Friday, December 19

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Bitter Lemons – Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath)
Scotland

Bitter Lemons – Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath)

Two women, both in their twenties, are high fliers in careers traditionally associated with men. One is a professional footballer, the other a banker. They are both on the cusp of even greater success. But their lives are changed for ever by something that can never happen to a man - they get pregnant. This is a wonderful new play, beautifully written by Lucy Hayes. It is transferring next month to the Bristol Old Vic. The writing is spare, often poetic, and crackles with energy.  There is gentle humour, too, especially in the descriptions of the women’s relationships with their mothers. Apart from a brief meeting at the end, the women never interact. They tell us their stories and we in the audience are their confidants. We are never told their names, but these women are spe...
The Brief Life and Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria – Pleasance Dome
Scotland

The Brief Life and Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria – Pleasance Dome

What a cracking beginning to my Edinburgh Fringe Festival!   After seeing Out Of The Forest Theatre’s Call Me Fury at The Hope Theatre in London in 2019, I was compelled to pay a return visit to their newest play. Here is a rough synopsis.  Boris III became King after his father abdicated in 1918 after World War I, he married Princess Giovanna of Italy and in 1937 his son Simeon was born.  Neither Boris, nor his father Ferdinand were Bulgarian due to the Turks occupying Bulgaria for 500 years, but they carried the burden of taking care of the people of Bulgaria now that Bulgaria was independent.  Here is where the play begins, with Boris III, now married and the country is peaceful.  Until of course World War II began!  Boris (played by Joseph Culle...
Sian Hutchinson: Tick My Box – Camden Comedy Club
London

Sian Hutchinson: Tick My Box – Camden Comedy Club

Winner of the Audience Choice ‘Best Event’ award at this year’s Brighton Fringe, award winning character and sketch comedian Sian Hutchinson brings her hilarious one-woman show to Camden Fringe. After being dumped by her true love Dave, Suze is determined to get back into the dating scene with seven dates all in one night at her local pub with copious amounts of white wine to get through the evening. Sian truly channels her character Suze from the moment you stepped inside the room, handing out various sweets to audience members at the door, you felt like you were with a friend armed with snacks recounting their terrible date the night before.  Once everyone was seated, she spent a few minutes chatting with the audience before starting the show. What follows is a brilliant re...
UPSTART! Shakespeare’s Rebel Daughter Judith – Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose
Scotland

UPSTART! Shakespeare’s Rebel Daughter Judith – Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose

The talented associate West End director, Alexandra Spencer-Jones (Action to the Word) is known for her physical theatre and musical productions such as Six and Clockwork Orange.  So, when the American writer, Mary Jane Schaefer, approached her to direct Upstart! she was both surprised, flattered and a little fearful. It is a gentle play and a perfect play.  One of a trilogy Schaefer, has created about the Shakespeare family, Upstart! will delight fans of the Bard. First given a reading at the National Arts Club in New York in 2014, the storyline explores the plight of women, then and now. There is no preaching. But there is a vivid awareness of the modes of suffering and paralysis caused by lack of education and confinement to the domestic domain, where dying children and intransige...
The Comedy of Errors – Speke Hall
North West

The Comedy of Errors – Speke Hall

A Shakespearean comedy set around two rival states and two sets of mismatched twins is brought to life in this bright adaptation from Steve Purcell, who also directs, with its central theme of mistaken identity the perfect vehicle for Mark Hayward’s production to explore a number of popular theatre forms in this consistently funny farce that piles error upon error at an increasingly frantic pace. If the challenge of the doubling up of not one but two sets of twins whilst keeping the audience on-board as the only ones who know what is happening on stage wasn’t enough, throw in an open-air venue, forecasted bad weather, and plane disruption from the adjacent airport, and I had everything crossed for the much-reduced cast of four playing all of the roles. I needn’t have worried as with ...
Tennessee, Rose – Pleasance Dome
Scotland

Tennessee, Rose – Pleasance Dome

The Tennessee in the title refers to playwright Tennessee Williams, the writer of such greats as The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, and Rose was his sister, who has also been described as his muse.  Tennessee, Rose examines the relationship between Williams and Rose by travelling through time with Rose to her childhood, and how her experiences shaped her future, leaving her with scars, both mental and physical. It is very easy to think of this show as a play about a playwright and his sister, but this play is so much more than that.  The lack of understanding of mental health meant that Rose’s treatment was severe, without any care for her feelings, but only on the impact that her unguarded action and speech had on others. Clare Cockburn has written a rem...
Piano Matinee: From Classical to Contemporary – St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh
Scotland

Piano Matinee: From Classical to Contemporary – St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh

Set in Scotland oldest purpose built concert hall, a handsome oval shaped room with an ornate skylight, dating from 1763, Russian-born pianist and composer, Olga Riazantceva-Schwarz, treated us to a varied exciting programme of piano recital. Kicking off with Debussy and Beethoven, played from heart, the award-winning pianist plays with extraordinary virtuosity and delivers a brilliant and moving interpretation of the sonatas. As a special feature, Olga Riazantceva-Schwarz then introduces us to Swiss composer Jean Paul Liardet, which she recently recorded. This concert is part of the album release tour and this is the Scottish Premier. The double-CD album contains a total of six piano sonatas composed by JP Liardet between 1971 and 2020. In halting English, Schwarz explains, L...
Los Guardiola, The Comedy Of Tango – Edinburgh Space Triplex
Scotland

Los Guardiola, The Comedy Of Tango – Edinburgh Space Triplex

If an aficionado of dance, movement and mime this is a must-see, but otherwise? The flyer for this production claimed the performers had drawn on their expertise in Commedia Dell’arte, mime and Argentine Tango but there were strong elements of Marionette/puppetry, and Kabuki present too. It was skilfully and cleverly performed by Marcelo Guardiola and Giorgia Marchiori, both clearly possessing years of dance ‘chops’. Structured in seven parts, the first (‘Barrel Organ’) dealt with the origin of the dance along the banks of the River Plate and the second (‘Emigrant’) with its spread to Europe, where it initially took hold in Paris. Important to its development in the late 19th century was the role of the barrel organ, combined no doubt with rhythms that had migrated there via slavery. ...
I’m Sexy and I Know It – Sprout Studio, Greenside
Scotland

I’m Sexy and I Know It – Sprout Studio, Greenside

Everyone should watch this show. And I mean everyone. As a 21-year-old man, it would be easy to assume that I wasn’t the target audience for a performance about a middle-aged woman’s relationship with her sexuality and her body. But that could not be more wrong. Anna Friend has devised an utterly hilarious, and incredibly moving, play about the struggles that women go through from such an early age to feel ‘sexy’ and desirable. She charts the course of her relationship to this struggle throughout her life. Beginning with when she first watched porn at the age of 11, to her more recent revelation that she is in fact bisexual. She holds nothing back as she takes the audience through this journey, which leads to as many hilarious moments as it does profound ones. I’ll try not to give away too...
I Was on a Sitcom – The Gilded Balloon, Teviot – Turret
Scotland

I Was on a Sitcom – The Gilded Balloon, Teviot – Turret

Eden Sher’s show, I Was on A Sitcom, is situated in The Turret at The Gilded Balloon Teviot. It is not easily accessible. The room is hot and Sher sweats her way through the act. It’s perfect … because the subject matter isn’t easily accessible and could bring on a sweat of embarrassment in less capable hands. But not in Sher’s hands. She is a raconteur who can turn anything to gold. Sher jokes, both verbally and physically, about the excruciating pain of giving birth to premature twins. Carrying her babies was an uphill struggle and the pregnancy culminated in a sweaty urgency. She cleverly links this life episode to her ten-year residency on the American sitcom, The Middle, explaining how she became, over time, half her character, Sue, and half herself, split from one egg, like he...