Summerhall Archives - North West End UK

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Shorts 3: Beyond Words is a great opportunity to see a wide and varied collection of animated short films from around the world, and to have your mind and imagination sparked by them. The third and final part of the animated film programme for this year. In the poignant and thought-provoking Sisters, by Andrea Szelesova, a young girl sullenly pulls a heavy load across a barren wasteland to the slumped body of a red skinned giant. She climbs up and grudgingly feeds bread and water to the giant, which rumbles and grows. Around the giant new flowers begin to sprout, their heavy heads tinkling in the breeze, the sound of tiny bells. The young girl resentfully continues to feed the giant, with the same results every day. One day she wakes up and...

Katie Gregson-Macleod – Summerhall, Edinburgh

5Dec

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Katie Gregson-Macleod – Summerhall, Edinburgh

Katie Gregson-MacLeod is probably a name you have never heard of but say it to Alexa and you might get a pleasant surprise as the Amazon music machine spits out five or six modern classics for your entertainment. This fresh meat is served up via TikTok, whose carnivorous audience launched Macleod’s career little over a year ago when her minute-long snippet of the breathlessly miserable piano-ballad Complex went viral, clocking up over 7M views in quick time. Appropriately enough, I’m at the Dissection Room at Summerhall, to analyse the small body of work that forms the touring MacLeod’s ouvre to date. It’s windowless, and airless, and unfortunately for this old man, chairless. I sit on a ledge next to the stage which I find out later is the sub-woofer. I’m still vibrating. Ominously or...

22Aug

By Ben PearsonNo Comments

Scotland

Bacon – Summerhall

Bacon, written by Sophie Swithinbank, and brought to the Edinburgh Fringe by HFH Productions, is a masterclass in storytelling. Focusing on the lives of fifteen-year-old’s Mark, Corey Montague-Sholay, and Darren, William Robinson, it explores masculinity, sexuality, and the dangers of toxicity in youthful relationships. Mark has just joined a new school and is struggling to make friends until he meets the hot-tempered Darren. The two could not be more different, and as such seem drawn to one another. Swithinbank’s script is electric. Despite repeatedly switching between narration and dialogue, it feels incredibly real. The characters may address the audience, but they never stop feeling like actual human beings. Perhaps this is because they are both so relatable, albeit in very differe...

What You See When Your Eyes Are Closed/What You Don’t See When Your Eyes Are Open – Summerhall

15Aug

By Euan HuthNo Comments

Scotland

What You See When Your Eyes Are Closed/What You Don’t See When Your Eyes Are Open – Summerhall

What You See When Your Eyes Are Closed/What You Don’t See When Your Eyes Are Open is a very strange piece of art. You are in a small room, and as you enter you are greeted by an eight-foot-tall orange Cyclops who is staring at you. Behind him, a man lays on the floor with the name “Mamoru” on his jumpsuit. The show begins and Mamoru is on location reporting for the news about the fifty-foot Cyclops attacking the city, and like all good fringe shows there’s plenty of audience interaction too. I’ll try to refrain from saying too much about the events of the show, as I feel work of this kind is most effective when you go in completely blind, but to be honest I also don’t think I could begin to explain it clearly anyway. That’s the sort of piece this is, it’s a thought-provoking narrative...

Mull Historical Society – Edinburgh Summerhall Dissection Room

5Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Mull Historical Society – Edinburgh Summerhall Dissection Room

In a record company promotions office, London town, late 2000 or early 2001, a track came on provoking one of those joyous ‘what’s this?’ moments. The song was ‘Barcode Bypass’. Mull Historical Society’s debut album ‘Loss’ appeared in October 2001 and eight albums later (two released under Colin MacIntyre’s own name) there’s ‘In My Mind There’s A Room’. It’s available via the usual modern channels but for those who care, also on double pink vinyl. A stellar literary cast too long to mention here assisted in its creation including locals Ian Rankin, Jackie Kay and Alan Warner. It’s an emotional listen. More so when one discovers it was recorded in a studio… apologies, a room… in Tobermory, once inhabited by his Grandfather Angus, none too shabby a poet himself. So it is that folks beat ...

<strong>Unbecoming – Summerhall</strong>

25Mar

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Unbecoming – Summerhall

This deeply personal solo piece, by Anna Porubcansky of Company of Wolves, unmasks the artist’s windswept inner world in all its dreamlike complexity, through poetry, song and performance. The show opens with a lament. A melodic dirge about loss, death and mortality. Porubcansky’s clear, plaintive singing voice is perfect here, and there are some lines of poetry which will stay with me for very a long time. Here, and elsewhere in the show, Porubcansky uses technology to layer her vocalisations, drawing on repetition to create a richly meditative atmosphere. Porubcansky’s openness and vulnerability, as a poet and performer, is exquisite. This is not a work of fiction: all the content comes from Porubcansky’s personal experience. She really shows up, emotionall...

14Aug

By Louise BalaguerNo Comments

Scotland

Mary, Chris, Mars – Summerhall

If you’re in search of a family friendly show this Fringe, or even if you just want to enjoy a heart-warming and playful performance by yourself, look no further – Mary, Chris, Mars has you covered. And if you happen to be a Korean learner, you can take in the delight of experiencing a performance in both Korean and English (with English captioning) – and if you’re not, the same statement still applies. I reckon it only adds to the enjoyment of the play. Part of the Korean Showcase – presented by the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) – Trunk Theatre Project’s Mary, Chris, Mars (played respectively by Cho Yeeun, Ryu Wonjun, and Park Hyeon) takes us on a colourful journey through space, as Mary and Chris are brought together by chance and spend a rather unusual Christmas Day on Mars. Pun...

14Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Work.txt – Summerhall Old Lab

Work.txt is a show about work in which the audience do all (well... most of) the work. Only they tread the boards as there are no actors; following instructions projected on the wall, communicated over headphones or printed out onto a script. They build the set, read lines and act out what needs acting out together (if they are okay with that), alone (if they volunteer) or just as witnesses (if they prefer) to the others, the interplay between audience and screen, and to the light show and music, aided by an atmospheric haze machine. Why? It's a show about the gig economy, financial instability and bad jobs, as seen through a day in a nameless city, and the impact and connections made by a single worker. The format illustrates all that, though I can't imagine anyone finding their part ...

11Aug

By H.S. BakerNo Comments

Scotland

Boy – Summerhall, Main Hall

“Boy” tells the true story of David Reimer, a Canadian boy born in the 1960s and raised as a girl. Named Bruce at birth, David was an identical twin to Brian, his name later being changed to Brenda. When they were six months old, both boys were referred for circumcision at hospital. A comparatively new method was used on Bruce, the first twin to have the surgery, and resulted in catastrophic and irreversible mutilation to his penis. The procedure was not carried out on Brian. His parents sought advice from Johns Hopkins psychologist, John Money, on how best to help their son in the coming years learning to live with his situation. The advice from Money was that, since in his opinion gender identity stems from social learning, it would be better to have ...

Receptionists – Summerhall Old Lab, Edinburgh

5Aug

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Receptionists – Summerhall Old Lab, Edinburgh

Kallo Collective's physical comedy Receptionists appears in the Fringe as part of Start To Finnish, an annual showcase since 2011 to promote Finnish performing arts at the Edinburgh Fringe. Clowns and (show creators) Inga Bjorn and Kristiina Tammisalo star as two receptionists in a five-star hotel for whom every day actions, such as waiting for customers or answering the phone, quickly escalate into huge physical challenges and situations. Taking a simple situation and wringing every ounce of physically comedic potential over an extended period of time is an art, and a difficult one. For proof of that, one need not look any further than Rowan Atkinson, a lifelong fan of comedians such as Jacques Tati, whose past classics such as Mr Bean haven't stopped him more recently faltering with ...