nd Aug, 2017

Hands-on Messiah, written and performed by F. Mary Callan, is a one-person adaptation of the Gospel of John told from the perspective of characters, great or small, who met and interacted with Jesus...

Maklena

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace @ Venue45
19th Aug, 2017

Perhaps at the time it was first written this play would have been seen as fantastic, dealing with themes that were deeply entrenched in many of the Soviet plays of the early 1930s...

Over the Garden Fence

The debut play from Haylo Theatre, comprising Hayley Riley and Louise Evans, Over the Garden Fence, follows Annabelle and her Gran, Dolly who is suffering from dementia. Through flashback and a huge roster of silly neighbours, we see the impact of her illness on their lives as the actors explore forgetting, recalling and reliving memories...

2016 the Musical

The idea of taking a serious topic and turning it into a musical is not a new to the Fringe. Despite this, the concept behind 2016 the Musical still seemed refreshing enough for me to have high expectations...

An Audience With Ted Pendleton

It is an interesting idea to stage a comedic play about the backstage conversations that take place between stage hands, in the shadow of the performer that they work for, but this idea has not been developed well here...

Sean Hughes's Blank Book

Improvised comedy is always a high stakes game. Unscripted shows walk a narrow path, attempting to circumnavigate an abyss of complete disaster and reach the coveted realms of spontaneous hilarity...

Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus is a new musical based on the Christopher Marlowe play/ancient story archetype. In this modernised telling, Emma Faustus is a pharmaceutical scientist who joins a shady company (HEL) to continue researching a cure for the disease that killed her girlfriend...

Breakfast Plays: B!rth

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Traverse Theatre
16th Aug, 2017

The Traverse Theatre sadly need to offer more than a bacon roll to make Breakfast Plays: B!rth worth getting up for. Whilst the addition of breakfast and a hot drink is a nice touch, they aren't enough to compensate for a dull performance...

The Dolls of New Albion

Paul Shapera’s steampunk opera The Dolls of New Albion is a macabre four acts featuring four generations in a small town where the dead can come back to life as human-sized, unworldly dolls...

Radio

The concept behind Sunscreen Productions’ Radio is pretty familiar: a group of flatmates at the end of their university careers grapple with past tensions and future anxieties while trying to get their deposit back...

Alun Cochrane: Alunish Cochranish

Alun Cochrane’s 2017 offering Alunish Cochraneish feels very well-named: with enjoyable skits and well-time delivery, this show is a collection of thoughts that make up what it must be like to be inside Alun’s brain...

Avalon

This is an insight into a piece of work in its infancy, and it does have a long way to go before it stands on its own two feet. This staged read though of Avalon is littered with clumsy tropes, a lack of consistency in its world building, and an ambiguity in what it is trying to achieve...

Beauty

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
The Royal Scots Club
12th Aug, 2017

'What is an artist without his muse?' Beauty constantly asks this question as it delves into what it really means to create a legacy as an artist, and investigates how morals are explored and brought into question in the world of art...

Ballot Box

Ballot Box from Tea and Tonic productions may be categorised under ‘New Writing,’ but it fails to provide an original scope on Brexit. This comedy satire follows the impact of the EU referendum on two out-of- work actresses, Molly and Lydia (played by Keri Bastiman and Emily Parker-Barratt, who also wrote the play)...

The Alchemist

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
SpaceTriplex
10th Aug, 2017

Caterham Rep’s adaptation of Ben Jonson’s classic tale The Alchemist is exactly that: don’t expect any surprises here. If you know the play, then this is a nice romp through his well-known Jacobean farce, and if you don’t then you’ll certainly pick up the gist fairly quickly...

Wrong Tree Adventures

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Lauriston Halls
9th Aug, 2017

This August, Durham-based Wrong Tree Theatre are bringing three shows to Edinburgh; currently on offer is Souvenirs, a light-hearted adventure that draws on the heavy use of props, puppetry, physical comedy and traditional storytelling techniques to advance its narrative...

Heartwood

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
9th Aug, 2017

Pinecone Penguin Theatrical’s Heartwood has all the makings of an enchanting production, but the slow and insipid script just does not deliver. Through music and puppetry, this family musical follows young Eleanor, a nine year old girl with a serious illness, who wakes from her hospital bed to find herself in a strange woodland full of odd creatures...

The Future of Desire

What is the future of desire? I hoped Neil Frude, a leading lecturer on abnormal psychology, would be able to tell me. Except what happened within this 45-minute talk was two things: I learned about the multitude of condom flavours on the market and fundamentally, that sci-fi TV series Humans on Channel 4, is in fact accurate...

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum!

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Central Hall
6th Aug, 2017

Sondheim’s fast-paced lyrics are hard to perform well, even for an experienced Broadway star, and it is rare that I have seen an amateur production that manages to do him justice...

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