Shakespeare
& Juliet
★★★★☆ No woe
There’s no woe to this story of Juliet without her Romeo, as Shakespeare’s most famous heroine gets solo billing in the girl power musical & Juliet which hits the Playhouse this week.
After Shakespeare: Richard III
★★☆☆☆ Flat
Billed as a staunch defence of a man maligned by Shakespeare and history alike, After Shakespeare: Richard III from Slade Wolfe Enterprises Limited succeeds only in making a rather boring play out of what was an extraordinary life.
Shakespeare for Breakfast
★★★★☆ Feelgood start
This is the 32nd year that C Theatre has staged Shakespeare for Breakfast at the Fringe with its offer of early morning coffee, croissant and an irreverent hit of the bard.
Regina Vagina
★★★★★ Smash
Hosted by William “Shakey” Shakespeare Regina Vagina, a new historical comedy musical from Erstwhile Media, takes a satirical romp through the life of Elizabeth I, famously known as the Virgin Queen, and asks the all-important questions: But did she?
At Home With Will Shakespeare
★★★★★ Sans nothing
It’s a popular image of Shakespeare: the great Bard, bent over his desk, quill flying over parchment as he composes some of the greatest drama ever put on the stage. But in At Home With Will Shakespeare, Pip Utton’s Shakespeare does not write freely…
Panto Macbeth
★★★★★ Perfectly absurd
It’s panto. It’s Macbeth. It’s Panto Macbeth. What more do you want? The Mermaids Performing Arts Fund of St. Andrews University hurl a fifty-minute pantomime version of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth onto the Fringe stage, like a vulgar No-Fear Shakespeare crossed with traditional panto bits.
Sam Blythe: Method in my Madness
★★★☆☆ Unresolved
A disyllabic clown with a trunk of tricks puts on a red nose and transforms into Hamlet, Prince of Denmark— or perhaps he was Hamlet all along? Sam Blythe: Method in my Madness is an experimental one-man Hamlet that ultimately creates more questions than it answers.
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.
Malvolio’s Fantasy
★★★☆☆ Tentative
Zuzabella Productions’ Malvolio’s Fantasy at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall is an adaptation of Shakespeare that is at its best when it is furthest from its source.
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.
