Assembly Roxy Archives - North West End UK

Peregrinations – Central at Assembly Roxy

23Aug

By Christina SchmidtNo Comments

Scotland

Peregrinations – Central at Assembly Roxy

According to the dictionary, peregrination means a journey to foreign lands, especially on foot. This play by Dutch Kills Theater Company, follows multiple of such journeys of people crossing borders and eplores themes of migration, exile, and the search for belonging in a culture hostile towards immigrants. That alone makes it an important piece of work in the times of ICE in the US and ever increasing support for right-wing politics across the west. But Peregrinations is more than that. It is a wordless, but visually stunning theatre piece. It is a masterclass in mask-work and physical theatre with some incredible puppetry sprinkled in throughout the show. Based on interviews of the ensemble’s real lived experiences it tells stories of humanity, resilience and hope for a better...

19Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

An Echo In the Void – Assembly Roxy

An Echo in the Void takes a little working out. Unless you have read the programme blurb beforehand, but even then, you may spend much of the opening trying to establish exactly where you are and what the rules of this strange new world might be. So perhaps I can do something the production itself rather fails to do. We are in the future. Sanctuary is an AI programme originally created to help people deal with grief and loss. With some 1.5 billion people apparently using the system, however, something designed as therapy has developed into something considerably more powerful, and potentially more troubling. The really clever idea here is that Sanctuary isn't actually creating your alternative reality. You are. The smells, sounds, images and sensations already exist wi...

10Aug

By Ella BeckleyNo Comments

Scotland

Vidrado – Central at Assembly Roxy

Vidrado takes its audience on a wholesome journey across imaginative lands filled with wonder and joyous celebration, a perfect show for the family to enjoy. It’s silly and outrageous all at once, honouring the circus tradition to find fun in the simplest of things. Renowned for his acrobatic balancing acts, Sao Paolo artist Guilherme Torres brings Vidrado to Edinburgh Fringe 2026 for its UK Premiere. Torres plays a travelling man determined to climb a mountain, assisted by a quaint embroidered map and an imaginative array of balancing props including glass bottles and of course, unicycles. Torres plays the fool, he is clumsy and maybe...

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...

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...

Strength In a Whisper – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

16Jun

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Strength In a Whisper – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

Some productions tell a story. Others invite you into a landscape, a culture and a state of mind. Strength in a Whisper belongs firmly in the latter category. Created by singer-songwriter Kirsty Law and developed with Liam Hurley, this atmospheric blend of folk song, dance and theatre draws deeply from Scotland's oral traditions, exploring memory, solitude and the songs that survive only because someone chooses to keep singing them.The production unfolds at a deliberately unhurried pace. Alone in a remote bothy, a woman settles into the rhythms of rural existence. Gather. Dry. Eat. Rest. Repeat. The repetitive rituals of daily survival become the structure of the piece itself, creating an experience that asks the audience to slow down and inhabit its world rather than simply observe it.At ...

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...