Articles by Sam Kingston-Jones

Hit Comet

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
2nd Sep, 2011

It’s surprising to find Hit Comet in the Comedy section of the Fringe Guide as the heartfelt friendship at the core of the piece is far more successful than some of the comic elements...

Patrick Monahan: Hug Me I Feel Good

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
2nd Sep, 2011

Having just won ITV’s Show Me the Funny the previous night, Patrick Monahan’s mood was one of pure ecstasy as he was pushed past a queuing audience into the venue two minutes before the opening of his stand-up set...

A Machine To See With

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
30th Aug, 2011

Making sure that I arrived exactly five minutes early, as instructed by the lady at the box office, I promptly passed my telephone details to a stranger and had left the venue in no more than three minutes...

Tales From the Vienna Woods

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
30th Aug, 2011

Following the interweaving stories of a community in 1940s Austria, Tales from the Vienna Woods largely focuses on the domestic disputes of the characters rather than the effects of the political situation at the time...

Theseus is Dead

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
28th Aug, 2011

Initially I had high hopes for this young company. As the audience scatter themselves around the auditorium, the tableau with which they are met is visually quite striking. Actors are cleverly positioned to play against an effectively simple set, and this care for aesthetics is a recurring feature in the proceeding fifty minutes...

Get Carter

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
26th Aug, 2011

It is unclear why, forty years after the release of the original, Get Carter requires a transfer to stage. The script, whilst enjoyable for a certain audience, is nothing remarkable and the widespread success that the film has enjoyed is largely down to Michael Caine’s iconic performance and Mike Hodges’ fantastic cinematic direction...

Ophelia

Review
★
Edinburgh Fringe
26th Aug, 2011

Ophelia is a strange concept: take what is widely considered to be Shakespeare’s masterpiece and try and rewrite it yourself, using lines from the original plus a couple of other Shakespeare favourites for good measure...

Pollyanna

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
26th Aug, 2011

The tale of an orphan - sheltered by her rich aunt, charming the snobs she meets with her sense of fun - Pollyanna is a relentlessly idealistic story. Nonetheless, this innocent naivety does seem refreshing considering a recent gradual introduction of more adult themes in children’s drama...

Hannah Ringham's Free Show (Bring Money)

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
25th Aug, 2011

The old adage ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ is not one that Hannah Ringham subscribes to. The show’s title may sound like that of a stand-up routine but by the end we realise that what Ringham has shown us a satire on the self-indulgence of certain performers...

Ten Plagues

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2011

With pre-festival recommendations from The Guardian and The Scotsman as well as a slot at one of the Fringe’s most prestigious theatres, performances of Ten Plagues have been packed with high expectations...

The Melody Blog

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2011

Musicals are a challenge to perform on a budget at the best of times but the problem is made worse when the performance space is absurdly tiny. At the Fringe the best musicals are usually the simplest, especially in venues such as the aptly named Warren at Zoo Roxy...

Mabbs & Justice: Love Machine

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2011

From the moment the audience is met at the entrance by the overenthusiastic Mr Alesbottom, it becomes clear that the duo are desperate for us to like them. Initially this is engaging as we will like them through the reasonably amusing opening sketch...

Flesh Eating Tiger

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2011

Flesh Eating Tiger is a frequently over-complicated little beast but one that prides itself on confusing its audience. Taking a damaging heterosexual relationship between a writer and an actress as its centre, the piece combines metatheatre and the absurd to create a somewhat baffling fifty-five minute network of scenes...

Hypnotist,Titan Knight

Review
★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2011

Titan Knight sure knows how to put on a show. Having hired out a vast space in a nightclub, Knight packs it with strobe lights, impressive multimedia and a full audience. He is also surrounded by support acts as it becomes clear, to somewhat bewildered onlookers, that the theme for the evening is a futuristic freak show...

The School of Night

Review
★★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
17th Aug, 2011

The School of Night may take their name from an intellectually exclusive Elizabethan collective but what this improvisational group performs is high culture made accessible to the masses...

The Little Mermaid

Review
★★
Edinburgh Fringe
17th Aug, 2011

The Little Mermaid was never going to be the easiest text to adapt to the stage, especially in light of the Broadway production’s recent failure to delight audiences under the sea...

Little Shop of Homos!

Review
★★★★
Edinburgh Fringe
15th Aug, 2011

The title’s unnecessary exclamation mark is testament to the relentless glee on show in London Gay Men’s Chorus latest musical jaunt. Following a precedent set by last year’s Oklahomo! Little Shop’s plot is constructed almost entirely around the innuendos that possess it...

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