Hill Street Theatre
Casual Encounters
★★★☆☆ Dark sex comedy
It is Saturday night and, following advice from a counsellor that he and his wife should have more sex, middle-aged Morningside banker, James, played by Ade Smith, is looking forward to his first experience of wife swapping.
Conspiracy
★★★★★ Bureaucratic nightmare
Conspiracy, a co-production between Edinburgh-based grassroots companies Strawmoddie and RFT, is a chilling and almost obscenely mundane account of the Wannsee Conference, held in a Berlin suburb in January 1942.
The Court
★★★☆☆ Maybe murder
Edinburgh Little Theatre’s interactive court-set drama, The Court, finds a middle aged woman accused by her sister of murdering their mother and is run on the Lunchtime Theatre principle of adding a pie and bevvy to the ticket price.
Caged: The True Story of Isabella MacDuff
★★★★☆ Commanding
Confined behind bars before her audience, Isabella MacDuff takes to the stage to tell her own story in Caged, written and directed by Colette Swan for Pigeon Cote Productions.
Murder at the Fringe
★★★☆☆ Fun exercise
Murder at the Fringe, by Edinburgh Little Theatre, is extremely courageous. The audience is closely involved in the solving of a murder, with six suspects lined up for questioning.
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.
Ripper: The Musical
★★★☆☆ Chilling
Ripper: The Musical presented by East Lothian company Reconnect Theatres at Hill Street Theatre for the whole Fringe, is a chilling musical based on the killings of Jack The Ripper.
And They Played Shang-a-Lang
★★★★★ Joyful romp
After an eleven-year streak, Edinburgh Little Theatre’s And They Played Shang-a-Lang opens what is billed as its final Fringe run, to a packed and cheering house at the Hill Street Theatre.
Kinky Boots
★★★★☆ Memorable
A glamorous and electric production of Kinky Boots by Sound Events Scotland features at the Hill Street Theatre where it is running every morning for the whole Fringe.
Cyrano de Bergerac
★★★★☆ Unexpectedly touching
There is an almost wilfully uneven quality to Arkle’s Cyrano de Bergerac at the Hill Street Theatre, but – eschewing much of the heroic bombast that is usually associated with the play – it manages to be convincing and affecting.
