Reviews & features: International Festival

Juilliard School bring upcoming dance stars to Edinburgh International Festival

High profile American dance institution set for Playhouse performance

Each August scores of budding artists, many still studying their craft, flock to Edinburgh to test their performance mettle in what even die-hard professionals might regard as a dauntingly competitive market. It’s these same young people – a few of…

Music highlights from the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Melvyn Tan and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra among picks

Melvyn Tan. The Queen's Hall morning concerts can usually be relied on for a few Festival surprises. Hearing perfectly formed piano music by 18th century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti alongside Sonatas and Interludes by 20th century American John…

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.

Leigh Warren + Dancers - Breathe/Impulse

The choreographer bringing his 'group of individuals' to Edinburgh International Festival

In some dance companies you have soloists and principals, in others everybody is on the same level. But rarely are company members described as ‘a group of individual dance artists’, as they are on the Leigh Warren website. When he started his company…

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…

Gulliver's Travels

Savage and funny adaptation of Swift’s satire

The Victorians considered Gulliver's Travels a kid's book, chortling at the notion of a big man in a tiny world and quietly omitting Gulliver's horrified realisation that the bestial Yahoos are in fact human. That uncomfortable final part of the book is…

Waiting for Orestes: Electra

Visually and aurally striking adaptation of Euripides’ Electra from Tadashi Suzuki

Five men, stripped to the waist and sitting in wheelchairs, circle the stage. Moving as one, they appear like a cross between an Ancient Greek chorus and the pitiful co-dependents of a Samuel Beckett play. For the first 18 minutes of the play, they say…

Sergio Diaz of Ballet Preljocaj discusses the company's performances at EIF

The Edinburgh International Festival is hosting three pieces from the acclaimed French company

It’s lunchtime at Ballet Preljocaj’s headquarters in Aix en Provence, and dancer Sergio Diaz is taking a well-earned break. A few moments earlier, he and the rest of the company were rehearsing And then, one thousand years of peace, an extraordinary new…

Twenty top shows at the 2012 Edinburgh Festivals

Highlights from the Fringe, Book and International Festivals

Having scanned the 23.6m shows, exhibitions and events across the festival in late July, August and early September, we pluck out the ones that simply cannot be missed

Wonderland

Vanishing Point investigation into dark erotic fantasies and internet porn is a huge disappointment

Vanishing Point's latest production finds the Glasgow-based theatre company in combative form, delving into internet pornography's seedy demi-monde and confronting audiences with their own desire for erotic titillation. Despite some stylish moments…

David et Jonathas, Festival Theatre, Mon 20 Aug

Psychological complexities of OT story brought to the fore in Andreas Homoki's musical feast of a pr

Musically, Les Arts Florissants’ David et Jonathas is a feast. French Baroque opera at its finest, Charpentier’s moving retelling of the biblical tragedy about two men who love each other - however that might be interpreted – is rooted in the most…

Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores)

Théâtre du Soleil's debut production at the Edinburgh International Festival is a coup de théâtre

The first ever Edinburgh International Festival production by the great French company Théâtre du Soleil promised to be an unforgettable event. And so it proves. The brainchild of Théâtre du Soleil’s founder and director Ariane Mnouchkine, Les…

Encounters series offers insight into themes running through the Edinburgh International Festival 2012

2 for 1 deals on Encounters talks during the last week of 2012 EIF

The Fringe/Book/International Festivals are coming to their various ends, but there's no need to dissolve into a flood of fest regrets: there are still gems to be found, and we can help you locate them. Encounters is a series of lectures and talks…

2008: Macbeth

Theatre of war re-imagined for the 21st century

The first we hear of Major Macbeth, he’s radio-ing in from his Scotland-52 helicopter saying he’s going to undertake a dangerous raid on Arab insurgents in an unnamed Middle Eastern country in defiance of his commander. The attack is successful, so we…

Behind the scenes at NVA's Speed of Light

Account of walking participation in Edinburgh International Festival event

It’s been described as looking like the movie Tron, a human work of art and a sci-fi sports endeavour, against the most famous silhouette Edinburgh has to offer. Rhona Taylor takes to the hills, and investigates what NVA’s much-talked-about Speed of…

TR Warszawa's 2008: Macbeth relocates the Scottish Play to Iraq

Artistic director Grzegorz Jarzyna brings the production to Edinburgh International Festival 2012

Grzegorz Jarzyna is something of a wunderkind in Polish theatre. Since being appointed artistic director at TR Warszawa – the acclaimed theatre company based in Poland’s capital city – in 1998, aged just 30, he’s become known for his genre-pushing…

Théâtre du Soleil's epic Jules Verne-inspired 2012 Edinburgh Festival show

Serge Nicolaï on Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (Aurores)

Multi-talented actor Serge Nicolaï tells Mark Fisher why four hours is positively speedy in the egalitarian and epic world of Ariane Mnouchkine and Théâtre du Soleil

One Thousand and One Nights

Flagship EIF production feels like a rediscovery of a lost classic

There’s a tremendous life force pulsating through director Tim Supple’s reclamation of these ancient folk tales. It’s a life force that exists, most palpably, for Houda Echouafni’s Shahrazad, whose survival depends on her ability to spin a yarn and…

Why Edinburgh remains unrivalled as a festival city

A huge number and variety of festivals take place each year

In 1961, a theatre director made a proposal. It was his opinion that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was getting too big. It would be much better, he said, ‘if only ten halls were licensed’. Nobody listened. Had the director been able to travel…

Vieux Carré

Bold, intelligent and intermittently entertaining play

The Wooster Group pulls apart Tennessee Williams’ late play set in a New Orleans boarding house and painstakingly reassembles it, adding references to the work of Warhol collaborator Paul Morrissey’s avant-garde films of the 60s and 70s and the work of…

EIF show Caledonia discusses banking and Scottish nationalism

Darien colony tale retold at Edinburgh International Festival

The last time the National Theatre of Scotland was on an Edinburgh International Festival stage they told, in 365, small, beautiful half-stories about teenagers, played by unknown actors - living in the forgotten corners of public life. That was in…

La Didone

For over 30 years, the most unlikely elements have been combined in the Wooster Group’s work. Everything from creaky old B-movies to cutting edge technology have been spliced together to create arresting pieces of theatre.

Batsheva Dance Company - Hora

Gaga dancers showcase their inventive style

For many years Israeli-born choreographer Ohad Naharin has been developing his own language of abstract dance with the suitably eccentric name 'Gaga'. In Hora a grass green box provides the backdrop for his cast of 11 to exercise their Gaga flexibility…

Zoe Strachan on The Lady from the Sea - interview

The playwright is collaborating with Craig Armstrong on the production for Scottish Opera

Five years ago, Scottish Opera embarked on a brave new venture called Five:15. The plan was to put together contemporary Scottish writers and composers and commission them to come up with five new 15 minute long operas. Altogether, 15 short operas were…

Russia's Mariinsky Ballet bring Cinderella to Edinburgh International Festival

Five reasons why you shouldn't miss it

The company You might know them as the Kirov, but back home they’re called the Mariinsky Ballet, and this St Petersburg-based troupe is widely recognised as being one of the finest classical ballet companies in the world. The choreographer A former…