Articles by Richard Beck

Second Space Launch

Feature
Richard Beck
Online & Broadcast
18th Jan, 2021

theSpaceUK starts 2021 'with renewed vigour'

The Rialto, Brighton: Born Out of Desire

Feature
Richard Beck
Brighton
21st Oct, 2020

Richard Beck met up with Roger Kay, who with his business partner Lauren Varnfield, owns the Rialto Theatre, Brighton, where they are also joint artistic directors.

Phil Willmott takes up arms against a sea of troubles

Feature
Richard Beck
London Fringe
25th Sep, 2020

Renowned playwright, composer, librettist, teacher, dramaturg, arts journalist and actor, Phil Willmott talks to Richard Beck about things past, present and future and in particula...

Vampire's Ball Ultimate Halloween Party

Brad Tassell and Steve Goodie describe themselves as a pair who have been ‘all-around nutty goofballs for more than 30 years’; and it shows.

Lockdown Drag-out

It’s either a mid-conversation pick-up or a recording error that opens Jane Martin’s monologue, Lockdown Drag-Out, in which she appears as the plummy and plumpy Audrey Stanton …

The Plague Thing

If you’ve been feasting on BBC iPlayer during lockdown and enjoying the delights of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, it’s worth taking six minutes out of your social isolation t…

Creating A Virtual Space At The Fringe

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
3rd Aug, 2020

‘One Festival, Three Weeks, Eighty Shows‘ - theSpaceUK

Army Launches Fringe Offensive

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
9th Jul, 2020

Out of adversity comes opportunity.A great programme of workshops, shows, screenings, readings and discussions.

Four Shows Fly Out From the Wings

Feature
Richard Beck
West End
10th Jun, 2020

The frozen theatre wasteland of COVID-19 is likely to take a long time to thaw, but there are signs of melting as companies find innovative ways to compensate for the lack of live ...

Wind of Heaven

There is something wonderfully seasonal about Wind of Heaven at the Finborough Theatre.

The House of The Spirits / La Casa de Los Espíritus

The mission of the Cervantes Theatre “to showcase the best Spanish and Latin American plays in London” is strikingly realised in its closing play of the 2019 season that featur…

Sydney & the Old Girl

Forget any notions of political correctness, civility or polite drawing room conversation.

A Kind of Loving

The decade might be set in history as ‘Swinging’, but for many of us who lived through the ‘60’s the appellation has only a marginal connection with the realities of life.

Murder in the Cathedral

Performing a play in a cathedral about an archbishop assassinated in a cathedral might sound like a match made in heaven.

The Match Box

The prospect of a two-act monologue that lasts around two and a quarter, an interval, is perhaps daunting for both the actor and aficionados of the genre alike.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane is an intensely Irish play set in the wilds of Connemara, premiered locally by the Druid Theatre Company in Galway in 1996.

Vassa

In a rare proscenium-style presentation at the Almeida Theatre, director Tinuke Craig offers Maxim Gorky’s Vassa as her debut production for the venue in a new adaptation by Mike…

Gaslight

Gaslight has stood the test of time in the canon of British theatre.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

Playwright Peter Nichols died only last month at the age of 92.

Breaking The Code

It’s only two years until the face of Alan Turing appears on the new £50 note.

Velvet

To compile his one-man show, Velvet, Tom Ratcliffe combined personal experience and the disturbing revelations that emerged as the #MeToo movement gathered momentum.

Blood Wedding

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
West End
Young Vic
4th Oct, 2019

In the late 1920s Frederico García Lorca allegedly read about a bride who fled her wedding to elope with a former amor.

Mother Of Him

Is a mother’s love unconditional, or can it be stretched beyond breaking-point? This is the consuming theme in Evan Placey’s Mother of Him at the Park Theatre, which was inspir…

I Am Gavrilo Princip

Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler all stand out in the history of the twentieth century.

Youth Without God

Youth Without God at the Coronet Theatre is heralded as ‘a dark fable about the individual conscience in a time of social uncertainty’ and the 1937 novel by Ödön von Horváth…

Torch Song

Review
★★★
Richard Beck
West End
Turbine Theatre
16th Sep, 2019

The neon sign above the stage at the new Turbine Theatre, Battersea, hints at the lights of New York City, but it also reminds us of the history behind director Drew McOnie’s pro…

So Here We Are

Luke Norris's Southend-based play and winner of the Bruntwood Prize, So Here We Are, finally comes to Essex in a delightful production that fits perfectly into the Queen’s Th…

Stiletto Beach

The world premiere of Sadie Hasler’s Stiletto Beach has burst onto the stage at the dynamic Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch in a bold, brave, fearless and funny exploration of what…

Falsettos

Review
★★★
Richard Beck
West End
The Other Palace
12th Sep, 2019

Falsettos has been around since 1992, but it’s UK premier has only just opened at The Other Palace, London.

Judas

Smokescreen Productions is supporting the work of Amnesty International through its new work, Judas, at Assembly Blue Room.

Everyman

As the saying goes, "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".

The Words Are There

The Words Are There is a moving and innovative piece of physical theatre that appeals both for its approach to male domestic abuse, and for its style of performance.

Stanley

There’s Stanley the man and Stanley the play.

Unicorns, Almost

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
17th Aug, 2019

Name a Second World War poet.

Thief by Liam Rudden

The Edinburgh Fringe programme’s standard listing format provides a simple yet clear message about Thief at the Hill Street Theatre.

BOBBY WINNER

Letter to Boddah

“Will they or won’t they go through with it?” That is the consuming question that hovers for an hour over Letter to Boddah, written and directed by Sarah Nelson and performed…

Identity

With a highly experienced team behind this production it is no wonder that Identity by CTC COMPANY at Greenside, Infirmary St.

This Island's Mine

The Italia Conti Ensemble changes its membership every year as another cohort passes through the famous drama school.

44 Inch Chest

Rarely does the stage premiere of a work take place twenty-three years after it was written, but Out Of Bounds Theatre has claimed the honour with their gritty production of 44 Inc…

EAST

Steven Berkoff’s irresistible EAST makes an inevitable return to the Festival Fringe, this time in a vibrant and energetic production by HiveMCR.

Franz and Marie: Woyzeck Retold

For an incomplete play, Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck has nevertheless managed to secure enduring interest.

Conversations With Myself

It’s fifty years since the Stonewall riots sparked off the movement that became known as gay liberation.

Bleeding Black

Christopher Watts returns to the Festival Fringe with his one-man-show, Bleeding Black, at Greenside, Nicolson Square.

Real Eyes

Aged just 16 and 17, Harrison Sharpe (Matt) and Archie Stevens (Mikey) make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with Real Eyes, an intensely moving story of brothers growing up t…

Teach

Matthew Roberts’ solo show, Teach, at theSpace, Surgeons Hall is performance brimming with conviction and energy.

Well That's Oz

Review
★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
11th Aug, 2019

Absurdism runs amok in Well That’s Oz, one of four plays in this year’s programme from CalArts at Venue 13.

Here Comes the Tide, There Goes the Girl

Review
★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
10th Aug, 2019

Here Comes the Tide, There Goes the Girl is one of four plays presented by CalArts at venue 13 this year and is steeped in their tradition of producing original material that stret…

Fight Song

Fight Song is part of this year’s programme of four plays by students from the celebrated CalIfornia Institute of the Arts (CalArts) at Venue 13.

The Thinking Drinkers: Heroes of Hooch

Award-winning drinks writers and comedy performers Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham return to Edinburgh with their latest libation, The Thinking Drinkers: Heroes of Hooch, in Underbel…

Dream of a King

Actor/writer Christopher Tajah of Resistance Theatre Company gives an impassioned performance in Dream Of A King at theSpace Triplex, as he reimagines the hours leading up to the a…

Ugly Youth

“I’ve not seen anything like this in the 12 years I’ve been working at the Fringe,” was the observation from one of the tech guys I spoke to after seeing Ugly Youth, this y…

Wrath of Achilles

Writer Jack Fairey has taken on a huge task in adapting the substance of Homer’s Iliad into a modern story still firmly embedded in the Trojan War with a running time just short …

The Brave Anthology

Angus gets a review that says he’s ‘watchable’.

Dear Mother Moon

Dear Mother Moon is one of four works presented by CalArts this year in what has become the Institute’s Edinburgh home, Venue 13.

(Ab)solution

(Ab)solution is the first Edinburgh Festival Fringe Play from Swindon-based Jackrill Productions, and it’s an impressive debut at Greenside, Infirmary St.

Bacon

Francis Bacon once observed that ‘in order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present’.

The Tempest

Many strange things occur in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but in this production, by Oxford’s Creation Theatre, there are more surprises than even Prospero might have conjured up…

Relax and enjoy the welcome extended to guests at the local infants’ school which Michele Austin delivers with considerable warmth and obvious delight. Feel proud to be part of a community in which people care for each other and members cherish the stability they have created for the safety and well-being of all and where that is celebrated in traditional festivals by families who have known each other for generations…

Man of La Mancha

A rousing overture, with blasting brass and pounding percussion raises hopes at the Coliseum for the first London production of Man Of La Mancha for over fifty years. The slow, dull, wordy scene that follows curtain-up dashes them to pieces…

The Hired Man

The Hired Man has been doing the rounds since 1984 and now finds a home at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. Based on Melvyn Bragg’s 1969 novel of the same name, the author collaborated in its creation, delighting, no doubt, in the exposure it gave to his native Cumbria…

Market Boy

A rollicking romp around the stalls of Romford fills the Union Theatre, Southwark, in a joyous revival of David Eldridge’s Market Boy. It premiered at the Royal National Theatre in May 2006…

The Dramatic Exploits of Edmund Kean

Despite occasional complaints, audiences over the centuries have generally become well-behaved. It’s unlikely that people today would go to the theatre armed with an assortment of rotten fruit or buttons to throw at actors who fail to perform to their satisfaction…

Post Mortem

It’s not just a dead body that can be the subject of a post mortem. Dead relationships can also be examined to see where things went wrong. It is such an investigation that forms the basis of Post-Mortem at the Space on the Isle Of Dogs…

Three Sisters

An air of timelessness perversely pervades Three Sisters at the Almeida. It’s firmly rooted in Russia and was written in 1900 but Chekhov’s reflections on the human condition resonate across the ages…

After The Dance

Terence Rattigan personifies the maxim that you can’t keep a good man down. His style and content might be unfashionable but no one better captures the period before the rise of the ‘Angry Young Man’…

Tony’s Last Tape

Possibly less famous than Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Andy Barrett’s Tony’s Last Tape has much in common with it; not least the obsession each of the eponymous heroes had with bananas and tape recordings…

Cry Havoc

There is plenty of barking in the street during Tom Coash’s Cry Havoc at the Park Theatre. Whilst these are not ‘the dogs of war’ that have been ‘let slip’, their baying is easily interpreted as symbolic of the ever-present authorities in pursuit of the blood of those who criticise the state or violate the oppressive laws of the country…

The Trials Of Oscar Wilde

Court rooms can often make for high drama, but unfortunately in this case the transcript of ‘the trial of the century, proves to be less than gripping.The Trials of Oscar Wilde at the Greenwich Theatre, and on tour till mid April, is co-written by Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland and director John O’Connor…

The Conductor

Review
★★
Richard Beck
London Fringe
The Space
1st Apr, 2019

The tragedy of World War II is remembered in many ways, but The Conductor, at The Space, takes a highly focussed look at just one small event in Russia’s window on the west in 1941 when Peter the Great’s city was under a siege that was to last 900 days and claim over half a million lives…

HAIR

We might still be in the age of Aquarius, or we may not yet have entered it, depending on whose calculations you prefer, but it is now over fifty years since Hair opened on Broadway in April 1968…

Fiddler on the Roof

Welcome to Anatevka! The Playhouse Theatre has been transformed to create this ‘dear little village’ for Trevor Nunn’s penetrating production of Fiddler on the Roof. Robert Jones’ set fills the stage with a jumble of barn-timber buildings and fencing that extends along the walls of the stalls in front of silhouetted trees, drawing the audience into the heart of the community…

Othello

There are times when a production comes along that is a powerful reminder of the beauty and eloquence of Shakespeare’s writing, his clarity of exposition and ingenuity of plot, even though many were far from original…

Othello

Review
★★
Richard Beck
London Fringe
Union Theatre
22nd Mar, 2019

The need for ‘a willing suspension of disbelief’ traditionally associated with an appreciation of Shakespeare’s Othello reaches a new level necessity in director Phil Willmott’s attempt to reinvent this classic at the Union Theatre…

Richard III

The palatial ceiling aloft the shattered plaster and exposed brick walls of the newly restored Alexandra Palace Theatre are aptly suited to Headlong’s powerful production of Shakespeare’s Richard III…

The Silence of Snow: The Life of Patrick Hamilton

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
UK Regional & Tours
GUILD HALL / Stamford Arts Centre / The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre
18th Mar, 2019

Master of the monologue, Mark Farrelly, sits slumped forward in an upright chair shrouded in a white smock, whose back-ties make it resemble a cross between a straight jacket and a surgeon’s theatre robe…

To She Or Not To She

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" That is probably not most women’s favourite line from Shakespeare and could not be further from the truth when applied to Emma Bentley. She quotes it in context and contemptuously as part of her fast-paced and hilarious indictment of the theatrical canon in which most of the great parts are given to men…

The Story's End

I didn’t actually see this performance; not by virtue of being absent, but rather because I had followed the request of actor and spoken word poet, Paul Daly, to blindfold myself…

Blasphemy

In the sad world of factory farming the horrors of animals trapped in cages for the duration of their painful lives is well-documented and visually familiar. Blasphemy turns the situation around…

The Tempest

The are more "sounds" than "sweet airs" in Lazarus Theatre Company’s production of The Tempest at the Greenwich Theatre and while some elements of the performance "give delight" others tend to "hurt…

DNA

Just because you’ve committed a crime doesn’t mean you have to be caught; at least, not if you can devise a clever cover-up. For one person, acting alone, to achieve this would be difficult, but it proves increasingly impossible for a group of teenagers…

The Orchestra

The programme notes aptly describe The Orchestra at the Omnibus Theatre, which might be regarded as one of Jean Anouilh’s more incidental pieces. “A third-rate orchestra in a small French spa town play time worn musical arrangements to an indifferent audience…

Summer and Smoke

The Almeida Theatre’s highly acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke, boldly and sensitively directed by Rebecca Frecknall, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre…

Love-Lies-Bleeding

A family on the verge of a momentous decision forms the focus of Don DeLillo’s Love-Lies-Bleeding at the Print Room at the Coronet in a stark production by director Jack McNamara, who is the only person to have staged the works of this multi award winning author in the UK…

The Recruiting Officer

In her article for the British Library on Restorations Comedy Diane Maybankobserves that “little can be gained from removing the plays from their historical settings”. This sentiment is completely borne out at the Red Lion Theatre in an adaptation by Charlie Ryall of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer (1706), directed by Jenny Eastop for Mercurius Theatre that runs in rep with their other work, Indebted to Chance…

Indebted To Chance.

Actor/scriptwriter Charlie Ryall leads an entertaining troupe of actors from Mercurius Theatre Company in her play Indebted to Chance at the Old Red Lion Theatre. Twenty first century prose is wrapped in eighteenth century style and costumes to reveal episodes from the life of Charlotte Charke over a period of three years from 1741…

BRASS, an Award-winning Musical by Benjamin Till

Brass, Benjamin Till’s winner of the ‘Best Musical’ in the 2014 UK Theatre Awards, fills the stage at the Union Theatre, Southwark, in its professional London première. Commemorating this month’s Centenary of Armistice Day and based on wartime stories, it was commissioned by the National Youth Music Theatre for performance in 2014 to mark the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War…

ear for eye

There are several peaks and notable features in debbie tucker green’s ear for eye that rise above the lengthy exposition of her themes that otherwise dominate this new work.The veil of secrecy that surrounded it is now lifted at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court…

Haunting Julia

After Alan Ayckbourn had seen The Woman in Black and the film The Haunting he was inspired to depart from his usual comedic tales of middle class life and try his hand at a ghost story of his own…

The Giant Killers

Darwen is probably not the most well-known town in England, but it holds a very special place in the history of football. It’s story is too good not to be told and has been taken up by co-writers/artistic directors of The Long Lane Theatre Company in The Giant Killers, at Upstairs At The Gatehouse…

Dealing with Clair

The Orange Tree Theatre in a co-production with English Touring Theatre could hardly have expected that renewed police investigations into the mysterious disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh would coincide with their 30th anniversary revival of Martin Crimp’s Dealing with Clair…

LOVE

The Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch has reconfigured it’s stage and auditorium to house writer/director Alexander Zeldin’s production of Love. Initially performed at the National Theatre it has since toured extensively, arriving here two years later with many of the original cast…

The Wild Duck

A brightly lit auditorium and bare stage, with its exposed brick walls, look all set for a rehearsal. A man with a mic pops out of a rear door and makes ringing noises, encouraging people to check their mobile phones once more before providing background information on Ibsen…

The Paradise Circus

A little-known theatre hosts a lesser-known play and the result is a theatrical triumph. It’s hats off to anyone who had anything to do with discovering James Purdy's The Paradise Circus and bringing it to fruition in its world premier at The Playground Theatre…

Quietly

Quietly is set in a pub in Belfast. It runs for an hour in real time so where better to perform it than in the bar of the Omnibus Theatre Clapham. With the customers/audience seated in possession of their own drinks all is ready in a momentary transformation for the play to commence…

Parents’ Evening

The Rebels’ Season continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre with Bathsheba Doran’s Parents’ Evening. In this case the rebel is the ten year old child of a nameless middle class couple referred to as simply Mother (Amy Marston) and Father (Peter Hamilton Dyer)…

To Have To Shoot Irishmen

To Have To Shoot Irishmen opens the Irish Theatre Season at the Omnibus Theatre, Clapham. It’s a spellbindingly bleak seventy minutes or so, but there is a historical inevitability about that when telling the story of (Frank) Francis Sheehy-Skeffington…

ONCE

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
UK Regional & Tours
The Queen’s Theatre / The Queen's Theatre
6th Oct, 2018

“It’s only people up there with guitars and other instruments telling and singing their way through an everyday love story.” Playwright Enda Walsh’s understated summation of Once perfectly captures the charming simplicity and honesty of this unpretentious musical at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch…

Little Fools

The autumn/winter season at the Space on the Isle of Dogs got off to a punchy start this week with Little Fools. The play is a devised piece from Hooked Theatre, a female-founded theatre company created in 2016 by Brooke Jones (Harri) and Holly Kellingray (April)…

Wine

Wine makes a return to the Tristan Bates Theatre following its successful run earlier in the year. It is one of three plays by Jack West currently showing as part of the LAGO Theatre Season…

Kids Play

Kids Play is now running in London following its triumph at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it received multiple five star reviews. It was also given the Broadway Baby Bobby Award as a mark of its excellence…

Revelation 1:18

"I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!" Although never spoken in Revelation 1:18 these words from the last book in the bible capture the aspirational ideology that runs through this play, which is anything but dead…

No Help Sent

Gordon Brown once observed how Aneurin Bevan’s vision of a National Health Service was unimaginable in its day, yet it has withstood the test of time. He proudly asserted that it ‘remains at the centre of the life of our nation as…

The Outsider (L’Étranger)

Albert Camus’ The Outsider (L’Étranger), is starkly brought to the stage in an adaptation by Ben Okri, Winner of the Man Booker Prize, commissioned by The Print Room at The Coronet…

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…

About Leo

About Leo is the first offering in The Rebels Season at Jermyn Street Theatre; an autumn programme that focuses on ‘people who dared to be different’. It fits the bill perfectly and is quite simply a delightful play beautifully performed…

Losing Venice

Shakespeare created ‘the vastly fields of France’ in a cramped ‘cockpit’ and crammed within his ‘wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt’ all courtesy of his audience’s imagination…

Abi

Despite its title, we know very little of what actually happened at Abigail’s party. In real life, if it had turned into a crime scene, detectives would no doubt have had questions for Laurence and Tony, who both left their own party to check up on what was going on in their neighbour’s house...

Abigail's Party

It’s a mark of how well a play is rooted in a particular era that the mere mention of Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew perfume can send ripples of mirth throughout the auditorium to an elderly generation that knowingly nudged each other and in many cases passed comment...

Picasso's Women

Given how many inhabited his life, Picasso’s Women is but a mere glimpse from one side of the bed into what they endured. The great artist once observed, ‘There are two types of women - goddesses and doormats’...

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...

The Dame

Peter Duncan’s The Dame is hosted at The Dome, one of Edinburgh’s glitziest and most glamorous buildings. The sparkling chandeliers, oversized vases of flowers, ornate furnishings and the sound of champagne corks popping make it the perfect setting for a spectacle...

You Are Frogs

If some of what you are about to read sounds completely bonkers then you are well on the way to an appreciation of You Are Frogs. Welcome to the world ‘isms and ‘ists that go some way to unraveling this bizarre work, but if they succeeded it would be self-defeating…

Cezary Goes to War

Review
★★★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
18th Aug, 2018

The Regional Medical Draft Board has strict guidelines for the classification of recruits and their suitability for deployment. Height, weight, chest, toes, waist, diseases, abnormalities, birth defects and a myriad other measures combine to label a would-be soldier A, B, C, D, E or even further down the scale…

Red and Boiling

Red and Boiling is an entertaining cabaret-style show with some serious undertones. Created by Noga Yechieli Wind and Joshua Rivas, it relates the stories of ‘queer womyn’ (sic) and non-binary individuals who deal with coming out and life thereafter...

Man Down

Review
★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
18th Aug, 2018

Man Down emerges from three years of research and hours of interviews and discussions with people in Baltimore, USA. It is steeped in the politics of today and the #BlackLivesMatter movement...

The Troth

Review
★★★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
17th Aug, 2018

Based on Chandradhar Sharma Guleri’s iconic Hindi short story Usne Kaha Tha, The Troth is about one soldier, Sardar Lehna Singh, and the sacrifice he makes to keep his secret promise to an unrequited love...

Bucket Men

Bucket Men takes place in a small basement studio at C Royale where two men coincidentally have jobs in a small basement of a faceless government building. They turn up for work every day, though not together, for one of them is always late...

Goodbye Rosetta

Goodbye Rosetta abounds with youthful enthusiasm and passion. That’s hardly surprising given its development by 30 young actors in collaboration with writer Katherine Manners and Director, Conor Baum...

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...

BOBBY WINNER

Kids Play

Glen Chandler, Edinburgh’s theatrical detective story-writing son, returns to the Festival Fringe this year with yet another ingenious triumph. The only similarity to Kids Play and anything that might be found in Taggart, however, is a pair of handcuffs…

Waiting for Ofsted

Oh how easily this ambitious project could have fallen flat on its face and oh how wonderfully it sustains itself. Making their debut at the Festival Fringe, Westcliff Boys Theatre bring their take on Samuel Beckett with Waiting for OFSTED...

Shell Shock

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
15th Aug, 2018

"A British soldier never runs away from a fight", Tommy Atkins proudly proclaims. All battles, however, are not the same, and neither do they all involve being on the front line...

HMS Pinafore

The University of St Andrews Gilbert and Sullivan Society makes their regular contribution to the Festival Fringe, this year with HMS Pinafore. Performing at their regular studio location of Paradise in Augustine’s, the infamous centre-stage support pole serves adequately as a ship’s mast and with the wheel behind it and the sailors around it everything is set to ‘sail the ocean blue’…

The Gin Chronicles in New York

The Gin Chronicles in New York is the latest saga in this well-established series that by now has something of a following. On this occasion detective duo John Jobling and Doris Golightly visit the Big Apple on holiday but are soon drawn away from sightseeing and find themselves investigating a mysterious case involving the manufacture of fake gin in Hell’s Kitchen...

InValid Voices

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

When the soldier goes to war what of those left behind? This is the question posed by InValid Voices, a new theatre piece based on interviews with women serving as and married to Commonwealth soldiers in the British Army...

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 [email protected] Festival Fringe programme...

To Have Done With the Judgement of God

Leaving the theatre with no idea what you have just seen but having enjoyed it immensely is perhaps an appropriate response to a production of Antonin Artaud’s To Have Done With The Judgement Of God…

Romeo and Juliet

Curious Pheasant Theatre reinvents the Bard’s most famous tale of ‘star-cross’d’ lovers in a bare-bones, twisted production that will have purists running for shelter and audiences that lack their reverential devotion to every word enjoying a butchered but exhilarating rendition of the text…

Éowyn Emerald and Dancers

A young man waited outside the Greenside Royal Terrace Venue for Éowyn Emerald & Dancers to appear after their performance. He greeted them with effusive praise and said, ‘You brought tears to my eyes twice’...

My Name Is Dorothy

The first point to make clear is that My Name is Dorothy has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. It does have everything to do with the story of Dorothy Lawrence, who is far less famous, if not virtually unknown...

Shackleton's Stowaway

Making their debut at the Festival Fringe, Stolen Elephant Theatre bring to life one of the great voyages of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration in Shackleton’s Stowaway. In 1914, young welshman Perce Blackborow stowed away on Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, despite having been rejected as a crew member...

Virgin

Simon David bursts onto the stage in a bout of eccentricity that boldly asserts his dominance over the evening. His body-hugging black leotard reveals him to be a man without inhibitions who is happy to strut his stuff in pursuit of his goal…

Hymn to Love

“I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song.” During her life, in her death and through her legacy, Édith Piaf’s niche in song became a place in history...

Iolanthe

Prime Minister Clement Attlee once observed that ‘the House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days’. In Sasha Regan’s famed production of Iolanthe, it feels as though the cork has only just been popped on their bottled-up Lorships...

The Final Journey of Edward Wilson

Recent years have witnessed mounting criticism of mumbling actors, mostly on television but also in the the theatre. Jan Leeming, the former BBC newsreader with commendable delivery, once admitted that for certain programmes she now turns on the subtitles...

Fred and Ginger

Love is a many-splendored thing, or so the soundtrack maintains as it heralds a fifty-minute romp through teenage troubles, acting aspirations and romantic realities. If the wooden bench, which is the set, could talk it would probably reveal even more than already comes out in the conversations between Izzy (Tilly Farrell Whitehouse) and Carl (Corey Thompson), but that might just be a tad too much...

Barry Humphries Weimar Cabaret

Review
★★★★
Richard Beck
West End
The Barbican
14th Jul, 2018

Ernst Krenek, Erich Korngold, Frank Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff and Mischa Spoliansky were not household names in the late 1940s when a young Barry Humphries in Melbourne, Australia came across a stack of sheet music in his local bookstore published some twenty years earlier in Vienna, Austria by the distinguished Universal Edition...

Earthquakes in London

In a lengthy whirlwind of staccato scenes with lento, adagio and presto interludes, Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London combines political intrigue, corporate corruption, personal compromise and environmental campaigning within the context of life in a divided family of three sisters and a father dealing with its past, present and future...

Knights of the Rose

Review
★
Richard Beck
West End
Arts Theatre
6th Jul, 2018

"Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon" (II Samuel 1:20) is a line that does not appear in Knights of the Rose. It’s surprising really: it would have been a suitable recitation following defeat on the battlefield…

Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope

Review
★★★★★
Richard Beck
UK Regional & Tours
Multiple Venues
4th Jul, 2018

"I come from a time and country where I was treated like a wrong hushed up. And now, eighty long, dark years later, I find myself living in the heart of Manhattan… the moment I finally caught sight of New York for real I wanted it… After that there was nothing for it but to leave England, which is nothing more than a rain-swept Alacatraz, and move to America…" Using the words of the man himself with only a few stylistically consistent linking phrases, Mark Farrelly's Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope delicately and eloquently charts the course of Crisp’s life and is similarly divided into two parts: Naked and Hope...

The Play About My Dad

According to its author, Loo Killebrew, The Play About My Dad “should feel quick-moving, and hopefully have a rhythm that is similar to the rhythm of a storm.” That hope is in vain as far as this Jermyn Street Theatre production is concerned...

Two by Jim Cartwright

Clueless Theatre makes a remarkable company debut with a production of Jim Cartwright’s Two. As they point out, this is a minimalist production: “No scenery, no props, no sound effects – just the cast, the audience and the script”...

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”...

Rope

Nietzsche’s notion of the Übermensch receives one scant mention towards the end of Patrick Hamilton's Rope, yet it is the driving force that underpins the play. Although easily classified as a thriller, the traditional tension of a murder mystery is displaced in Rope...

Woyzeck

Having spent three months eating only peas, it comes as no surprise that the eponymous central character in Woyzeck appears in a state of both physical frailty and mental instability…

More Heat Than Light

In a well-paced, one-hour monologue, eighteen-year-old Alex talks about the generations of family who have had a significant impact upon his life. He takes on their personas, voices and quirky habits...

Will

The happy band of players that performs Will or Eight Lost Years of Young William Shakespeare’s Life is reminiscent of the troupes that wandered the country when the Bard was alive or opportunely arrived at Elsinore in time to further Hamlet’s mischief...

Bomb Happy

Bomb Happy is a verbatim victory. As one of the veterans proudly reminded us after the play, it is their words alone that form the script with "nothing added and nothing taken away"...

The Overcoat

Review
★★★★
London Fringe
Omnibus Theatre / The Old Sorting Office Art Centre
7th Oct, 2017

Scandal and Gallows theatre company shines as a remarkably talented team in this production of The Overcoat by rising star scriptwriter George Johnston, who has imaginatively transformed Gogol's powerful everyman short story into a vibrant work of metatheatricality...

One for the Road...

In the early 1980s Pinter became increasingly interested in human rights abuses and in particular the torture of political prisoners in Argentina and Turkey. One For The Road emerged from those concerns, although it is deliberately given no specific national location; he believed such violations could occur as easily in democracies as dictatorships, although the common expression for another drink, used many times during the play and as the title, suggests an English-speaking background for the lead character...

Venus and Adonis

It is a rare treat to hear a dramatised performance of Shakespeare’s first published work, Venus and Adonis. Publishedin 1593, the poem became the bestseller of its day, helped to a certain extent by the closure of theatres during an outbreak of plague...

When the Sky Falls In

When The Sky Falls In is written and presented by Janet Gershlick. She is quite clear about not being an actress, although as a broadcaster she has many years experience working in radio with the BBC and independent stations such as Capital Gold and Talk Radio UK...

Wired

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Army @ The Fringe in Association with Summerhall
28th Aug, 2017

Wired is one of several productions with a military theme being performed at the Army Reserve Centre, Summerhall’s new venue, [email protected] What it portrays is a world away from the cosy atmosphere of the mess bar, the art exhibition and the casual social interaction; not that several of the soldiers on duty haven't had first hand experience of what it portrays...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Sam Leishman

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
28th Aug, 2017

The final day! Richard's alcohol-fueled quest to find Edinburgh's best bar staff ends up at WestRoom, where he found Sam Leishman, a 20 year old Guinness drinker with a passion for mixology.

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Gavin Robertson

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
27th Aug, 2017

Richard didn't stumble far from yesterday's bar, Foundry 39, as just a few yards up Charlotte Lane he fell into Sygn, a trendy retro-style cocktail bar & diner where Edinburgh Barstar of the Day, Gavin Robertson, who after crossing the globe revealed he now wants to settle down.

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Sarah Brown

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
26th Aug, 2017

Tucked on the corner of Queensferry Street and Charlotte Lane you'll find the ultra-hip bar and eatery, Foundry 39. It's also where Richard discovered today's Edinburgh Barstar; Scottish lass, Sarah Brown – who would say no to a Jägerbomb.

Semi-Toned: Stay Tuned

If the boys of Semi-Toned ever tire of a cappella they could always take up comedy. Their new show, Semi-Toned: Stay Tuned, has all the smooth harmonies expected of this stunning ensemble woven into a humorous scenario of dry wit, repartee and self-effacing rhetoric...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Nathan Hinze

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
25th Aug, 2017

Warm and welcoming, and always entertaining, 99 Hanover Street is at the heart of Edinburgh's bar scene. Richard popped along for a fruity cocktail and to meet today's Edinburgh Barstar, Nathan Hinze - and if you ask him nicely he might even mix you a Del Famoso.

Summerhall’s army@TheFringe: An Affront to the Arts or an Ambitious Alliance?

Summerhall’s [email protected]: An Affront to the Arts or an Ambitious Alliance?

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
25th Aug, 2017

The Army has set up camp for the first time at the Fringe and is stationed with Summerhall in its own premises. The move is not without its critics, but its contribution to the Fringe is welcomed by many...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Dale Welstead

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
24th Aug, 2017

In the heart of the Old Town, Cabaret Voltaire is a legendary live music venue in the vaults beneath North Bridge. Richard went exploring and found today's Edinburgh Barstar, Dale Welstead, a child star of kayaking who turned his sporting talents to swimming...

The Edinburgh Cocktail Festival is this Year’s New Kid on the Block

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh
24th Aug, 2017

Back in 1947 the founders of the Edinburgh International Festival could hardly have imagined what their legacy would be. Over the years their inspiration has not only spawned the Fringe but a host of claimants to International Festival status: Film (1947); Television (1976); Book (1983); Science (1988); Children’s (1990); Storytelling (1990); Internet (1999) and Marketing (2010)...

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...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Lainey Corroon

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
23rd Aug, 2017

The Three Sisters – renamed the Free Sisters during the Fringe – has long been a festival hub and a jewel in the crown of the Free Festival. Richard popped along to the busy pub on Cowgate to chat to today's Edinburgh Barstar, Lainey Corroon, and discovered this Irish gal is fond of glitter and a drop of spiced rum with her Coke.

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Erik Stenersen

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2017

Just around the corner from the iconic Greyfriar's Bobby you'll find the Oz Bar, and that's also where Richard found today's Edinburgh Barstar, Erik Stenersen. Born in Luxembourg to Danish parents, his favourite drink is Chocolate Milk...

The Scottish Story Telling Centre: A Venue for Voices

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2017

The Scottish Storytelling Centre is, in its own words, ‘a vibrant arts venue with a seasonal programme of live storytelling, theatre, music, exhibitions, workshops, family events, and festivals’...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Danny Smith

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2017

Edinburgh is Festival City for good reason, and amongst all the theatre, comedy, books and arts there's even a Scottish Gin Festival. Richard popped over to Gin 71 which plays host to this event (and keeps 150 Scottish Gins in stock) to meet today's Edinburgh Barstar, Danny Smith who's planning a career in advertising photography...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Denise Garland

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
20th Aug, 2017

Formerly a parsonage, Cloisters Bar is a uniquely traditional Edinburgh pub. Richard ventured over to the north west tip of the Meadows to meet today's Edinburgh Barstar, Denise Garland, a New Zealander who's travelling the world.

Mary, Queen of Scots

“All I knew was the playground song Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off,” says opera singer Louise Macdonald, “until I started learning Schumann’s Maria Stuart Lieder with renowned pianist, Malcolm Martineau, OBE...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Maurice Penny

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
19th Aug, 2017

Just off the Royal Mile and Cowgate you'll find a craft beer shop and bar called the Salt Horse. You'll also find Maurice Penny, who just happens to be our Edinburgh Barstar of the Day.

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Tomas Germanavicius

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
18th Aug, 2017

The Heads & Tales bar is the home of Edinburgh Gin, and it's also where Richard found today's Edinburgh Barstar, Tomas Germanavicius, a Lithuanian who's a dab hand at mixing up a cocktail.

A Thousand Doorways

A finely-woven, patterned rug hangs from the ceiling, its design typical of the region. Centre stage is a multipurpose plain old chair. The air is filled with the sound of impassioned voices singing traditional Kurdish songs to the beat of drums and bowing of stringed instruments...

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Jay Weeks

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
17th Aug, 2017

Richard's headed over to Leith to the eclectic bar that is The Mousetrap where he finds today's Edinburgh Barstar, Jay Weeks. Born in England, raised in Spain and educated in Scotland - he gets about!

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Molly McCluskey

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
16th Aug, 2017

Richard is exploring Edinburgh's East End today to discover the Barstar of the Day at The Newsroom, where Glaswegian Molly McCluskey is making plans on photography while sipping a Scottish spiced rum.

Edinburgh Barstar of the Day: Montse Pearce

Feature
Richard Beck
Edinburgh Fringe
15th Aug, 2017

Richard's headed south to Clerk Street where at the unique Dog House bar he's discovered today's Edinburgh Barstar, Montse Pearce, a Spanish-born artist with good taste in whisky.

Gunshot Medley

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

“Black lives matter!” Hold it there and let that well-known refrain ring in your head, along with the image it conjures up in your mind. What sort of play are you anticipating? I can almost guarantee it won't be Gunshot Medley...

About a Goth

Life as a Goth is not easy. All those clothes, the make-up and maintaining the image make for a very demanding existence. Nick, a 17-year-old gay boy is feeling the strain and is beginning to wonder whether he has chosen the right vocation in life...

Lord Dismiss Us

Scottish award-winning playwright and novelist Glenn Chandler’s best-known work might be television detective series Taggart, but he also has a string of successful plays and productions to his credit...

Fox and Hound Presents Tennessee Williams' Ivan's Widow and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen

For lovers of Tennessee Williams and anyone who appreciates good theatre the double bill of Ivan’s Widow and Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen makes for a very rewarding investment of time...

Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story

Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story won the first Broadway Baby Bobby Award in 2014 as one of the most outstanding productions of that year's Festival Fringe. This current production has the same director, Guy Retallack, but is in a different venue with two new actors...

Bleach

There are downsides to most jobs and many come with dangers, hidden or otherwise, but there are usually compensatory factors as well. Working as a rent boy is no exception. Through the character of Tyler Everett, Bleach lays bare one gay boy’s daily ups and downs on the game and exposes a shattering, dark ‘event’...

A Boy Named Sue

Sid, struggling to become Sue, proclaims, “The great barrier between myself and the outside world is my appearance”. Meanwhile, the ‘great barrier’ between A Boy Named Sueand the audience is far more difficult to identify...

Coming Clean

It’s 35 years since Kevin Elyot’s first play, Coming Clean, premiered at the Bush Theatre and 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK. Anniversary productions are commendable for often resurrecting early works, celebrating the contributions of significant writers, marking moments in history and illustrating how times have changed...

Queers

Queers comes with no explanation, but the title alone is enough preparation for an hour of material that is amusing and sad, historical and contemporary. It's a fast-paced romp through the years that also offers time for reflection on a number of facets of gay life...

Tremors

Review
★★
London Fringe
King's Head Theatre Pub
28th Jun, 2017

An ‘incident in a hotel room’ becomes a life-changing event for Tom Crowe, a rising star of the Labour Party whose past, present and future form the basis of Tremors. It is also the fundamental weakness in this attempt at socio-political drama...

Collapse

In under thirty minutes Collapse presents a hauntingly hypnotic exploration of Cassandra' agony as she prophetically laments the collapse of her city. Ignored by the people, their denial of her claims induces her own fall into a a state of mental derangement...

Thirty Three

Saska (Corinne Furlong) decides to hold what which she hopes will be a cosy dinner party for a select group of her closest friends. It goes wrong from the outset with the unexpected arrival of her estranged brother, Josh (Doug Hansell)...

The Stroop Effect

The disparity between the promotional material put out by theatre groups and the reality of what they present to audiences is often quite staggering. The Stroop Effect is an excellent example of this phenomenon...

Sweet Charity

Review
★★★★
Brighton Fringe
The Brighton Academy - Preston Park Campus
9th Jun, 2017

The Brighton Academy of Performing Arts uses its Preston Park studio theatre to showcase the talents of its students. It's probably not the ultimate location for a glitzy musical like Sweet Charity, yet this is a finely executed production that, with ingenuity and simplicity, converts the bare floor space into the multiple locations that in a full-scale theatre would have the benefit of lavish sets...

Goggles

Pets come in many forms. Cats and dogs are the obvious choice for many people, perhaps because of the ease with which an emotional attachment can be made and the affectionate responses they give...

Brawn

Ryan was a bright lad at school. He should have done well. He could have successfully made it to university and followed a fairly traditional career path. Instead, his mind was taken over...

The Fool, The Champ and The Bandito

The Fool, The Champ and The Bandito is "presented by BA(Hons) Acting and Creative Performance students, from the University Centre Colchester" who "in their final year of study present a series of devised pieces as part of The Creative Performance Company"...

Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton

Summer in the south is aggressively hot and stiflingly humid. There is no escape from it. It dominates life and determines its pace. Creating that heavy air is essential to the successful staging of any Williams' text and Fox and Hounds Theatre Company has created a triumph in Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton by doing just that from the outset...

Blink by Phil Porter

Described as "unconventional, quirky, and voyeuristic", Peppered Wit's production of Blink by Phil Porter fulfills each of those descriptions. Whatever your understanding of love might be, it is almost certainly not what transpires between Jonah and Sophie...

Kings Cross (Remix)

Review
★★
London Fringe
Camden People's Theatre
23rd May, 2017

I'm always interested in the extent to which the publicity for a performance matches the reality of the production; how the promise materialises on the stage. Created and performed by Tom Marshman, Kings Cross (Remix), "recounts tales from the LGBTQ community about the raucous underground scene around Kings Cross in the 1980s"...

The Tempest

Review
★★★
UK Regional & Tours
Multiple Venues
21st Oct, 2016

Welcome to The Tempest as Shakespeare and probably most other people never imagined it could be. This production is original, imaginative and bold, yet at the same time raises major issues of distorted interpretation that ultimately makes it fall short of being completely satisfying...

Thrive

Review
★★★★
UK Regional & Tours
artsdepot
21st Oct, 2016

Post Traumatic Stress from a variety of sources is a familiar phenomenon in modern times. Perhaps less well-known is Post Traumatic Growth, explained by Zest Theatre as ‘the positive psychological change experienced as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances’...

If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You

Casey and Mikey cannot escape: not from who they are, not from how their lives have moulded them and, more immediately, from the rooftop onto which they have just clambered. An essential part of committing robbery and theft is planning the escape and that’s the bit that just went wrong...

Wank Bank Masterclass

The Aussies have a certain way with words and in the case Adam Seymour with his hands also. He grew up in the countryside of Victoria, Australia where his ginger hair made him a ‘ranga’, derived from orangutan...

Alba Flamenca

If you missed this show all is not lost. Alba Flamenca is present in one form or another all year round in Edinburgh, so even in the depths of winter you can immerse yourself in the heat of an Andalucian evening...

The Gin Whore Tour

Much has been said and written about gin but Dorothy Parker probably uttered the most appropriate for this event. Forming its indispensable base she remarked, “I like to have a martini, two at the very most, three I'm under the table, four I'm under my host...

Confetti

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
31st Aug, 2016

There’s no confetti in Confetti, but there is a complex mix of language and movement that makes it intriguing. This year CalArts Festival Theater celebrates ‘13 At 13’, marking its 13th year staging plays at Venue 13...

No Exit (Huis Clos)

No Exit (Huis Clos) is an existentialist drama, adapted from Jean-Paul Sartre's classic by Charlie Rogers. It contains the famous line, “Hell is other people”, which could just as easily be the title of this work, given its particular interpretation of hell...

The Wall

The Wall is a wonderfully refreshing play from Corby Productions. It has two firsts: the play itself is D.C. Jackson’s first full-length work and the performance marks the company’s debut...

The Rose and Crown

There’s always a good smattering of obscure, seldom-performed or minor plays at the Festival Fringe. Many prove to be hidden gems. Others provide the necessary evidence as to why they have been almost forgotten...

Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp stands frozen staring into the distance, barely living in the present, heading to an unknown future and transfixed on the past. It’s chilly and the rain is coming down on what feels like a bleak and desolate house...

The Telemachy

It’s rare to come across a wandering poet these days and it’s probably not the most effective way to get your message across to the public. There’s a certain charm to the idea though: an escape from technology and the opportunity to do some serious listening, instead of reading texts...

Twix

Jamie’s comical lack of good fortune is beautifully summed up in the last two lines of this play, where the parallel monologues of Twix finally come together. Unfortunately they are too cleverly amusing to tell here without spoiling their impact, but they will probably leave you chuckling for some time...

Posh

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Bedlam Theatre
24th Aug, 2016

Theresa May went to Oxford, but unlike Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Johnson, she could never have been invited to become a member of the infamous Bullingdon Club, to which Laura Wade’s play POSH has always been linked...

Decade

9/11, as it now succinctly known, is one of those ‘where were you on the day?’ events. Members of the teenage Hoghead Theatre Company were around, but only just. For them it is a piece of history, but one in which they have immersed themselves for this production of Decade...

Attempts on Her Life

Take a play with no plot, an unspecified number of players, no defined characters, pages of intense prose and lines that can be spoken by any performer and what do you have? Unmistakably, Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Italia Conti Ensemble returns to the Festival Fringe with their second-year students again split into two groups, each with its own choice of play. This production of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn takes Matthew Francis' adaptation of the classic tale and reformats it to suit their own highly distinctive style...

Road

It’s Road, but not as we know it. Italia Conti Ensemble give their own take on JIm Cartwright’s 1986 classic. Much has changed in the ensuing thirty years but the working-class struggle is still with us: poverty remains an issue as does housing and its quality...

Grey Matter

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C nova
22nd Aug, 2016

Adrian Raine’s pioneering work in neurocriminology can be seen as a reaction to the supremacy of nurture over nature in the debate about the causes of criminal behaviour. His research findings caused a storm in the nineties and remain controversial not so much for their science as for the implications of it for social policy...

Chapel Street

If ever the strength of a story lay in its telling, Chapel Street would be a perfect example. Luke Barnes’ play is written in a punchy, in-yer-face style which could easily fall flat if not attacked with venom...

West Side Story

This tragic romance has always been about the individual consequences of divisions in society. It was not new when Shakespeare created the Montagues and Capulets as rival houses. Jerome Robbins originally proposed a musical that pitted Catholics against Jews, but as the years passed before the show the rivals changed into white Jets versus Puerto Rican Sharks...

Jumping the Barriers

There are many symbols of class division and expressions of social stratification in this country. I had not considered pistachios to be among them until I saw the look on Nathan’s face when offered some...

The Mikado

St Andrews Gilbert and Sullivan Society with Mermaids Performing Arts return to the Festival Fringe with their typically entertaining style of presenting Gilbert & Sullivan, this time with their own take on The Mikado...

Chef: Come Dine With Us!

Chef: Come Dine With Us! should not in a way be confused with the TV series Come Dine With Me. Each of the characters in this show is so much larger than life that not one of them would fit around your table...

Bildraum

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
20th Aug, 2016

Bildraum is part of the 'Big in Belgium' series, featuring six of the country’s many outstanding theatre and performance companies. This work is likely to be most people’s first exposure to anything of its kind, so if you are looking for a completely new experience this might well be it...

Red

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Dance Base
20th Aug, 2016

The redness of Red is not visible. The anticipated set of brilliant red objects, a glowing cyclorama, crimson costumes and swathes of red beams flooding the stage do not appear. Instead this red is a signal, a red alert from within that generates what Carl Knif terms ‘emergencies of emotion’...

Felix Holt: The Radical

‘Wholesome’ is how a lady I spoke to after the performance described Felix Holt: The Radical. It’s not a word I can remember using, but the subsequent conversation revealed her to be well versed in Eliot, the Midlands and the nineteenth century...

Family Voices and Victoria Station

Harold Pinter’s two short plays make only rare appearances nowadays and yet they are rewarding pieces. Family Voices, broadcast as a radio play in 1981, was followed a year later by the premiere of Victoria Station at the National Theatre...

Three Jumpers

The tweeting of the birds portends a beautiful day, but the view from the bridge is spoiled by an ominous thick mist. In the lives of three men contemplating suicide it is the gloom that has the upper hand...

The Age of (Distr)action

In Edinburgh as members of Group 64, the cast of The Age of (Distr)action are an inclusive young people’s theatre company from Putney who have created, written and performed this production themselves...

Year Ten

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

Never judge a play by its title. Year Ten conjured up images of yet another dreadful classroom drama of teenage hang-ups, shallow love stories and endless texting. Nothing could be further from the truth in this hard-hitting, action-packed tale of aggression and tenderness...

Spool

Suppose, just suppose, that your mind and body lived separately from each other. That having started out life together they went through a divorce in which the marital estate was divided up...

Growing Pains

Standing ovations are rare, but the house rose as one at the at the end of Tom Gill’s Growing Pains in tribute to a remarkable performer and a stunning show. The applause was prolonged and there was a sense that people just did not want to leave...

Éowyn Emerald & Dancers

Éowyn Emerald and Dancers, make a welcome return to Edinburgh in their usual Greenside, Royal Terrace location. They played to a full house the day I was there and some last-minute hopefuls had to be turned away...

Lïnger

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Dance Base
16th Aug, 2016

Breandán de Gallaí, the celebrated ex-Riverdance principal, has devised a biographical series of dances to create Lïnger, which is performed in the generously spacious main theatre of Dance Base...

A Dream of Dying

It seems almost almost impossible that a man could go through his life and when his naked body is washed up on a shore in Ireland no one knows who he is. In A Dream of Dying author Treasa Nealon breathes life back into him, giving him a family and a story...

5 Out of 10 Men...

Top ratings aren’t always just about putting on a remarkable production, although 5 Out of 10 Men is that. Sometimes a play ventures into new territory, swims into unchartered waters or deals with a topic that has been been ignored, avoided or swept under the carpet in the belief that it might go away...

Call Mr Robeson

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
16th Aug, 2016

Call Mr Robeson is Tayo Aluko’s tribute to one of the twentieth century’s most recognisable singers in terms of looks and voice. A towering man, both physically and professionally, he is most widely remembered for his songs and film credits, but there was far more to him...

The White Crow

Adolph Eichmann never personally killed anyone, but he was hanged in 1962, having been found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The evidence against him was overwhelming, but he remained as detached from the facts as he had been from the millions of deaths he facilitated...

Oh Hello!

“Charles Hawtrey 1914 -1988 – Film, Theatre, Radio and Television Actor Lived Here.” So reads the plaque where Hawtry (of Carry On fame) resided in Deal, Kent from 1968 until his death...

Partial Nudity

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
13th Aug, 2016

This might only be Partial Nudity, but it’s a full-on piece from writer/director Emily Layton and actors Kate Franz and Joe Layton. The plot is simple. A Bolton pub is hosting a stag do and a hen party in separate rooms...

Are We Stronger Than Winston?

The British might be renowned for talking and complaining about the weather, but if you come from Fiji there are more heightened concerns than just cold rainy days. In Fiji climate change and rising sea levels threaten the disappearance of land and communities...

Saturday Night Forever

I’ve left theatres in all sorts of states from elation to depression, anger to jubilation, in tears and totally numb. I left Saturday Night Forever marginally moved and totally frustrated...

Denton and Me

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
13th Aug, 2016

Never underestimate the power or repercussions of a gift. In 2011, writer/performer Sam Rowe was given a copy of Denton Welch’s journals in which he records his lonely existence in rural Kent and his heartbreaking love affair with reckless land-boy Eric Oliver...

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

If you’re expecting a cosy drawing-room comedy about an aging female relative then you have clearly not read the publicity and are in for a big surprise. There is no aunt Sally. Instead, you’re treated to seventy minutes of minimalism, mathematics, mobile phones and much, much more...

On Ego by Mick Gordon

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
12th Aug, 2016

Many theatre companies oversell their wares with outrageous hyperbole. Mind Over Matter Theatre Collective has done quite the opposite in their understated description. On Ego is a towering work of theatrical achievement that potently combines remarkable acting with moving effects...

The End

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Dance Base
12th Aug, 2016

Celebrated Scottish choreographer Jack Webb has brought his latest, typically idiosyncratic work, The End, for performance at this year’s Festival Fringe as part of the extensive programme at Dance Base...

Hamlet in Bed

Hamlet in Bed is an exploration of one man’s obsession with Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece ‘The play's the thing’ that forms the subject of the production and also the means by which the plot is created...

Troika

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
SpaceTriplex
12th Aug, 2016

Great composers sometimes create a theme that is so captivating or remarkable that other great composers write variations on it. This is done as a tribute to its merits, rather than because they are short on good ideas themselves...

Bash

Neil LaBute sets out to upset and disturb audiences and he made a spectacular start with his first play Bash: Latterday Plays. Initially having Mormon connections, he later revised the work: it was no longer just a slanted assault on the Latter Day Saints, from which non-Mormons could exempt themselves, but instead became a universal statement of the human condition...

Three for Two by Phil Booth

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
11th Aug, 2016

We all have our price. Or do we? How far would you go and what would you do for the right money? These questions are at the heart of Three for Two by Phil Booth. They are placed in three intriguing contexts that provide insights into the lives of people in very different situations...

I Keep a Woman in My Flat Chained to a Radiator

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
11th Aug, 2016

I Keep a Woman in My Flat Chained to a Radiator. Actually, I don’t, but Stephen does. You can see her there as you enter the auditorium, shackled to one of those old-fashioned cast-iron radiators that makes you wonder whether it was a requirement when he took on the flat...

Dropped

There’s a lot of camouflage in Dropped. The physical sort is evident from the outset. Two female soldiers dressed in desert gear sit tented beneath netting waiting to be rescued. The scene is heavily military...

Care Takers

Seeing Care Takers is like watching all the episodes of a fabulous five-part drama series in one sitting. You’re gripped in the first scene. Then you’re given time to breathe and collect your thoughts before the action resumes and the plot thickens...

Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening won an impressive list of Tony, Grammy and Olivier Awards. On those occasions the glamour of the production and the quality of the performances must have overcome the many distasteful aspects of the storyline...

Dieser Ort

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
SpaceTriplex
8th Aug, 2016

A bell tolls. Feint strings begin to shimmer. A sombre procession of sixteen women dressed in black and carrying black chairs fills the space from both sides. They are silent and sharply focused as they carefully place each chair into position...

Fresher

There are two very good reasons for going to see Fresher: it is an outstanding play that ingeniously tackles contemporary issues, and the production is also raising money for Young Minds, a charity specialising in mental health services for young people...

Bucket List

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Pleasance Dome
8th Aug, 2016

What do you do when your mother is murdered for protesting corporate and governmental corruption? In the case of Milagros, you fight for the justice your mother was denied and seek revenge...

The Dwelling Place

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
8th Aug, 2016

Two large basement rooms in Summerhall have been transformed into a remarkable installation and immersive theatre, musical, video, sound, and light performance area. If that seems like a lot to take on board, be assured that overall the experience can be rather soothing...

Oliver!

The Spiegeltent is a far cry from the workhouse and rarely can a setting have been better used than in this stunning production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! by Captivate Theatre. The group started life as an after school class for children in and around west Edinburgh in 2011...

Squirm

The toilet, which dominates the floor space of this production, is essential to the performance of Squirm. Rory vomits into it seven times, initially as the consequence of a night of overindulgence, and later as a physical expression of trying to rid himself of stomach-churning guilt...

2 By 5

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
SpaceTriplex
7th Aug, 2016

International Collegiate Theatre Festival has put together a delightful programme of both well-known and less familiar works to create this production of 2 By 5. All songs are by the highly talented writing partnership of Kander and Ebb, the men who created such memorable works as Cabaret, Chicago and Fosse...

5 Guys Chillin'

If your idea of chillin’ is sitting in the armchair with a cup of cocoa and a novel, you probably won’t feel at ease with this play. Indeed, if that is your source of relaxation, you probably don’t use the word “chillin’” anyway and perhaps shouldn’t read the rest of this review...

Adam & Eve and Steve

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C
6th Aug, 2016

In the beginning it all seemed so straightforward. There was God, who had made the earth and everything in it. He was now all set to form Adam, who would have control over his creation, and his companion, Eve, because it was not right that Adam should be lonely in the garden...

Damián Ortega

The Fruitmarket Gallery boasts “World class contemporary art at the heart of the city”. No exhibition could justify that claim more than the current display by Damián Ortega. It must be regarded as a major coup for the Fruitmarket to host the new works that constitute States of Time by the man who stands in the current line of succession to internationally renowned Mexican artists from Rivera to Orozco...

Roaring Boys

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Te Kore
1st Sep, 2015

Roaring Boys makes a welcome and very successful return to the Festival Fringe this year adding a further chapter to its interesting history. Commissioned in 1994 by Sandbach School from former Head of Drama, Phelim Rowland, it went on to be selected to launch the Connections project at the National Theatre in July 1994 and subsequently receive excellent reviews at the 1994 Festival Fringe...

Posh

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Te Kore
30th Aug, 2015

With this year’s general election behind us and members now in office the return of Posh to the Festival Fringe is timely. Laura Wade’s play is based on tales of the infamous Oxford University Bullingdon Club...

H.M.S. Pinafore

While it is laudable to have an open policy for membership of an amateur operatic society the knock-on effects can be dire as demonstrated in Cat-Like Tread’s production of H.M.S...

K'rd Strip: A Place to Stand

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Roxy
30th Aug, 2015

K’Rd Strip: A Place to Stand is a bizarre yet beautiful blend of Māori culture, contemporary dance, vocals and music, drag and real life stories.Amid the smoke a light comes up on a man dressed in just a very short kilt-like leather skirt...

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men could be seen as a dark comedy or as just dark. This is not a laugh-a-minute show, despite the hype; more a meander through murky minds that provides the occasional amusing moment...

Oliver Twist

Italia Conti Ensemble score an absolute triumph with Neil Bartlett's Oliver Twist. They get it right from start to finish and never falter – every component is honed to perfection...

Party

Party isn’t that sort of party; well, it sort of is, and maybe it should be, but overall it isn’t – though it might be after it’s finished. Clear? Good. Now prepare for an hour of linguistic lampoonery in this stunningly clever show by Lyons Productions from the students of Exeter University...

Piaf

Piaf opens with a spectacular tableau of the entire cast. All the ingredients for this show are visible: the keyboard, the accordion, the guitar, the drums and an audience longing to hear the unmistakable voice of Piaf pumping out those unforgettable songs that captivated audiences in Europe and the USA...

For Queen and Country

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
27th Aug, 2015

For Queen and Country. That’s why Jamie Robson joins the British Army at the age of twenty-one. Actually, for the Queen and his brother. Though not his life plan, when the decision is made he pursues it wholeheartedly...

I Am

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
27th Aug, 2015

I Am is the sequel to LCP Dance Theatre’s Am I. The first work is based on the story of Sophie Hayes, a victim of human trafficking and explores how the the victims of sexual exploitation were robbed of their identity...

Five Drinks

It might be a good idea to take five drinks into the auditorium, to see you through a play that has moments of wit and humour but contains nothing profound. Five Drinks is another script that will end up on the pile of mediocre coming-out, gay dating plays that are little more than possibly pleasant diversions...

The Amazing World of MC Escher

Given our familiarity with Escher’s unmistakable style it’s hard to believe that this is the first major exhibition of his work in the UK and that there is only one print of his in a British public collection...

The Hendrick's Emporium of Sensorial Submersion

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
The Hendrick's Emporium of Sensorial Submersion
26th Aug, 2015

The Hendrick’s Emporium of Sensorial Submersion is yet another triumph for the phantasmagorically fertile imaginations of the genial geniuses of gin. Occupying a new location at 91 George Street the team has completed a meticulous metamorphosis of the otherwise ordinary offices into a salubriously sumptuous sanctuary of sensory enlightenment...

I Loved You and I Loved You

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
26th Aug, 2015

If Morfydd Owen had lived three weeks longer she would have been immortalised in the 27 Club. As it is she remains almost unknown outside of her native Wales Growing up in musical family she learned the piano and aged sixteen gave a performance of the Grieg piano concerto...

Last Man Standing

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo Southside
26th Aug, 2015

For those who like their dance without frills, Last Man Standing provides an hour of unrelenting raw movement. This work is another gem from James Wilton’s increasingly impressive repertoire of exhilarating dances...

Oliver!

With a cast of nearly fifty, there’s no shortage of oom-pah-pah in this dazzling production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! by Stage 84, The Yorkshire School of Performing Arts. The close collaboration of all departments in this show is evident from the outset and they have done a stunning job in bringing it all together...

Savage

Aimee has an ironically funny line in Savage when she refers to John as “a boring old queen”. It’s not part of the comedy in the script, but it’s amusing insofar as Gary Gordon (who plays John) creates the only character who is not boring...

The Unknown Soldier

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Spotlites
25th Aug, 2015

The Unknown Soldier finds an interesting perspective on the lives of men who fought in the First World War. For many, that job didn’t end when the armistice was declared. As most of the fighting boys began their march home, they left behind battlefields littered with the carnage of conflict and a group of men who had to clean them up...

YAMA

There is dance and there is Scottish Dance Theatre. Last year there was Fleur Darkin. This year there is Damien Jalet. We have have been transported from the Callanish Stones of the Outer Hebrides which inspired Miann to the volcanoes of Tohoku, Japan, the setting for YAMA...

Romeo and Juliet

A Daily Mirror awaits us on our seats announcing the death of a 'pair of "star-crossed" lovers … in the wake of increasingly violent clashes in the streets'. It serves as background and gives context to this 1960s mods-and-rockers swinging version of Romeo & Juliet...

Odd Shaped Balls

'The last 12 months have been very difficult for me. I became concerned with my mental health. Because of this I am going to step away from the game at this time. Thank you all for your understanding and support...

The Trials of Galileo

Galileo lived in age when the church reigned supreme, faith was more important than fact and dogma denied discovery. The ages of reason and enlightenment were a long way off. Scientists and free thinkers lived in fear of the inquisition and debate was stifled...

Styx

For once, we are given a programme description that is completely accurate and delivers what it promises: ‘a tragicomic thriller about love and accidental murder….a whirlwind romance of intrigue, grotesquery, and bad puns’; actual groaningly bad puns that we hate to enjoy...

Wonderland

Wonderland is the story of Alice’s encounters in the tale of the Red Queen. It comes with a new and somewhat confusing preamble of underground chaos created by an untimely death at the hands of the Jabberwock...

The State of Concrete

The Britwell estate, built in 1957, was created to rehouse people from the slum clearance areas of London and Essex. It’s also the location for LUTheatre’s The State of Concrete, which, according to the company, is ‘based on true stories, real people, and overheard conversations’...

The Ascension of Mrs Leech

This hilarious beginners guide to theology is the funniest presentation of religious concepts imaginable. If you are not familiar with the problematic issues surrounding the nature of God and can barely spell omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, have no fear - all will be explained...

Undermined

Undermined was going to be called Shafted, but a guy named Godber had already beaten Danny Mellor to it. Both names are clever and set the tone for telling a tragic tale. The miners strike ended in 1985...

BED

Eddie, Imogen and Lena share a flat. What would otherwise be a communal living room has been turned into a third bedroom in order to save money and is taken up almost entirely by the bed...

IamI

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
22nd Aug, 2015

Yet again CalArts pushes forward the frontiers of theatre with an extraordinary, fascinating and labyrinthine work. To guide us through this maze of existential complexity I will confess to being more than usually dependent on the press release for providing the only way out...

The Pirates of Penzance

“In Pirates, there are gems from the first to the last minute. You don’t think ‘Oh, I’ll have to sit through this bit.’” Mike Leigh’s opinion of this comic operetta is no doubt endorsed by lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan all over the world...

My Name is...

When Gaby disappeared from her Scottish home in 2006, it was assumed that her Pakistani father had kidnapped her. The media wallowed in sea of sensationalism and speculation, much of it with racist overtones...

A Little Respect

Here we go again. Another school drama about bullying, complete with do-gooders and social misfits and a storyline that has been done countless times before – a classic GCSE piece...

The American Soldier

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo Southside
19th Aug, 2015

We must be nearly at saturation point with plays and particularly monologues about war veterans. There can’t be much more left to be said on the subject and it’s very difficult to find a new angle on this almost exhausted theme...

Reconciling

Fractals are frequently found in discussions within the realms of science, maths, art and nature. Courtesy of the Barrington Collective, a company of recent East 15 MFA graduates, we can now see how effectively they can be used in playwriting...

Faust

In sixteenth-century Germany it was not regarded as irreverant to perform comic puppet shows featuring characters and scenes from the legend of Faust. The post-A-level students from Tiffin School, under the guise of Triple Fish Theatre, have not gone that far, but they certainly generate more humour than is found in traditional performances of this otherwise weighty work...

Antigone: An Arabian Tragedy

Antigone: An Arabian Tragedy started out as two plays in a year-long project by One World Actors Centre (Kuwait) to produce Jean Anouilh’s Antigone in both English and Arabic. As the interpretations of the work progressed they took on separate identities - the English version was given an ancient setting during the Celtic rebellion in Roman-occupied Britain, while the tale in Arabic was placed in the modern Middle East...

Ozymandias

Interviewed by Broadway Baby, Hugh Train explained how Ozymandias was generated through free writing around the words of Shelley’s poem until eventually the “nonsensical ramblings” which are to be found in abundance, “morphed into the show”...

S.E.N

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Bedlam Theatre
18th Aug, 2015

You can find the characters Taylor and Aalia in every comprehensive school in the country. Actually you can find lots of them. Taylor’s removal from her normal lessons into the intervention classroom is understandable from the moment she opens her mouth...

Loot

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
C venues - C
17th Aug, 2015

There’s a huge difference between comedy and black comedy that seems to have eluded the Lincoln Company in their production of Joe Ortons’s Loot. The play concerns two young thieves, Hal and Dennis, who have robbed the bank next to the Undertakers where Dennis works...

Labels

Labels are easy to create: they can even be fun. They have a purpose and can prevent you from putting salt on your cereals and sugar on your shepherd’s pie. Give something a name and you know what it is, what to expect from it, and you don’t have to think any more because you’ve already defined it and it’s not going to change...

Homme | Animal

'How can I know who I am …feeling with pure energy, / With my heart, my mind, my body, my soul, / This is who and what I am. / I feel. I see. I am an animal.' These words form part of Vendetta Mathea’s vocal opening to her composition Homme | Animal...

RAZ by Jim Cartwright

It’s a deceptively simple bag of ingredients that Jim Cartwright lists in the script for his new play Raz, which has had its premiere at this year’s Festival Fringe. “Character Shane, a young man...

Bones

Bones is an intimate and tragic tale of growing up in a bruised family and having to take responsibility not only for yourself but also for those who who should be caring for you.In the course of a tough upbringing Mark has made the odd error of judgement and even done a short spell in jail, yet he still doesn’t come across as a bad lad...

Bayou Blues

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Venue 13
14th Aug, 2015

Bayou Blues is beautiful. ‘Beauty’ is the girl’s name in this solo performance and she too is beautiful. Growing up in the segregated wards of New Orleans, however, she was never told that...

Thirteen (13)

The storyline is shallow, the message insubstantial and the script contrived, so you don’t have anything deep to think about. Instead, you can just sit back and enjoy the stream of songs that flows from Jason Robert Brown’s fast-paced score and marvel at the wonder of youth...

A Face That Fits

Moon Fly Theatre Company was created this year with the aim of affording opportunities to new and promising writers, actors and directors. Sean Langtree, its founder, has set the ball rolling with his debut play, A Face That Fits...

Rent

Fans of Rent will love this full length presentation and for those who have never seen it, this is a great opportunity to watch a rip-roaring production. Based in New York City, Uncompromising Artistry Productions under director Nicola Murphy has had the benefit of creative consultation from original Broadway cast member Anthony Rapp...

La Ronde

In keeping with its history, this latest production of La Ronde by Zebronkeyis controversial. Describing it as a ‘bareback ride to get your juices flowing’, the issue is whether the company has gone for titillation over substance and for puerile pornography over serious social commentary...

Comfort Slaves

Suitability: 16+ (Restriction). That’s the line in the Fringe programme which as an adult you probably don’t pay much attention to, unless you’re taking your children out for the day...

Danza del Caribe: Itara

Welcome to a world in which West Africa meets Jamaica, meets Cuba: A world of burning desire, or as they say in Yoruba, Itara. Danza del Caribe fuses these international elements to create a unique performing style, some of the finest examples of which are performed in this programme...

International Stud

Originally a one-act play consisting of five scenes, The International Stud premiered Off-Off-Broadway in 1978 and later became the first part of Harvey Fierstein's landmark work, Torch Song Trilogy, which opened three years later...

Edinburgh Gin O'Clock

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
The Boards
10th Aug, 2015

The Edinburgh Gin Company has left its distillery behind and moved to The Boards in the Edinburgh Playhouse to tell a brief history of the city’s alcohol and gin heritage along with the development of its own unique brand...

As Is

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Bedlam Theatre
10th Aug, 2015

New York, 1985. The city is in the grip of a disease called AIDS about which little is known. Rich, a young writer on the verge of a successful career is breaking up with Saul, his long-time lover, but his new romance is short-lived when he is diagnosed with the new condition and reconnects with Saul...

Hendrick's Parlour Bar

“Immersive theatre productions tend to operate in dynamically fluid settings, allowing the audience a more active, voyeuristic, and central role, while also individualizing their experiences” (Adam Green)...

James Bannon: Running with the Firm

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Assembly Roxy
31st Aug, 2014

James Bannon’s story has all the ingredients of a good novel: a down-to-earth setting; some very shady characters, some good guys and some dumb ones; a developing plot; plenty of suspense, some romance and a mounting climax to a staggering ending...

Error 404

“Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends and family.”“Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them...

Confusions

One of the confusions in this production, although not without precedent, is the running order of the five interrelated plays that make up the complete work. Ayckbourn intended Confusions to end on the down note of A Talk in the Park...

Compulsion

Declan Cooke is a physically big guy with a powerful presence: if you saw him standing at the bar you would imagine him to be full of confidence and completely in control of his life...

Simon Singh: The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

Simon Singh has a very easy style and voice which belies the genius within. His Ph.D is in particle physics and that remains his main area of interest, but his forays into mathematics have made him a BAFTA award winner and Emmy nominee...

Who's Afraid of Michael Gove?

The Tories have take control and Michael Gove is Prime Minister. With the zeal of a dictator he is now able to complete unfinished business from his days as Secretary of State for Education and ensure that a utilitarian curriculum serving the economic and industrial needs of society is properly enforced and maintained...

Falling in love with Frida

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Dance Base
31st Aug, 2014

Caroline Bowditch, Welly O’Brien and Nicole Guarino provide a wonderful evening in a cosy little room at Dance Base: it’s not very often a full house can consist of twelve people and it creates the sense of being a privileged guest at a party with friends...

Now We Are Pope: Frederick Rolfe in Venice

Frederick William Rolfe (1860-1913) was a minor English writer, artist and photographer and serious eccentric. Not satisfied with just converting to Roman Catholicism, he also felt destined to be a priest...

Dorian

In a 1990 interview on Japanese television, Berkoff said, “I believe that you don’t need anything more than just utter simplicity and that everything in my art must be created from the body onwards...

Nature's Heart

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
[email protected]
23rd Aug, 2014

Koji Takeuchi was born in Japan and began his search for truth in his teens. On a meditation course he had his enlightenment experience in which he saw “the absolute perfection and beauty intrinsic in all things and all beings, the essence of Life...

Winter of Our Discotheque

Autistic, severely depressed and with inadequate provision for her, Tess Humphrey left school at the age of thirteen. Two years laters she had written Winter of Our Discotheque, an extraordinary play with an equally unusual origin...

SHOUT! The Mod Musical

Bored with Berkoff? Choking on Chekhov? Fed-up with Feydeau? “Don't sleep in the subway, darlin', don't stand in the pouring rain. Go downtown. Things will be great when you're downtown...

Footloose

"Footloose may be a hit, but it's trash - high powered fodder for the teen market.” So said Dave Denby writing in New York magazine about the film but it applies equally to the staged musical, as evidenced by the young cast of this production and the audience which consisted largely of supportive youths applauding with passion...

The Hacienda Tales

Canterbury may have one of the world’s most famous cathedrals, but Manchester had the Hacienda. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, everybody who was anybody just had to be seen there...

Woodbine Willie

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Edinburgh Elim
19th Aug, 2014

Chain smoker and chaplain, poet and padre, furnisher of faith and fags, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy dispensed Woodbines and the word of God on the Western Front during the First World War...

MacBheatha

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
19th Aug, 2014

Summerhall’s steeply tiered Demonstration Room gives off the air of an amphitheatre, but its back wall houses very modern projections. White noise gives way to the witches, flashed in front of us as this malicious tale commences...

O is for Ofsted

Ofsted inspections are generally not much fun. Staff room chatter tends to be rather dull and school kids’ gossip is rarely entertaining. An Ofsted inspection poses a challenge as the substance of a play and this young people’s theatre company has its hands full trying to make a gripping tale out it...

Violetta's Last Tango

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Ghillie Dhu
17th Aug, 2014

The stunning Grand Auditorium of the Ghillie Dhu provides a spectacular setting for Violetta’s Last Tango and raises high hopes for a marvellous milonga and an evening of songs full of the fiery rhythms of the genre...

Miann

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Summerhall
14th Aug, 2014

Soiled bodies writhe across across a primordial swamp in earthbound exploration, rising from time to time in contorted gestures. Gradually these develop into recognizable, repeated motifs and group sequences...

Edinburgh Traditional Building Festival - Maintaining Sash and Case Windows

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Acheson House
13th Aug, 2014

If you think the Fringe is just about theatrical performances then think again. For the third year The Edinburgh Traditional Building Festival is providing an opportunity to learn about the skills and materials used to build and maintain traditional buildings for future generations...

A Virgin's Guide To... Rocky Horror

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
New Town Theatre
13th Aug, 2014

“This is not The Rocky Horror Show stage production” - a significant point of clarification in the Fringe programme lest anyone might think that this is the real thing. It is not, by a long way...

Cafe Voices

Cafe Voices is held in the beautiful John Knox House, where the elegant wooden panels of the large bright room provide perfect acoustics for storytelling. This event was one of two Fringe specials being put on by the Scottish Storytelling Centre which meets monthly, so even when the Festival is over you can continue to attend similar evenings...

An Extraordinary Light

"The Nobel prize, by canonising individuals, disguises the truth that they are all, in Newton's famous phrase, standing 'on giants' shoulders' and on each other's as well." So wrote Brenda Maddox in her biography of Rosalind Franklin, whose contribution to the discovery of the double-helix as the structure of DNA was questioned at the time and has been been fiercely debated ever since...

Forty-Five Minutes

Flying High Theatre Company from Nottinghamshire is aptly named; that is exactly what this group of lively youngsters do throughout this performance. Forty-Five Minutes was written by Anya Reiss for young people participating in the National Theatre’s Connections Project...

The Noctambulist

This is a rock-solid, totally refreshing naturalist drama performed by outstanding actors.The Noctambulist is the first original production from Raving Mask, formed out of Durham University Theatre...

Things from Before Pt. 4

“Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?” Maurice Maeterlinck published his play in this intriguing perspective, The Intruder, in 1890…

Faith

Review
★
Edinburgh Fringe
theSpace on the Mile
8th Aug, 2014

Faith is based on the story of Imber, a village which had the misfortune to be located too near to a military base on Salisbury Plain. On All Saints Day, 1943, the people were summoned to a meeting in the village schoolroom and given 47 days’ notice to evacuate...

Nunsense

“I always had a good experience with nuns,” said Dan Coggins, who wrote the book, music and lyrics we all know as Nunsense to show us what nuns are “really like.” He clearly had some exceptional times with his nuns and now you have your chance to have a “good experience” with them too...

Pennyroyal

This is one for all the lads who have ever had girlfriends problems, all the lassies who have had to put up with boyfriends, and anyone who likes tea. Asa Nisi Masa was formed by a group of E15 graduates and is particularly interested in raising questions on what is expected of a man in today's society, how is he perceived, and the nature of masculinity...

Rock Trial

Forget the defendant, it is the cast of this excruciating production who should be in the dock. In Trial by Jury, Gilbert and Sullivan created an operetta with a farcical plot which is taken seriously by the characters...

Éowyn Emerald and Dancers

Éowyn Emerald and Dancers made a successful debut at last year’s Fringe and are back again this year with another varied programme of short dances. The company is based in Portland, Oregon, but members of the group trained in some of the top dance schools and universities in North America and performed with a number of different companies before coming together to work with Éowyn...

The Caddington Affair

The boys of Tiffin School are in town and look set to make a huge impact with The Caddington Affair, one of two devised pieces presented by different groups of year 12 A Level students...

Evil

Jesper Arin, who performs this one-man play, stood at the exit to the theatre as the audience left. We shook hands and I was going to congratulate him on his performance. Instead, I ran up the stairs onto the street and burst into tears...

Man Enough

Chris is 18 years old, gay, and in search of fun and attention. Consequently, he spends lots of time and money in gay bars and clubs and fails to get up for work on a regular basis...

Tea Time Story

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
Zoo
4th Aug, 2014

How many kilos of flour does it take to tell a good story? In the case of Heather Lai, over fifty during the course of her Fringe run and every gramme is put to excellent use.Lai’s story is based on the harrowing experiences of her family during the harsh days of the Cultural Revolution...

Olaudah Equiano: The Enslaved African

The spoken content of this play, written and directed by Adam Tulloch, is minimal; the direction is bold and brave. This is a simple story: a man and his sister are kidnapped by a slavemaster; they journey to the West Indies and on to Virginia where they are they are bought in the slave market...

Hancock’s Last Half Hour by Heathcote Williams

"Ladies and gentlemen, I shall now bid you all good day... None of you know what you're looking at. You wait 'til I'm dead, you'll see I was right!" So said Tony Hancock at the end of his 1961 film Rebel...

Edinburgh Jews

Edinburgh Jews is an exhibition originally compiled by two students at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity. As it makes extensive use of maps it has now been moved to the National Library of Scotland’s Map Library, making it accessible to a wider audience...

MenSWEAR Collection: Three, Two, F*ck

What does it take to be remembered? What would you have to do to ensure that your name lives on forever? Three young lads have spent a few years on the music scene and have finally achieved what they thought they wanted: a fashion magazine praises their image and a music magazine hails them as them as the next big thing...

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Articles by Richard Beck