Mark Robertson

Flhip Flhop: Everything Happens on the Break

Comic theatre gives hip hop the brush off

16 Aug 2009

Given how the Fringe aspires to be a place for artistic cross-pollination and experimentation, should we be surprised when worlds collide? Well, what about the pairing of hip hop culture and painting and decorating? The white dungarees and paint soaked…

Wil Anderson

Australian comedy striving to find the good in us all

11 Aug 2009

This sweet, excitable Aussie thirtysomething is driven to find the good in the world, no matter how cynical it gets. He definitely has his moments, but too often you can see the pay-off from miles away, and he deflates some of his sharpest ideas by…

Alun Cochrane

The weaver of dreams hits top form again

10 Aug 2009

Alun Cochrane came to the Fringe only a few years ago as a fully-fledged comedy concern. His debut show was the complete package – insightful, endearing, and bloody funny – and after a few visits back trying (and not quite managing) to recapture that…

The Raconteurs

21 Aug 2008

The seemingly spontaneous nature of the release of their frankly tremendous second album, Consolers of the Lonely, might suggest this quartet, the brainchild of Jack White and his long-time best bud Brendan Benson, were trading in off-the-cuff…

Matt Kirshen

Globe-trotting charmer gets coy

7 Aug 2008

Matt Kirshen explains away his show's title (Keep Smiling, Matt. Just Keep Smiling) saying he has a funny face and smiles a lot. Now this is obviously a more favourable title than, My Adventures in the Weird Land that is America which would have been a…

Andrew Maxwell

Irish export continues to delight

7 Aug 2008

It's a been a few years since Andrew Maxwell consolidated his talents and realised he would be better off not boxing himself into some TV-friendly pigeon hole and just getting on with what he does best: telling very funny stories. The ghost of Ireland's…

Camille: the Dark Angel

31 Jul 2008

Some festival veterans would appear to be gluttons for punishment, others just seem to return again and again only to grow in stature. Dublin’s Camille O’Sullivan is very much of the latter category and is among the most celebrated and cherished of…

Festivals

5 Jun 2008

Until 8 June Leith Festival Various venues, Leith, Edinburgh, prices vary www.leithfestival.com Leith Festival showcases its trademark brew of home-grown talent and big name headliners with over 100 musical acts, 50 comedians and a dozen visual…

Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

16 Aug 2007

The notion of abandoning the mid-Atlantic accent when singing may have finally permeated Scottish indie-land, but for the folk world making use of your own regional voice is a given. So to hear Rachel Unthank make the Geordie accent sound quite so…

Reginald D. Hunter

Sprawling set from comedy icon

9 Aug 2007

One of the problems with the Fringe is that us reviewers often need to get in early during a run while comedians may take the month to refine their material so that the show we see on the 3rd is rarely the one performed on the 20th. It’s worth pointing…

Andrew Maxwell

9 Aug 2007

There comes a point in every comic’s career where he or she must decide whether they are going to stay the joker forever or grow up and move onto doing something respectable for the rest of their life. Andrew Maxwell had a brief shot at British TV…

Teenage Kicks

9 Aug 2007

It’s not the fact that John Peel had such an eventful life that makes it ideal material for a play. In fact, the relative mundanity of his existence is highlighted here.

Little Bear

9 Aug 2007

Exploring is fun at any age, but for our eponymous hero there are a lot of firsts in his day. He discovers a tin barrel that not only makes great noises but can be used as boat. He meets some new friends along the way and learns that keeping his tummy…

Tom Russell & Michael Martin

9 Aug 2007

Folk singers of any depth and quality should be the real historians of a nation, capturing the essence of a people through their own distilled musical methods. The work of a man like Tom Russell should be looked up and devoured in libraries by eager…

Hitlist - The best music

1 Aug 2007

5 Questions - The Black Seeds

1 Aug 2007

Its not as if we need convincing that New Zealand is anything other than a prime exporter of general hedonism to the UK, and The Black Seeds, a low-slung reggae soul outfit whose feelgood party music fails miserably in making us think otherwise.

Eva Cassidy – Songbird

1 Aug 2007

Eva Cassidy’s music was virtually unknown outside her hometown of Washington DC during her lifetime.

The Directors

13 Nov 2006

It may not be very apparent yet, but Scotland’s summer festivals are feeling seismic tremors. On the one hand there are new chiefs heading up two of Edinburgh’s prestigious festivals. On the other, there’s a new, upmarket music festival outside Glasgow…

Francis & Power

11 Aug 2006

There’s always a nagging doubt when watching sketch comedy that someone couldn’t quite manage to come up with one good idea but could stretch to two dozen OK ones instead. It only takes seconds to register that this is not the case here with two skilled…