Reviews & features: Fringe

Jeremy Lion answers questions from kids

The children's entertainer answers the questions that popped into our mailbox

Bumbling children’s entertainer Jeremy Lion has taken time out from being near-permanently soused to explore some pressing environmental issues in his new show. He’s still got time for the kids, however, and was more than happy to answer the questions…

How to visit the Edinburgh Festival

A guide to getting the best from the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe

The phrase 'planned itinerary' might might be at odds with the spirit of chaos and wild abandon you associated with your visit to the Edinburgh Festival. The brutal truth is that shows do sell out, so book tickets to things you definitely want to see.

Oh, the Humanity and Other Good Intentions

Marvellous quintet of short plays with excellent performances

Marvellous quintet of short plays with excellent performances Isn’t self-consciousness a ball-ache? It ups the ante, rather, as if all eyes are on you and you’re barely making sense, let alone delivering the goods, and you still haven’t found what…

Thread

Poignant site-specific evocation of life and loss

After the success of last year’s Allotment, Nutshell Theatre returns with an immersive evocation of nostalgia, memory and love as the forces that bind us together in the second part of their thematic trilogy. The audience is invited to the Burntisland…

Tim Key interview: the poet discusses Edinburgh, Alan Partridge and 'sexy baths'

Comedy Award winner brings his Masterslut show to the 2011 Fringe

The List has just presented Tim Key with two pages of facts about himself. ‘This is a very good piece of research,’ he says, commending the 16-year-old work experience person who compiled them. ‘I didn’t get to do anything like this on work experience.

Bubblewrap and Boxes turns cardboard boxes into children's show

Playing around with the post at 2011 Edinburgh Festival

As any young child will tell you, there’s no end of things you can do with a cardboard box. Melbourne-based theatre company Asking For Trouble discovered it too, when they turned a pile of unwanted boxes into packages and parcels to create award-winning…

Edinburgh Fringe comedy podcasts 2012

Enjoy shows by Shaun Keaveny, Greg Proops and Richard Herring without the need to visit Edinburgh

There are so many Fringe shows on in August every year it is impossible to see them all. The good news is more and more shows are being recorded live and put on the internet for you to download and listen to at your leisure.

Blood and Roses

Multi-sensory journey with history’s courageous women

Edinburgh’s tendency towards the wet would seem an admonishment against a promenade performance. The northeast’s Poorboy, whose raison d’être is the site specific, doesn’t shy away from the less sunny sides of life. Listening via individual headsets…

Stonewall

Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.

Tuck into the Fringe - five shows you can watch while you eat

See it all without missing a meal

We have compiled a list of shows that you can watch while also being served some delicious shows. Don't miss your dinner without also seeing a show!

Bob and Jim - Go

Top-notch buffoonery and lecherous lookalikes

After indulging in some Modern Urges last time around, now the truly big and daft Bob and Jim are imploring us to Go. No doubt deliberately, this is a title which admittedly could be read in a couple of contrasting ways. These classically cockney gents…

7x7th Street

Interactive sounds sculptures create a musical promised land

Seven and seven is, well, a very magic number indeed in Jean Pierre Muller's walk-through collaboration with musical icons including Robert Wyatt, Nile Rodgers, Archie Shepp and Terry Riley. Free-associating ideas based around the number seven (days a…

Ventriloquist Nina Conti brings new show to Fringe

Talk to the Hand brings chat-show format to puppetry

Once a reluctant ventriloquist, Nina Conti is now exploring the possibilities of the form. Brian Donaldson hears about weird gigs and strange road trips

Rhona Cameron

‘I don’t feel you know enough about lesbian relationships,’ is somewhat unsurprisingly a misconception that this 41-year-old wishes to clear up, back at the Festival after a four-year break. But what broadens this show’s appeal from niche to mainstream…

Katherine Ryan: Little Miss Conception

Canadian comedian's hits Edinburgh with show about crucial early years

As a little girl growing up in the Canadian smalltown of Sarnia (not a made-up place), Katherine Ryan’s parents put her forward into those pageants that only north Americans are capable of laying on. Yet even at an early age, Ryan showed a healthy…

Circus Oz: 30th Birthday Bash

Acrobatics with an Aussie accent

Characters in colourful costumes exchange banter with the audience, the live band plays a constant stream of Gogol Bordello-like polka and one act involves a dramatic take on Frankenstein's monster. This isn't your average circus. Far more theatrical…

As Ye Sow

Strong performances and mounting tension in well-conceived ghost story

Without the use of special effects horror can be quite tricky to bring to the stage with the result that ghost stories are usually the sub-genre of choice for the theatre. The audience can fill in the gaps that clever editing or CGI would usually…

Russell Howard

Beat surrender

Russell Howard can't resist a spot of testicular tomfoolery but, he tells Jay Richardson, his new act is less Buster Gonad than Jack Kerouac With his infectious, wide-eyed optimism currently offering a counterbalance to Frankie Boyle's unflinching…

Tim and Light children's show all about playing games and puppets

Burton and Miyazaki-inspired puppetry at 2011 Edinburgh Festival

Tim and Light is the second children’s show from Tucked In, following 2007’s lauded Jackajack. In this adventure, which has been touring UK theatres and festivals this summer, a boy called Tim and his cat Light board a train from Brighton that doesn’t…

Cabaret Whore

Sex, revenge and Katie Price

The themes of sex, revenge and Katie Price are just some of the topics tackled in Sarah-Louise Young’s all female cabaret show. Performed with passion from the very beginning, Young’s interchanging characters - Southern belle, socially inept librarian…

Amanda Palmer & Neil Gaiman bring joint live show to Edinburgh Fringe

Singing and reading from musical and literary couple

‘Amanda taught Neil to love the festival,’ speaks the Palmer/Gaiman marital unimind (in fact hallowed fantasy author Gaiman emailing on behalf of himself and his ex-Dresden Doll and Fringe mainstay spouse). ‘He used to come to Edinburgh and do the book…

Funny girls Ford & Akram Bamp up the action at this year's Edinburgh Fringe

From Humdinger to Bamp: Louise and Yasmine show their Boosh side

Anyone appearing at the Fringe for the first time, be that as audience member or stage act, might be shocked to discover some of the claustrophobic, sweaty hellholes that we like to call performance spaces during August. One of last year’s comedy double…

Scotrail announce expanded Edinburgh Festival 2012 train timetable

Additional night services to Glasgow, Dundee, Perth and North Berwick

New late-night train services to and from Edinburgh will make it easier for those outside the city to visit the 2012 festival. In Glasgow, there will be a Fringe box office at Queen Street station from July 27. Tickets bought online in advance can be…

Felicity Ward: The Hedgehog Dilemma

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…