Allan Wilson
McScrooge
★★★★☆ Beautiful adaptation
McScrooge by Alan Mountford and Leith’s Citadel Arts Group for the Scottish Dementia Arts Festival is a beautiful adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, designed to meet the particular needs of its audience, while retaining the key elements of the original novella.
Arán & Im
★★★★☆ A winning combination
Irish writer and television documentary maker, Manchán Magan’s Arán & Im (Bread & Butter) is a fascinating piece of storytelling, slicing through Irish history, language and culture, while baking traditional Irish sourdough and churning fresh cream to create butter, live on stage. It is a winning combination.
Bluevolution World Tour
★★★★☆ Imaginative
The Blue Man Group have brought their superbly imaginative performance art skills to the Festival Theatre this week to Sunday, as part of their current Bluevolution World Tour.
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.
Babe Alien
★★★☆☆ Weirdly fascinating
Mon Espoir’s Babe Alien is a weirdly fascinating story in which an innocent outsider living in Las Vegas, but apparently from another world, takes a critical look at American culture and behaviour.
Covenant
★★★★☆ Dystopian
Covenant, written, directed and produced by Turning Point Theatre Company invites the audience to consider the possibility of a dystopian future in which control over women’s bodies is at an all-time high and existing legislation has been taken to an extreme position.
Oedipus Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
★★★☆☆ Uncompromising
Edinburgh University Theatre Company’s Oedipus Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is a challengingly complex update to the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother.
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.
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.
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.
