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Dr Brown Brown Brown Brown Brown and his Singing Tiger
4 Aug 2012
Mighty Boosh-style physical comedy for quirky kids
An unassuming chap in a tiger-striped onesie plucks a ukelele. On the corner of the stage, a giant laundry bag is moving. From its depths emerges a pink woolly hat then safety goggles and a bushy beard. Jacket, tie, then very short white shorts and…
Breathing Corpses
4 Aug 2012
Promising exploration of death from Exeter University Theatre Company
In La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler sets up a Newton’s cradle of sexual relationships: one person sleeps with another, who sleeps with another and so on. Laura Wade’s 2005 play, first seen at the Royal Court, charts a similar chain reaction, only of death…
Jim Campbell: Nine-Year-Old Man
3 Aug 2012
Wonderful timing, whimsical narrative
On the wrong side of 25 and facing the less exciting parts of contemporary life (mortgages, babies, failed dreams of being a rock star), Jim Campbell muses on the themes of growing up and assuming responsibility. It’s hardly unique subject matter and…
Scottish Ballet
1 Sep 2011
An evening of contemporary classics
For a programme dominated by music from the great canon of composers, the opening to Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo’s Kings 2 Ends, a silent dynamic solo, comes as a surprise. But it’s curiously pleasing. It lets the clean stretched lines of the dance…
BUG Hosted by Adam Buxton
26 Aug 2011
Entertaining but unchallenging music video presentation
The usually BFI-based BUG organisation’s remit is to celebrate ‘global creativity in music video’, and in that respect, this show succeeds admirably. Videos from acts as diverse as US indie-rockers Manchester Orchestra, electro artists The Chase and…
I, Malvolio
22 Aug 2011
Revisiting Shakespeare’s maligned steward
Appearing in the latter half of a Festival that has made its theatre audience work harder than in previous years, Tim Crouch keeps us on the edge of our seats with a show that probes cultural tastes through the figure of Shakespeare’s much maligned…
Josie Long: The Future Is Another Place
19 Aug 2011
Stand up for the left
Josie Long is ready to rubbish a stock right-wing idea when a heckler interrupts. ‘Hear hear!’ the grumbler shouts back at the suggestion that a cleaner shouldn’t have to pay tax towards funding liberal arts degrees. Long looks shocked, uttering…
Russell Kane
17 Aug 2011
Caustic and hilarious self-flagellation
It’s hard to judge Russell Kane’s show because he’s already done it. For the ‘difficult’ follow-up to his Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning 2010 show Kane performs Manscaping as himself, offers up heckles, anticipates critic and audience responses and even…
Le Gateau Chocolat
17 Aug 2011
Moreish cabaret feast
With his delicious charm and La Clique credentials, Le Gateau Chocolat’s solo debut is an evening treat that leaves you wanting more. Enter the fabulous Bosco tent, and the gentle strains of ‘The Way We Were’ are just audible, a feast of colour and…
Reservoir Dogs
17 Aug 2011
Unimaginative adaptation of Tarantino’s heist movie
Quentin Tarantino has his fair share of detractors – those who claim his films make up for their lack of originality with profanity and violence. These people should swipe an extra star or two from this review, since Tarantino’s plot and dialogue are…
Und
17 Aug 2011
Tough play with the meaning stressed out
Howard Barker is a playwright loved by academics for the challenges thrown down by his knotty ‘theatre of catastrophe’ and by actors for the chance to get their tongues round his muscular language. His writing is tough, poetic and…
Danny Pensive’s Map of Britain
15 Aug 2011
Wonderfully odd character comedy
This character comedy is so assured, odd and sweet, that you can easily see the self-styled Sunderland simpleton becoming the next score keeper on Shooting Stars. During his whistle-stop recollection of a three-year trip around Britain, Pensive…
John Lynn
15 Aug 2011
Affable comic story-telling with a neat turn of phrase
No matter his subject material, which ranges in profundity from colonoscopies to making the perfect tomato and cheese sandwich, the roguish Lynn is able to mould it into a melodious, charming yarn. An affable, natural performer, he’ll send you away with…
Frimston and Rowett
15 Aug 2011
A collection of decent comic coceits that overstay their welcome
Almost every sketch this duo bring out has a great play on words or a pleasingly silly concept at its heart, but far too often they pass the point where the sketch should naturally end. Trying to make quantity do the work of quality where their beloved…
A Slow Air
8 Aug 2011
Nationhood explored and deplored
In David Harrower’s new play a struggling middle-aged builder (Lewis Howden), haunted by an entirely inadvertent contribution to the Glasgow Airport bombing, is provoked into reflections about his estranged sister (the performer’s real-life sister…
Francesca Martinez
8 Aug 2011
A charmingly caustic look at ‘normal’
She may be ‘the world’s wobbliest comedian’, but the force of Francesca Martinez’s convictions and the energy with which she puts them across never falter in a show that’s as hard-hitting as it is caustically funny. She takes to the stage with this…
Minute After Midday
8 Aug 2011
Pared-down performance based on Omagh bombing
Pared-down performances resonate here as three very different stories are told, in overlapping monologues, from the day the Omagh bombing devastated Ireland. A young survivor, a widow, and the driver who left the car bomb on Lower Market Street, relive…
Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie
5 Aug 2011
Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it
Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…
Elizabeth Blackadder
3 Aug 2011
Brilliant retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s major artists
Elizabeth Blackadder is a Dame, a Royal Academician and arguably Scotland’s most popular female painter and printmaker. A major retrospective of her work at Scotland’s biggest gallery space was only ever going to draw sighs of resignation from art snobs…
Twelfth Night
27 Aug 2010
By my troth, an afternoon delight (if you’ve got the energy)
The small cast composing this year’s C Theatre production are really enjoying themselves. They transport Twelfth Night’s faraway kingdom of Illyria to a sexy 1930s London scene, and complete the look with boater hats, black lace, cigarette holders, and…
Matt Green
23 Aug 2010
Preoccupations with paedophilia and scatology
Presented as a catharsis of his most embarrassing moments, it’s remarkable just how much risqué material Green gets past his audience. After warming them up nicely, his self-deprecating, loose demeanour lets him visit some pretty dubious places…
Reykjavik
19 Aug 2010
Get on the next flight
Not one for the participation-averse, but any production where you get to dress as a Ghostbuster is fine by me. Flippancy aside, this is something a bit special. The unpromising surroundings of the Bongo Club are transformed into an evocative…
Granny's Gone Wild
19 Aug 2010
Geriatric jokes and pensioner’s punch-lines
Lynn Ruth Miller is 77 years old – a fact she lets you in on moments into her opening rap (yes, you read that correctly). Nestled among the wrinkly folds of her material are jokes about saggy boobs, husbands long dead and sex for the elderly, along with…
Atrium
17 Aug 2010
Theatre interrupted
Last year Belt Up caused a stir by blindfolding the audience during The Trial. Even without blindfolds there is a great deal of trust placed in a theatre company: to guide the audience clearly (and safely) to an as-yet unknown destination. When standard…
Seann Walsh
16 Aug 2010
Making the humdrum hilarious
If you were to sit down and read a full synopsis of Seann Walsh’s debut hour, it might come across as the dullest thing ever. The subjects he takes as his inspiration for comedy would make Michael McIntyre seem like the merged resurrection of Bill Hicks…
