REVIEWS Archives - Page 11 of 612

10Aug

By Stewart Who?No Comments

London

Can You See Me? – Museum of Comedy

I got a U (ungraded) for ‘O’ Level Physics and failed my Maths four times. My attempts to defeat these numerical frailties via exams, evening classes and persistent application continued into my early twenties. For decades, I believed that STEM subjects were my Achilles heel and leaned into the Humanities with avant garde enthusiasm. In retrospect, this mix of avoidance and failure was fuelled by uninspiring teachers and shame-based anxiety. My life could have taken a different turn entirely if my early education had been blessed with a teacher like Vivien Puppa Kocsis. Can You See Me? is a pop-science seminar which serves as a cool mix of entertainment and education. Is it a stretch to define such an event as ‘theatre’? Probably. However, this show was staged as part of the Camden ...

The Show That Goes Backwards – Camden Comedy Club

10Aug

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

London

The Show That Goes Backwards – Camden Comedy Club

The premise of the improv show is that it begins at the end, and the improvisers must build a back story for what happens in a reverse timeline (if you know what I mean). To begin the show the company ask the audience for a word, any word. Someone suggests beans – and we’re off! The play ended with a bean induced slippage in aisle seven, but the improvisers must now create their story. Sainsburys is the supermarket of choice, and the couple who were shopping in the store were rather heavy handedly admonished by security. We then move on to a rather murky discussion by executives about a merger of all supermarkets, yes, they are going to include the Co-op. This will lead to total domination of the supermarket sector and unchallenged pricing. ...

The Comedy About Spies – Adelphi Theatre

10Aug

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

The Comedy About Spies – Adelphi Theatre

There are productions that make you smile, productions that make you laugh, and then there are those rare productions when “surrender” is the only option. ‘The Comedy About Spies’ belongs firmly in the latter category. Mischief Comedy’s latest theatrical assault on the funny bone is riotously entertaining, breathtakingly well executed and, quite simply, one of the funniest shows I have seen in a very long time. Written by Henry Lewis and Henry Shields, the play takes the familiar world of the 1960s espionage thriller and gleefully scrambles it into an ingenious comic farce. In London’s Piccadilly Hotel, spies from opposing sides (CIA and KGB) converge in pursuit of stolen top-secret documents called Project Midnight, plans for a deadly new weapon. Throw an actor aspiring to play Jam...

Mrs Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library – Traverse Theatre

10Aug

By Tom ScottNo Comments

Scotland

Mrs Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library – Traverse Theatre

The cell door opens, and a terrified woman is bundled into a dingy, dimly lit basement. A uniformed police officer aggressively tells her to give him her handbag and empties its contents on a table. He orders her to take off her coat and raise her arms, then frisks her. The interrogation starts. This is the dramatic start to ‘Mrs Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library’, Jenny Lyn Bader’s fascinating play which recently had its premiere Off-Broadway in New York and is now being seen for the first time in Europe in the Traverse’s studio theatre. The play is inspired by the real-life experience of Hannah Arendt, the political theorist and philosopher, who was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis. It is 1933. The previous year the Nazis had become the largest party in the Reichstag, and ...

10Aug

By Ella BeckleyNo Comments

Scotland

Vidrado – Central at Assembly Roxy

Vidrado takes its audience on a wholesome journey across imaginative lands filled with wonder and joyous celebration, a perfect show for the family to enjoy. It’s silly and outrageous all at once, honouring the circus tradition to find fun in the simplest of things. Renowned for his acrobatic balancing acts, Sao Paolo artist Guilherme Torres brings Vidrado to Edinburgh Fringe 2026 for its UK Premiere. Torres plays a travelling man determined to climb a mountain, assisted by a quaint embroidered map and an imaginative array of balancing props including glass bottles and of course, unicycles. Torres plays the fool, he is clumsy and maybe...

10Aug

By Danielle FarrowNo Comments

Scotland

Bog Witch – Traverse Theatre

A few branches and linen-looking sheets, fresh air and husbandry, home produce and homemade felt. How simple! Here’s permaculture, with a touch of children’s story narration, a one-eyed cat and some fine song and dance, all amid the beautiful changing seasons. How sweet! NOT when it is Bryony Kimmings’ take on the reality of uprooting for love, being a mackerel out of water, having a huge personal hole to fill, and a bog calling you to surrender to the witch. Bryony Kimmings’ exploration of life and climate changes makes the sweet saucy and the simple complex. Bog Witch - showing Kimmings’ own reluctant move to the country - is fantastically full of cynical city-slick humour, hilarious and highly adept physicality and wit, and strange rural practices. The unexpected is peppered w...

Samantha Day (I’ve Started So I’ll Finish) – Edinburgh Banshee Labyrinth

10Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Samantha Day (I’ve Started So I’ll Finish) – Edinburgh Banshee Labyrinth

Self-styled Heritage Hottie, self-confessed Recovering Accountant sits in a quiet, dark corner of (Scotland’s most haunted pub/venue – tell us another!) The Banshee Labyrinth and at least we know we’re in the right queue. Thirty minutes later we’re in the company of someone hilariously dark but nowhere near quiet. It’s an intimate venue, the Cinema Room, and proximity to a performer such as Day provokes the odd spot of discomfort, related anatomical details notwithstanding. But it’s so worth it. Reminiscences about ‘Dating Direct’ (was a thing in the late noughties, apparently), lies and false photos posted, one’s inability with age to suppress comments about others, self-effacing admissions regarding youth (‘I was like Harrods, everyone was queuing to get in’) pepper an hour where the tim...

Ian Stone (The Plebs Pow Wow) – Edinburgh Counting House

10Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Ian Stone (The Plebs Pow Wow) – Edinburgh Counting House

And if you do end up with a Rhino-sized hamster in your kitchen, make damn sure it has its trousers in order and understands the recommended toilet manoeuvres. You get meh? ‘Mon there, keep up. Especially Keith from Canada. There’s audience sympathy for Keith, for so quick and break-neck is the pace of this show, it’s a tall ask. Speaking of which, just take a moment to contemplate the diminutive Hazel Blears given the responsibility for floods back in 2007? Speaking of politicians, there’s a brief assessment of prime ministers from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown et al up to and including Andy Burnham. It’s exhausting, impossible to take your eyes off him or take even a second to pass comment to your neighbour. There are twists and turns, but Stone doesn’t slow down for any of them. It’s ...

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Cathy – Traverse Theatre

Tommy never appears, we don't see him alive, in flashback or even in a photograph. Yet by the end of Eilidh Loan's beautifully observed new play, I felt I knew him. That is quite some trick. Tommy is dead before the story begins, leaving Cathy to negotiate that peculiar new country called widowhood. Elaine C. Smith, making a heroic return to the Traverse stage after 26 years, gives us a woman whose stoicism is matched only by her capacity to find humour in the darkness. And Cathy is surprisingly, wonderfully funny. Not polite theatrical chuckling, but genuine laugh out loud funny. Loan understands something fundamental about grief and perhaps about Scottish families: sometimes you laugh because the alternative is crying. During this performance, plenty of people did both. T...

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Waiting For Wonka – Gilded Balloon

Fifteen years after Willy Wonka opened the gates of his chocolate factory, health and safety has finally caught up with him. And frankly, it has questions. Why, for example, was there no handrail beside the chocolate river? Had there been one, perhaps Augustus Gloop would never have fallen in. And what about Veruca Salt's father, who followed his daughter down the rubbish chute trying to save her? We now discover that he actually died in the furnace. Welcome to Waiting for Wonka, Half Trick Theatre's very funny reimagining of what became of Wonka's unfortunate young visitors once childhood was over and the lawyers, trauma and demands for corporate responsibility arrived. It is a terrific concept and frequently laugh out loud funny. Veruca, Augustus, Violet and Mike are ad...