Rebecca Mahar
Antonio’s Revenge
★★☆☆☆ Unfathomable
Antonio’s Revenge is a definite oddity, not made any less strange by its staging by Edinburgh/New Zealand company Half Trick Theatre at C alto on even dates of the Fringe only.
Hamstrung
★★★★☆ Method in’t
“A fellow of infinite jest,” is how Shakespeare introduced deceased court jester Yorick, but the Yorick of George Rennie’s Hamstrung is a being as existential as the appearance of his skull at a pivotal moment in Hamlet’s crisis deserves.
Divided
★★★★☆ Delicate
In Divided, Kate Macsween and Michael Reddington play the parents of recently transitioned Saul, in this (mostly) two-hander about family, gender, and the deeper commitments behind unconditional love.
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.
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.
