Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

Cat Power Sings Dylan ’66 – Edinburgh Playhouse

21Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Cat Power Sings Dylan ’66 – Edinburgh Playhouse

Running some fifteen minutes late, Chan Marshall, AKA Cat Power takes to the stage hobbling with a recently broken toe. It’s not a good start, but nothing compared to the distinctly lacklustre 45 minutes that follow, which are to say the least a huge disappointment, to me personally and on the evidence I saw, the majority of the almost full Edinburgh Playhouse crowd. People leaving, muttering, thank god that’s over, is never a good sign! Far from owning the stage, the American performer, with a distinctly quiet acoustic guitar and harmonica support, and an almost inaudible Hammond organ accompaniment makes heavy weather of Visions of Johanna, Desolation Row and Mr Tamborine Man. Powers rather convoluted and, frankly, untuneful interpretations of these classics, with constant referen...

21Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Weather Girl – Summerhall

World Premier Julia McDermot. Remember the name. Sometimes everything just fits. The actor, the script, the venue, the tech, the resonance of the story. This magic realist climate change monologue perfectly sums up the mood of our planet as it sleepwalks towards disaster. Julie McDermott appears, bubbly and smiling, like a human clone popped from a blister pac marked ‘perfect’. Pencil thin, blond haired and button nosed bundle of positivity, squeezed into an electric pink tube skirt, like a walking neon glow stick. She is the Weather Girl for a Californian TV station and totters to the microphones, spotlights and blue screens like a seasoned pro. She reports on a house that is burning as a result of yet another Californian wild fire, with a perky professionalism, “I can’t hold thi...

21Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Playfight – Roundabout @ Summerhall

Their meeting place, an ancient Oak tree, all our echoed inner pain, three girls, Zainab the earth, Keira the animal and Lucy, like a cloud with legs. So writes Julia Grogan in the Playfight script notes, which I could hardly just walk past after watching this fire cracker. Summerhall’s crucible of dreams, the Roundhouse, is a perfect In the round venue for a play about the complexities of girlhood, which twists and turns following three fifteen-year-old school friends who spark off each other in multiple directions. Keira is the adventurous one and has just lost her virginity, on the tennis courts, doggy style, with an eighteen year old. Zainab is coming to terms with the idea that she might prefer girls, and Lucy floats along, struggling to balance her love of the church with her ...

20Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

A History of Paper – Traverse Theatre

World Premier Set in a different time, on the eve of the millennium, before the dawn of the paperless office, Oliver Emanuel’s, A History of Paper, started life as a radio drama. Then in 2016, song writer and composer Gareth Williams contacted the playwright to suggest that it might make a ‘good musical’. Tragically, Emanuel passed away from brain cancer in December 2023, aged just 43, so sadly never got to see the finished product. Which is a real shame, because it is a sweet thing. Emma Mullen, and Christopher Jordan-Marshall play journalist and would-be writer as an unnamed couple who sing their relationship into existence. Whilst he is a hoarder of paper memories, she couldn’t care less. He has a boxful of tickets and lists and menus and plane tickets, and a half finish...

20Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Piskie – Summerhall, Edinburgh

One of my favourite posters of this years’ Fringe, and a one word title that hints at something….interesting. Couple this with one of my fav performance spaces, a little hidden gem of a venue, a beautifully proportioned theatre, just ten seats wide with a central aisle, focused but friendly, raking back into the darkness, a surprisingly long way…. And at the business end a very nice performance area, about an acre of black cloth enfolds it and damps voices down to a pleasant whisper, but with plenty of tech if you need amplification. Basically, a black box in which magic can happen. Lights duly killed, lecturer Ouida Bert (Lucy Roslyn) employs the torch under the chin (it always works!) to relate a spooky tale of two male friends, a policeman and a barrister, lost on the moor who ta...

The Marriage of Figaro – Festival Theatre

20Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Marriage of Figaro – Festival Theatre

At a lengthy 3 and a half hours, performed in Italian with English subtitles, this was, to be honest, a somewhat daunting proposition. More used to one hour long bite-sized Fringe morsels, an opera definitely requires a long-distance mentality rather than a sprint approach. On reflection, Kirill Serebrenbbnikov’s take on Mozart’s comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro, would have been better as a half-marathon. The joy, humour and accessibility of the first act is worth five stars, but what follows is, frankly, incomprehensible, confused and humourless that seemingly almost forgets that there is an audience, drenching itself in opulence and superficial appearance to the point of self-destruction. The weirdly lavish mirrored art and the butchery of most of the cast in the second act is like...

18Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Show Pony – Summerhall Main Hall

What happens to a show pony when it gets old? Yep, bang!! Three ‘middle-aged’ ladies pull back the curtain for a behind the scenes view on what it’s like to be a circus performer your whole life, with your body slowly giving up, facing the existential question, what next? An entertaining hour, of high quality tricks and stunts, but also much humour and insight, which suggests this talented trio are not done yet, and are more than one-trick-ponies. Along the way, we get to delve into the earliest memories of the strong woman, the aerialist and the contortionist. It’s a fascinating and beautifully choreographed introduction, with old photos, flickering videos and tricks aplenty, which has all the charm and otherness of a Wes Anderson flick. They explain that the rules of circus ...

18Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

A Knock On The Roof – Traverse Theatre

World Premier A Knock On The Roof, a brand new, and very current, one-person play written by and starring Khawla Ibraheem, which takes us to Gaza as young mother, Mariam, prepares for war along with her mother and 6-year-old son, Noor. The title refers to the, so-called, humanitarian practice of dropping small warning bombs on residential buildings in Gaza, giving civilian tenants five to fifteen minutes to evacuate before a much bigger rocket hits. Whether this happens in reality is anyone’s guess. The family live at the top of a seven-storey tower block, which is good and bad. Good because they will hear the knock on the roof first, but bad because they will have a long way to run to escape the carnage that is coming. Mariam decides to train for the possibility of this Knock...

16Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Dear Billy – Assembly Rooms

Partick, birthplace of comedian, Billy Connelly, back when it was a small countryside village on the outskirts of Glasgow, on the banks of The Clyde, famous for fish and hunting, Aye, it had a hundred chippies and you had to watch out for people with knives! The world and the words of National Treasure, Billy, are brought gloriously to life by multiple Fringe-First winner, Gary McNair, accompanied by the musical talents of Simon Liddell and Jill O’Sullivan. But this is no tribute act, despite the obvious visual similarity between McNair and a young Billy. Instead, it is an array of stories and recollections, of the big man, hilariously voiced and acted by McNair, collected across the length and breadth of Scotland, most humorous, but some surprisingly deeply moving. From his childho...

One Sugar, Stirred to the Left – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

16Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

One Sugar, Stirred to the Left – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

World Premier Based on his own lived experience, following the death of his father, award-winning composer Jon Lawrence, turns playwright in a quirky, bittersweet tale, which may have a sad ending built-in but leaves a pleasant aftertaste, nonetheless. Hamish and Henry lie in hospice beds. They know they are dying, but they have not lost their sense of humour, or their need for human contact. They still have their dignity, and for one of them they find a reason for living, at least a little longer, in a final task to be completed. Like a final episode of Still Game much of the best writing here comes in the pitch-black gallows humour, but also the life truths, shared between coffin-dodgers Stephen Corrall (Henry) and Duncan Airlie-James (Hamish). A pair of old curmudgeons, rea...