EdFringe 2024
Murder! At the Cirque Du Banquet! The Terrible, Final Case of Detective Ace Dekkard
★★★☆☆ Chaotic
Dead Parrot Collective’s Murder! At the Cirque Du Banquet! The Terrible, Final Case of Detective Ace Dekkard, at Paradise in Augustines for the Fringe’s second week, is a cross-genre comedy romp that is a fitting late-night Fringe entertainment – defiantly silly and performed with gusto.
Tim Licata: Close up and personal
★★★★☆ Childhood magic
Local Edinburgh magician Tim Licata is back at the Fringe with Close-up and Personal at Assembly Rooms. It is a delightful show, filled with autobiographical anecdotes and magic tricks. But there’s more to it than just traditional illusions.
TÁIN
★★★★☆ Otherworldly
Young Edinburgh Storytellers, Mark Borthwick and David Hughes, hold their audience rapt with TÁIN, a much-condensed adaptation of Ireland’s most famous epic tale.
Polishing Shakespeare
★★☆☆☆ To speak and purpose not
Twilight Theatre Company’s Polishing Shakespeare dramatizes imagined meetings between a dotcom billionaire, the artistic director of an “esteemed American theatre company,” and the playwright they are attempting to commission to translate Shakespeare’s works into modern English.
Chatterbox
★★★★☆ Gentle humour
Lubna Kerr’s Chatterbox, at the Pleasance Courtyard all Fringe, builds on her difficult experiences of growing up as a child of Muslim heritage in 1970s Scotland.
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”.
