Articles by Oliver Simmonds

Brexit and Nazi Art: Interview with Ten Storey Love Song’s Paul Smith

Feature
Oliver Simmonds
Edinburgh Fringe
30th Aug, 2016

Bobby Winner Ten Storey Love Song (adapted by Luke Barnes from the Richard Milward novel) is a play cum techno gig about five wretched tower-block inhabitants who deserve better from life...

One for the Road

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Quaker Meeting House
27th Aug, 2016

Harold Pinter’s short play, One for the Road, concerns torture, and you can assume it’s talking about state-sanctioned torture, given Rising Phoenix Repertory’s decision to tack on a clip of the playwright saying “political theatre is important” at the play’s end...

Taiwan Season: Solo Date

Looking like a cyberpunk priest, Tsai Pao-Chang’s hero is swamped in technology — AI, encrypted files and dating sites. We see a bereaved protagonist, Ho-Hien. His lover has just died in a plane crash and he cannot find peace, especially so when a file belonging to his deceased shows a torrid history...

All In

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
20th Aug, 2016

Here’s what happens in order: A parody of bourgeois conversation by actors in black morphsuits; a light show to the gaiety of the Ode To Joy; unembellished description of said piece; a demented, Sesame-Street-type lesson on cooking and friendship; a plastic-covered man holding his drink in a nightclub while an omnium-gatherum of object names gets projected behind; footage of North Korea’s Arirang Mass Games; a penumbra-umbra light show to wrap it all up...

Single Varietal

Review
★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
18th Aug, 2016

Bob Stourton has an orchard. This orchard makes cider, specifically Hambledon Gold Single Varietal Cider, a famed brew from South West England. Bob dies and suddenly his children, Molly and Tim, are thrust into the care of the smallholding, and conflicts grow over its handling...

Camille

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
18th Aug, 2016

Most Fringe shows think they can squeeze two hours into fifty minutes. Not Camille: it’s focused and the pace of it is of a kind gallingly absent from Edinburgh.Musing, Camille takes the stage quietly, though don’t assume this means she’s content...

Ears on a Beatle

Billed as “not simply a docu-drama”, Ears on a Beatle promises perspective on the post-Summer-of-Love, post-Fab-Four decade in which the two protagonist agents find themselves.Rookie Daniel and battle-hardened Howard do the grunt work in investigating John Lennon and his revolutionary comrades...

Under Ice

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
17th Aug, 2016

Lithuanian director Arturas Areima mounts an adaptation of Falk Richter’s play of the same name, Under Ice. If these names ring obscure, fear not: know that Areima is a brilliant director with a spirited cast of performers and Richter’s words manage to make an impact...

Nzinga Warrior Queen

When the polyrhythm is heard in Nzinga Warrior Queen’s opening, you know this isn’t a comedy of manners. We’re seeing South African nation Angola in the 17th century (when it wasn’t Angola), when the Portuguese tried, and succeeded at establishing a slave trade...

Mule

Drug-smuggling. Ibiza to Peru. One of the worst prisons in the world and two women trying their best to survive. Omnibus’ Mule is inspired by the Peru Two: two girls who entered the drug trade and paid for it with a prison sentence...

This Evil Thing

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
New Town Theatre
16th Aug, 2016

Many appreciate conscientious objectors because they seem on the right side of history. Because war’s pointless, isn’t it? Many British appreciate Muhammad Ali for spurning Vietnam; but could an audience appreciate the conscious objectors (C...

Last Call

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
14th Aug, 2016

Angst. Millennial or Generation X — we don’t know, but it’s definitely angst. A teen has run away from her Belgian home because she doesn’t feel connected to life or herself...

Spaced: Whisky Theatre

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Valvona & Crolla Scottish Foodhall@Jenners
14th Aug, 2016

Imagine you’re fifteen. Imagine you’re using BBC Bitesize modules to help cram for the GCSE History exam the following day. Imagine, also, that you’re trying stave off revision by drinking whisky...

The Road to Huntsville

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
13th Aug, 2016

Stephanie Ridings does a lecture on state homicide with drama. Framed on one level as a straightforward research project into Death Row, Ridings can’t help but get involved in another sense...

Tent

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
13th Aug, 2016

A man and his unseen companion in a tent. They’re hiking; trudging through the mountains to reach...somewhere. Tent puts on cryptic dressings to let the performer, Yuuya Ishizone, riff on life, its problems and Japanese living...

The Rose of Jericho

Kevin Hely stares, bares his teeth and darts along the stage. His character’s an ex-soldier, hard-as-nails and sweary; you’ll see why he had to choose the army, a seemingly better home than the one he couldn’t stand as a child...

Mrs Roosevelt Flies to London

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Hall
12th Aug, 2016

Five-star performance in a three-star play. In Mrs. Roosevelt Flies to London, Mrs. Roosevelt, well, flies to London. It’s Mid-WWII, post-Blitz England with a city blown to pieces, and Eleanor Roosevelt has come to cheer us all up...

Sins Borne

Absolutely implausible and performed implausibly too: there are moments where Sins Borne’s premise works but they are too sparse.EJ’s a crusty old hermit: a widower shut off from the world and the tumult of societal change...

BOBBY WINNER

Ten Storey Love Song

Ten Storey Love Song may be the greatest Fringe show I’ve ever encountered. And I’m going to try my hardest to explain why, because it truly is worth your time.Middle Child Theatre are based in Hull...

Fourth Monkey's Genesis and Revelation: Ascension Part 2

Here we go again. The other half of Fourth Monkey’s Ascension is here, though according to them the parts are “complementary, but independent”. And they are complementary, if by ‘complementary’ you mean utterly the same in tone, image and structure...

Bend in the River

Deep Water Theatre Collective mount Bend in the River: a tender, Thornton Wilder-esque look at the modest living of lepers. The place: Marine Hospital 66 in Carville, Louisiana. The time: 1941...

Travesty

It’s a bowl of sugar mixed with grit. Liam Williams, Edinburgh Comedy darling, has written a play and it’s a two-hand romance. Travesty charts the relationship of yuppies Ben and Anna, from their intrepid beginnings to the later, harder trials...

Wilde Without the Boy

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Hall
10th Aug, 2016

It’s indefatigably Wilde. You don’t even need the show’s title to know it’s Wilde. Gerard Logan simply is Wilde, from the non-stop quips and allusions to the tender look at his own condemned urges...

Fourth Monkey's Genesis and Revelation: Ascension Part 1

The Genesis + Revelation cycle by Fourth Monkey promises “traditional Bible stories with a contemporary twist”. I struggle to see what’s contemporary about Ascension Part 1; it’s a mishmash of apocalypse imagery and shouting, unfettered by sense...

Happy Dave

Bloody Happy Dave. I can’t lie, it sounds bad on paper: office boy reclaims the glory days as a DJ. He was good, he tells us. His raves were the greatest in England, or they were until the bilious Criminal Justice Act of 1994 that outlawed them...

Captured

Forsaken love. Reunited lovers. Man and woman. The man whose illustrious career kept the woman afloat in a subtle, stifling bondage. She had to get out; she’s jettisoned comfort for a modest career in a poor area...

Isabel(le)

Isabel(le) concerns Isabel Brade, a freewheeling brothel owner with a penchant for dance, and Emma, her great-granddaughter and narrator of the show. Together they’ll teach us about their relationship, their church and why sometimes you have to stick it out despite the condemnation of others...

House and Amongst the Reeds

London-based Clean Break fit two plays into one show: House, a tight family drama set in a British-Nigerian household, and Amongst the Reeds, a nondescript tale of homelessness, friendship and pregnancy...

Dreaming Under the Southern Bough

stage@leedscompany mount an original adaptation of Tang Xianzu’s A Dream Under the Southern Bough. Xianzu was a playwright and he died 400 years ago, like our dear Bard. But he’s obscure and Chinese; therefore he’s the kind of under-appreciated source ripe for a Edinburgh Fringe performance...

Inferno

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
6th Aug, 2016

Inferno is the first and, arguably, best part of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Sin manifests itself. We see the evidence of our transgressions, even when they exist in a nasty, draconian framework...

The Unknown Soldier

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Hall
5th Aug, 2016

Centenary productions saturate the Fringe, yet the conceit at the heart of The Unknown Soldier puts it slightly above the masses. And masses are relevant here. The Great War has ended: dead soldiers abound and the Armed Forces lack the wherewithal to send them back...

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