Scotland Archives - Page 4 of 140

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...

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Best of Burlesque – Assembly Rooms

There are occasions at the Edinburgh Fringe when sitting in the front row feels like a privilege. There are others like, several minutes into Best of Burlesque, you begin to wonder whether you have made a serious tactical error. You live and learn. The problem is not burlesque. Quite the opposite. Burlesque has enormous theatrical possibilities. It can be funny, provocative, sensual, satirical, beautiful and absurd. There can be character, storytelling and invention in the simple act of appearing on stage and gradually removing what you arrived with. But there has to be an idea. Too often tonight, Best of Burlesque seems to consist of people taking their clothes off to music. There isn't enough artistic interpretation or theatrical imagination to turn the act of undressing ...

9Aug

By Christina SchmidtNo Comments

Scotland

Belly – Greenside @ George Street

Three women, three generations, one family - and all of them struggle with their belly. The play follows Ellie, who gets pressured into an eating disorder by her high school swim coach, her aunt Katherine, who wants to do everything right for her baby but has to navigate a fatphobic healthcare system and patronizing doctors and Katherine’s mother Susan, newly widowed and learning to live with her grief. From time to time, writer and performer Reilly O'Shaughnessy checks back in with the audience as herself, and we get to learn about her own story and the reasons behind her creating this show. This variety of characters and storylines keeps the audience engaged and waiting to learn more about their relationships. They get rewarded with a very sweet ending, tying the different s...

Tick, Tick…Boom – Nicholson Street Venues

9Aug

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Tick, Tick…Boom – Nicholson Street Venues

A story of a struggling theatre writer and the sacrifices he makes to make his dream come true, Tick, Tick…Boom is a show full of fun and thought-provoking songs. An autobiographical piece on the life of Jonathan Larson: most famously known for the hit musical Rent. Whilst a successful movie, and perhaps with a creative set and direction a strong musical, unfortunately Midnight Sun Theatre’s production misses its mark. Set in a small black box theatre with a tv screen to show locations and several black stage boxes and stools which seem to be aimlessly moved around the space the entire show, the direction and vision for the show seems amiss. Songs are not directed in a particularly interesting or dynamic manner the performance seemed to lack any kind of atmosphere at all, with very few ...

Colin Cloud: Hoax – Pleasance Courtyard Grand

9Aug

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Colin Cloud: Hoax – Pleasance Courtyard Grand

If illusions and magic are your thing or you just fancy a good mind-boggle, Colin Cloud has you covered. From guessing the names and dates of people’s first kisses to getting an audience member to read the audiences’ minds, this show is sure to have you leaving more confused than you started. Cloud has an incredible stage presents: Funny, trustworthy and somewhat other worldly. He is incredible skilled at what he does and despite there being 700 plus people in the room, he made sure to make the whole room feel included. Now I don’t want to spoil too much so the tricks themselves will remain a secret, but the show is well paced and has you on the edge of your seat throughout. Audience participation is guaranteed with a large number of audience being chosen for set tricks or ...

9Aug

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

[Seagull] – Studio Theatre

[Seagull] directed by Stijn Van Opsatal is a bold new take on Chekhov’s classic play The Seagull. Running consecutively for two and a half hours, this is an adaptation unlike any you have seen before. At the forefront of [Seagull] is the performance of the text in Flemish Sign Language. This production truly highlights the ingenuity and championing of accessibility as not just a requirement, but as a medium in its own right. Performed as part of the Edinburgh international festival, [Seagull] is brought to us by two Belgian theatre companies; Toneelhuis and Olympique Dramatique. [Seagull] follows the story of a young aspiring playwright and the relationships around him. Featuring four acts, each exploring the themes of unrequited love and creative ego, tensions rise and fall b...

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Wolf of Poyais – Assembly Roxy

There are some stories so extraordinary that the difficulty in putting them on stage is not making them interesting but making the theatre as interesting as the story. The Wolf of Poyais, written by Sam Went and performed by Thom Tuck, takes on one of the most extraordinary confidence tricks in British history, the story of Scottish soldier, adventurer and fraudster Gregor MacGregor, the man who managed to sell people land in a country that did not exist. Born in Scotland in 1786, he became a soldier and adventurer, fought in the South American wars of independence and then performed perhaps his greatest feat of imagination. He invented Poyais. Not merely a piece of land. A country. It had a government, currency, titles, documents, land for sale and, most importantly, inves...