Music
Craig on the Cliff
★★★★☆ Welcoming:
Craig on the Cliff, featuring folk singer Craig Herbertson at Randolph Cliff, is an unassuming but thoroughly accomplished affair that draws on Edinburgh and Scotland’s past in word and song.
Zappa ghosts into Playhouse
Frank Zappa Hologram Tour’s only Scottish date:
The “mind-melting” Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa hologram tour has its only Scottish date, at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Thursday 9 May 2019, 42 years after Zappa’s only ever Edinburgh appearance.
Gie’s Peace
★★★☆☆ Peaceful zeal:
Gie’s Peace, Morna Burdon’s political song and spoken word performance, has an intimate feel but a core of steel.
Bonnie Fechters
★★★☆☆ Gallus
Bonnie Fechters – Songs of Hope and Resistance – a one-woman show devised, directed and performed by Morna Burdon at the Scottish Storytelling Centre – has a friendly and inclusive feel that at times belies the bite of its content.
As the Crow Flies
★★★★☆ Ground-breaking:
Anarchic, clever and hinting of ritual, Greg Sinclair’s experiment with the theatrical performance of improvised live music with young people, As the Crow Flies, is a strangely calming experience.
Indie as F*ck
✭✭✭✭✩ Swear it’s good:
Pinched! Theatre’s story of a teenage indie band’s dissolution seeks to combine comedy, theatre and indie rock, and does so with great success.
That Deadly Noir Magic
✭✭✭✩✩ More deadly than magic:
Dani Iannarelli’s love letter to film noir and jazz combines film clips, music and a noirish plot. The outcome is too confused to be a success, although parts of the performance are very enjoyable indeed.
A Requiem For Edward Snowden
✭✭✭✩✩ Mourning becomes electronica:
A Requiem For Edward Snowden, the ‘digital opera’ at Stockbridge Church, has an eerie contemporaneity, treating political concerns in a way that speaks more of sorrow than of anger.
Review – Susan Boyle
The temperature in the Festival Theatre was sky high and climbing in anticipation of Susan Boyle’s appearance – at last – in her own show on her home turf. The pre-show buzz was completely off the scale.
