Oliver Giggins, Author at North West End UK

24Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

The Hunger – Space @ Niddry Street

Deborah (Susan Jayne Robinson) and her daughter Megan (Hollie Burgess) live on their pig farm, once an independent and isolated business, now a seemingly last haven in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Besieged by the mutated and desperate humans outside, inside mother and daughter clash over nostalgia, how to live in this brand new world, and how to behave towards the unseen creatures roaming outside. As directed by Natalie Simone, Robinson and Burgess are excellent, believable as mother and daughter and intensely realistic in their situation and surroundings. Aided by very well designed and chosen set (corrugated plastic walls that are at times either metal-looking or see-through) and props (the utilitarian food and gun are their own centrepieces at times), the show is effectively gritty ...

Operation Market Garden – The Space @ Surgeons’ Hall

21Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Operation Market Garden – The Space @ Surgeons’ Hall

Taken mostly verbatim from Welsh paratrooper Neville Neads' wartime diary and letters to his fiancée, Operation Market Garden was adapted by his great-granddaughter Izzy Lane (who also produces, assistant-directs and acts in the show), directed by Izzy Driscol, and produced by This Inspired Theatre Company. The show's title is somewhat a misnomer, as the disastrous titular Operation Market Garden (specifically the Battle of Arnhem) really only takes up the first ten or so minutes of the show, with the rest covering the 200+ days Neads (played by Macsen Llewelyn) and his battalion spent as POWs life in consequence of its failure. Lane divides up her great-grandfather's recollections between Neads and his fellow paratroopers, which works well in most places, except with Neads' frie...

Titanic: The Last Hero and The Last Coward – Church Sanctuary at Palmerston Place Church

19Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Titanic: The Last Hero and The Last Coward – Church Sanctuary at Palmerston Place Church

The titular “Last Hero” and “Last Coward” are Scottish pastor John Harper and White Star Line director Joseph Bruce Ismay. Both were passengers on the Titanic and acquired their own legend from it. Harper, the story goes, was the courageous man of faith who apparently converted people even in the freezing water; and Ismay the coward who sank the ship with his desire to make the ship famous for her speed, surviving only by taking a place in a lifeboat that didn't belong to him. The truth is obviously more complicated, and Searchlight Theatre's show (one of eight they are putting on this Fringe) brings the two men together rather than in juxtaposition, as men navigating (pardon the pun) family, society and each other. Ismay is not judged for his actions, and Harper is not made a stick to ...

Love’s Labour’s Found – Greenside Riddles Court

18Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Love’s Labour’s Found – Greenside Riddles Court

To avoid being fired, modern poetry lecturers Jackie and Kate tell their employers they discovered a long-lost play by William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Found. The lie quickly spirals out of control when they’re invited to perform the “new” work at the 45th Shakespearean History International Teaching Conference (notice the acronym) the next day, aided and thwarter by a collection of zany characters such as one of their mothers, an actor, their boss and the dean, who is called Dean. Written and performed by members of the Newcastle University Theatre Society, the ensuing farce has its moments but unfortunately lacks the internal reality to properly build from. To properly spiral, one must have a centre to start from (or finish with), and Love's Labour's Found, which chose its tit...

17Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Endgame – Pleasance at EICC

Probably Samuel Beckett's second most famous work after Waiting For Godot, Endgame is, perhaps not coincidentally, a much bleaker play than the one famously known as the play in which nothing happens (and twice). The play's mix of the absurd and the nihilistic are not for everyone. This material is not relatable or made of easily defined punchlines, and anyone coming in purely off the name of a famous comedy writer or the MCU team-up could be in for a shock. Set in a houser in a post-apocalyptic landscape, the play follows Hamm (director Henry Maynard), his servant Clov (Simon Gleave) and Hamm's two dustbin-bound parents, Nagg (Derek Elwood) and Nell (Annabel Arden). Maynard brings a Shakespearan gravitas to the seat-bound and petty Hamm, while Elwood and Arden in their bins a...

Houdini Speaks To The Living – The Space On The Mile

17Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Houdini Speaks To The Living – The Space On The Mile

Hidden Room Theatre produce this show from writer-director Beth Burns and writer-magician Patrick Terry, who also stars as Houdini, along with Robert Matney playing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini was famously a debunker of fraudulent mediums, while Conan Doyle, perhaps counterintuitively as the creator of the very rational Sherlock Holmes, was a crusading spiritualist. That the two men were real-life friends feeds the dramatic tension that has fascinated many for a century and is the centre of this show. The level of research is clear, with lines taken verbatim from the letters and works of Houdini and Conan Doyle. Terry & Matney first originated these roles a decade ago, and their ease in these parts is clear, though Terry's theatricality, while reasonable for a performer c...

13Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Blackbox – Underbelly Cowgate

This is the true story of Henry "Box" Brown, the enslaved African-American who, in 1849, mailed himself to freedom in the North in a wooden box measuring just 3 feet by 2.5, in which he had to remain quietly, and not always right side up, for 27 hours. This adaptation by Rickerby Hinds (who also directs) draws on Brown's own autobiographical writings, published as Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown Written by Himself, to tell his story. As such, it is mostly monologue form (performed by Josiah Alpher as Brown, with Jada Evelyn Ramsey as Spirit and chorus) combined with partially live gospel soundscapes and, reflecting Brown's later career, stage magic. Though the play starts and ends with the box which is so central to this show (not to mention the man's name), it is really...

13Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

The Hobbit – The Space @ Venue 45

Officially licensed by Middle-Earth Enterprises, Theatre On The Blue does what Warner Brothers could not, telling the story of The Hobbit in an hour with a team of six young actors. The original story is epic on a scale only dwarfed (sorry) by its sequel The Lord Of The Rings, and with multiple kingdoms, races, a dragon and a battle with only one less army than there are actors, cuts were inevitable. Some are seemingly quite drastic, such as the loss of all the dwarves save Thorin (prompting a knowing joke later about Bilbo eating for 13 hobbits and Thorin for 13 dwarves), or the Battle of the 5 armies getting reduced to two paper cutouts repeatedly bodyslaming each other into submission. Never-the-less, this is a very faithful, light-hearted adaptation of the children's story, w...

A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong – Festival Theatre

12Feb

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Scotland

A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong – Festival Theatre

Based on their 2017 BBC television special, Mischief Theatre's A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong was directed by Matt DiCarlo, with associate director Sydney Stevenson. Mischief Theatre's bread and butter are the literally named “Goes Wrong” shows (including The Play That Goes Wrong, The Goes Wrong Show, Mind Mangler - Member of the Tragic Circle, Magic Goes Wrong, Mischief Movie Night and Peter Pan Goes Wrong) which was directed by , and in this one, the Cornley Drama Society, a familiar staple of their shows, are casting a production of the seasonal Dickens classic, led by their director Chris/Scrooge (Daniel Fraser) and assistant Annie (Nancy Zamit). Unfortunately their casting pool is not what they would like, leading to a cast which includes drama course recidivist Max (Matt Cavendis...

6Oct

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

War Horse – Festival Theatre

Based on the 1982 novel by Michael Morpurgo which was later adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 2011, the show was adapted for the stage back in 2007, on which it has been more or less ever since (factoring in for Covid). The eponymous War Horse is Joey, young farmer Albert’s beloved equine companion, who gets sold to the Cavalry and shipped to France in 1914 during mobilisation. Soon he and Albert who, despite being too young, followed him into war a few months, are caught up in enemy fire in No Man’s Land. Despite having followed Joey explicitly to find him, there seems little hope of reuniting, or even surviving the War that was meant to be over by Christmas. Featuring life-sized horses by South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company and projection on a tear-like screen by Nico...