Reviews & features: Fringe
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Love Letters to the Public Transport System
21 Aug 2012
Life-affirming monologue celebrates society’s unsung heroes
The premise of Molly Taylor’s monologue sounds, in summary, so precious you wouldn’t expect it to work as a piece of drama. In 2009, following a painful break-up and the loss of her permanent job, Taylor travelled by bus to London where a chance meeting…
Luke Benson - Backseat Hero
21 Aug 2012
Deadpan delivery and thin material get lost in the void
Bravely diverging from the ‘genial Geordie’ archetype, Luke Benson (aka Skywalker aka The Bensonator) has a deadpan, monotone delivery that fits well with his tales of urban discontent and gangly outsiderness (he’s 6’ 7”). Unfortunately this nuance is…
David O'Doherty
21 Aug 2012
Well-executed show on dark times wears thin
Fringe favourite David O'Doherty returns to Edinburgh with his new show show 'Seize the David O'Doherty'. The Irishman, whose appearances on Never Mind The Buzzcocks catapulted him in to the public eye, fuses a dry and subtle wit, self-depreciating…
Al Pitcher - Tiny Triumphs
21 Aug 2012
A funny if unchallenging appreciation of life’s little amusements
Most people are too busy to stop and appreciate life’s small absurdities, but not Al Pitcher. He spends his days taking photos of things that amuse him, then presents a slideshow of his results at that evening’s performance. It’s a performance style…
Lights! Camera! Improvise!
21 Aug 2012
Giving improv a good name
Banish all preconceived notions of improv being cringey or stilted, as there are no such qualms when it comes to the Scat Pack troupe. The premise is to create an entire film from scratch, directed by a chirpy host (Oscar, naturally) who pauses…
Jigsaw - Gettin' Jiggy
21 Aug 2012
Top sketch comedy from Dan Antopolski, Nat Luurtsema and Tom Craine
After a successful Fringe debut last year, the troupe return with another offering of what has to be one of the fastest-paced sketch shows about. Some skits last less than a minute before we’re plunged into the next. Stand-ups Dan Antopolski (the…
Four Screws Loose
21 Aug 2012
Intelligently conceived highlights rare in show that is largely filler
Sketch show foursome Four Screws Loose set out to find a comedic juxtapose of pantomime-style tomfoolery and the bizarre. The show opens with a music led and flamboyant introduction that, whilst prompting the obligatory audience clap-along, is old…
Silky
21 Aug 2012
Liverpudlian comic is keen to please but able to disturb
Unlike other performers that have descended on Edinburgh throughout the festival, Silky has opted not to plaster his posters around town. Going against the publicity grain, the comedian has instead placed his PR material on the underside of buses; and…
Wuthering Heights
20 Aug 2012
Emily Brontë adaptation by young Cardiff players is a praiseworthy production
Rarely has fiction portrayed the negative as well as positive emotions of love than in Emily Brontë’s masterpiece. Heathcliff and Cathy's passionate, never harmonious yearning is, of course, at the heart of the story, yet the novel's complex narrative…
Monkey Bars
20 Aug 2012
Kids say the profoundest things
‘Sometimes adults don’t really listen to children,’ suggests the actor playing dialogue artist Karl James at the start of Chris Goode’s masterful new verbatim play. And that’s exactly what this astonishing piece seems to be telling us – that there’s so…
Bigmouth
20 Aug 2012
Enthralling roller-coaster through history and its (in)humanity by Valentijn Dhaenens
‘History not merely touches on language, but takes place in it.’ This quote from the German philosopher Adorno could summarise the underlying themes of SkaGeN’s Bigmouth. The show makes the (perhaps not obvious connection) between figures of great…
Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel
20 Aug 2012
Inspirational one-on-one poetry experience with Ryan Van Winkle
Poetry readings have often suffered from small audiences. Ryan Van Winkle has worked that to his advantage: the size of the audience for Red, Like Our Room Used To Feel is precisely one. And that’s why it works. There is nothing scary or awkward…
Paperbelle
20 Aug 2012
Imaginative fun for the very young
Creating a show that straddles the fine line between engaging a pre-schooler, and not scaring them, isn’t easy. Harder still to capture the imagination of the grown-up whose lap they’re sitting on or next to. Yet with this delicate, sweet and funny…
Matthew Crosby
20 Aug 2012
Slightly stilted affair from an otherwise very funny man
Given the majesty of this year’s main Pappy’s show, we can surely forgive Matthew Crosby (the small, bespectacled, beardy one of the trio) if he’s not firing on the same number of cylinders that powered his 2011 solo debut. Even so, he is able to…
Felicity Ward: The Hedgehog Dilemma
20 Aug 2012
High-speed hour of breathless laughs from charismatic comedienne
One way to freshen up material about relationships is to frame it in a cute thought experiment. Imagine two hedgehogs getting ready for winter. Do they cuddle together, and risk hurting each other with their spines? Or do they sit apart, not getting…
Beats
20 Aug 2012
Tremendous recreation of rave culture
Tremendous recreation of rave culture In 1994 the UK Criminal Justice and Public Order Act outlawed gatherings of more than 100 people with a soundtrack of ‘amplified music characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’. In the…
Carl Donnelly: Different Gravy
20 Aug 2012
A tickling rather than side-splitting hour from home-made autobiography writer
Carl Donnelly is a nice guy. Beginning his routine with a slide-show (before he gets on stage) of his home-made autobiography cover and jokey snaps of family and friends, it’s clear that here is someone not afraid to take the piss out of himself, never…
Uninvited
20 Aug 2012
Ambitious production fails to spring to life
Our unnamed protagonist, obsessed by order and routine, returns home from work to discover a stranger in his house. So he makes him a cup of tea. But that’s the least of his worries: the talking wallpaper seems to have opinions on everything, and his…
Guardian Reader
20 Aug 2012
Liberal leftie humour from William Hammer-Lloyd
The anonymous reader is a tall, lanky, floppy-haired, bearded, liberal, leftie, upper-middle class intellectual and former teacher. In other words, he’s the archetypal reader of the newspaper affectionately known as The Grauniad. Having become all too…
John Conway - The New Conway Dimension
20 Aug 2012
Small and daft is the order of the day in Conway's semi-anarchic routines
If you find yourself tiring of the slick, professional, often identikit comedians in town, you should cop a load of Australia’s John Conway. With laptop-wielding sidekick Michael Burke trying his utmost to keep proceedings reasonably on track, Conway…
Boris and Sergey’s Vaudevillian Adventure
20 Aug 2012
Droll and bawdy puppet double act
Droll and bawdy puppet double act Nothing covers cracks like cuteness. Boris and Sergey are two faceless leather bunraku puppets that look like reconstituted old footballs sprung to life. They speak in gravelly Russian honks and have more than enough…
Out of the Blue
20 Aug 2012
All-male a cappella group radiate charm with formidable vocals and infectious stage presence
Before a 500-strong, sold-out Saturday house, 15 young men shimmy onto a lights-down, mist-shrouded stage, to be greeted thunderously from what seems to be most of the visiting female population of Edinburgh. Out of the Blue is back. In their…
Steve Shanyaski’s Life-Survival Bible
20 Aug 2012
Perfectly pleasant jokes masking an aimless set-up
Shanyaski is an all-guns-blazing kinda guy, barrelling onstage and wasting no time ingratiating himself to a late-night crowd. His is a show, he promises, that will help the hapless sods among us to navigate the challenges of everyday life, his…
And They Played Shang-a-Lang
20 Aug 2012
Bay City Rollers jukebox musical is boisterous good fun
If a semi-autobiographical jukebox musical about salad days in Scotland sounds grim -- and it should -- Derek Douglas’ nostalgia fest is surprisingly good fun. Local amateur company Craft Theatre’s 15-strong cast perform with such gusto and evident…
Colin Mars: A Life Full of Lemons
20 Aug 2012
Over-egged and unoriginal fare
Life may have given Mars his fair share of lemons, but instead of making lemonade, a yawnworthy theme he continually comes back to, he's squeezed the metaphorical citrus dry leaving nothing but a sour pulp. Nervous and sweaty, the three-strong audience…
