Summerhall Archives - North West End UK

SLUGS – Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre)

20Aug

By Charles PipeNo Comments

Scotland

SLUGS – Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre)

At its outset, SLUGS boldly claims to be a show about “NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING”. Inspired by garden slugs – seemingly formless, mindless, useless creatures – the characters set out to create a show that completely avoids touching on any serious or thought-provoking topics. The show should supposedly be pure escapism, akin to scrolling through cute videos of puppies on Instagram. However, serious topics inevitably creep in. The characters – fictionalised versions of the performer S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger themselves – can’t help but bring up gun violence, transphobia, sexual harassment in the comedy industry, and so on. The result is an hour of nonstop, unhinged, manic, perfectly executed comedy, as the characters desperately attempt to avoid these topics. The show is b...

18Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Because You Never Asked – Summerhall

Because You Never Asked is a clever, at times mesmerising performance by Montréal-based collective We All Fall Down. Conceived by Roger White and choreographer Helen Simard, the work draws on the recorded memories of White’s grandmother, Marianna Clark (née Goldmann), a Jewish teenager in 1930s Germany who eventually escaped to Edinburgh just before the start of WW2. It’s an emotionally charged blend of dance, music, and archived testimony, and its effect is quietly profound. The cast comprises four dancers, three women and one man, whose presence is physically stunning and emotionally evocative. Émile de Vasconcelos-Taillefer and Maxine Segalowitz set the tone with intense, expressive sequences early on, while Lina Namts delivers a haunting spoken passage before folding seaml...

Pussy Riot: Riot Days – Summerhall, Dissection Room

16Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Pussy Riot: Riot Days – Summerhall, Dissection Room

Political theatre turned punk gig turned call to arms, Pussy Riot’s Riot Days is an unflinching blast of protest art. At Summerhall’s Dissection Room, the Russian collective fire off pounding beats, stark captions, and unapologetic political fury. It’s powerful, messy, and confrontational, from the raw delivery to the deliberately provocative splashes of water into the crowd. You might not like every tactic, but you’ll leave knowing you’ve been in the same room as the real thing. There are protest gigs, and then there’s Pussy Riot. The Russian art-punk collective’s Riot Days tour has been roaring through cities worldwide, bringing their mix of punk gig, political rally, and theatre piece to stages that can barely contain them. At Summerhall’s Dissection Room, it’s all on top of you:...

15Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Anthem For Dissatisfaction – Summerhall

A loud, brash, and unapologetically political coming-of-age tale set to a killer soundtrack of working-class anthems, Oasis, Reverend and the Makers, the Manics, Springsteen. Anthem for Dissatisfaction bursts with energy and heart, but in Summerhall’s small Red Lecture Theatre it sometimes plays like it’s still aiming too big. Big performances, big music, big feelings, and just a bit too much of all three. It starts strong, with Jamie talking about his big sister, Sarah, his “own personal NME”, and their shared love of music and the first record they owned from 2008: The State of Things by Reverend and the Makers. From there, we’re into austerity Britain (and Northern Ireland), and a 12-year-old’s question: “What the hell are we spending our money on?” When there’s no lavish lifesty...

14Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Wild Thing! – Summerhall

A riotous eco-comedy that shape-shifts into a moving requiem for our planet’s vanishing creatures. Wild Thing! - Laugh Now, Cry Later! Summerhall’s TechCube 0 is already a bit of a womb for oddball creativity, and Wild Thing!, the latest creation from Tom Bailey’s Mechanimal, is like an ecological fever dream with a sense of humour. It’s part comedy, part requiem, and part, “what on earth did I just witness?”, in the best possible way. We enter the performance space together, the audience in single-file, like a school trip with no teacher. Bailey is already mid-flow, becoming a carousel of creatures, some endangered, some right on the edge of existence, some that sound like they’ve escaped from a Monty Python sketch. “Cheerful Pheasant,” “Fearful Owl,” “Polymorphic Rubber Frog...

Darkfield Radio: Visitors – Summerhall, Old Lab

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Darkfield Radio: Visitors – Summerhall, Old Lab

Darkfield has a well-earned reputation for bending the mind through total sensory control, and Visitors is no exception. Presented in complete darkness with only a pair of high-quality binaural headphones as your lifeline to the outside world, it’s a strikingly intimate encounter. The sound design is astonishing, voices slip behind you, whisper in your ear, or circle the space with uncanny precision. Every creak of a chair or shuffle of a foot lands with hyper real clarity, making you question what’s in your head and what’s in the room. The premise requires two people and sees your +1 sit opposite you as Jean and Alex, two characters clearly existing somewhere in the afterlife, make their presence known. There’s a gentle eeriness to it, an unsettling suggestion of being used as a ve...

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Ceremony – Summerhall

I’m not sure what’s more remarkable - the fact that The Ceremony ends with thirty-odd people making chicken noises at full volume in the Summerhall courtyard, or the fact that this is the second show I’d seen tonight to feature a chicken. I’ve been reviewing theatre for many years, and I don’t think I’ve ever typed the word “chicken” before. Tonight, it comes up twice. Make of that what you will.It starts innocently enough. I arrived early, take my seat in the front row, notepad at the ready. Unfortunately, the front row plus notepad is like wearing a neon sign reading “critic” - and Ben Volchok, our master of ceremonies, clocks me straight away with a knowing wink and a smile. The premise of the show is disarmingly simple: the audience and the performer create a ritual together. That’s it...

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Philosophy of the World – Summerhall

Every now and then at the Edinburgh Fringe, a show comes along that seems to fracture theatrical logic entirely—while still leaving you entirely gripped. Philosophy of the World, devised by the experimental collective In Bed With My Brother, is one of the most original, unsettling, and oddly moving performances I’ve seen in years. It may well go on to become a cult classic. The show is inspired by The Shaggs, a 1960s rock band made up of three sisters from New Hampshire, whose father was convinced they were destined for greatness. That father, Austin Wiggin Jr., pulled them out of school, forced them to practise endlessly, and produced their only album—widely derided at the time, but now held up as an artefact of outsider art. Philosophy of the World takes this story and explodes it...

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Paldem – Summerhall

Written and created by BAFTA winner, David Jonsson, Paldem is a daring and provocative Fringe debut that boldly ventures into the world of amateur pornography, digital fame, and performative intimacy. Premiering at Summerhall, the play unfolds as an “anti‑romantic comedy” exploring themes of race, desire, artistic ego, and online commodification.The story centres on Kevin (Michael Workeye) and Megan (Tash Cowley), former lovers, who reconnect one night and end up having sex. What neither expects is that they’ve accidentally recorded the whole thing. But when they watch the footage back, they’re surprised: it’s hot, they look great, and the dynamic works. From there, an idea is born. In today’s society—where everything is monetisable and nothing is too intimate for content—they realise they...

8Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Shitbag – Summerhall

There’s something fitting – perhaps even poetic – about staging a show called Shitbag in the Anatomy Theatre at Summerhall. Once a site of anatomical demonstration, now turned intimate performance space, it adds a certain weight to what is already a deeply bodily piece of theatre. The semi-circular layout draws the audience into close communion with the performer, reinforcing the sense that what we’re witnessing isn’t performance so much as confession. Hayley Edwards, an engaging and fearless Antipodean performer, commands the space well. She navigates the tricky terrain of living with Crohn’s Disease – not with self-pity, but with humour, insight, and an unflinching willingness to discuss things most people would euphemise or avoid entirely. Her rapport with the audience is imme...