Summerhall Archives - Page 2 of 7

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Julius Caesar Variety Show – Summerhall

There is a lot packed into the short running time of Joy Nesbitt’s Julius Caesar Variety Show. It is energetic, well acted, frequently funny and undoubtedly clever. My reservation is that clever and particularly interesting are not necessarily the same thing. The premise gives Nesbitt plenty to play with. Three actors arrive to audition for Julius Caesar, while outside the theatre an increasingly angry mob protests against plans to convert the building into an asylum hotel. Inside, questions of casting, identity and theatrical power begin to collide as the director pushes his performers in search of something authentic. It is certainly current. The mob outside inevitably carries echoes of recent protests around asylum accommodation, while Shakespeare supplies another mo...

You and Me (and whoever comes next) – Summerhall

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

You and Me (and whoever comes next) – Summerhall

One day someone can be the most important person in your world. The next, they can simply disappear. For them, it was a job. For you, it was your life. That asymmetry sits at the heart of You and Me (and Whoever Comes Next), a funny, clever and ultimately moving autobiographical piece from Keron Day, playing himself alongside Lauren Koster as Dani, his new personal assistant. Keron has cerebral palsy and requires 24-hour support. Dani is the latest in a succession of PAs, and Keron takes us entertainingly through some of her predecessors. "Christine is what you get when you order your PA on Temu," he tells us. It also starts to sound remarkably like dating. There are the introductions, the getting to know one another, the irritating habits, the arguments and, eventu...

12Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Come Back Home – Summerhall

There is a danger in making theatre intentionally difficult to understand. Make it oblique enough, abstract enough, strip away rhythm, meter, narrative momentum and familiar cultural reference points, and eventually you have to ask whether the audience is being challenged or simply excluded. Come Back Home walks perilously close to that line. I found myself thinking about Rothko. Put a Rothko beside conventional paintings and its abstraction, colour and absence of recognisable form acquire context. Fill the entire gallery with Rothkos and something changes. If you anchor the absurd against nothing, it isn't even quantifiable as absurd. There is very little here against which to anchor anything. At its centre is a man telling the story of the boy he once was, growing up...

Aufguss X The Waves – Sauna Theatre, Summerhall

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Aufguss X The Waves – Sauna Theatre, Summerhall

My God, this is refreshing. And at the Edinburgh Fringe, by the middle of the day I have walked several miles, watched several shows and hauled a bag full of chargers, notebooks and assorted electronic paraphernalia, refreshing is no small achievement. Sauna Theatre is Summerhall's latest experiment in what theatre might actually be. There is a little faff involved. Swimming trunks, flip flops and a couple of towels aren't normally essential reviewing equipment. But changing cubicles and lockers are provided, valuables disappear safely inside, water is handed out and soon a collection of strangers are standing around in varying degrees of undress waiting to see what happens next. What happens next is a sauna. A proper one. I like heat, so naturally I head for the top ben...

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It – Summerhall

10Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It – Summerhall

Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland are rapidly becoming something approaching Fringe royalty. Arriving from New York on crowdfunding in 2022, they won a Fringe First with And Then the Rodeo Burned Down, then repeated the trick in 2023 and 2024. Three consecutive Fringe Firsts inevitably creates expectation. So, is Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It simply riding a considerable wave of hype? Not a bit of it. This year's Summerhall run is sold out, with the show heading almost immediately afterwards to Soho Theatre in London. On the evidence here, that trajectory feels entirely deserved. Rice and Roland, two diminutive New York clowns with painted faces, impressive physical dexterity and an anarchic imagination, play teenage girls in an isolated Appalachian community who, larg...

9Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Nesting – Summerhall

There are Fringe shows you admire, shows you enjoy, and occasionally shows that remind you why actors act and why people like me continue to write about theatre. Nesting is one of those. Peter McCormick’s new play, directed by Ben Standish, places Billy Mack’s Francis, a man living with motor neurone disease, alongside his pregnant daughter Emma, played with extraordinary emotional commitment by Francesca Hess. As the disease progresses, daughter increasingly becomes carer, until into this painfully recognisable world comes something altogether stranger. Michael Guest’s Gull offers Francis an extraordinary escape. Allow the bird to nest inside him, inhabit his body and somehow release father and daughter from what is coming. It sounds almost impossible on paper. Gues...

11Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Auntie Empire – Summerhall Edinburgh

At Summerhall, as part of the Manipulate Festival, Julia Taudevin’s Auntie Empire is a show that improves as it decays. Performed solo by Taudevin, who also conceived the work, the production opens in a register of playful provocation, leaning heavily on audience participation. Under the guidance of performance director Tim Licata, these early sections clearly aim to implicate the room, drawing the audience into complicity before pulling the rug, but the results are mixed. Some exchanges feel laboured, stretching jokes past their natural lifespan and slightly blunting the edge of the satire. At times, the structure seems more interested in keeping the audience busy than in advancing the analysis. Once the show pivots away from participation and into its more overtly theatrical langua...

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:...