Reviews & features: Kids, Allan Radcliffe

Pop-Up! The Amazing Adventures of Moo-Dong

The art of entertaining

Theatre Bom’s Pop-Up! is based around the inspired notion of recreating famous paintings, such as Arcimboldo’s ‘fruit faces’ and Seurat’s ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette’, live onstage. Don’t be nervous: an in-depth knowledge of…

Horrible Histories - Barmy Britain

Gruesomely entertaining alternative history lesson

The history of these islands is littered with enough corpses to fill a month’s worth of Fringe shows, so hats off to Birmingham Stage Company for managing to pack so much blood and gore into a bare hour. Terry Deary’s deliciously gruesome book…

Mil's Trills Music and Stories

Merrily chaotic exploration of musical instruments

Never mind the kids. If you’re brave enough to lay out a big pile of shakers, tambourines and ukuleles in the front row of a Fringe space, it’s the grown-ups you’ll need to hold back. A happy rhythmic jangle is already well-established before Amelia…

Cloud Man

Delightful puppet show with its head in the clouds

Puppet maker/performer Ailie Cohen has been delighting young folk and their grown-ups for many a Fringe with her original stories and fairy-tale adaptations. Cloud Man is no exception, a deceptively simple story that will melt even the flintiest of…

The Last Miner uses puppetry to profound effect

Moving, melancholic puppet show

This inventive show, developed by Tortoise in a Nutshell in association with Catherine Wheels, is short on action, features little dialogue and takes place on the tiny stage of the Hill Street studio theatre. But the tale of an elderly miner, living…

Edinburgh Festival 2010: More Fringe show highlights

Some of the shows to look out for at the Fringe

With over 2,400 shows to choose from at this years Fringe festival, it's all to easy to succumb to the paradox of choice. Here we present our picks for some of the smaller shows that are worth looking out for.

Lighter Than Air

Balloon antics provoke belly laughs

It’s amazing the fun that can be generated from a few simple props. When clown Danny Schlesinger plods on stage wearing a too-tight suit and a deadpan expression, his arms weighed down with three enormous yellow balloons, you wonder whether he will be…

Frog

Amphibian tale that puts a spring in your step

Pity poor Max. He’s moving house in the morning, and is terrified of leaving behind his friends, his school and his teacher. The only thing his mother can do to reassure him is read from his favourite picture books – all about a kindly, inquisitive frog…

Burglar Bill

Winning adaptation of kids’ classic

This stage re-imagining of Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s much-loved illustrated fable, by Pandora’s Box theatre company, retains the offbeat humour and otherworldly atmosphere of the original, while throwing in plenty of opportunities for audience…

I Can't Sleep by David O'Doherty

No cure for insomnia

Next time you find yourself wide awake in the middle of the night, desperately trying to think of ways to make yourself tired, try taking a few leaves out of David O'Doherty's self-help manual for insomniacs. Rule number one: counting sheep is just…

Clockheart Boy

Stylish, heart-rending tale

There's an important piece missing from the Professor's puzzle: his daughter Sophie disappeared 28 years ago while out walking on the beach. Luckily, he's got an energetic bunch of eccentric pals living in his castle to help with the search and assist…

James Campbell's Shut Up Stupid

Comic plays for kids of all ages

James Campbell is envied and acclaimed across the comedy universe for carving out a triumphant career performing stand-up for kids. While his Comedy Club 4 Kids continues to train young folk from the ages of six upwards in the hard-nosed business of…

We all fall down

Exploring the darker side of storytelling

Over the past five years, En Masse theatre has garnered a reputation for creating exciting, imaginative productions for young people and their families. Their latest show, We All Fall Down, is a tale of two villages – Eyam, where the people are saintly…

A History of Scotland (In 60 Minutes or Less)

The avowed intention of this whizz through Scotland’s turbulent past is to bypass the usual cheesy tartan and shortbread stereotypes in favour of something altogether grittier. While this is a noble aim, the trio of performers initially struggle to get…

Whiff

Kipper Tie theatre’s tale of how Whiff the big, fat, smelly baby warthog, surmounts his rather unfortunate body odour problem and propensity to attract ‘tickly quickly flies’, to finally find a firm friend, is told without fuss or frills. But the lack…

Kidsamonium

While jazz improv may not immediately spring to mind as ideal kids entertainment, Tom Bancroft, drummer and innovator behind the hugely successful children’s jazz orchestra, Kidsamonium, begs to differ.