The Worst Little Warehouse In London is crammed into The Box, which appears to be an actual shipping crate housed in Assembly Gardens.
When I heard the Radio 5 live interview with Laurence Clark at the end of July, I was immediately struck by the sense that this was a really nice guy: level-headed, easy-going, art…
Area 51, Brexit, holding midfielders and bouncy castles.
Freya Parker and Celeste Dring are back at the Fringe with a refreshingly light-hearted slice of sketch show comedy.
Some shows are a must-see simply because of the title, and Tilda Swinton Answers An Ad On Craigslist is about the best title for a play I’ve encountered in several years of revie…
Maureen Lipman more than qualifies for National Treasure status; she’s shared the stage with everyone from Olivier to Hugh Jackman and has appeared in Oscar winning movies and na…
Ivy Paige opens her show gliding on stage in full sequins and crystals, elegantly poised as the heady beats of It’s Raining Men blasts in the background.
O’Doherty is back with his mini-keyboard, flopping hair, and uninhibited attitude, but this time in one of the most prestigious venues that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has to o…
Comedian/guru Jamie Wood returns with his new show I Am A Tree in Assembly’s enchantingly draped gypsy-chic Omnitorium theatre space.
Solo comedy show Tatterdemalion’s Henry Maynard is charming, ridiculous, adorably pathetic and completely enchanting as he frolics about excitedly miming out conversation to audi…
Djuki Mala, formerly known as the Chooky Dancers, rose to fame ten years ago with a viral YouTube video of Aboriginal dancers performing Zorba the Greek in homage to a Greek woman …
Described by its creator as a two-actor play of “a relationship rotting” and a manifestation of domestic “purgatory”, it quite quickly becomes apparent through this tense a…
I remember the time when, several years ago, Out of the Blue came to my school and did an assembly.
Oyster Boy is a comic telling of the fictional relationship between two young lovers on Coney Island and their subsequent journey into marriage.
If you’re in search of the next big thing this Fringe, look no further.
New Zealand’s Barnie Duncan has created a perfect comedy persona; he’s believable enough as a character but ridiculous in so many perfectly pitched ways.
If Moonlight After Midnight were easier to follow, I’m sure it would make for an incredible piece from Concrete Drops Theatre.
The novelty musical gets its fair share of traction over the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Fat Rascal Theatre are attempting to stake their claim as rulers of the field.
I have a great admiration for clowning; whilst superficially there is most certainly a stereotype of the heavily made-up children’s entertainer doing nothing more than blowing up…
Nonsense Room Productions are no strangers to the Edinburgh Festival, having first debuted Hairy Maclary all the way back in 2010.
Natasha Marshall’s Half Breed is a vibrant and moving monologue about what it is like to grow up mixed race in a parochial white community.
Ed Byrne’s latest show is based around the notion that as a generation we are all spoilt.
Satire can often be found at the root of absurdism.
On first viewing the stage I thought I would try and count all the instruments I could see scattered around waiting to be played.
The technical choreography from Flabbergast Theatre that delivers this consistently joyful, yet bleak, puppetry extravaganza is exceptional.
When a comedian comes on clutching notes you would expect that you were about to watch something that was underdeveloped and in need of refinement.
The translation of the word utopia, if my Ancient Greek (and Wikipedia) haven’t let me down, is “no-place”.
The Handlebards are a unique group, reinventing the concept of the company of travelling players.
Slight Return’s showbiz opening - jazzy music, searchlight scanning the crowd - is a fun contrast to a consciously dressed-down show, but it’s unfortunately prophetic in an hou…
Apparently, even circuses nowadays feel a need to satisfy the public’s desire to glimpse behind the scenes, to smell the greasepaint and discover how the magic happens.
London-based Clean Break fit two plays into one show: House, a tight family drama set in a British-Nigerian household, and Amongst the Reeds, a nondescript tale of homelessness, fr…
Chef: Come Dine With Us! should not in a way be confused with the TV series Come Dine With Me.
Russian Company Derevo’s Once takes place early in the morning by Fringe standards and many of the audience members at the George Square Theatre might have been wondering whether…
Snap is an incredible display of the very best magic performance that South Korea has to offer.
Out of the Blue are something of a Fringe staple by now.
“This shit definitely passes the Bechdel test,” is a statement that can be found emblazoned on the show’s marketing material.
What is love? In an immersive clown show with an interesting lyrical vein, Sean Kempton (of Cirque du Soleil) attempts to find out.
In a little circus salon tent named ‘The Omnitorium’ tucked away behind George Square Theatre, Anya Anastasia proves that she is a force to be reckoned with.
Amelia Ryan used to be a mess.
What does it mean to be British? That’s the question that underlies this political, anarchistic play Octopus.
Improv comedy is a tricky beast - when it’s good, it’s very, very good; when it’s bad, it’s pointless.
Puppet pioneers Flabbergast Theatre have made an interesting move this year, establishing their own dedicated performance space, The Omnitorium, within the confines of Assembly Ge…
Some things never change; despite more than a decade performing stand-up, Laurence Clark still opens his set by drawing attention to his cerebral palsy: “This is just how I talk.
On every front, this show is a winner.
Piff the Magic Dragon is the character creation of comic magician, John van der Put.
“We have a reviewer in tonight” crows a tall, stunning, grotesquely padded and malformed white-painted clown.
This reference-heavy show fills a key niche for fan fiction comedy at the Fringe.
Taking to the confined stage of Assembly’s ‘Box’, and looking for all the world like a key-note speaker at the world’s tiniest tech conference, Henry Paker sets the tone of…
Margaret Thatcher truly is the Queen of Soho.
Ross & Rachel is an exploration of beyond ‘happily ever after’, using the two Friends characters we all know so well as a medium through which to explore the artifice of relati…
The live rhythm action bonanza Siro-A is quite simply multi-layered hyperactivity for the stage.
Out Of The Blue could well be classed as Fringe veterans, returning year after year over the past decade for an afternoon of singing, dancing and suggestive hip-wiggling to guarant…
FanFiction Comedy is a chilled-out hour of laughs that doesn’t try to change the world or do anything radically new with the artform; it’s just having fun, despite a few hitche…
Nick Payne’s bittersweet love story One Day When We Were Young charts Leonard and Violet’s tangled relationship across five decades of love and longing.
In Goose: Kablamo, comedian Adam Drake has created a comedy show that doesn’t so much defy description, it just stuffs so much in that it is very difficult to do the act justice …
Charlie Baker blends song with stand-up, as he intersperses his versions of one hit wonders with tales from his life.
Ballet and juggling.
There’s an enlightening moment in Jonzi D’s dance-based piece where a disembodied voice interrogates him as he ponders whether or not to accept a New Year’s honour.
The improv concept of This Is Your Trial is sound: two comedians take on the roles of prosecution and defence as they argue over cases that are brought by the audience.
If The Shuffle Show is anything to go by, life behind the Genius Bar requires a very specific skill-set.
This time next year, the Assembly George Square Theatre will not be big enough to contain David O’Doherty.
Alfie Brown has a real problem with moral absolutism.
The Room is the worst film ever made.
‘Knob jokes with depth’ are the words that fifty-six year old Frank Skinner himself uses to describe his new stand up show Man in A Suit.
Big-time book nerd Lev Grossman once told Time magazine that “fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band…
Billed as a poignant one-woman comedy drama, actress Davina Leonard delivers exactly that, with more accent on the drama.
This new one-man show from South African theatre company Hello Elephant is by turns heartfelt, amusing, and pleasantly evocative of a morning run through Johannesburg.
The acting is exquisite.
Away From Home is the sensitive, touching tale of Kyle, who in his capacity as a rent boy is used to his fair share of sensitive touching.
Zombies have become a considerable presence across entertainment and pop culture, which has led to a growing fascination with the undead and the world being overrun by them.
The Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre Company present George Orwell’s Animal Farm in a remarkable, poignant enactment of the dangerous rise of tyranny in a state where ideals of f…
Out of the Blue, Oxford’s all male a capella group, have many things to offer.
David O’Doherty is one of those rare stand-ups who is a familiar face without being plastered everywhere, who is successful without being packaged.
“You’ve proved my point: nobody has any respect for me”, McCaffery laments as four latecomers traipse across his stage to their seats, interrupting his flow.
Lord of the Dance Settee marks Richard Herring’s 23rd Fringe show, an accumulated Edinburgh residency of just under two years; enough, as he himself points out, to make him mor…
Like any sketch show there is often a sense that the evening may play out something like lucky dip.
We all have them, if we’re honest; those moments in our lives where we’ve reacted without thinking and “put our foot in it”, slipping from innocent victim to outright offen…
An interactive, improvised courtroom drama, This is Your Trial puts the audience under scrutiny, pulling people onto the stage as the accused, charged with ridiculous crimes.