Theatre
La Cage Aux Folles, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - 40 years on, the drag show still entertains and educatesWednesday, 16 August 2023
Forty years ago, the world was very different for gay men. AIDS was devastating their communities, especially in the big cities where hard-won enclaves of acceptance were being hollowed out, one sunken-eyed friend after another. Media screamed “Gay... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: The Grand Old Opera House Hotel / YOU ARE GOING TO DIETuesday, 15 August 2023
The Grand Old Opera House Hotel, Traverse Theatre ★★★The Traverse Theatre’s biggest, most lavish production for the 2023 festival is bold, colourful and joyful. It’s also, however, a somewhat patchy creation. Aaron (a gangly, gormless Ali... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Tennessee, Rose / The Ballad of Truman CapoteTuesday, 15 August 2023
Tennessee, Rose, Pleasance Dome ★★★Clare Cockburn's new play posits the notion that all the women in Tennessee Williams' work were inspired in some way by his older sister, Rose, who spent most of her life in mental institutions after being... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Adults / BaconMonday, 14 August 2023
Adults, Traverse Theatre ★★★Outside the festival madness of August, Edinburgh is a bit of a village. So it’s no surprise if you keep bumping into people you know. For entrepreneurial Zara, however, it nonetheless comes as a shock that the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Flat & the Curves / Shamilton! / I Wish My Life Were Like a MusicalMonday, 14 August 2023
Flat & the Curves, Pleasance Dome ★★★★Flat & the Curves – Katy Baker, Charlotte Brooke, Issy Wroe Wright and Arabella Rodrigo – perform a gig-style musical comedy show with risqué material about what it means to be a modern woman. And... Read more... |
The SpongeBob Musical, QEH review - musical based on popular kids' animation sinks for lack of focusSaturday, 12 August 2023
There are many things that you are not told about being a parent, a vast landscape of details that batter you with unwelcome difference from that comfortable life of Friday night prosecco and pizza. One is a whole new palette of garish colours... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Casting the Runes / The Return / WoodhillSaturday, 12 August 2023
Casting the Runes, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ A viciously critical review gets its unfortunate writer driven mad and sent to an untimely death in this adaptation of a macabre MR James chiller. In that case, I’d better be careful what I say... Read more... |
Trojan Women / Thrown, Edinburgh International Festival 2023 reviews - passionate all-women productionsFriday, 11 August 2023
Trojan Women, Festival Theatre ★★★★★You can feel the white-hot intensity radiating from the stage virtually from start to finish of this remarkable, hypnotic production from the National Changgeuk Company of Korea and Singaporean director... Read more... |
Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe review - uneven production of intermittent powerFriday, 11 August 2023
That Shakespeare speaks to his audiences anew with every production is a cliché, but, like so many such, the glib blandness of the assertion conceals an insistent truth. The Thane of Glamis has had some success in life, gains preferment from those... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Groomed / Let the Bodies PileFriday, 11 August 2023
Groomed Pleasance Dome ★★★★“How can a truth be told? How can a secret be spoken?” Patrick Sandford asks in Groomed, his searingly honest account of his experience of abuse by a teacher at primary school several decade ago. Over 50 minutes he... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2023 reviews: FOOD / DuskThursday, 10 August 2023
FOOD, The Studio ★★★There’s no denying it: Los Angeles-born Geoff Sobelle is a theatrical magician (quite literally – it’s how he began his career). Through a string of visually spectacular shows on the Fringe and more recently at the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2023 reviews: Heaven / Lie Low / After the ActWednesday, 09 August 2023
Heaven, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★It’s a rare show that combines form and content to quite such devastatingly potent effect. The storyline of two-hander Heaven from Dublin-based Fishamble theatre company might seem simple: a middle-aged couple... Read more... |
