Tom Ralphs
No Place Called Home
★★★☆☆ Climate crisis drama
Whilst the production team and cast of No Place Called Home are predominantly students, ThirdCulture Productions are not a student led company. At a time when cuts to arts funding in Scotland are making the news again, it’s refreshing to see current and former students committing their immediate future to Edinburgh.
Eleanor
★★★★★ Historical insight
For every figure whose name echoes throughout history there are the descendants destined to spend their lives living in the shadow of their ancestors.
The Ruffian on the Stair
★★☆☆☆ Falls short
For the second of their Fringe productions, EGTG revive The Ruffian on the Stair, a little-known Joe Orton play, sixty years after it debuted as a BBC radio play.
It’s a Sheet Show
★★★★☆ Strong debut
It’s a Sheet Show, Fools and Thieves Fringe debut in a coproduction with The Counterminers, is set in and around a bed. However, there’s nothing tired about the play – or the production – as a series of short scenes track a relationship from its early moments to its demise in a little over fifty minutes.
The Drifters’ Girl
★★★☆☆ Stories still unsung
The Drifters Girl, at the Playhouse this week as part of a UK tour, provides plenty of Drifters hits, hung around the story of Faye Treadwell, who managed the group up until 2001.
Escaped Alone
★★★★☆ Environmental dystopia
Following its Scottish premiere at The Tron earlier this month Escaped Alone, Caryl Churchill’s dystopian play that had its UK premiere at the Royal Court in 2016, comes to the Traverse for five performances only.
Boris and Sergey’s Christmas Cabaret
★★☆☆☆ Puppets unstrung
Thirteen years on from their first production, the multi-talented Flabbergast Theatre are reviving their most successful and enduring creations, Balkan bad boys Boris and Sergey, for a show billed as their ‘very unique take on A Christmas Carol’ at Assembly Roxy.
Ghosts of North Leith
★★★★☆ A haunting tale
Following a trial reading at Leith Festival earlier this year, the Ghosts of North Leith have been brought home in Citadel Arts Group’s production, which returns them to the church near by the cemetery where they are buried.
FLIP!
★★★★★ Flipping Fantastic
Racheal Ofori’s FLIP! – at Summerhall to Saturday – combines comedy with social commentary in a play which successfully brings the breathless charge of social media to the stage.
In Loving Memory of Mary Mort
★★☆☆☆ Semi-formed surrealism
Taking over the vast space that is Greenside’s Emerald Theatre and filling it with nothing in the way of a set is one of the many unusual things about In Loving Memory of Mary Mort from Cod Liver Theatre.
