Edinburgh
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018
La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / BackupFriday, 17 August 2018
Orpheus ★★★★ This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist... Read more... |
Greed as the keynote: Robert Carsen on the timelessness of 'The Beggar's Opera'Tuesday, 14 August 2018
In the time of composer John Gay, greed and self-interest were the main motives for life; and his work The Beggar’s Opera is an open critique on the way that society behaved. The work’s opening number sets the tone, basically saying: “we all abuse... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / StatusTuesday, 14 August 2018
Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★ “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Daughter / Huff / First Snow/Première NeigeMonday, 13 August 2018
Launched just last year to celebrate the country’s 150th anniversary, CanadaHub has quickly become one of the Edinburgh Fringe’s most exciting and intriguing venues, presenting a small but richly provocative programme of work from across that vast... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Zimerman, LSO, Rattle - fizzing chemistrySaturday, 11 August 2018
It was Simon Rattle’s first visit to the Edinburgh International Festival for – well, really quite a few years. And the first of his two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra drew, perhaps predictably, a capacity crowd in the Usher Hall, for... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Underground Railroad Game / On the ExhaleFriday, 10 August 2018
Underground Railroad Game ★★★★★ The game of the show’s title is a fun educational exercise on the US Civil War devised by Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stuart at Hanover Middle School, with the aim of bringing alive the flight of... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Ulster American / Cold BloodMonday, 06 August 2018
Ulster American ★★★★★ David Ireland’s brand new, brutally incendiary black comedy gleefully tosses a grenade into any lazy liberal sensibilities at the festival (and, let’s face it, there are plenty of those). Race, gender, rape, prejudice... Read more... |
CD: The Proclaimers - Angry CyclistThursday, 02 August 2018
A sight every music fan should see and hear once is The Proclaimers playing Scotland. Around 18 years ago I saw them play a giant marquee at the T In The Park Festival. It was like a rally, a roaring wall of joyful fanaticism (on which note, their... Read more... |
Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh - transforming spacesThursday, 07 June 2018
In just five years, what the team behind Hidden Door Festival has achieved is quite remarkable. Having sprung up in 2014, taking over a group of disused vaults behind Waverley train station, the festival’s mission to transform redundant spaces in... Read more... |
RSNO, Oundjian, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - ending on a high in MahlerMonday, 04 June 2018
Marking his departure as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Music Director after six years, Peter Oundjian definitely left on a high, conducting a gripping, visceral performance of Mahler’s last completed symphony. Its beginnings were glassy... Read more... |
Robin Ticciati on conducting Brahms: 'trying to understand the man through his music'Monday, 09 April 2018
Edinburgh, October 2015. Robin Ticciati is still flying high from a remarkable performance of Brahms's First Symphony, the start of an intended cycle with his Scottish Chamber Orchestra in his seventh season as principal conductor. After a... Read more... |
