In this intricate and playful solo show, inspired by his involvement in the Egyptian revolution of 2011, and the counter-revolution that followed, actor and activist Khalid Abdalla…
What happens when Scotland’s premier dame, Johnny McKnight, collaborates with award-winning director John Tiffany? It results in a riotous, heartfelt journey into the wild world of…
What are the odds of living an extraordinary life? This is the story of one boy’s grandad who won a fortune betting on the 1966 World Cup and, when diagnosed with cancer, gambles i…
Direct from its sell-out North American premiere.
A moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare’s play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia who is living in an old memory of rehearsing King Lear.
Mariam prepares for war.
New Year’s Eve 1999.
An Ivy league professor (Madeleine Potter) reveals herself to us in slices at Traverse Theatre.
Thumbing through a record collection, having a glass of wine, remembering the old times.
‘She’s off her trolley.
Attending the world premiere of My English Persian Kitchen at The Traverse Theatre is a real treat.
Four-time Fringe First and Olivier award-winning Fishamble returns to Traverse.
Told through paper mementos, A History of Paper is an epic love story.
“Why do we keep telling the old stories?” asks the titular character of Virginia Gay’s adaptation.
Claire has to find a job And Cassie’s UCAS form is due And exams are coming up And there’s litter on the beach And there’s bills to pay And prejudice to fight And essay…
No rehearsals.
Following double Fringe First winners (The Believers Are But Brothers; Rich Kids – A History of Shopping Malls In Tehran), the final piece of Javaad Alipoor’s trilogy is an inves…
Bloody Elle returns to the Traverse for a strictly limited run after award-winning, sell-out TravFest22 performances.
Looking for a way out of their humdrum lives in the outskirts of Glasgow, straight-laced Sean, fresh from dropping out of uni, and the gallus Daro, overflowing with charisma and bu…
When shy Aaron joins the hotel’s ramshackle team, he encounters volatile guests, inept management and even rumours of singing ghosts stalking the corridors.
A new gig-theatre show featuring songs by Kyle Falconer of The View.
After The Act (A Section 28 Musical) is an eye-opening performance about Section 28 a series of laws introduced to the UK in the 1980s that prohibited the “promotion of homosexua…
Heaven is set in County Offaly, Ireland, during the weekend of a local wedding.
Faye’s afraid.
Thrown – a play about backhold wrestling – surely one of the world’s more obscure sports, even to city-living Scots.
Kieran Hurley's Adults was like being taken for a 1 hour and 20 minute gripping joyride, which consisted of belly laughs and thrills throughout.
An immersive journey through a psychedelic dreamscape of live painting, live music, spoken word and theatre.
The Guardian’s #1 Comedy Show of 2021 comes to the Fringe for a limited run.
Chloe, Maia and Anna are reunited under the most painful of circumstances, the death of their mother.
As we come into nearly eight years of rule of the UK Government by the Conservative Party – or 12 Years depending on your feelings for the Liberal Democrats – we have seen a ri…
Calvin is going to revolutionise his life.
Eve’s eyes are green like guacamole, she has posh hair and a freckle on her chin and when she puts her hand on Elle’s arm… This heart-warming and belly-achingly funny story i…
By Tabby Lamb (they/she).
Psycho Productions and Cusack Projects Ltd.
10 April 1998, Belfast.
Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre continues its tradition of being non-traditional this Christmas season.
This is Paradise, Michael John O'Neill’s new play at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, is a lengthy monologue in which Kate (Amy Molloy) provides a complex interweaving of the…
The banner proclaims, ‘Congratulations’ as it hangs from the ceiling above the unimaginable mess left by the previous afternoon's party in which inmates and staff seemingly…
“It’s about us—together,” explain Jake Jarratt and Cameron Sharp, in their new play in which two drama students – straight “Jake”, gay “Cameron” – end up trying…
Experimental, inventive and hugely daring, Antigone, Interrupted is Sophocles re-imagined, the first production by Joan Clevillé since becoming Artistic Director of Sc…
Edinburgh’s Traverse has long-championed new drama—indeed, the venue’s self-description is the simple goal of being “Scotland’s new writing theatre”.
I well remember when Jenni Fagan’s explosive debut, The Panopticon, first appeared in 2013.
A play comparing racist undertones in modern society to those in 1950s America runs the risk of stating the obvious — there is still a major inequality problem in the 21st Centur…
Having this year reached the notable landmark of their 500th new production, the team behind the award-winning lunchtime theatre phenomenon that is “A Play, A Pie and a Pint” i…
Remarkably, if you wander into The Traverse at 9am, you will find an audience willing to watch a rehearsed reading of a brand-new play and not a spare seat in the house.
Just what does it take to make a monster? Is inhumanity truly born simply from reanimation, or is it a product of the already inhumane environment? Re-investigating Mary Shelley’…
I have a confession: I’d never previously heard of Erich Kästner's 1929 novel, Emil and the Detectives; It just wasn't a part of my childhood.
Super Human Heroes from theatre group The Letter J (in association with Paisley Arts Centre) has a simple message: We all need to do our little bit to help make the world a better …
It’s seldom fun to leave a venue thinking: "Well, that's an hour of my life I'm never getting back.
This is a Spoiler.
In drama, an audience can either be ahead of what the characters know, or behind them, catching up; each approach has its dramatic advantages and disadvantages, but what is needed …
When Jo Clifford ("proud father and grandmother") first performed her play, The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven, at Glasgow's Tron Theatre, it attracted bo…
It's said that Edinburgh is a city, the size of a town, that feels like a village; or, in other words, the Scottish capital is sufficiently small and compact that you don't…
Watching Clare Duffy's one-act play "Arctic Oil", a particular phrase kept coming back to me: that mantra of 1960s' student protests and second-wave feminism, &qu…
"Best leave history in the history books—get on with living.
Within a cluttered clearing in some woods that's neither town nor countryside and so somehow feels like nowhere, an unnamed Man (David McKay) sleeps the sleep of the just-finis…
One of the hardest calls for a reviewer to make is where to draw the line between production and play.
Mark Thomas regales us with a peppy portrayal of his health-check on the NHS, in commemoration of 70 years since its inception.
The Traverse One stage looks more ready for a gig than a piece of theatre, but while music undoubtedly runs through the heart of Cora Bissett's latest, most autobiographical wo…
Acclaimed writer David Ireland’s new play is a visceral, violent and incredibly explosive punch to the gut that passionately tears into the confused state of British identity, th…
“You always thought it would be you”.
The Traverse Festival program has jumped into action, already selling out full days' worth of shows at a time.
"Grow up, mature, and come back when you have something to contribute!" It's not the most sympathetic way to address a young audience; nevertheless, it succinctly sho…
Part of the inherent challenge for Noel Jordan and the Imaginate team when putting together their annual Edinburgh International Children's Festival is their very diverse poten…
“In my day, we trusted people.
If theatre is home to lies that impart truths, then this Actors Touring Company’s production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Winter Solstice (translated by David Tushingham) makes …
“It’s sweat on your brow that gives life meaning,” says one of the supporting characters in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and it’s fair to say that, on occasions, there’s a …
Perhaps it was tempting fate, but David Leddy’s decision to call his latest work The Last Bordello now comes with a certain irony, given that it could well prove to be his final …
Most stand-up comedy these days is based on the lives of the people standing behind the microphone, albeit reshaped to varying degrees to ensure their material matches the “rule …
The central metaphor running through Frank McGuinness’s 2012 monologue The Match Box is almost breath-taking in its simplicity; it’s that all of us, all of our lives, are ultim…
This revival of Shona Reppe’s acclaimed puppet retelling of the iconic fairytale is a fascinating jewel of a production, ideal for young children and families alike; subtle, s…
As Scotland’s self-declared “new writing theatre”, Edinburgh’s Traverse does like to offer up an alternative to the pantomimes and decidedly family-focused fare on offer…
It’s mildly amusing to see two grown men briefly falling into a childish bragging-match about their fathers—one a retired Church of Scotland minister, the other a former Bis…
There were a lot of expectation around this new Wales Millennium Centre production of Manfred Karge’s one-woman play, Man to Man.
There’s little obvious theatrical artifice on show; just four actors, in casual clothes, sitting or lying on the plain black floor of an empty stage as the audience comes in.
There’s no doubting the raw energy and physicality of this show, a work of dance theatre that definitely prefers choreography to speech, and uses it—along with some pretty st…
Historically speaking, the original “Damned Rebel Bitches” were—according to the “butcher” Duke of Cumberland—the Jacobite women who marched behind their men in order…
During the early years of the British Broadcasting Corporation, its first Director-General Lord Reith established the BBC’s mission as being to “inform, educate and entertai…
Delve into an hour of real Locker Room Talk, a term made infamous by Donald Trump, and allow yourself to be immersed into the murky and dark world of everyday sexism that society d…
A show about the evocative powers of art must be particularly effective in practicing what it preaches.
The Traverse Theatre sadly need to offer more than a bacon roll to make Breakfast Plays: B!rth worth getting up for.
For a theatre piece to be perfect for some people, it has to be horrible for others.
Traverse Theatre is currently hosting rehearsed readings of pieces from graduates at the University of Edinburgh’s Playwriting Masters course.
1960s America.
Adam tells the story of Adam Kashmiry, a trans man born in Alexandria, Egypt.
Zinnie Harris has five plays on in Edinburgh this August, including two within the Edinburgh International Festival’s theatre programme.
The Traverse Theatre is onto a winner with its programming this year.
Confession time: I’ve never been a fan of The Smiths or Morrissey.
The perfect image of youth and boyhood is projected onto the mirror-like panels which hang from the ceiling as Jo Clifford gazes thoughtfully the photo of herself.
Jess and Joe want to tell us their story.
Nassim.
This acclaimed show from award-winning Australian theatre company Sisters Grimm clearly aims to put the “lion” back in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, through a startlingly …
It’s fair to say that Bounce!, created and performed by French company Arcosm, is a delightfully playful blend of music and dance, performed with real skill and alleged wild a…
Recent years have seen a significant rise in the number of (usually) London theatre productions being transmitted live to cinemas and other venues across the UK.
“Keep going,” actor Andy Clark says repeatedly to the musicians behind the glass screen in the unsubtly-named Limbo Studio created on stage, ensuring that we find our seats …
The symbolism is hardly subtle; when we enter the Traverse Theatre’s principal performance space, we have to choose which side of a massive shipping container we sit next to.
Evan Placey’s Girls Like That (first performed at London’s Unicorn Theatre three years ago) came to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre—courtesy of the neighbouring Lyceum Thea…
“I can be pretty dim, sometimes,” says Sion Pritchard as Tom, an office-working film school graduate who doesn’t, initially, come across as particularly sympathetic.
It’s a brave show which starts with the words: “I don’t like it.
“It’s quite comfortable being old,” 80 year old actor Tim Barlow tells us at the start of his latest one-man show, a work co-devised with the writer Sheila Hill.
For at least some of its audience, it’s enough that Grain in the Blood reunites actors Blythe Duff and John Michie—long-time compatriots on STV’s Taggart.
There’s no hanging about with Morna Pearson’s Walking On Walls; when the lights come up, we see a bespectacled woman observing a man who’s bound on an office chair, tape a…
This one-man show, written and performed by Gary McNair, won lots of praise during its initial run as part of the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
We’re somewhere among the Western Isles, and at least a thousand years back in time.
It’s fitting, in the weeks running up to the latest Arctic Circle Assembly (running from 7-9 October in Reykjavik, Iceland) that the team behind A Play, a Pie and a Pint opted…
Blow Off is part concert, part theatre and deals with one woman’s journey to committing an act of terrorism.
“Revolutionise the world”.
The Traverse’s Breakfast Plays series is an intriguing prospect: four plays on the same theme by their Associate Artists, presented as script-in-hand rehearsed readings at 9am ea…
Panti Bliss has had a whirlwind of a few years and, naturally, she has more than a few fabulous stories to share.
Mark Thomas’ new one-man-play blends spoken word and storytelling to create a compelling, intimate and rousing performance that lifts the spirit in this pitch perfect personal an…
Three of the ‘seven ages of man’ populate the Traverse stage: a pair of 14-year-olds, Steph and Ash, wrestling for the first time with the ideas of love and sexuality; a couple…
Little remains of Gogol’s original short story, Diary of a Madman, with Al Smith taking much artistic licence in updating it to post-Brexit Britain and turning it into a story of…
Daffodils is an unusual show of two halves.
Theatre audiences are, for the most part, quite comfortable with their self-assigned role of secret voyeurs of the people on stage who go about their lives with no apparent knowled…
My Eyes Went Dark takes us down into the abyss of overwhelming grief and denies us any chink of light.
Rob Drummond is known for being one of Scotland’s most experimental and accessible theatre makers and his new show In Fidelity is no exception.
The gamut of performers at Fringe brings with it a spectrum of experience; from shiny new student companies, powering forward on naive enthusiasm and off-brand energy drinks, to ve…
Strange Town is an Edinburgh-based company which offers opportunities for young people between the ages of five and 25 to fulfil their creative potential though drama and perfor…
There’s a definite shift in the second play in this double bill from Edinburgh-based theatre company Strange Town.
Part of the attraction of seeing magic tricks performed well – beyond the sheer spectacle – is trying to work out how they’re done.
There’s a simple idea at the heart of Australian company cre8ion’s show Fluff; rescuing and giving a new home to lost and abandoned toys.
Sometimes words feel unworthy of the task when it comes to describing and reviewing a performance, especially a dance-piece as vibrant, colourful and joyous as this.
There is much more to history than just learning dates and facts.
During the 2008 Spring Season of “A Play, A Pie and A Pint” at Glasgow’s Òran Mór, writer and director Selma Dimitrijevic presented audiences with a delicate, poignant e…
First lines are important; as attention grabbers, but also as indicators of what’s to come, tonally at least.
Ring roads are not usually places you go to; they’re a means of avoiding congestion, of giving a wide berth to somewhere.
There’s are plenty of laughs in this imaginary conversation between King James VI of Scotland – preparing in March 1603 to make his stately progress south from the Palace of…
It has become traditional for Lung Ha Theatre Company – Scotland’s principal theatre group for people with learning disabilities – to present at least one large show every…
It is a tad ironic that, initially, the most overpowering element in this new show from Stellar Quines Theatre Company – established in 1993 to “celebrates the energy, exper…
David Leddy’s apocalyptic fable International Waters certainly starts as it means to go on; loud and bold, with the memorable image of four gas-masked figures performing a tab…
In Greek mythology, princess Iphigenia is the eldest daughter of King Agamemnon, sacrificed to the goddess Artemis in order to allow her father’s warships to sail off to Troy.
There’s a beautiful symmetry to this new production from Glasgow-based Birds of Paradise Theatre Company; the start and end deliberately remind us that the four disabled men o…
With typical modesty (not), Glasgow-based Vanishing Point describe themselves as “Scotland’s foremost artist-led independent theatre company, internationally recognised and …
Outside of the almost factory-like default setting of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s one hour time-slot (long-since exported around the world), it actually feels somewhat odd…
One-man show The Tailor of Inverness first hit Edinburgh stages eight years ago and has been touring ever since.
In the run-up to Mike Bartlett’s play Cock opening at the Tron Theatre, a lot of people – myself included – clearly couldn’t help have some innocent adolescent fun with …
At a time of year when most theatres across the land are bursting with colour, raucous laughter and the panto spirit, it’s typical of Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, long-esta…
Swearing more than a band of sailors, the cast of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour present an entirely candid portrait of female teenage sexuality and lives.
The Garden is an off-site performance that takes place a short walk away from the Traverse Theatre.
Death is an important topic and it affects everyone, obviously.
Vanishing Point’s latest devised show opens with three figures creating what look to be masks, perhaps of their future selves.
Shef Smith’s new play presents three damaged, complex, engaging characters, each trying to continue their lives in spite of a new sense of chaos surrounding them.
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is definitely not an easy watch, though ‘listen’ might be a better description, as Aoife Duffin delivers a highly unsettling stream-of-consciousne…
Performed and written by Gary McNair, A Gambler’s Guide to Dying is a story told by a young boy, charting his grandfather’s extraordinary life of gambling.
How to Keep an Alien is an autobiographical story written and performed by Irish actress Sonya Kelly.
Though this is a story about a trader, the crash of the title refers not only to the financial crash but also to a car crash that turns the trader’s life upside down.
Bryony Kimmings is a theatre maker, performer and actor.
The ever-prevalent story of the individual being caught up in, or fighting against, the machine of society – not always nobly – is told with skill and beauty by the three actor…
In 2015, using actors who haven’t seen the script for a piece of theatre isn’t too much of a selling point: there are always multiple shows at the Fringe which do so.
The team behind the Fringe First winning Grounded (2013) are back with a powerfully human tragedy – one that grapples with issues of belief clearly and concisely, without recours…
Acclaimed playwright Alison Carr’s latest offering, Fat Alice, opens on a familiar scene.
Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha is the first of three plays in this season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint from Russia and Ukraine, curated by playwright Nicola McCartney who also direct…
No less a figure than Inspector Rebus creator Ian Rankin once insisted that the only author to ever “nail” Edinburgh was Robert Louis Stevenson in his classic 1886 novella, S…
After a very strong debut with Squash in last season’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint, playwright Martin McCormick returns with his second play, The Day the Pope Emptied Croy.
Life was so much simpler, back in 1980.
Flying with Swans focuses on three women, all now well into retirement, who reignite their old tradition of taking the ferry to watch the arrival of the whooper swans as they mig…
Though not a play in the strictest sense, this showcase of extracts from the Playwriting MA at Edinburgh University offers a compelling insight into the program, via the portfoli…
“If one understands a story, it has been told badly.
I’ve often wondered how Edinburgh locals truly feel about the Fringe - is it a huge party or just a massive disruption? Given the wealth of subjects from around the world being d…
Mark Thomas is a comedian and activist best known for political shows that seek to both satirise the status quo and, importantly, share ideas on how to challenge it.
Unfaithful is the latest work by Fringe First award-winning writer Owen McCafferty.
Death always makes us think about life.
We begin early in the morning, when several men are getting out of bed.
SmallWar, a piece adapted from actual accounts of events and experiences from conflicts spanning from WWI to Afghanistan, is an interestingly understated exploration of the emotion…
We are at a tribunal for war crimes.
As was always to be expected, the buzzword of this year’s Fringe is independence.
Riverrun is an adaptation of the final chapter of James Joyce’s controversial novel Finnegans Wake, a book that’s been cited as one of the most difficult novels of the twentiet…
When the Glasgow-born poet, playwright, song-writer, musician, cartoonist, humorist and story-writer Ivor Cutler died in March 2006, the nation’s obituarists remembered an “una…
Edinburgh’s revered Traverse Theatre has, for many years, defined itself as “Scotland’s new writing theatre”, regularly giving over its stages to a variety of new voices …
A play for naval-gazing theatre goers everywhere, Mouthpiece delivers an impactful message about exploitation and appropriation.