Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Lynn Faces – Summerhall Main Hall

It’s odd. Very odd! Following on from Laura Horton’s 2022 near perfect, sensitively written award-winning Breathless which focussed on mental illness and hoarding and which transferred successfully to off-Broadway, we have something of a hand-brake turn into her latest vehicle, Lynn Faces. The story follows almost-40 Leah, wannabe lead singer of newly assembled punk band Lynn Faces. We join them as they are about to play their opening gig.They wear masks of Lynn, the eponymous long-suffering, snazzy-cardigan-wearing assistant to fictional comedian Alan Partridge. Problems are racking up: firstly, none of them can really play any musical instruments (with the exception of an excellent grade 3 recorder solo!), oh, and the drummer hasn’t turned up. But, who cares, the show must g...

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Nation – Roundabout @ Summerhall

Within the womb-like space that is The Roundhouse, at Summerhall, one of my favs in the scrum that is the Fringe, magic can happen. Nation might have been written for this space, and this time. It may not be the kind of launch pad writer and performer Sam Ward would have wanted, but the spate of xenophobic far-right riots sweeping the UK makes this story chilling pertinent. Ward welcomes us into the tent and asks us to exist in the moment, right now you are an audience listening to a storyteller. Right now, I’m a postman, on a High Street of an ordinary town. We are asked to imagine the ordinary town, not too big, not too small, and the ordinary people that inhabit it. The Butcher, the Baker, the Pilates Instructor, Ward points at people in the audience, assigning identities, ...

Sheeps: The Giggle Bunch – Pleasance Courtyard

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Sheeps: The Giggle Bunch – Pleasance Courtyard

This 3 for 1 offer is for the most part good value. Sheeps with pedigree, Ladhood creator Liam Williams, Stath Lets Flats star Al Roberts and writer Daran Johnson. Former Fringe favourites return after a six year hiatus with a new suite of sketches which are in turn brilliant, tricksy, silly and just plain weird, in what they promise is their final Fringe run together (probably!). Given their already high-flying status, this is more of an excuse for the ‘boys’ to get together one last time, rather than a serious career or financial move. There’s an intriguing boy band dynamic and comedic palsy bickering throughout the show which is part of the show’s charm. The quality of the sketches is varied to say the least, the opening skit, possibly the high point of the show, features a...

Ania Magliano: Forgive Me Father – Pleasance Courtyard

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Ania Magliano: Forgive Me Father – Pleasance Courtyard

Magliano is moving up the roster at the Pleasance, last year she was in a container, today she is in a proper raked auditorium with 3x the capacity, and it is full. I see a real progression, a maturity, in her material, and her delivery. Last year she braided a lightweight tale about getting a haircut. This year she has knitted a gorgeous monologue, about life, forgiveness and moving on, as fine as the olive green waistcoat she wears: perhaps a bit baggy and saggy in places, but quirky, stylish and unique. Magliano’s fresh face and natural colour choices, down to her russet cords, have led some to assume she is a Vegan, but as she explains, she left that dietary choice behind 12 years ago when she came out as bi-sexual. She is not a fussy eater anymore! Magliano’s ‘nice girl’ who...

Lorna Rose Treen: Skin Pigeon – Pleasance Dome

7Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Lorna Rose Treen: Skin Pigeon – Pleasance Dome

Surreally great!! I have a theory that environment can create comedy, that some spaces are just inherently funnier than others. So here, upstairs at Pleasance Dome, where the equally brilliant Crizards stood last Fringe, rising star Lorna Rose Treen rises from the mound. It is a small space, hot ‘intimate’, as they say, and, unsurprisingly, it is full. Treen, emerges from a pile of laundry, reminiscent of a student’s bedroom. The ‘mound’ plays a central role for quick clothes changes, prop retrieval and another brilliant use, which will have you creased up - but no spoilers here!. Almost Pythonesque in her humour, she plays many characters in this quick-fire sketch show, but chief among them is the tough talking nine-year-old brownie, who appears several times, surely a cypher...

Patti Harrison: My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected NOT FAKE – Pleasance Courtyard

7Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Patti Harrison: My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected NOT FAKE – Pleasance Courtyard

I really wasn’t ready for this. I thought this was just another comedian. How wrong I was, and how old this made me feel! In the packed 250-seater, all are welcome Patti tells us as she races frantically up and down the aisles, bi, trans, binary and those with allegations. America’s most famous trans comedian, the 33-years old Ohioan veers between a school teacherly persona with a Mall girl drawl to a self-obsessed and terrifying monster involved in a bizarre sexual relationship with children’s character, Stuart Little. Yes, you heard that right! Whilst also giving us a sneaky peek of her ‘in progress’ side hustles, her theatrical masterpiece-in-the-making about growing up biracial, complete with thrash metal song, or her ‘Emily In Paris’ remake that is nothing like the origin...

7Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Shantify! – Assembly Rooms

Fishy fun never sounded so good! The six likely lads that make up Shantify are off to a winning start. The sold out tent does not lie! Six because they get to call themselves a sextet, which is way cooler than a quartet or a quintet! Anyway, it’s all blue jeans and brown leather boots, stripy tops and Fairisle sweaters (looks hot!) and neckerchiefs as they drop anchor (well, they started it!) in George Street, Edinburgh for the duration of the fringe. Folks are going to be clambering for tickets for this one. Seriously though, like all great ideas, this one is so simple, but is so well executed! Combining six of the West End’s leading men creates some dreamy harmonies, as a selection of popular songs from stage and chart are turned into sea shanties. First up for the Shanty...

Isobel Rogers: How To Be Content – Pleasance Courtyard

7Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Isobel Rogers: How To Be Content – Pleasance Courtyard

Former Camden Roundhouse resident artist, writer, composer and comedian Isobel Rogers makes her much anticipated Edinburgh Fringe debut, with her existential musical comedy show How To Be Content. I’m Not Really That Intense, she jokes at one point, when of course she actually is. Mini powerhouse, Rogers, in deep-soled open-sided sensible shoes, rattles through a musical Odyssey rolling from Weddings to Polygamy, To living with my mum, (with my boyfriend!) and on to To baby or not to baby. With guitar in hand and a head full of condensed clever lyrics the delivery is safely professional, but hardly ground-breaking. Maybe if you are a thirty-something woman with your eggs on a timer this will strike just about the right chord. However, in reality this is a music show with some ...

6Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Arturo Brachetti: SOLO – EICC

Being a reviewer has its pluses. When promoters, The Pleasance, provided an extra ticket especially so that my daughter could accompany me to this one, they created a beautiful father/daughter moment which will outlast me! A magical hour of entertainment, by one of the true masters. Italian national treasure, Arturo Brachetti, is in town with several truck loads, a circus-full if you will, of props, costumes and surprises, the sheer scale of which will take your breath away. Regarded by many as the greatest, The Guinness Book of World Records lists Brachetti as the world’s fastest and most prolific quick change artist, having achieved a staggering 250,000 costume changes throughout his career. Some of the props are a bit ragged at the edges, but then so is Arturo. It kinda add...

6Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

St. Matthew’s Passion – Usher Hall

The second Passion of the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival, following on immediately from the opening night Concert, Osvaldo Gilijov’s extraordinaryLa Pasio Segun San Marcos,a reinterpretation of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion from 2000. However, tonight too is a reworking of Bach’s original masterpiece. The young Felix Mendelssohn transformed Johann Sebastian Bach’s majestic St Matthew Passion for modern orchestra. We hear his (rarely performed) groundbreaking arrangement from Leipzig 1841. Arguably this changed the course of music history, and without it the great Bach revival of the 19th Century might never have happened. There would surely have been an argument to host a third Passion, the original, using baroque instruments, which would sound very different again. A...