Saturday, February 28

Scotland

The Rite of Spring – Traverse Theatre
9Feb By Greg HolsteadNo Comments
Scotland

The Rite of Spring – Traverse Theatre

At the Traverse Theatre, as part of the Manipulate Festival, Dewey Dell’s The Rite of Spring announces itself as a work that expects, and repays, sustained attention. Running a concentrated fifty minutes, this is not a production that courts easy admiration or quick interpretation. It is slow, deliberate, and insistently moody, drawing the audience into a sealed weird world that unfolds according to its own internal logic.The original scandal of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring lay in its pagan brutality, Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes presenting sacrifice as the necessary price of renewal. In Dewey Dell’s reimagining, conceived and directed by Agata Castellucci, Teodora Castellucci, and Vito Matera, that focus subtly shifts. As a monumental red flower opens to reveal a prot...
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Don Quixote (Is A Very Big Book) – Traverse Theatre
9Feb By Greg HolsteadNo Comments
Scotland

Don Quixote (Is A Very Big Book) – Traverse Theatre

There’s a moment early on in Don Quixote (is a Very Big Book) where the performer suggests the entire show sprang from a serendipitous eBay purchase, a suit of unlikely, clown-footed, articulated armour. It’s a charming idea, but frankly, it’s nonsense. The armour is far too central, too embedded, too perfectly calibrated to the rhythms of the piece for this to be anything other than myth-making. And that’s no bad thing. Don Quixote, after all, is built on glorious delusion. What matters is that this is an almost perfect one-man show, and that’s a bold claim, but a justified one. One-handers often get tantalisingly close to perfection because of the sheer control involved, one body, one voice, one mind shaping the entire theatrical universe. What’s remarkable here is that this sh...
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Animated Documentary Shorts – Edinburgh Film House
9Feb Avatar photoBy Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments
Scotland

Animated Documentary Shorts – Edinburgh Film House

It is good to be back in the Filmhouse after the crowdfunded rescue and a beautiful refurbishment. Run by a new charity, Filmhouse (Edinburgh) Ltd, the staff are welcoming, the decor contemporary and warm on this cold winter night. The bus stops right outside and, inside, the bar serves hot food and drink. Seeing the nineteenth Manipulate Festival, which specialises in animation, puppetry and visual theatre from the plush new seating is a treat. On this night, there were eight animated short films. Other nights included short horror films and a daytime dance workshop for over 14s at Dance Base led by two outstanding Italian improvisational breakdancers. The festival runs from 4th - 10th February. Within the eight short animated documentaries, you are gripped by the psychological trau...
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Coffee With Sugar – Traverse Theatre
6Feb By Greg HolsteadNo Comments
Scotland

Coffee With Sugar – Traverse Theatre

There are moments in Coffee with Sugar at the Traverse Theatre when the senses are so thoroughly engaged that conventional critical distance simply gives way. Smell, sound, movement and image collide in ways that feel genuinely intoxicating, even overwhelming, in a production that prioritises sensory immersion over narrative drive. The show forms part of the Manipulate Festival, one of the many festivals Edinburgh hosts throughout the year, and arguably one of the most consistently rewarding. Dedicated to visual theatre, puppetry and experimental performance, Manipulate reliably delivers work that foregrounds audio visual invention and formal risk taking, and Coffee with Sugar unquestionably lives up to that billing. The piece is led by Laia Ribera Cañénguez, who also created the wor...
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The Cathode Ray & Electrical Melting Company – Edinburgh Traverse Bar
3Feb By Roger JacobsNo Comments
Scotland

The Cathode Ray & Electrical Melting Company – Edinburgh Traverse Bar

First up in the night’s intriguingly titled diversion were the aptly named Electrical Melting Company who proceeded to meld, with great affection, their many late-60’s influences. Being quite the event for Edinburgh musical alumni the trio consisted of ex-Spooks Ron Doo Ron, AKA Scott Fraser (bass & vox) and Peach McNulty, AKA Pod Kennedy (guitars & vox) supported on drums by longtime associate and ex-Ringo Graham Bodenham. Kicking off with a Neil Innes quote, ‘here’s a medley of hit’ their clutch of tunes landed upon almost every Austin Powers reference point; The Beatles Revolver-era ‘Suburban Bourbon Man’, the Traffic/Donovan/Barratt-inspired ‘Mile High Strawberry Pie’, a straight cover of The Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ (apologies, ‘straight’ is an insult in this context), some r...
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Press to Pulp (WIP) – Augustine United Church
27Jan By Jessie MartinNo Comments
Scotland

Press to Pulp (WIP) – Augustine United Church

Edinburgh Rep Company kicks off the start of their ambitious 2026 programme with work-in-progress piece Press to Pulp.  This noir inspired one act play sees cynical Detective Carmady (Stephen Park) wake up in his office - except this isn't his office... When Carmady's client Lady Broadame (Beth Eltringham) calls round, Carmady already knows every detail of her case and how to solve it - he has been here before. As the play progresses, we uncover three other detectives also stuck in this strange time warp, each thinking this office is their own, each thinking every client who walks through the door is an ex-case of theirs.  It is up to them to solve this mystery in order to close the loop, with their main lead being the mysterious typewriter that has been keeping minutes, t...
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Into The Woods – Church Hill Theatre
21Jan By Jessie MartinNo Comments
Scotland

Into The Woods – Church Hill Theatre

Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group (EUSOG) opens their production of Into The Woods this week at the Church Hill Theatre.  Sondheim's notoriously complex and finicky musical score provides quite the challenge for both the performers and musicians, especially given this is an amateur company.  EUSOG's ambition in taking this musical on cannot be denied, but I'm not sure the company was quite prepared for the challenges this musical demands. Co-directed by Tai Remus Elliot and Hunter King, with assistance from Elise Chan, their take on Into The Woods follows the typical fairytale style of the show.  In the director's note, we are told that this production has been made more 'relatable', by making the 'characters feel more connected to the modern world'.  I'm not qu...
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Drawing The Italian Renaissance – King’s Gallery, Holyrood Palace
14Jan By Greg HolsteadNo Comments
Scotland

Drawing The Italian Renaissance – King’s Gallery, Holyrood Palace

This is an excellent exhibition, inspiring, beautifully curated, and quietly revelatory. Drawing the Italian Renaissance does something deceptively simple but profoundly effective, it brings us closer to the act of thinking itself, as revealed through the drawn line. But first, a little historical background – on paper. Far from being the boring commodity that Ricky Gervais parodies in the iconic The Office, paper was exciting and new and suddenly abundant. Before the Renaissance, drawing was constrained as much by material as by imagination. Paper, though known in Europe from the medieval period, was scarce and relatively expensive, and artists instead relied on vellum, made from animal skin, which was costly and ill-suited to exploratory or repetitive work. From the mid-fifteenth cent...
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Magic Awareness Society – The Royal Scots Club
1Jan By Jessie MartinNo Comments
Scotland

Magic Awareness Society – The Royal Scots Club

Set in the exuberant class of The Royal Scots Club, the highly esteemed Magic Awareness Society has gathered to instil the law - magic is banned and has been for decades.  In this meeting we are informed on the dangers of magic, the tricks magicians historically used, and the ways in which we could be coerced by them today.  Ironically being performed on the final night of the Edinburgh International Magic Festival, it is soon revealed to us that this meeting is a ruse.  In fact, this meeting is a resistance - we are here to oppose the ban on magic and once again be filled with wonder. Leading this show is Tim Licata, accompanied by his right-hand man Dan Bastianelli.  Both magicians are clearly very well experienced, dedicating a large amount of focus on the perf...
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Jamie Leonard, Wonder Boy – Edinburgh International Magic Festival
1Jan By Greg HolsteadNo Comments
Scotland

Jamie Leonard, Wonder Boy – Edinburgh International Magic Festival

As my final show in this year’s Edinburgh Magic Festival, Wonderboy brought energy, charm and an undeniable sense of youthful confidence. Performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Jamie arrives fresh from a successful 2025 Edinburgh Fringe run and clearly comfortable in front of an audience. This boy unquestionably knows his way around a stage. There’s a strong theatrical instinct at work here, allied to a rubber-faced expressiveness that plays very effectively to a mixed crowd. At just 17, his confidence is impressive, and he leans into his age with a stream of schoolboy humour and routines that feel knowingly pitched rather than apologetic. It’s a sensible strategy, and one that allows him to sidestep the trap of pretending to be more seasoned than he is. That said, ...
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