Reviews & features: Theatre
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1984
6 Aug 2012
EmpathEyes Theatre's slick, sexy and terrifying adaptation of Orwell’s dystopian tale
Opening with a stream of perfectly timed choreography, half-naked bodies and live music, it’s clear from the outset that this is no generic adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian tale. Winston Smith (Theo Gordon) is a man on the verge of rebellion…
Ma Biche et Mon Lapin
6 Aug 2012
A quirky French comedy from Collectif Aie Aie Aie
Like escapees from a Jean-Pierre Jeunet and/or Marc Caro film (Delicatessen/Amelie/Micmacs), Julien Mellano and Charlotte Blin are craft store silent vaudeville eccentrics; Gallic bunraku doll puppet handlers with no puppets but a whole load of mutant…
Life is Too Good to Be True
6 Aug 2012
Not quite the whole truth from show examining Stephen Glass, Barbara Ehrenreich and Lady Gaga
The place of truth, lies, delusion and self-realisation in our individual lives and within society as a whole is the big theme tackled in this one-man show that begins modestly and ends with a high-camp finale. Written and performed by Gable Roelofsen…
The Girl With No Heart
6 Aug 2012
Children's storybook on loss of innocence fails to come to life
The Girl with No Heart is based on a short story book written by performer Louisa Ashton. A children’s parable about the loss of innocence, Sparkle and Dark’s Travelling Players use puppetry, silhouettes and origami to narrate the tale of a girl who…
Dubrovski
6 Aug 2012
Ambitious adaptation that’s let down by the fundamentals
Sheffield-based Headlock Theatre Company have transformed Alexander Pushkin’s unfinished 1832 novel Dubrovski into a devised stage piece that mixes a passionate Russian revenge tragedy, an energetic physical staging and a live violin-and-piano…
Just A Gigolo
6 Aug 2012
A literate, bawdy, touching production about Lady Chatterlerly's real lover
Playwright Stephen Lowe’s DH Lawrence trilogy comes to a neat and naughty conclusion (following Fox and The Little Vixens and Empty Bed Blues) with this fine one-man show directed by Lowe and performed by veteran Scottish actor Maurice Roëves. Roëves…
Chapel Street
6 Aug 2012
Snappy double monologue delivered with panache
This exuberant new piece by Luke Barnes plays as two monologues: a boy and a girl stand side-by-side, the narrative snapping breathlessly back and forth between them as their worlds draw closer and closer and ultimately collide in the messy climax to a…
Shopping Centre by Matthew Osborn
5 Aug 2012
Harrowing dissection of everything that’s wrong with society
Devised by comedian-cum-actor/playwright Matthew Osborn, Shopping Centre is more a list of everything that is wrong with society than a drama. Loner Jim lives beneath a shopping centre, preferring the company of furniture and his memories to the…
Serve Cold
5 Aug 2012
A nasty dramatic thriller with a patchy script
Joy (Elaine McKergow) stands on a bridge, contemplating the river below and swigging a bottle of red wine. Grace (Nicola Clark) is an on-duty prostitute, who walks by to make sure Joy isn’t thinking of jumping in. After paying for Grace’s services for…
TR Warszawa's 2008: Macbeth relocates the Scottish Play to Iraq
4 Aug 2012
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…
Five questions for kids' theatre company Purves Puppets
4 Aug 2012
The company behind Pips and Panda tell us about their 26 years on the Fringe
1. This is your 26th year on the Fringe – what keeps you coming back? ‘There’s a special holiday atmosphere unique to Edinburgh, and families are already excited when they arrive. Even the kids have often seen a lot of theatre. They expect – and they…
Superjohn
4 Aug 2012
Plucky superhero fights for survival in sensitively-portrayed kids' theatre show
Creating a show about a child in need of a bone marrow transplant was never going to be easy. It’s a subject most children don’t really understand, and parents don’t want to think about. It’s part of life, however, and if you’re going to tackle such…
The Boat Factory
4 Aug 2012
Poignant, moving evocation of a lost way of life
If you don’t think a play about a shipyard sounds like your kind of thing, think again. This moving two-hander by Dan Gordon, performed by Belfast’s Happenstance theatre company, is a real gem, at once an evocation of the city’s Harland and Wolff boat…
Kin
4 Aug 2012
Heartfelt exploration of motherhood starring Donna Rutherford
This sensitive exploration of our relationships with our mothers as we both grow older carefully uses a mixture of live performance and pre-recorded interviews to create a heartfelt and moving show. Sitting at tea-lain tables with televisions displaying…
A Clockwork Orange
4 Aug 2012
Stylish, shocking, all-male adaptation of Anthony Burgess' classic novel
Theatre company Action to the Word’s high-energy, all-male adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s classic novel relocates the fable to a futuristic northern England, full of rippling muscles, bronzed flesh and lashings of casual sex and…
Monstrous Acts
4 Aug 2012
Bluebeard inspires 15th century prison romance
The first ten minutes of this production from Australia’s Out Cast Theatre are wordless. When the dialogue finally kicks in, it rather punctures the wonderfully charged atmosphere of the opening scenes, which establish the power dynamic between a pair…
Wrong Place, Right Time
4 Aug 2012
Generation X drama that’s heavy on the clichés
Ah, the quarterlife crisis; a life-slump suffered by 20-something Generation Y-ers with big dreams, little direction and zero financial security. With the big three-oh looming, Sophie Willan, Léonie Higgins and Lowri Evans explore its grip in three…
Miss Havisham’s Expectations
4 Aug 2012
Linda Marlowe deconstructs Dickens’ jilted bride
Without doubt one of Charles Dickens’ most infamous creations, Miss Havisham casts an eerie shadow over Great Expectations, the black heart of the story, a woman ruled by spite but also suffering deeply from her own heartache at being jilted. Linda…
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…
Nothing is Really Difficult
4 Aug 2012
None-more-Fringe physical theatre performance
Inside a purpose-built plywood cube on George Square, three grown men run around, striking poses and indulging in slapstick behaviour, with the odd flash of profundity and occasionally sinister undertones. None of them utters a word, and at one point…
Kemble’s Riot
2 Aug 2012
Political intrigue with superbly engaging performance from Richard Hansell
Kemble's Riot recreates 66 nights of rioting in 1809 when the Covent Garden Theatre increased its ticket prices. With the audience drafted in as the rioters, split pro- or anti- theatre manager John Kemble, sitting on the fence is not an…
Interview: Miriam Margolyes, star of Dickens' Women
1 Aug 2012
The veteran actor of stage and screen discusses Dame Eileen Atkins, salmon and Graham Norton
First record you ever bought. Last extravagant purchase you made. First film you saw that really moved you. Last lie you told. First movie you ever went on a date to. Last time you cried. First thing you do when you’ve got time off work.
Fringe by the Sea 2012: Five ingredients for the ultimate seaside experience
1 Aug 2012
North Berwick will host Kate Rusby, Neil Innes and more on 6–12 August
Take a break from the buzz of the city and join in the thrill of the seaside. For the 5th year running, Fringe nge by the Sea returns ns with an eclectic mix of music, comedy, theatre, film, authors- in-conversation and, of course, the…
Didj Wentworth of cabaret outfit La Clique - interview
29 Jul 2012
The slippery performer hares his love of Thai food, Little Dragon and Pretty Woman
First record you ever bought INXS the Kick album. Last extravagant purchase you made M-one-11 shirt bought last week, impulse buy. First film you saw that really moved you Pretty Woman. Last lie you told The last question. I don’t…
Theatre productions The Prize, Endure and Born to Run bring sport to the Fringe
28 Jul 2012
Sport-themed shows at 2012 Edinburgh Fringe
Any Fringe show which takes a sporting theme in the same month as the Olympic Games arrive in London might be seen as belonging to the roster of gimmickry which inevitably assails Edinburgh in August. Yet speaking to the writers of three of the most…
