Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

The Golden Age of Hollywood – Usher Hall

25Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Golden Age of Hollywood – Usher Hall

Well, this was something special, what a sound! And I have a particular reason for loving the sound of an orchestra arriving beneath a musical. Having been involved in numerous amateur musical productions over the years, one of the moments our cast always looked forward to was band day. Usually sometime during the final week, because that was all we could afford, the musicians would finally arrive. Suddenly, the show we had rehearsed for months acquired another dimension. Everything lifted. The Golden Age of Hollywood was band day times ten! John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London make their Edinburgh International Festival debut at the Usher Hall with an evening devoted to the great Hollywood musical tradition, much of it reconstructed from original MGM orchestrations which Wils...

25Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Aufguss x Nils Frahm – Sauna Theatre

My sixth and final visit to Summerhall’s Sauna Theatre this year was an unusual one in that I attended with my wife, the only time I shared one of these sauna experiences with her. It proved a rather lovely way to round off my time in what has surely been one of this Fringe’s most intriguing new venues. With around 35 people attending, the sauna felt comfortably populated rather than crowded. Aufguss x Nils Frahm takes the familiar ritual I had encountered across my previous visits, but this time sets it against the music of composer Nils Frahm, ranging from the neo-classical Wintermusik (2009), through Spaces (2013), to Graz (2021). Frahm’s combination of piano, electronica and more rhythmic material proved particularly well suited to the gra...

24Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Kirsty Mann: Corpse – Summerhall

Summerhall's Red Lecture Theatre is a particularly appropriate home for Corpse. I always find it a slightly creepy, intimate space, graced with comfortable, nicely raked seating that focuses attention firmly on the stage. There is something about the slightly institutional atmosphere of this lecture theatre that also feels rather well suited to the ghost story that is about to unfold. And Corpse begins with a premise almost too good to resist. Kirsty Mann is a real life doctor, a rational, scientifically minded woman who, with her husband, buys a surprisingly cheap house in an area of London where they had never expected to be able to afford one. Immediately, alarm bells ring. Why is it so cheap? Then strange things start happening. Mann herself references ...

Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge – Pleasance Courtyard

24Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge – Pleasance Courtyard

Elf Lyons is The Woman on the Edge arrived with considerable expectation, and for a while I thought I was in for something rather special. The opening Hitchcock-esque passages are beautifully conceived, Lyons creating something strange, textured and nuanced, with an unsettling film-noir quality that suggested an intriguing hour ahead. Unfortunately, for me, the show gradually lost its way. The Beyond at Pleasance Courtyard doesn't necessarily help. It is a particularly wide room, requiring Lyons to cover considerable ground to maintain contact with the whole audience. She certainly works hard physically, but looking around during some of the longer passages, I saw rather a lot of people not laughing. Instead, there were quizzical faces, apparently trying, as I was, to piece ...

24Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Buggers – Pleasance Courtyard

Francis Bacon distorted the human figure on canvas. Buggers asks what happened when that same capacity for distortion entered one of the most important relationships of his life. Written by Alistair Hall and directed by Alice Wordsworth, the play immediately demythologises the famous story that Bacon first encountered George Dyer burgling his home, giving us instead an almost wordless wine-bar tryst between Alistair Hall’s Francis Bacon and Peter Clements’ George Dyer. The following morning begins to expose the gulf between them. “I like your nose,” says Bacon. “Yeah, it’s been punched a lot,” replies Dyer. When Bacon discovers that Dyer has done time, he is delighted. “How wonderful.” Then comes a line which encapsulates both Bacon’s attraction to Dyer and something fu...

23Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Hang Time – Royal Lyceum Theatre

Hang Time is unlike almost anything I have seen before, particularly within the ornate surroundings of the Royal Lyceum. Three Black men hang apparently lifeless in mid-air, an extraordinary and initially almost unbearable image which writer and director Zora Howard gradually makes us accept as normal. Kamal Bolden's Slim, Julian Rozzell's Bird and Bryce Foley's Blood simply hang around. There is something almost Beckettian in the absurdity of three dead men passing eternity through mundane conversation, discussing relationships, blues music, faith and even the weather. Slim is the antagonist, constantly needling the God-fearing Bird about whether there really is anything waiting on the other side. We discover that Slim murdered his wife's lover, while Howard offers no correspondin...

Yuck Circus: Naughties – Assembly George Sq.

23Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Yuck Circus: Naughties – Assembly George Sq.

I was probably doubly outside the target demographic for Naughties. I wasn't a teenage girl in the noughties, indeed I wasn't a teenager at all, but you don't necessarily need to have spent the decade clutching a flip phone and listening to Britney Spears to appreciate what Australian company YUCK Circus does here. The Palais du Variété is an excellent venue for this. A runway pushes deep into the centre of the lofty tent, while the considerable height above provides an ideal playground for the aerial work. Having previously endured the rather laddish Stamptown in this same space, Naughties proved a considerable improvement. Five women showed how this sort of circus cabaret can be done, with skill, personality and, appropriately enough, plenty of girl power....

22Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Hole! – Underbelly Bristo Sq.

If it is done with enough passion, commitment and sheer musical ability, apparently you really can make a musical about absolutely anything. HOLE! is the proof. Created and performed by American Sing-Song's Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, and directed by RJ Tolan, its premise is completely bonkers. A fundamentalist Christian community in Nebraska prepares for an apocalyptic event called The Great Sucking, and survival depends upon having something firmly lodged where the sun doesn't shine. That's probably enough plot. What I wasn't expecting was just how controlled, sophisticated and ultimately joyous this would be. The musicianship is superb. Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper move from big, life-affirming harmonies into exquisitely intimate passages, sometimes accompanied...

22Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Two Little Pigs – Pleasance Courtyard

There is a problem before Two Little Pigs has even begun. Sitting in the front row of The Green at Pleasance Courtyard, the glare from the lighting is sufficiently fierce that I resort to sunglasses. That shouldn't happen. The Green itself is a wafer-thin temporary structure seating around 60, full tonight, but with external noise penetrating the space. Nevertheless, director Merle Wheldon and her two performers have an intriguing hour ahead of them. Written by Caitlin McEwan, produced by Patrick Bone Productions, and performed by McEwan as Pig alongside Caleb Hughes as Mark, Two Little Pigs takes us into the increasingly troubling world of the manosphere. Mark's relationship with Martha has collapsed and she has walked out. Into the void comes a pig. The slight...

22Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Top Gunchained – Guilded Balloon Teviot

It is not the most promising of starts. A double-height room, plastic seats laid out on the flat and an approximately 18-inch-high stage. On it, there is virtually nothing: black drapes, a solitary leather swivel chair and a Top Gun-esque flying jacket. Fortunately, Richard Marsh doesn't need much else. Top Gunchained retells Top Gun through beat poetry, physical comedy and Marsh's own relationship with his father. It is a clever conceit, but what elevates it beyond movie parody is the warmth of that father-son story. Marsh's portrayal of his dad, complete with a wonderfully characterful West Country accent, is particularly lovely. We see the young Marsh growing up on his father's knee with Top Gun becoming one of their favourite films and later r...