Scotland Archives - Page 3 of 140

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...

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It – Summerhall

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It – Summerhall

Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland are rapidly becoming something approaching Fringe royalty. Arriving from New York on crowdfunding in 2022, they won a Fringe First with And Then the Rodeo Burned Down, then repeated the trick in 2023 and 2024. Three consecutive Fringe Firsts inevitably creates expectation. So, is Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It simply riding a considerable wave of hype? Not a bit of it. This year's Summerhall run is sold out, with the show heading almost immediately afterwards to Soho Theatre in London. On the evidence here, that trajectory feels entirely deserved. Rice and Roland, two diminutive New York clowns with painted faces, impressive physical dexterity and an anarchic imagination, play teenage girls in an isolated Appalachian community who, larg...

Skank Sinatra: How to Succeed in Show Business Without Really Trying – Underground at Assembly George Square Studios

10Aug

By Torya HughesNo Comments

Scotland

Skank Sinatra: How to Succeed in Show Business Without Really Trying – Underground at Assembly George Square Studios

Drawing inspiration from the title of his show, Jens Radda certainly succeeds in show business and manages to make it look mostly effortless. Performing as his drag alter-ego Skank Sinatra, the multi-lingual Radda delivers a masterclass in show business. The lessons are simple – be the director, diversify your portfolio, and always read the script before making any commitments. This is a new show from Radda, meaning that there are a few rough edges, however he more than makes up for this with his stage presence. Mixing crowd work with comedy and song, the show tells his story as a boy growing up in South Africa who had one very important ambition – to play Eva Peron. The songs are a clever mix of original music and arrangements of familiar musical classics, with the edited lyrics co...

Our Town Needs a Nandos – theSpace on the Mile

10Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Our Town Needs a Nandos – theSpace on the Mile

Up and coming Edinburgh-based theatre company Hot Mess Productions, brings their rendition of Samantha O’Rourke’s, Our Town Needs a Nandos to the Edinburgh Fringe. The play sees a group of young girls in high school work on creating a devised piece for their drama exam. In a run-down town with not much to do, this is a coming-of-age story where friendships are tested, sexuality is explored, and the girls shared experience of sexual violence is at the forefront. Each girl faces a sense of displacement, whether that be down to emigration, isolation, or repression. The cast of five work well together, clearly taking their strong bonds from the rehearsal room to the stage. Each cast member is believable as an unruly teenager finding their feet in the world, hitting ...

10Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

BearGirl – Assembly Roxy

In dealing with the death of her husband, thirty-year-old BearGirl (played by Rachel de Fontes) finds comfort in the form of a second-hand bear onesie. Day by day as the grief and guilt consume her, she retreats further into her bear persona – running away from memory and reality. Given the premise of this play, one would expect a surrealist piece of theatre that sweeps you away from realism and into true primality. BearGirl however is very much grounded in reality – perhaps too much so. In classic Fringe style, this play turns out to be your typical one-woman show, although is accompanied by Jimmy Kavanaugh multi-roling a number of characters, including BearGirl’s narcissistic husband, her elderly neighbour, and the grandiose fortune teller. Kavanaugh transit...

Kevin!!!!! – Forth at Pleasance Courtyard

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Kevin!!!!! – Forth at Pleasance Courtyard

Last year Recent Cutbacks gave me one of my picks of the Fringe. Fly, You Fools! was gloriously inventive, while Hold On To Your Butts proved equally adept at turning a much loved blockbuster into breathless, brilliantly silly theatre. So, I arrived at KEVIN!!!!! expecting another hit. Instead, they have given me Christmas in August. This Home Alone parody may be described as something wildly different from the company’s other Fringe offerings, but there is an irony here. KEVIN!!!!! was originally developed around ten years ago and, having seen what Recent Cutbacks have subsequently become, this feels less like progression and more like a retro step too far. The approach is predominantly puppet led, with handmade miniature s...

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Nesting – Summerhall

There are Fringe shows you admire, shows you enjoy, and occasionally shows that remind you why actors act and why people like me continue to write about theatre. Nesting is one of those. Peter McCormick’s new play, directed by Ben Standish, places Billy Mack’s Francis, a man living with motor neurone disease, alongside his pregnant daughter Emma, played with extraordinary emotional commitment by Francesca Hess. As the disease progresses, daughter increasingly becomes carer, until into this painfully recognisable world comes something altogether stranger. Michael Guest’s Gull offers Francis an extraordinary escape. Allow the bird to nest inside him, inhabit his body and somehow release father and daughter from what is coming. It sounds almost impossible on paper. Gues...

Kanpur: 1857 – Above at Pleasance Courtyard

9Aug

By Ella BeckleyNo Comments

Scotland

Kanpur: 1857 – Above at Pleasance Courtyard

The Fringe First-winning production follows true events of Indian uprisings against British colonisers, told from the perspective of both the coloniser and the rebel. The siege of Kanpur, formally anglicised as Cawnpore, was a major event of the Indian rebellion of 1857 in which several hundred British were slaughtered by rebels on the banks of the River Ganges. British women and children were held captive in a house named Bibi Ghar where all 200 of them were brutally murdered. In retaliation, British troops captured and executed rebel soldiers by hanging, and on occasion would tie them to a live canon, with an audience of onlookers. &n...

Paul Foot: The Future – Belly Dancer at Underbelly

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Paul Foot: The Future – Belly Dancer at Underbelly

A sold-out Paul Foot show at the Edinburgh Fringe is hardly a surprise. I managed to snag a very last-minute seat in the front row, which with Foot feels simultaneously like a privilege and a potentially hazardous place to be. Foot has been part of the Fringe landscape for years, developing a particularly devoted following, the self-styled Guild of Connoisseurs, or Leguminati. There is something reassuring about seeing a comedian with such an established audience who still appears determined not to give them quite what they expect. The Future finds Foot in characteristically restless form. His comedy occupies that peculiar territory somewhere between carefully constructed argument and the thoughts of a man whose internal filing system has been struck by lightning. Like a harmless dru...