Archive for August, 2024
Joyfully Grimm – Reimagining a Queer Adolescence
★★★★☆ Hopeful
Joyfully Grimm – Reimagining a Queer Adolescence at the Scottish Storytelling Centre is a winning combination of personal reminiscence, politics and traditional tales which is understatedly poetic and utterly convincing.
Tartan Tat
★★★★☆ Authentic comedy
Shark Bait Theatre’s Tartan Tat, playing theSpace @ Niddry St for the first two weeks of the Fringe, is a very funny play set in a tourist gift shop on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.
Around the World in 80 Days
★★★☆☆ Enjoyable
Arkle’s Around the World in 80 Days, at the Royal Scots Club in Fringe Week Two, is a straightforward piece of family-friendly theatre. Inventive and committed, it has its drawbacks, but is always fun.
Eleanor
★★★★★ Historical insight
For every figure whose name echoes throughout history there are the descendants destined to spend their lives living in the shadow of their ancestors.
Henry V
★★★☆☆ Contrarious
Henry V from Massachusetts-based Ghost Light Players is a dynamic, physical, ensemble-centred production of Shakespeare’s sprawling history that aims to impress upon its audience the “bloody cost of war”.
Macbeth & Dunsinane
Macbeth: ★★★☆☆ Speedy
Dunsinane: ★★★★☆ Bloody
A Necessary Cat have done it again – bringing a powerful double helping of a Shakespeare starter and Shakespeare-adjacent main course to the Fringe in which the whole is better the sum of its parts.
The Ghost of Alexander Blackwood
★★★★☆ Thought-provoking
Deaf Action’s third annual arts festival celebrates deaf language, culture and, in this two-hander theatre performance written by Nadia Nadarajah, the history of pioneers in the Edinburgh deaf community.
Keep Watching It
★★☆☆☆ Repetitive
Keep Watching It, at The Space on the Mile, is a new play by Kestrel Eye Productions, a grassroots film and theatre company based between Edinburgh and New York.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
★★★★☆ Terrific ensemble
Captivate’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Edinburgh Academy is an imposing production, full of fine singing and acting.
Napoleon’s 100 Days
★★☆☆☆ Basic
Napoleon’s 100 Days is a comic telling of Napoleon’s epic escape from captivity on the island of Elba, performed by its writer and producer Andy D (for Dickinson) at Paradise in the Vault for the first two weeks of the Fringe.
