Reviews & features: Claire Sawers
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Mark Lanegan solo show at Edge Festival
14 Aug 2010
Prolific collaborator plays Edinburgh
His third album with Isobel Campbell, the excellent Hawk, came out last week, proving the beauty and the beast coupling of grunge grump and indie lovely was one with plenty mileage in it. This is a solo show from the Queens of the Stone Age/ Gutter…
Beautifully heavy guitars of Sleepy Sun hit Edinburgh
14 Aug 2010
Spaced out Californian folk-rockers set for Edge Festival show
Beautifully heavy guitars from California. The band’s name does a fairly good job of describing the langour and Laurel Canyon-inspired sound of their big, spaced out folk-rock. Supported by Frankie & The Heartstrings and Sky Larkin. Capital, 08444…
Bear in Heaven bring psychedelic rock to Edge Festival
14 Aug 2010
Brooklyn's finest take Beast Rest Forth Mouth on the road
Putting a psychedelic spin on their brand of stoner rock, Brooklyn’s Bear in Heaven, who were responsible for this spring’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth serenade the Fringe with their proggy, poppy sound. HMV Picture House, 08444 999 990, Thu 26 Aug…
Mike Keat
13 Aug 2010
A massively talented and very entertaining tool
You may know Edinburgh boy Mike Keat as one third of the creosote-tanned Cuban Brothers, and here he delivers a homecoming hero act in this first solo show. Actually, it’s hard to describe him as a hero really, watching him lunge and prance around in…
Amy Sackville
12 Aug 2010
Retreating into imagined worlds of the past
Amy Sackville’s debut novel, The Still Point, is an Arctic love story which has already drawn comparisons with Virginia Woolf. Set in modern England, Julia is the great-grand-niece of an explorer whose story fascinates her and she often dreams about the…
David Mitchell
12 Aug 2010
Dreaming up the non-existent
David Mitchell isn’t known for his simple approach to storytelling. His most recognisable work, the Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas, was described as having a ‘Rubik’s cube structure’. Ambitious and unconventional, it melted genres of airport…
Roaring Boys
11 Aug 2010
Enjoyable, surreal character comedians
Armed with a synthesiser, a clutch of angry power ballads, and a hidden weapon (their French song about racist and homophobic grandparents gets the biggest laughs), Danny and Jonny are determined to blow up the studios of The One Show. Ludicrous, slick…
Soap! The Show
10 Aug 2010
Water-logged circus show leaves the crowd open-mouthed
This bathtub-themed circus show comes to Edinburgh after a two-year run in Berlin. The German production team, Circle of Eleven, has assembled a very bendy cast of performers – Masha Terentieva contorts herself seductively around a trapeze, Nata Galkina…
Withered Hand set for Edge Festival show
10 Aug 2010
Key player in Edinburgh alt.folk scene hits the Fringe
This likeable oddball is a key player in Edinburgh’s alt.folk scene. Singer Dan Willson is a regular performer at Fence Record nights (and also pops up at this week’s Haarfest festival, see page 129) and counts Neil Pennycook (of Meursault) Bart Owl…
Sex Idiot
9 Aug 2010
Enjoyably loopy journey through Bryony Kimmings’ past loves
You could probably fit Bryony Kimmings’ inhibitions into a matchbox. Frank, confident, and more than a little bit unhinged, this show is her reaction to the discovery earlier this year that she’d contracted an STI. In a style similar to the Jim Jarmusch…
The Besnard Lakes set for Edge Festival date
8 Aug 2010
Montreal psychedelic rockers play Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh
This Montreal quartet’s third album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, has been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, which is Canada’s equivalent to the Mercury, and are up against the likes of Broken Social Scene, Caribou and Owen Pallett.
Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw set challenge with Fringe comedy show
6 Aug 2010
Champion of new music finds comedy feet
Radio 1 returns to the Fringe following last year’s Scott Mills The Musical. DJ Nick Grimshaw was set the challenge of writing a one-man show, with five weeks to prepare. Here, he explains the show he’ll perform this week. ‘Don’t get me wrong – I…
Quartet of notable U.S. comics stand-up for America
30 Jul 2010
Jennifer Coolidge, Bo Burnham, Caroline Rhea and Charlyne Yi hit Fringe 2010
Jennifer Coolidge is having trouble describing her own stand-up show. She asks a friend who is within shouting distance for help. ‘Michael?’ she calls, in a sugary purr. ‘I have Scotland on the line. What’s my show like?’ After a pause an answer booms…
Doc Brown: Rapper turned stand-up hits Edinburgh
16 Jul 2010
Unfamous rapper turned on to comedy by big sister Zadie Smith
Rapper geek turned stand-up Doc Brown has always felt like an outcast despite moving in some rarefied media circles. Claire Sawers discovers that he’s fine talking about his famous author sister. For now …
Edinburgh Festival 2010: More Fringe show highlights
16 Jul 2010
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.
Jimmy McGhie
24 Aug 2009
Crowd-repelling tartan, bagpipe and clansmen stereotypes
Opening with his weakest material - crowd-repelling tartan, bagpipe and clansmen stereotypes, and watery anecdotes about teen drinking disasters - this English stand-up is on shaky, confusing ground until he settles into more successful, far funnier…
Who’s Afraid of the Brothers Grimm
23 Aug 2009
Modern-day take on fairytale characters
The Brothers Grimm liked to show the dark side of life in their twisted fairy tales, and have scared generations of small children silly with their stories of girl-eating wolves and cannibal women living in gingerbread houses. This family show from…
Alex and Helen's Radio Nowhere
21 Aug 2009
Silly, surreal and sarcastic fun
Like a sort of sarcastic, deadpan orphan Annie, Helen Cripps and her comedy partner Alex Nash show real potential in this mini-comedy drama about a village radio show. Utterly crap phone-ins and jingles, not to mention visual gags and ‘I Saw You…
Planet of the Shapes: Susie Orbach
20 Aug 2009
The bestselling psychotherapist on body fascism
In 1978, psychotherapist Susie Orbach wrote the bestselling Fat is a Feminist Issue, warning against dieting, and outlining the compulsive behaviour linked to eating disorders. Fast forward 30-odd years, and have we paid heed to her warnings? In her…
Jason Donald
20 Aug 2009
Opening doors in other people’s memories
‘The reaction to Choke Chain has been positive and often emotional,’ says Glasgow-based author Jason Donald, whose first novel was published earlier this year. His debut is a tender, at times uncomfortable, coming-of-age tale of two brothers growing up…
Simon Amstell
20 Aug 2009
How to Do Nothing in a very funny way
Hypochondria, bulimia, dyslexia, paranoia; as stand-up material goes, it doesn’t exactly smack of a fun night out. Yet, in the hands of curly-topped Simon Amstell, neuroses and human failings are spun into a warm, intelligent and engaging hour of…
Michael Fabbri
19 Aug 2009
Destined for a bigger stage
The Brighton funnyman brings a strong, very smoothly delivered set, with tales about being employed in a job centre, and snippets of internet forum abuse making for smart comedy fodder. A section with melodramatically soppy background music is a…
Serate Bastarde
19 Aug 2009
Subversive, shocking, clever and utterly nuts comedy
Carmen, Renata and Silvia are intellectual, Italian lefties, and they want to make you think about current affairs, through spoof pop videos, bared boobs and free samples of Berlusconi’s sperm. With a Kabul-set Sex and the City remake, a bikini dance…
The Brothers Lionheart
18 Aug 2009
Heavy tale of death and doom
Jonathan and his little brother, Rusky set off an adventure that changes their lives forever. It’s a tale of dragons and monsters, and the mighty Tengil who has the villagers of Nangilaya living in fear. The boys must man-up and fight back against…
Zoe Lyons
18 Aug 2009
Sharp act with a cuddly side
Despite the misleadingly butch show title of Miss Machismo, Zoe Lyons thankfully goes easy on the cocky swagger in this show about women with an exaggeratedly massive masculine side. Instead, ‘the 81st most influential gay woman in Britain’ (so says The…
