Rebecca Mahar
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.
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 Steamie
★★★★★ Hilarious & heartfelt
Stage Door Entertainment brings Tony Roper’s classic play The Steamie to the Fringe with heart, humour, and honesty.
The Whirligig of Time
★★★★★ Malvolio Often Appears Innocent
Malevolent, malicious, malcontent: Malvolio. But is he? In a tour-de-force by solo actor Robin Leetham, Tortive Theatre’s The Whirligig of Time questions the traditional perception of Malvolio as the antagonist of Twelfth Night, and allows him to tell his version of the story.
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.
The Wind in the Willows
★★★★☆ Charming
Adapted and Directed by Kate Stephenson, C Theatre’s The Wind in the Willows is a charming, delightful retelling of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s novel.
Tit Swingers
★★★★★ Omg they were crewmates
From the team behind Julie: the Musical comes Tit Swingers, a Punk Gig Musical – with added Pirates. To the wild riffing of electric guitar, bass, and drums, Le Gasp! Productions tells the unapologetically queer story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read: pirate queens, hellcats, tit swingers. Oh, and Calico Jack— he’s there too.
The Last Five Years
★★★★☆ Bittersweet
New Edinburgh-based Never Ending Theatre brings a poignant rendition of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years to Paradise in Augustines, which is pacy and arresting from start to finish.
Macbeth: Sleep No More
★★★☆☆ Well Spoken
Reducing Shakespeare’s cast of forty-plus characters to a company of four female performers, Shadow Road Productions brings Macbeth: Sleep No More back to the Fringe in an adaptation that encapsulates the essence of the Scottish Play.
