Summerhall Archives - Page 2 of 3

June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me – Summerhall, Dissection Room

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me – Summerhall, Dissection Room

Performed cabaret style with tables and chairs, it’s well worth arriving a little before the stated ticket start time, with drinks in hand, to snag the best viewpoint. Early birds also get the significant bonus of a personal welcome from writer/performer Charlene Boyd, sashaying between tables humming tunes and chatting in American drawl like a hospitable Texas mam. Boyd has come a long way from the seeds of an idea, germinated during the lockdown-years, recently divorced mum of two, in her very unglamorous Glasgow high-rise! As the hamster wheel stopped for many of us, Boyd showed that it’s amazing what you can achieve when you have time on your hands! But Boyd always knew she was better placed than almost anyone to write the story of June Carter, having sung for the last 14 yea...

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

I’m Almost There – Summerhall Main Hall

This might just be the best day I’ve ever had at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’ve just come from Every Brilliant Thing, and now this! It is one thing to see the ubiquitous posters of Todd Almond running with his yellow umbrella (which seem burned into my retina!), it is entirely another to see and hear him in the flesh. Like an alabaster statue come to life, this David with his piercing blue eyes (I was lucky enough to sit in the front row!) has the audience transfixed from note one. Almond, the toast of New York, seated at piano for most of the performance, with a lazy laconic boredom reminisces over a modern queer love story. It’s dreamy, probably because I’ve been reviewing and writing my five-a-day for the last five days, but also because it’s just dreamy! Accompanied by Erin Hi...

Sh!t Theatre: Or What’s Left Of Us – Summerhall Tech Cube

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Sh!t Theatre: Or What’s Left Of Us – Summerhall Tech Cube

Like a pair of iconic Midsommer maidens, in mediaeval garb, replete with silly Wicker Man – style animal head hats Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole prove that It is possible to be desperately sad and have fun at the same time. Incredibly brave to have put this on at all, set against the tragically young death of Adam Brace, the duo’s long time director (and Rebecca’s partner), this is a rollercoaster of a show full of laughs but also barely held tears, that leaves you admiring, nay loving, this duo even more. Along the way, we discover that badgers enter a torpic state, which is quite different to hibernation! We sing about John Barleycorn, some even drink the drink of John Barleycorn, but remember, There are rules! Much of the show focuses on their new found love of Folk...

Oh, Calm Down – Edinburgh Summerhall (Cairns Theatre)

5Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Oh, Calm Down – Edinburgh Summerhall (Cairns Theatre)

In 2024 it’s customary for plays, books or TV programmes like this to carry a trigger warning for anyone who suffers from any form of anxiety. Happy to report that this doesn’t carry any such warning as it’s precisely the sort of thing one should see. It’s sometimes uncomfortable and one audience member is seen leaving the theatre in tears, but this was simply testament to how vividly the two performers represented the issues, so respect to them and director Ed White. Beautifully paced, it sped up when it needed to, slowed when required and not a pause was wasted. At points, despite the subject, it managed to be funny and entertaining too. To start with, both Claire (Charlotte Anne-Tilley) and Lucy (Maddy Banks) are late delivering something, in Claire’s case some coursework for ...

4Aug

By Caroline WorswickNo Comments

Scotland

1984 – Summerhall, Old Lab

I do not wish to state the obvious, but I will, this play is set in 1984 and written by George Orwell in 1949. In just thirty-five years from writing his novel, Orwell was imagining a time when the government would be an oppressive, intrusive, dictatorship, ruling our society. He imagined us with no rights to free speech, and a punishing regime ruled by terror. Within Theatre Company, (with Sophie Vallee in the directing chair), have taken Nick Hern’s script adapting the novel for theatre, and wrapped a message inside of it – that this is happening in places around the world today, places that they know…their homes! Unable to perform in their home countries of Russia and Belarus, they are performing 1984 in the UK. And, 40 years on did Orwell predict the future correctly? ‘1984’ wa...

3Aug

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

The Bookies – Summerhall Cairns Theatre

Treat yourself to a spot of pre-show research but hold on tight. Tapping ‘Bookies’ into any search engine is not an edifying experience. The avalanche of links, options and manoeuvres from betting sites is staggering. Obscene probably a more accurate description. Originally written as a sitcom pilot one pines to know why this script was never properly picked up, the seams of the subject rich enough to mine for episode after episode… anyway, years after, the writers re-wrote ‘hings as a play and pitched it to Dundee Rep who ran it in May 2022 to some well-deserved acclaim. Mikey Burnett (co-writer with Joe McCann) has worked in such establishments and hails from Edinburgh so ticks all the boxes necessary to fashion a paean to desperate locals, the lines between staff, customers and h...

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 differen...

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 ...