Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

Jenny Gorelick: SORRY – Monkey Barrel Comedy

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Jenny Gorelick: SORRY – Monkey Barrel Comedy

Having interviewed Jenny Gorelick earlier in the month, I was interested to see whether the engaging, quick witted comedian I had met would translate into her debut Fringe hour, SORRY. The premise is straightforward enough, bad dates, worse decisions and an apology, in advance, to the men Gorelick has dated, or might yet date. It is territory firmly rooted in the experience and language of dating as a younger woman and, perhaps inevitably, it talks most directly to a younger and predominantly female audience. My curiosity was whether Gorelick could pull those of us outside that demographic into her orbit. The truth is, not quite. There is actually another layer of comedy available here. What happens when an older man simply does not understand the joke? Stop, look at him,...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Julius Caesar Variety Show – Summerhall

There is a lot packed into the short running time of Joy Nesbitt’s Julius Caesar Variety Show. It is energetic, well acted, frequently funny and undoubtedly clever. My reservation is that clever and particularly interesting are not necessarily the same thing. The premise gives Nesbitt plenty to play with. Three actors arrive to audition for Julius Caesar, while outside the theatre an increasingly angry mob protests against plans to convert the building into an asylum hotel. Inside, questions of casting, identity and theatrical power begin to collide as the director pushes his performers in search of something authentic. It is certainly current. The mob outside inevitably carries echoes of recent protests around asylum accommodation, while Shakespeare supplies another mo...

You and Me (and whoever comes next) – Summerhall

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

You and Me (and whoever comes next) – Summerhall

One day someone can be the most important person in your world. The next, they can simply disappear. For them, it was a job. For you, it was your life. That asymmetry sits at the heart of You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next), a funny, clever and ultimately moving autobiographical piece from Keron Day, playing himself alongside Lauren Koster as Dani, his new personal assistant. Keron has cerebral palsy and requires 24-hour support. Dani is the latest in a succession of PAs, and Keron takes us entertainingly through some of her predecessors. "Christine is what you get when you order your PA on Temu," he tells us. It also starts to sound remarkably like dating. There are the introductions, the getting to know one another, the irritating habits, the arguments and, eventu...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

First Night at The Hub – The Hub

And so, it begins. A couple of hours ago I heard this exact piece played by these exact musicians. So why does it suddenly sound completely different? Earlier in the evening, at the Usher Hall, conductor Karina Canellakis had put down her baton, picked up her violin and joined pianist Kirill Gerstein for the Blues movement from Ravel's Violin Sonata No. 2. It was beautifully played, but somehow this intimate little conversation struggled against the grandeur and ceremony of that enormous hall. Now they have hightailed it up the hill to The Hub, as have I, and everything has changed. The room is smaller. We are closer. The acoustic is different. Suddenly every inflection matters. The blues within Ravel's music seems clearer, the conversation between violin and ...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Come Back Home – Summerhall

There is a danger in making theatre intentionally difficult to understand. Make it oblique enough, abstract enough, strip away rhythm, meter, narrative momentum and familiar cultural reference points, and eventually you have to ask whether the audience is being challenged or simply excluded. Come Back Home walks perilously close to that line. I found myself thinking about Rothko. Put a Rothko beside conventional paintings and its abstraction, colour and absence of recognisable form acquire context. Fill the entire gallery with Rothkos and something changes. If you anchor the absurd against nothing, it isn't even quantifiable as absurd. There is very little here against which to anchor anything. At its centre is a man telling the story of the boy he once was, growing up...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Gershwin and Bartok – Usher Hall

Sometimes during the Edinburgh festivals, you simply need a little space. After days spent rushing between Fringe venues, squeezing into small rooms and watching theatre at increasingly close quarters, there is something wonderfully restorative about walking into the Usher Hall and finding the stage filled by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. And I mean filled. Under conductor Karina Canellakis, this remarkable collection of young American musicians produces an enormous, confident and wonderfully optimistic sound. The scale of the string section alone is extraordinary, stretching seemingly endlessly across the stage. They look magnificent too. Black jackets sit above striking blood red trousers, the whole orchestra beautifully colour coordinated, whi...

Aufguss X The Waves – Sauna Theatre, Summerhall

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Aufguss X The Waves – Sauna Theatre, Summerhall

My God, this is refreshing. And at the Edinburgh Fringe, by the middle of the day I have walked several miles, watched several shows and hauled a bag full of chargers, notebooks and assorted electronic paraphernalia, refreshing is no small achievement. Sauna Theatre is Summerhall's latest experiment in what theatre might actually be. There is a little faff involved. Swimming trunks, flip flops and a couple of towels aren't normally essential reviewing equipment. But changing cubicles and lockers are provided, valuables disappear safely inside, water is handed out and soon a collection of strangers are standing around in varying degrees of undress waiting to see what happens next. What happens next is a sauna. A proper one. I like heat, so naturally I head for the top ben...

The Jolly Fisherman – Buttercup, Underbelly, George Square

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Jolly Fisherman – Buttercup, Underbelly, George Square

There is a certain irony in spending ten minutes wandering up and down George Square Gardens trying to find a play which turns out to be largely about our need to find a place to belong. The Jolly Fisherman isn't actually inside the Gardens at all. Eventually I discover it outside, beside the box office, housed in what looks remarkably like a Portakabin. Perhaps accidentally, it is the perfect introduction to John Dinneen's thoughtful new play about place, identity and what happens when the buildings we invest with meaning cease to be ours. At its centre are Alan and Amir, childhood friends growing up in a changing East London. The Jolly Fisherman pub becomes the physical point around which their lives, and eventually their differing ideas about belonging, revolve....

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Singer – Traverse Theatre

There is a lovely irony running through The Singer. This is a show fascinated by the importance of finding the flow in music, yet it is a production which repeatedly struggles to find its own. Perhaps that is entirely intentional. Life is messy. Creativity is messy. Relationships are certainly messy, and the relationship between Joe, a profoundly Deaf songwriter, and Andy, a musician whose own career has fallen apart, was never going to travel in a conveniently straight line. So perhaps the stops, starts and sudden changes of direction are part of Cora Bissett's design. But that raises another question. Is the mess what an audience actually wants, or do we still crave the simplicity of a story which knows where it is taking us? There is an enormous amount to admire here. J...

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

After Party – Traverse Theatre

Imagine inviting the family round for your 80th birthday, pouring the drinks, cutting the cake and then announcing that you intend to be dead tomorrow. That is the grenade Vivienne Blackwood throws into the celebrations in Morna Young’s After Party. A celebrated former actress, Vivienne has terminal cancer and has decided that she will determine the manner and timing of her own death. She wants her fractured family around her when she does it. You could hardly ask for a more combustible theatrical premise. What is surprising is how rarely After Party allows it to explode. This Traverse Theatre production, in association with Paines Plough and the Belgrade Theatre and directed by Katie Posner, initially treats the gathering remarkably broadly. The first half freq...