Wednesday, December 17

Scotland

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – Pleasance Courtyard
Scotland

Garry Starr: Classic Penguins – Pleasance Courtyard

Returning to the Fringe with his third solo show, comedian and clown Garry Starr attempts to perform every Penguin Classic novel in the space of an hour, to save literature from extinction. This seems like a bold claim; however, this is a man who has previously performed every style of theatre and all of Greek mythology and managed to make both incredibly funny. This year he has even branched out into children's theatre, albeit with an underlying narrative about mental health. Starr arrives onstage naked, save for a top hat, a dinner jacket, an Elizabethan ruff and a pair of flippers. He builds an instant rapport with the audience, riding the waves of laughter before gently encouraging some participation. There is a great deal of skill involved in his crowd work, never ridiculing an...
Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort – Greenside @ Riddles Court
Scotland

Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort – Greenside @ Riddles Court

Written and performed by Jan Carey, Author, Composer, Soldier-of-a-sort sees Marion Scott present a biography of her relationship with Ivor Gurney by means of their letters to each other and the music of Gurney.  Carey masterfully swings between the voices of both Scott and Gurney, giving us a sense of the eccentric personality of Gurney, and the wistful nature of Scott as she reflects on the pair’s friendship. Despite being Carey’s first piece of writing, this play is a true, heartfelt representation of what theatre should be.  The audience are taken on a journey of reminiscence that leaves us with both a hollowness and fullness that only an exceptional show can conjure.  With humour and sadness, we are given a glimpse into a beautiful relationship and the themes tha...
Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall
Scotland

Elizabeth I: In Her Own Words – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

Created with Elizabeth I writer/scholar, Doctor Carole Levin and starring Tammy Meneghini as the titular queen, this show invites you into a private evening audience with Queen Elizabeth I. Near the end of her reign, she reflects upon its major events and the people she was closest to, told through "her own words", from documented letters, speeches, passages from her own hand, though these are very much augmented by others' words, including letters from Mary Queen of Scots and the Spanish Ambassador, and multiple speeches  from the plays of William Shakespeare. This makes sense in the context of the creation of the piece, ie to accompany a visiting exhibit of Shakespeare's First Folio to the campus of the University of Colorado Boulder, though it might lead the casual viewer to...
Gwyneth Goes Skiing – Pleasance Courtyard
Scotland

Gwyneth Goes Skiing – Pleasance Courtyard

One day in 2016, Gwyneth Paltrow went skiing. The Hollywood starlet and celebrity sex toy saleswoman collided on the slopes with retired optometrist Terry Sanderson. A high-profile lawsuit soon followed. On the day of the collision, Sanderson claims to have suffered life-changing injuries. Gwyneth, meanwhile, lost half a day’s skiing. And Awkward Productions gained the inspiration for this hilarious fringe show. I think I know who the real winners were. Paltrow (Linus Karp) and Sanderson (Joseph Martin) are as different as can be. He likes boiled eggs for breakfast. Gwyneth prefers jade eggs. But they both like skiing. Sanderson falls and is rescued by our angelic Gwynfluencer. She takes him to her chalet for a pep talk and some bone broth. Sadly, things sour between them, and then ...
In Two Minds – Traverse Theatre
Scotland

In Two Minds – Traverse Theatre

Joanne Ryan’s delicately observed portrayal of a mother-daughter relationship complicated by mental illness is beautifully brought to life by Pom Boyd (The Dry), as Mother and Karen McCartney (A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings) as Daughter. In Two Minds finds insight in the darkness, humour in the pain, and tenderness in difficult family dynamics. But don’t expect dramatic revelations or grand gestures, its simply not that kind of play. Sarah Jane Scaife’s unhurried production for Dublin’s Fishamble is light and practical and dwells on the ordinary rather than the extraordinary, a semi-autobiographical scenario, of Ryan’s relationship with her own mother. Set during the extension of her house, Mother has to share a small studio flat with her grown up Daughter for howev...
Three Of A Kind: A New Musical – Paradise in Augustines
Scotland

Three Of A Kind: A New Musical – Paradise in Augustines

Three Of A Kind is a new contemporary musical that follows the life of waitress Sam as she attempts to navigate work, love and caring for her sick mother. The score is completely original, and the musical has been created from scratch by Gregor Satti and Rebekah Holly Neilson. Story wise this is a rather classic musical theatre tale: girl who works as a waitress but longs for more meets boy and falls in love. In this tale Sam is having to work to care for her sick mother, when she meets Jamie, she begins to re-evaluate her life, but it seems Jamie is not the only man who intends to enter her life and change her world forever. There are many positive aspects to this show: the musical orchestration and composition being one. It is completely fresh and even without words you can fee...
BATSHIT – Traverse Theatre
Scotland

BATSHIT – Traverse Theatre

BATSHIT is an unexpectedly funny, but also deeply intimate story of female madness. Created and performed by Leah Shelton (AU) and directed by Olivier award-winning performance artist Ursula Martinez (UK), this is a portrait cum-memoir of Leah’s grandmother Gwen, who was incarcerated for seeking personal independence from her husband in 1960s Australia. It looks like Gwen just didn’t like her husband very much anymore, but in this era that constituted a mental illness which required serious medical interventions. Using Gwen’s actual medical records from the period, real voice over clips, video clips and television interviews, this highly technical show transports the audience back in time to consider what now seems clear, from this evidence, the sexual inequality, of a deepl...
The Last Five Years – Paradise in Augustines
Scotland

The Last Five Years – Paradise in Augustines

Never Ending Theatre’s latest production sees Ciaran Walshe and Sarah-Louise Donnely star in the two-man show that is The Last Five Years.  Now this show is no easy feat to pull off, having only two actors to tell the story over an hour and a half.   It takes a great amount of stamina and energy to sustain the audience’s focus and enjoyment for that long but Donnely and Walshe certainly pulled it off, giving an emotional portrayal of Cathy and Jamie’s marriage. Jason Robert Brown notoriously composes scores that leave the musicians tripping over themselves, but this band handled it smoothly with only very minor slip ups.  I enjoyed seeing the band be featured on the stage – the level of musical technicality needed for this show is very much worth appreciating.&nb...
Natalie Palamides: WEER – Traverse Theatre
Scotland

Natalie Palamides: WEER – Traverse Theatre

Clown princess Natalie Palamides has become a force to be reckoned with, scoring huge acclaim with her first Edinburgh outing, Laid, in 2017, which won her Best Newcomer award, and Nate (Netflix special 2020). Last year she directed Bill O’Neill’s superb The Amazing Banana Brothers, a Fringe highlight. Any new work by this performer is now very much on the radar. So, it was an absolute delight to see that the 34-year-old LA-based performer was returning this year with a solo show to world premiere at the Traverse. The show does not disappoint. It’s a hilarious hot-mess of clown mayhem in the style of a ’90s-style romcom, which stars Palamides as a pair of star cross'd lovers, having a quarrel at a party cabin in the woods, before midnight as the millennium fast approaches. Y2K ma...
100 Years of Musicals – theSpace Triplex
Scotland

100 Years of Musicals – theSpace Triplex

Co-founded in 2017 by Jessica Broderick and Douglas Watts, Show Choir is the UK’s number one musical theatre community choir collective, with hundreds of members in multiple groups across Southwest England. This is their first year at the Fringe - not that you would be able to tell. This was a slick debut - very well-rehearsed with sublime four-part harmony and excellent use of diminuendo and crescendo. Expertly conducted by the choir’s founders, whose energy was infectious, the choir were clearly confident under their direction. There was a small amount of choreography in some numbers which was simple, but effective and attainable for all singers, maintaining the high standard of performance. The show took us through the last 100 years of musicals, picking a number from each of ...