First published in The Times, Friday August 23 2019
Three Stars
Zoe Ní Riordáin’s solo show is one of those Fringe oddities that defy neat classification. From the moment the doors to Summerhall’s Demonstration Room open to reveal the performer wearing a gleaming spacesuit and bouncing on a trampoline, we know we’re in for something a little out of the ordinary.
First published in The Times, Thursday August 22 2019
Four Stars
Groupwork is a new Scottish theatre initiative led by the co-directors Finn den Hertog and Vicki Manderson, who collaborated on last year’s Fringe award-winner Square Go. On the basis of this unnerving, atmospheric dance-theatre piece, the company appears to have arrived fully formed.
First published in The Times, Wednesday August 21 2019
Four Stars
Cardboard Citizens has been making theatre for and about people with experience of homelessness for 25 years. Lately the company’s work has acquired an increased sense of urgency. In a poignant moment during this new show the cast passes around a list of the nearly 600 people who died on the streets or in temporary accommodation in England and Wales in 2017.
First published in The Times, Friday August 16 2019
Three Stars
At various points during Jonathan Caren’s new play (set at a bachelor party on the Colorado River) the simmering tension that the writer and his cast work hard to sustain threatens to boil over. The script even includes its own backwoods equivalent of Chekhov’s gun: a hunting rifle that gets waved around with intent, only to finally go off in the most apologetic of ways.
First published in The Times, Thursday August 15 2019
Four Stars
This ensemble piece from the National Youth Theatre, which addresses burning issues of social networking and misappropriation of data, began life as a workshop participated in by 30 members of the company. Its origins can be seen in the show’s freewheeling structure and multiple narrative threads, but the playwright Tatty Hennessy has done an admirable job of focusing these conversations and experiences into a chewy, compelling production.
First published in The Times, Wednesday August 14 2019
Two Stars
The fraught relationship between parents and their offspring has proved fruitful subject matter for many writers. This new play from the Wardrobe Ensemble is prefaced with a series of quotations on the theme of intergenerational dependency and conflict, ranging from Philip Larkin’s “They f*** you up, your mum and dad”, to Emily Dickinson’s far sunnier “Hold dear to your parents”.
First published in The Times, Saturday August 10 2019
Two Stars
Occam’s razor — the philosophical principle that the simplest explanation is the most likely — is increasingly going out of fashion. Conspiracy theories abound, fuelled by online communities and jet-propelled by a growing distrust of conventional news and a general sense that the world is going to hell in a handcart, steered by shadowy powers with sinister agendas.
First published in The Times, Friday August 9 2019
Three Stars
Chronicling 100 years of Turkish history in a single hour is a tall order. This multimedia piece created by Yesim Ozsoy packs enough material into its running time to fuel a dozen Fringe shows. If the premise is ambitious, the storytelling is unconventional. Ozsoy’s history lesson is delivered through the prism of an Istanbul mansion, with the writer-performer incarnating everything from furniture to ornaments to create a layered, multifaceted narrative.
First published in The Times, Wednesday August 7 2019
Three Stars
The demand for true crime has never been greater. Television schedules are saturated with documentaries based on real-life murder cases, from The Staircase to Making a Murderer, while blockbuster podcasts such as Serial and Dirty John have bequeathed the genre to an ardent younger audience.
First published in The Times, Saturday August 25 2018
Four Stars
We tend to associate adaptations of The Iliad with scale, visual riches, casts of thousands. As recently as 2016, Mark Thomson chose to mark the end of his tenure as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum with a lavish production of Homer’s epic, as reworked by Chris Hannan, the Scottish playwright.
