Assembly Roxy Archives - North West End UK

Betty Grumble’s Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t – Assembly Roxy

10Aug

By Torya HughesNo Comments

Scotland

Betty Grumble’s Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t – Assembly Roxy

Performance artist, sex clown and ecosexual Emma Maye Gibson returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a new show which she describes as a "composting" of herself. Merging dance, live music and bold physicality, Gibson explores themes of domestic violence, justice and grief with a characteristic intensity and humour. Gibson's previous Fringe performances have been in character as her drag alter ego Betty Grumble. This time, Betty is a mask and an outlandish mutant wig that can be donned by Gibson or her assistant Craig, an outward display of bravado that hides the human vulnerability within. However, Gibson becomes truly vulnerable on the stage tonight, literally baring all in a physical sense, but also emotionally. She relates her experience of taking an abuser to court, and being dismi...

An Asian Queer Story: Coming Out to Dead People – Assembly Roxy

10Aug

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

An Asian Queer Story: Coming Out to Dead People – Assembly Roxy

Ricky Sim is a gifted storyteller. He talks beautifully about the complexities of coming out as gay to his Malaysian family, and his grief following the death of his beloved mother. He also tells a lot of dick jokes. Sim engages energetically with the crowd as he introduces us to the intricacies of “Gaysian” culture and the accompanying slang. Do you know why Sim decided not to major in computer science? Go to his show and you will find out. Just when Sim was preparing to come out to his mom, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was afraid that he might break her heart. He wished that there was a gay Asian role model he could point to, so that she would know he could be happy. Sim fills our hearts with memories and little details about his mother. Years after her passing, w...

La Nina Barro (The Clay Girl) – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

10Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

La Nina Barro (The Clay Girl) – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

Writer Marta Masse joined the audience at the Roxy tonight, to see her life-affirming poetry brought to life for the first time in almost ten years. It must have been an emotional reconnection with her prose and with the original all female cast on what was International Woman’s Day. Ten years on from its first performance during the Edinburgh Free Fringe in 2014, Elizabeth Sogord, returns as La Nina (the clay girl) and Alexandra Rodes as Woman / mbira player. Relying on very minimal set and costume, or in Sogord’s case no costume at all. From a winding sheet of clay-spattered plastic we see the clay girl squirming and wrestling and moaning, and eventually releasing herself into existence to the weirdly haunting (think ancient music box) sound of the mbira, a mini piano from Zimb...

18Oct

By Ella CatherallNo Comments

Scotland

Pickled Republic – Assembly Roxy

Walking into the Assembly Roxy space to be greeted by a tomato with legs, I was a little suspicious of what I had gotten myself into with this show. However, ‘Pickled Republic’ a ‘surreal cabaret’/sketch show in which all the acts are vegetables played by Ruxy Cantir, is astoundingly good fun. As a solo show, the quality of the piece lives and dies on the strength of the performance and Cantir’s performance makes it such that this show is live and kicking. Her extraordinary physicality paired with the incredible costumes (Visual Design by Fergus Dunnet) that she swaps out between sketches makes this an unbelievably fun show to watch. Also impressive is the speed at which she’s able to get the audience on side while dressed as a tomato with legs. I can’t have been the only audi...

21Aug

By Euan HuthNo Comments

Scotland

1984 – Assembly Roxy

One of the main advantages of theatre is that the actors are physically there in front of you acting. There is a certain rawness to theatre that gives it this powerfulness, which can be used to convey strong messages and themes and emotion to audiences. 1984 is a story that could greatly benefit from that rawness, but it does not deliver. It is a piece that is very relevant in this day and age, Big Brother and The Party oppressing the masses with the Thought Police, no-one is allowed independent thought, and Winston Smith finds himself in the Department of Love after falling for Julia, a rebellious woman he meets in a world that is devoid of any real emotion. The shows biggest failing is the fact that all the interactions between these two pivotal characters is all done through p...

16Aug

By Euan HuthNo Comments

Scotland

Hive – Assembly Roxy

Hive is show that feels like it has big things to say. It wants to talk about corporations building monolithic skyscrapers and the consequences of that , how people can be displaced and forced to move out of their homes, the way grief can impact our lives and relationships. Hive tries very hard to communicate these things, but unfortunately it does not communicate them well enough. The setting is an abandoned housing building with Mother Ria (Elin Doyle) being brought in to investigate a “hive” of some description along with her child, Salve (Emily Millwood), after they where expelled from school and there’s no one Salve can stay with while Ria works. The play also features a third character, Craig, the site manager who joins Ria on her journey to the hive while Salve makes their ow...

15Aug

By Danielle FarrowNo Comments

Scotland

The Messenger – Assembly Roxy

Motion. Emotion. Toilet Humour. This masked physical theatre play grabs from the start and we soon see the stakes are high. An imperial figure initiates the process for A Mission, where someone is endowed with the ability to carry this out through the bestowing of a special hat, accompanied by rousing adventure music. Costume is of the Korean Joseon period, but we quickly follow this new Messenger into the modern world, and there the fun begins. Hangings allow the set to swiftly change from neutral to a photographer’s studio / home. Different characters are strongly depicted, from an old photographer and the ill wife to whom he is devoted, to various amusing customers - including a dog - wedding planners, and, of course, the mysterious Messenger. The focus is on the relatio...

Picasso: Le Monstre Sacre – Assembly Roxy

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Picasso: Le Monstre Sacre – Assembly Roxy

Guy Masterton’s name attached to any Fringe production usually guarantees quality and this piece is no exception. Brilliantly acted by Peter Tate, who is electrifyingly terrifying as the human Minotaur Pablo Picasso. One cannot love the Minotaur, and live, Tate portrays the Infamous womaniser as the ultimate home fatale, as he crawls from needy journalist to idolising art student, all looking for a part of him that he is more than willing to give, for a price. Tate starts the show astride a paint-splashed ladder, at the top of his game, later in his life, looking out intently at a single spotlight, the sun. Behind and around him a muslin cloth hangs limply to the floor from a high semi-circlular rail, his canvas, but also the thin veil that surrounds his boudoir, the spiders lair, to...

20Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Intelligence – Assembly Roxy

Inside the basement of the US State Department, two young Foreign Officers Paige (Sarah Street) and Lee (Joy Sunday) are reluctantly assisting Special Envoy Sarah MacIntyre (Laura Jordan), recently returned from a top-secret and personal mission to a volatile foreign country. MacIntyre needs to prepare a report to convince the president, or the repercussions could mean death for many… if she’s right. But is she? The exact region the situation is happening in is kept purposefully vague, the reason given being that the junior officials Paige and Lee aren't cleared for the specifics of this operation, which is itself tied into an attempt by their superiors and other departments to ensure MacIntyre's initiative fails. This haziness works, mostly, as it doesn't tie the show down to a specifi...

9Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

The Queen’s Cartoonists – Assembly Roxy

The Queen's Cartoonists are six jazz musicians currently part of the New York City jazz scene (the eponymous Queen's being the location over there, rather than the person over here). Their show aims to make jazz music more accessible by performing a live soundtrack (which sometimes involve folley too) to classic and contemporary animation, synchronized with the projected films. With a seemingly extensive repertoire of music and shorts, their Fringe show feature prominently Classic Warner Bros cartoons, accompanied by some (probably less well known here) shorts from Russia and Korea. For their British audience they have also teamed up with Aardman Animation to include four of their pieces starring their three most famous characters, a no doubt canny move judging by the awed murmur which ...