Tuesday, November 10

REVIEWS

Fagbreak – Cockpit Theatre
London

Fagbreak – Cockpit Theatre

As its first and only staged performance, ‘Fagbreak’ arrives with the understandable rough edges of new writing, but unfortunately, in its current form, Purnima Rai’s play feels lengthy, unfocused and in drastic need of editing. Following 4 young people working together in a hot-dog takeaway, there are potentially interesting ideas around friendship, work and personal struggle, but these never coalesce into a sufficiently coherent narrative, and at around seventy-five minutes, Director, Estrella Mabika’s production feels considerably longer than the limited material can sustain, scenes frequently outstay their purpose and conversations meander without advancing either character or story. There may be a sharper, more impactful thirty-minute play buried somewhere within the material, ...
Amanda Knox: Cartwheel – Gilded Balloon, The Wine Bar
Scotland

Amanda Knox: Cartwheel – Gilded Balloon, The Wine Bar

Amanda Knox’s show has been the talk of the town at the Edinburgh Fringe.  With protests calling for the show to be removed, Knox is quite the figure of controversy.  Being convicted for the alleged murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher during their study abroad programme in Italy in 2009, Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison.  Released after four years, Knox was finally acquitted in 2015.  In Amanda Knox: Cartwheel, part one-woman show, part stand-up, Knox tells of the continuous impact the accusation played on her life as a young woman, and now mother. Using a voiceover of her four year-old daughter, Knox provides an imaginary dialogue showing the difficulties she has had in explaining the events to such a young child.  Furthering this image, Knox te...
Beethoven 7 & Ortiz: Los Angeles Philharmonic – Usher Hall
Scotland

Beethoven 7 & Ortiz: Los Angeles Philharmonic – Usher Hall

Marked as one of the definitive anchor classical events of the 2026 Edinburgh International Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s appearance at Usher Hall was an evening of striking contrasts. Conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the orchestra presented Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 alongside Gabriela Ortiz’s Revolución diamantina, a work inspired by Mexico City’s 2019 Glitter Revolution and its protests against violence towards women. The 1 hour 45 minute concert, with one interval, was the first of three appearances by the LA Philharmonic at this year’s Festival. It also carried a particular sense of occasion. Dudamel, who has led the orchestra for seventeen years, is coming to the end of his remarkable tenure before taking up his new role with the New York Philharmonic. His long-standing re...
Spencer Jones (Dogs) – Pleasance Dome
Scotland

Spencer Jones (Dogs) – Pleasance Dome

‘You off to work Dad?’ ‘Yeah son, I’m off to work.’ Observing the prop-strewn set one can only speculate on who has the tidiest room in the Jones household. It definitely won’t be a dull place. The title of tonight’s show is ‘Dogs’ and it’s not so much a theme as a frame on which to hang each chaotic episode. Brilliant, illuminated chaos, the set a physical representation of our performer’s unruly, hilariously distracted mind. Surreal, and fascinating, too. Surveying this as we take our seats a geezer we’ve all encountered in the night-time economy blunders into our midst, apologising, ‘I’m a man with three pints’, cranking up the anxiety with the plea ‘I need a wee.’ With the fourth wall in ruins and the tone established, Jones arrives at his set, removes his ‘big heid’ an...
Andrew White (What A Life) – Edinburgh Cab Vol 2
Scotland

Andrew White (What A Life) – Edinburgh Cab Vol 2

Wasn’t he lovely? Just ask Phil the celebrant. But seriously, he was. OK, funnily, he was. Very Funnily as it happens, nicely illustrating how to compose an hour of laughs with few swear words or much fabricated controversy in sight. But he didn’t neglect dark. There was plenty about death and what’s one to expect when you were reared by a mother obsessed with murder documentaries and the idea that bad things (death, chiefly) come in threes? Or insisting that any track from the radio meeting approval be added to the ‘I want that at my funeral’ list. In this potted account of his life Andrew’s inspirational Mum took top billing, co-stars being his partner, sundry friends and mentors from teenage years when White’s social circle consisted of 60-year-olds. Precocious, him? Johnathan...
REDACTED: The Cover-Up of a Cover-Up of a Cover-Up – Pleasance Dome
Scotland

REDACTED: The Cover-Up of a Cover-Up of a Cover-Up – Pleasance Dome

Sometimes reviewing at the Fringe is difficult. Sometimes you spend half the walk home wondering what on earth you have just seen and how you are going to write about it. And sometimes they make it very easy for you. REDACTED: The Cover,Up of a Cover,Up of a Cover,Up is brilliant. There is something here that reminds me of the extraordinary Foley work I enjoyed in Fly, You Fools! at the Pleasance Courtyard last year. Voloz Collective take that idea and turn it into something approaching live cinematic Foley, four actors creating an entire visual world while musician Jonny Venvell, tucked into the corner with percussion and strings, does much of the heavy lifting in establishing its sound. The integration is beautiful. Music, movement, sound effects and physical theatre...
Morning Sauna Rave – Sauna Theatre Summerhall
Scotland

Morning Sauna Rave – Sauna Theatre Summerhall

There is something slightly perverse about setting an alarm to go to a rave. Admittedly, Morning Sauna Rave does not start until 10.30am, but during the Edinburgh Fringe that still feels positively dawn-like. A sunny walk across Edinburgh past Arthur’s Seat certainly helps, and by the time I am stripped down to swimwear and heading into the heat, the prospect of starting the day with music, steam and a cold plunge seems increasingly sensible. This is my latest visit to Sauna Theatre, the extraordinary temporary structure occupying Summerhall’s rear courtyard, on the very spot where Paines Plough’s Roundabout was launched in 2014. Designed for 80 people, it is both the UK’s largest sauna and its first purpose-built sauna arts centre. Having visited before, I remain im...
This Shining Night – Usher Hall
Scotland

This Shining Night – Usher Hall

The concert begins and ends beneath the same shining night, Samuel Barber first contemplating James Agee’s stars, Morten Lauridsen returning us to them at the conclusion. Much has happened in the darkness between. This Shining Night, part of the Edinburgh International Festival’s celebration of choral music, brings the Edinburgh Festival Chorus to the Usher Hall under conductor Sofi Jeannin for a journey through American choral music. It is an intelligently constructed programme; one whose dramatic shape only becomes fully apparent as the evening unfolds. It starts quietly enough. Barber’s Sure on This Shining Night, his 1938 setting of Agee’s poetry, establishes the idea which will eventually bring us full circle. There are beauty and restraint here, but initially I find my...
Dan Rath: Help Me Please – Monkey Barrel Comedy
Scotland

Dan Rath: Help Me Please – Monkey Barrel Comedy

I descended a labyrinth of stairs into the sub-basement of Cabaret Voltaire to find Dan Rath. Red and blue LEDs light the way through a grungy, stone-arched room, while great lengths of aluminium ventilation snake overhead. It is a fascinating venue, dark, subterranean and atmospheric. No windows here, folks. And, on this occasion, not really much of a window into Dan Rath either. I had been looking forward to this. Rath’s I’m Not Doing Well, Folks is hilarious, a gloriously peculiar, rapid-fire excursion through a mind that seems permanently several steps ahead of its owner. Help Me Please, however, feels surprisingly tired. Perhaps that is simply Rath’s demeanour, but tonight the delivery seems slower, the jokes flatter and the whole thing rather scattergun. There...
Sexy Circus Sideshow 3.0 – Piccolo Assembly George Square
Scotland

Sexy Circus Sideshow 3.0 – Piccolo Assembly George Square

Having been rather underwhelmed by my previous excursion into burlesque at this year's Fringe, I am pleased to report that Sexy Circus Sideshow 3.0 is a considerable improvement. Perhaps the clue is in the title. This is less a burlesque show with circus attached than a late night circus and variety show which happens to have rather fewer clothes than usual. And that distinction matters. The International Fringe Burlesque Festival is new to Edinburgh this year, bringing more than 100 international artists together across five daily shows. Sexy Circus Sideshow 3.0, playing at the Piccolo tent in George Square Gardens, is its most ambitious offering, and certainly the most entertaining I have encountered so far. What works is that the entertainment comes first....