REVIEWS Archives - North West End UK

17Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Stamptown – Assembly George Square

Ten years at the Edinburgh Fringe makes Stamptown something of an institution. The problem, perhaps, is that alternative comedy is supposed to kick against institutions, not become one. This particular institution has, sadly, aged like milk. Created and hosted by Zach Zucker, Stamptown has built its reputation on chaos, unpredictability and giving unconventional performers a platform. Here, however, Zucker seemed remarkably reluctant to surrender that platform to anybody else. He was onstage for an extraordinary amount of the evening. At some point, you rather wished he would move over and let the acts on. Unfortunately, when they arrived, they weren't particularly strong either. The notable exception was aerialist Donna Carnow, unquestionably the highlight of the...

The Legend of Queen – Surgeons’ Hall Grand Theatre

17Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Legend of Queen – Surgeons’ Hall Grand Theatre

There are some voices you simply cannot mistake. Peter Marchant gets remarkably close to one of them. Close your eyes during The Legend of Queen and you are pretty much there. Open them and you are definitely not. But that is rather the point. This is not a Freddie Mercury impersonation act, it is an exceptionally accomplished celebration of the music. Marchant particularly captures the compressed, slightly shredded quality of Mercury’s lower register. It is instantly identifiable and extremely well done. At the very top, he cannot quite reach those extraordinary Mercury heights, but two very able backing singers take the sound onwards and upwards. It is clever arranging around a voice that was always going to be almost impossible to reproduce. Musicianship throughout is up ...

Jess Fuchs: Feral – Pleasance Bunker Two

17Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Jess Fuchs: Feral – Pleasance Bunker Two

There is a particular Gen Z manipulation of language that I am encountering increasingly at this Fringe. Words are compressed, acronyms appear without explanation and everything is delivered at such speed that, unless you are completely tuned into the vocabulary, the joke can be halfway across Edinburgh before you have worked out where it started. Jess Fuchs's Feral occasionally suffers from this. At one point she references being a “STEM woman”. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, apparently. Perhaps everybody else knew. I didn't. Sometimes Fuchs is simply a little too clever for her own good, or perhaps too determined to demonstrate how clever the language can be. Which is a shame, because when she allows herself room to breathe, Fuchs is very funny inde...

Rosie Jones: I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying – Pleasance Cabaret Bar

17Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Rosie Jones: I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying – Pleasance Cabaret Bar

Rosie Jones has the sort of characteristics that, in considerably darker times, would have put her first in line for persecution: female, disabled and gay. Today, she jokes, they put her at the front of the queue for arts funding. Swings and roundabouts, eh! Two things she definitely can't handle! And that is pretty much the territory of I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying, an hour in which Jones gleefully crashes through almost every boundary between able-bodied and disabled comedy. At one point she confesses that she is only kidding about being disabled. She has been pretending all along, perfecting her iconically slow speech and unstable delivery. She only did it for the money. It is wonderfully outrageous because Jones understands precisely where the boundaries are and then t...

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...

Twonkey (Soft December Night In Tallahassee) – Edinburgh Dragonfly (Other Room)

17Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Twonkey (Soft December Night In Tallahassee) – Edinburgh Dragonfly (Other Room)

Other than the closing line of one of Twonketta’s musical interludes, there was no ‘Soft’, ‘December’, ‘Night’ or ‘Tallahassee’. Of course there wasn’t. Welcome to the Twonkey-sphere. Or Twonko-verse. Or, since the unceremonious, Ziggy S-style curtailment of Twonkey’s career a couple of years back, maybe the Twonketta-sphere? Some are starting to question the story about the tin of condensed milk, sensing the hallmarks of a particularly ruthless boardroom takeover. Still, Twonketta feigns such remorse that we accept, attend and note that most of the backing props and puppets have moved on too. With gusto they set about this adventure, a complex chilli-spiced grapefruit, designed to give most professional chefs a seizure. One which the Marvel franchise can only dream of. So, hold on… tight!...

17Aug

By Nazaret RaneaNo Comments

Scotland

Mozart’s Don Giovanni – Usher Hall

The Scottish Chamber Opera dazzles again with its high-spirited rendition of Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the Edinburgh International Festival. Conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev, the show continues the SCO’s highly acclaimed series of Mozart operas at the festival. Part raunchy comedy, part high drama, Don Giovanni tells the story of a dissolute Spanish nobleman whose penchant for womanising and bloodshed brings him to a grisly end. Act I opens with Don Giovanni murdering Il Commendatore after a failed attempt to bed the old man’s daughter, Donna Anna. Konstantin Krimmel plays a leonine, bombastic Don Giovanni, who is at times slick with charisma, at times laughably pompous. His Canzonetta in Act II (“Deh, vieni alla finestra”), sung with elegance and tenderness, is a particularly memo...

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...

17Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Swan Song – theSpace @ Surgeons Hall

Swan Song, produced by Irish theatre company Jilted Bride Productions, is a camp melodrama providing commentary on the hypocrisy, corruption and egos of the entertainment industry. Big Media, and their subsidiary Big Film, are the biggest conglomerate around. Headed by the evil Big Media Boss, she is on a mission to shut down anyone who disagrees with her. In an attempt to return to the spotlight, director Oswald recruits bygone diva Heidi Hole to star in his new play. When Big Media Boss fires journalist Samira Plath for her support of liberal activism, her father and renowned critic Skandar Plath returns to confront Big Media Boss, rehashing age-old secrets and scandals. After her father is murdered, Samira makes it her mission to take down Big Media Boss f...

17Aug

By Torya HughesNo Comments

Scotland

Steak Out – Gilded Balloon

Steak Out is the latest offering from Edinburgh born writer and actor Ruaraidh Murray, providing a dark comedy with a lot of local flavour. Set over two nights before Christmas, the play follows an Edinburgh family as they seek good fortune and revenge. Murray stars as Pilton butcher Archie, who hatches a plan to steal the best cuts from his ex-employer, Smedleys of Stockbridge. Aided by his girlfriend Karen and her out of work actor son Thomas, he finds himself committing a more serious crime than the one he'd originally planned. The performances are excellent. Murray is very believable as the rough and ready Archie, constantly being berated for his language by long suffering girlfriend Karen. Reanne Farley displays range as family matriarch Karen, scolding the men in her life for ...