Reviews & features: Theatre, Yasmin Sulaiman
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My Shrinking Life - Alison Peebles' MS-themed show
21 Aug 2012
Alison Peebles' first MS theatre piece will feature dancers and is directed by Belgian Lies Pauwels
Scotland has the highest levels of multiple sclerosis in the world, and one of the country’s most high profile sufferers is lauded actress, writer and director Alison Peebles. Peebles, who’s won acclaim in the past for her portrayal of Lady Macbeth and…
The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean
10 Aug 2012
Rediscovering the beauty of scrapbooks
Shona Reppe’s new production is a wonderfully scientific venture that slowly blossoms into a love story. The set is beautiful and intricate, a cross between a science laboratory, an operating theatre and a dark room. Reppe dons a lab coat and becomes…
Knee Deep
10 Aug 2012
Redfining the meaning of headstand
Casus, Australia’s most exciting new circus company, have the audience squealing and gasping within minutes of beginning. The four performers use each other as climbing frames, running up limbs and jumping off shoulders, creating four-person towers and…
Shit-Faced Shakespeare
6 Aug 2012
A gut-busting hour of rowdy theatre with the odd moment of discomfort
Don’t worry, overseas visitors, the actors in Shit-Faced Shakespeare don’t have actual excrement smeared over their faces. Although it’s possible that, before the end of this run, that might actually happen. Instead, a different cast member turns up…
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…
Polish theatre company Teatr Biuro Podrozy to stage Planet Lem
28 Jul 2012
The sci-fi spectacular is inspired by the writings of Stanislaw Lem
In 1995, Teatr Biuro Podrozy won critical acclaim for Carmen Funebre, a harrowing account of the war in Yugoslavia. In 2007, they won more plaudits for Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man?, which brought us the three witches on stilts and…
Children's puppetry show Luminous Tales at 2012 Edinburgh Fringe
25 Jul 2012
Zannie Fraser's Ripstop Theatre perform show about night-time for ages 4 and above
Zannie Fraser’s shadow puppetry has toured all over the world, but 2012 marks her Edinburgh Fringe debut in the guise of Ripstop Theatre, her own company. Fraser’s new show, Luminous Tales, is a collection of stories about night-time for audiences aged…
Machines for Living explodes some the myths surrounding British architecture
23 Jul 2012
New architecture-themed physical theatre show at 2012 Edinburgh Fringe
It’s become commonplace to denigrate the Brutalist 1960s tower blocks that now characterise the British urban skyline. But Let Slip, a theatre group formed by graduates from the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris, are seeking to combat these…
The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean puts scrapbook in a laboratory
23 Jul 2012
New Edinburgh Fringe show from children’s theatre innovator Shona Reppe
Shona Reppe hasn’t performed at the Edinburgh Fringe since Cinderella in 2002. But in the meantime, she’s steadily established herself as one of Scotland’s most innovative and engaging purveyors of children’s theatre. ‘I wanted to set a show around an…
Edinburgh Fringe show Prodigious mixes dance with music of The Prodigy
23 Jul 2012
Prodigy-inspired show starts a fire of its own
Neil Davy is a barrister following his passion for dance. His new company, Lite Fantastic, was set up to make dance more accessible to new audiences. It makes its Fringe debut this year with two shows: Collision, a feel-good music and dance mash-up, and…
Soldiers act out hard reality in Owen Sheers' The Two Worlds of Charlie F
11 Jul 2012
'No make-up, no lighting, no trickery' in hard-hitting Edinburgh play
Six and a half years after abandoning a career in stand-up comedy for the Royal Marines, Lance Corporal Cassidy Little is making his Edinburgh debut. In 2011, Little was injured by an IED in Afghanistan. While recuperating at defence medical…
The Fall Children
22 Aug 2011
Weak storyline made up for by macabre, colourful underworld
This sinister fairytale turns a place that young children fear to tread – under the bed - into a delightfully macabre underworld. A little girl awakes to find that she and her stuffed toy Caruso have fallen into this dark chasm. With the help of a…
The Velveteen Rabbit children's show from Backhand Theatre
29 Jul 2011
Much-loved children’s tale takes to the stage at 2011 Edinburgh Festival
Following the success of 2010’s Greek Myths for Kids (which returns for another run this year), Backhand Theatre are back at the Fringe with a new adaptation of Margery Williams’ 1922 novel, The Velveteen Rabbit. One of six shows presented by the…
TEAM return to Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011 with Mission Drift
20 Jul 2011
Ambitious new work takes in 400 years of American history
Since their 2005 Fringe debut, New York City’s cutting-edge-but-chaotic theatre company the TEAM has attracted critical praise, sold-out runs and won three Fringe Firsts – not bad for a group of NYU graduates that initially came together to perform just…
Edinburgh theatre show Rose stars Art Malik and daughter Kiera
20 Jul 2011
Play by Hywel John set for 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Art Malik is no stranger to the stage, despite being better known for his film and TV roles – which range from a psychotic terrorist in 1994 Hollywood blockbuster True Lies to a heartthrob anaesthetist in hospital drama Holby City. Over the past 30…
The sex-themed shows that turn Edinburgh into sin city during August
16 Jul 2010
Pole dancers, prostitutes and rampant bedhoppers at the 2010 Fringe
'Coming back from seeing the second Sex and the City film,’ says live artist Bryony Kimmings, ‘I was absolutely disgusted.’ And she’s not the only one groaning about the latest instalment of this once groundbreaking explicit comedy about the sexual…
The Tale of Lady Stardust
26 Aug 2009
Meditation on religious extremism
Convinced that David Bowie is a prophet, Ziggy and Gary are eagerly awaiting the Rapture in their grotty flat when their bubble is pierced by the appearance of a drugged-up clubber. As a meditation on religious extremism, it has little new to say but…
God: A Comedy by Woody Allen
25 Aug 2009
Deliberately unsatisfying, disposable feeling
UCLU Runaground re-create Woody Allen's neurotic mannerisms with startling clarity in this polished student production of his 1975 play God. The shambolic way in which its narrative blurs the audience/actor relationship may not appeal to theatre-goers…
A Year’s Hard Labour
25 Aug 2009
Sound performances make this an engaging free show
Goldsmiths Drama Society showcases a diverse array of talents in this marathon-paced play. As six jurors discuss an immigration case, their daydreams meld into reality, though slick staging ensures the audience is never confused. And, despite the…
Wondermart
21 Aug 2009
Avoid the security guards on this inventive supermarket exploration
There are moments in Wondermart that might make the more self-conscious shopper ditch their trolley and run away in fright. Through the course of this 30-minute supermarket wander, the listener is required to become the performer, quietly complicit in…
Ritter, Dene, Voss
21 Aug 2009
Torment amongst siblings
Skilful acting and inventive staging underpin this menacing yet comic tale, in which two sisters bring their brother home from a mental institution and are confronted by their fraught relationships over the dinner table. Taking Austrian writer Thomas…
Nightfall
21 Aug 2009
Experimental mime
Hurtwood Theatre Company’s experimental work is a charming meditation on different forms of love. At first relying solely on mime, the impreciseness of some of the actors’ movements means a few sequences are hard to follow. But as the form progresses…
Controlled Falling Project
20 Aug 2009
Australian act wows with an elegant mix of physical theatre and acrobatics
The muted colour scheme of the 1930s laboratory instruments cluttering the stage make a charming backdrop for the agile performers in Controlled Falling Project, a theatrical display of acrobatics from Australia’s This Side Up. Speaking few words, the…
Chauntecleer and Pertelotte
20 Aug 2009
Bestiality and poultry fornication make for unexpectedly fun viewing
Chicken sex is perhaps a rather unlikely subject matter for a play but writer Dougie Blaxland somehow manages to make the idea seem realistic in Chauntecleer and Pertelotte, though some may find graphic descriptions of coital relations between humans…
Precious Little Talent
13 Aug 2009
No slight return from award-winning playwright
After last year’s award-winning Eight – which has since played to acclaim in London and New York – emerging playwright Ella Hickson returns with a truly lovely piece of theatre, one that proves she can write dialogue as confidently as she mastered the…
