Scotland Archives - Page 14 of 154

House of Life – Underbelly, George Square

13Aug

By Torya HughesNo Comments

Scotland

House of Life – Underbelly, George Square

Billed as “one part sermon, one part purge, three parts party”, House of Life delivers a joyous immersive experience with plenty of glitter. Led by the RaveRend and his straight-faced sidekick Trev, the audience are encouraged to participate in a multi-level guide to ascension. The experience starts in the queue outside, where Ben Welch’s RaveRend anoints the waiting audience with glitter. Once in the venue, he hurls multi-coloured egg shakers into the crowd, while Trev (played by Lawrence Cole) awkwardly checks the loop machine and sound equipment in the corner. The two characters are direct opposites, RaveRend clad from head to toe in sparkly vestments, while Trev sports a grey suit and tie. This makes for quite a few comedy moments, and allows Trev to go on the journey of ascen...

12Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

The Global Ideas Stage – Kings Theatre

A trumpet cuts through the audience’s murmuring – Wynston Marsalis stands at the back of the auditorium playing Amazing Grace, and amazing it absolutely was. The Global Ideas Stage began as it intended to go on. Featuring Edinburgh International Festival’s Director, Nicola Benedetti as host, alongside Harvard Art and Culture Historian, Sarah Lewis. Last year’s festival also featured a talk from Sarah Lewis, but this year the structure followed a more interview-based approach. Six guests were chosen to discuss the connection between Scotland and America and its Declaration of Independence. As well as discussing how culture and media allows for minds to be changed and hope to be given. Our panel consisted of Adam Dixon, Amy Goodman, Gordon Brown, Bryan Stevenson, Ken Burns, Lewis and B...

Allaster McKallaster (An unbiased afternoon with) – Gilded Balloon Museum

12Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Allaster McKallaster (An unbiased afternoon with) – Gilded Balloon Museum

If you’re English, this show is a must. Pete Reid’s McKallaster has been purveying his intelligent, keenly-observed - crucially impartial - views on football for years. Specifically, the English variety. However, today Hugh McHugh (Vic Galloway), an Englishman, wishes to contest the neutrality of the self-proclaimed ‘Favourite Unbiased Scottish Commentator’ of Andy Robertson and ‘close personal friend’ of Archie Gemmill. Resplendent in seven types of tartan (six of them visible), McKallaster’s ready to defend his reputation. With a name like McHugh, you might be concerned his opponent qualifies as a Scot, but fear not, he’s from Edinburgh. It’s an opportunity to watch (or re-watch in many cases) the Instagram clips we’ve become so fond of @mckallaster. And they are side-splittingly,...

Around The World in 80 Toys – Edinburgh Summerhall (Anatomy Lecture Theatre)

12Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Around The World in 80 Toys – Edinburgh Summerhall (Anatomy Lecture Theatre)

Wow. Take a breath… prepare to be humbled by a surfeit of inventiveness and ingenuity… in a venue the performer admitted he wasn’t initially happy with! It’s a wonderful tribute to, a celebration of – using many of the same techniques employed by – French cinema pioneer Georges Melies. Born in Paris just before Christmas in 1861, he’s what might today be described as an early adopter of the then burgeoning film technology. He was also a magician, actor and toymaker – in common with today’s creator and performer Thaddeus Phillips. With an understanding of perspective, props, effects and an appreciation of the camera’s possibilities he created hundreds of films, A Trip To The Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904) both having stood the test of time to the extent they inspired – and wer...

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...

Mythos: Ragnarök – Assembly Rooms, Music Hall

12Aug

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Mythos: Ragnarök – Assembly Rooms, Music Hall

The fringe is all about embracing all kinds of art from physical theatre, to spoken word, from historical talks to wrestling…. yup this is a wrestling show but with a twist. Mythos Ragnarok has become a stable of the fringe since it started its journey 5 years ago, and it’s not hard to see why. Being the first of its kind (that we know of), it mixes wrestling, Norse Mythology and storytelling incredibly well. Is all the mythology told in its most correct form? Not quite, but time constraints and the power of theatre allow for a little customization, not to mention the stories were made up to begin with. This show is really a labour of love that has paid off: homemade costumes, an ever adapting and improving script and some excellent performers make up one hell of an entertaining ...