Edinburgh
David Kettle
Meet Me at Dawn ★★★★★ Edinburgh-based playwright Zinnie Harris is the subject of a particular focus at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, with three productions in collaborations with leading Scottish theatre companies. Her blazing adaptation of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros has been pulling crowds at the Lyceum Theatre, and her searing Aeschylus reboot This Restless House, created with Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland, opens next week.It’s another Greek myth – that of Orpheus and Eurydice – that simmers in the background of Meet Me at Dawn at the Read more ...
David Kettle
It was an intriguing, contrast-filled programme that Swiss-born pianist Andreas Haefliger brought to Edinburgh for his Queen’s Hall recital at the International Festival. Two masterpieces of musical picture painting – Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and the smaller but equally evocative St Francis of Assisi’s Sermon to the Birds by Liszt – alongside two far more abstract works: Berg’s compact but punchy Sonata Op. 1 and Beethoven’s Op. 101 Sonata.You might have expected two entirely different musical approaches, then – one all hot-headed, vivid musical storytelling, the other cool and Read more ...
David Kettle
Pike St ★★★★ London-based theatre company Paines Plough’s pop-up touring venue Roundabout has been a regular Edinburgh Fringe fixture for the past four years, nestled in nicely among the redeveloped veterinary buildings of Summerhall. And it’s been home to some of the Fringe’s most exciting new writing, too, both from Paines Plough itself and visiting companies. Pike St is a near-miraculous solo show featuring a tour-de-force performance by New Yorker Nilaja Sun, who also wrote its very funny and very moving text. Miraculous (or near miraculous at least) not only because of Sun’s uncanny, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Allen ★★★★ Tom Allen is celebrating his 10th year at the Fringe, and he appears to be having a ball – and so do we. He bounds on stage full of energy and does a fantastically strong 10 minutes' interaction with the audience, and when he finds comedy gold in the front row with a management consultant, a nurse on a liver ward and a judge, he dextrously weaves details of their lives into the show.Absolutely is more of the conversational comedy that Allen has honed over the past decade, and there's a pleasing touch of the television host about him (someone please give this man Read more ...
David Kettle
A society that segregates men and women, prescribes what women can learn, read, wear, even which words they can say. A society willing to sacrifice its own people to maintain its repressive theocratic orthodoxy. Sound familiar?There are plenty of contemporary resonances in The Divide, the mysterious new Alan Ayckbourn creation unveiled to the world at the Edinburgh International Festival, a co-production with London’s Old Vic and travelling to the capital at the start of 2018. And as they say, it’s Ayckbourn, but not as we know him. This is a massive, six-hour, two-play event that plays out Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tiff Stevenson ★★★★“I identify as a 10!” Tiff Stevenson tells us in Bombshell. It’s a strong opener, particularly as she follows with: “And if you don’t agree you’re beauty-phobic.” It’s not to boast, though, more marking her territory in a show about the shifting sands of modern sexual politics. Why should women identify with a male view of the world?She playfully sets up the seeming incongruity of loving to dress in leopardskin while being able to talk about the semiotics of feminism - the two aren't mutually exclusive, after all, and how you see yourself is not necessarily how others Read more ...
David Kettle
Eve ★★★★Transgender issues are high on the agenda at this year’s Fringe, with the energetic Testosterone at the Pleasance and the breezy You’ve Changed from Northern Stage at Summerhall among the stand-outs. In addition, the National Theatre of Scotland brings two trans-themed shows to the Traverse Theatre. Eve is a deeply personal, autobiographical work from playwright Jo (formerly John) Clifford, co-written with Fringe regular Chris Goode, that reflects on the challenges and joys of her life from a fearful young boy – before being transgender was even considered as a concept – to the Read more ...
David Kettle
Rhinoceros ★★★★★Marketed by an image of a Trump-quiffed and -besuited pachyderm, Zinnie Harris’s new version of Ionesco’s absurdist 1959 comedy is one of the International Festival flagship shows for 2017, a collaboration between Edinburgh’s own Royal Lyceum Theatre and Istanbul’s DOT Theatre. And with its wild, scabrous humour and its blazing, furious energy, it doesn’t disappoint. This is a Rhinoceros very much for our times, with fake news, mistrust of immigrants and even a USA gone to the dogs under a tinpot dictator all firmly referenced, in amongst Ionesco’s tale of the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Maurice Hatton’s 1978 Long Shot comes with the subtitle “A film about filmmaking”, a nod at what has practically become a cinematic sub-category in itself. But while other directors have used the genre for philosophical or aesthetic rumination, Hatton’s subject is far more immediate and down-to-earth – the perilous business of just trying to get a movie made.Specifically, an independent movie: Long Shot is a glorious satire on the sheer rigmarole of attempting to stitch a deal together. It’s set against the backdrop of the 1977 Edinburgh Film Festival, which gives rich extra atmosphere, and Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Sacred and profane, trivial and profound blissfully combine in this irresistible, Olivier Award-winning tale of choirgirls gone wild. Lee Hall, of Billy Elliot fame, adapts Alan Warner’s 1998 novel with a similarly shrewd grasp of youthful hope amidst challenging circumstances, and with the arts once again proving a vital escape – albeit, in this case, temporarily.In a whirlwind 24 hours, a group of 17-year-olds travels from Oban to Edinburgh for a choral competition. Angelically voiced they may be, but they’re also here to “go mental”: cue the flaming sambuca, sexual experimentation, unholy Read more ...
David Kettle
Time travel, Britpop, Sleeping Beauty. Classical ballet, the ravages of alcoholism, serial poisoning. There’s plenty going on in Douglas Maxwell’s idiosyncratic Charlie Sonata at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre – so much, in fact, that it’s hard to know what it all adds up to.Girvan-born Maxwell is known for his poignant dissections of contemporary issues – he had big Fringe hits in the early 2000s with Decky Does a Bronco and Our Bad Magnet, plus plenty of well-received productions since then. Charlie Sonata feels like his most ambitious offering so far, but also his most uneven. It’s clearly a Read more ...
David Kettle
What to pair with Bluebeard’s Castle? It’s always a dilemma for opera companies. Something lightweight, even comic, provides contrast but also risks trivialising Bartók’s dark, symbolist drama. Something equally brooding risks submerging the audience into an evening of endless gloom. For its collaboration with Glasgow-based experimental theatre company Vanishing Point, however, Scottish Opera has come up with a bold, ambitious solution: to pair Bluebeard’s Castle with a brand new piece, written expressly to complement it.The work in question is The 8th Door, created jointly by Scottish Opera’ Read more ...