Coffee-Table Notes

Scottish Storytelling Centre Four stars    Meet Bonnie. Bonnie’s the Scottish lassie in the tracky top who’s just slunk on stage to say hi - well, awright, actually - and looks like she’s got something else to say besides. Over the next 75 minutes of Fraser Scott’s solo play, Bonnie tells all  about who she is and where she comes from. More importantly, she says it in her own accent. It’s the one she learnt growing up with her Papa, and it’s the one the posh kids laugh at and the Americans treat as a novelty. As she learns along the way, however, it is the only voice she’s got, and  if you’ve got it, flaunt it.   As brought to life by a magnificent Olivia Caw, Bonnie is a whirlwind of working class Scottish self-determination. In-between learning about what words are worth on bookshelves in other places at university, Bonnie gives the audience a few lessons in the power of saying some of the choicest words with a Scots accent, and how their meanings can change a...

Summerhall Four stars    In a world full of heroes, sometimes it is the forgotten ones who are worth unearthing most of all. So it goes with Matthew Webb, the Shropshire born Victorian seaman who became the first man to swim the English Channel. Adam Riches here takes a deep dive into Webb’s life as seen through the eyes of Webb’s trainer and swimming champion, Fred Beckwith.    With the shrouded body of Webb sitting centre stage, Beckwith gives what is effectively an extended eulogy to his former charge, with the audience mourners at his wake. In Riches' rendition, this becomes a legendary yarn of such largesse as to elevate him to the sort of grand old man of the sea who might occupy a story by Herman Melville.    Riches has channeled a tale of rivalry and failure, and of one man’s sheer determination in the face of public ridicule to achieve what was once thought impossible, or else die trying. This is offset by a comic swagger from Riches, who gets...

Zoo Southside Four stars    Don’t be fooled by the naked roller-skating that opens Sh!t Theatre’s latest rad-fem riot of a show. Beyond the untethered Starlight Express tribute of this freewheeling prologue, the harmonious duo of Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole who make up what is more a way of life than a theatre company serve up what is likely to be one of the most incisive political histories to grace the Edinburgh stage this month. Given the duo's own recent back story which they lay bare, the show also becomes a more personal look at what it takes for women like them to make history.   In just 75 minutes, Biscuit and Mothersole channel comedy, showtunes and obsessive fan-girl research as they go down the rabbit hole to unearth one of the lesser known, but briefly most powerful women in the world. No, not Eva Peron, the ever so slightly reimagined heroine of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s best musical, but the next Mrs Peron, Isabella.    As Sh!t T...

Pleasance Courtyard Four stars    Life’s a riot for Kelly, the messed up human dynamo at the heart of Kimberly Hart-Simpson’s emotional rollercoaster of a play which she performs herself over a breathless hour. Kelly is a nurse in a dementia home in not so sunny Rhyl, North Wales’ end of the pier holiday Mecca. The town may stink of fried onions and cheap cocktails, but for Kelly it remains a personal pleasure palace she devours like a stick of rock.    With a Tom Jones impersonator mum - her absent dad was also one, proving it’s not unusual to have such a job in Rhyl - and a selection of eccentric residents to tend to, Kelly’s life runs louder, faster and harder by the minute. When her gay best friend Amrit moves in with his new beau now he and Kelly are back from Ibiza, the duo’s disco dance diva partnership appears to be over as Kelly’s good times take a sour turn. Only life changing news of her own suggests she too might be ready to grow up and settle d...

Pleasance Courtyard Four stars    There’s a ghost in Dylan Howell’s house in this excavation of psychic history and the tricks memory can play on us to avoid the damage the past might have done. With the audience’s help, Howells is going to exorcise the bad spirits forever. On a mini building site of a set, the performer and designer proceeds to do just that in a charming and extremely clever mix of memoir, magic and a bag of shock-horror tricks more used to being applied to large scale hammy horror yarns than something so intimate.    It begins when Dylan was ten, and he was about to move into a run down cottage in an isolated village with his dad. His Dad renovates the cottage as they go, with the bathroom being in a particularly dilapidated state. Befriended by a weird kid from next door called Connor, Dylan first notices the bumps in the night when preparing for bed as all hell breaks loose beyond the paintwork, behind the shower curtain and in the mirror. When i...

Assembly Rooms Four stars   God probably isn't the answer for at least one prisoner in this electrifying new play by American writer Lev Steinberg, who at just seventeen makes a ferocious debut. Exactly what the question is remains a mystery to the four strangers thrown together in a cage after being kidnapped. None of them know why they were taken away seemingly without cause or who each other is, but with their lives on the line, conflict between them is inevitable.    Given America’s current state of play one might think Steinberg’s set-up relates to the fallout of some of the country’s more brutal invasions of civil liberties. As it is, things take a less obvious turn, as the four captives are told by those watching them that they have just 44 minutes to decide which of them is to be sacrificed for some higher cause.    As an LED clock counts down the seconds, just what that cause is exactly isn’t clear to any of them, alas, as they try to make sense of...

Summerhall Three stars   When Oscar and Ela go on a drunken bender with their pals Syd and Quinn, what starts out as a mixture of sparring and flirting in Emmeline Hartley and Jack Mullings’ new play ends up as a full on night of… well, what exactly was it? The awkward morning after the night before doesn’t provide any easy answers. Only when Oscar and Ela get trapped in a lift together do they try and work out not only what did or didn’t happen, but what should, and more significantly what very much shouldn’t have.    Hartley and Mullings navigate the post MeToo age with an incisive cut and thrust between Oscar and Ella. This has clearly been born from a lot of late night discussions that have been fed into Hartley and Mullings’ collaboration.    Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s busy production starts out resembling some hedonistic shagfest before developing to highlight an infinitely more serious study of responsibility and accountability in one night sexual encounter...

Assembly Roxy  Three stars   Death can do funny things to people in terms of how loved ones left behind react to the grieving process. For the young woman at the heart of Emery Schaffer’s new play, her response to the demise of her seemingly loving husband Jake is to buy a tatty old bear suit which she inhabits like a second skin. As she becomes BearGirl, the woman rewinds on her and Jake’s life together, from her inglorious career as his student to them ending up together and the fallout from his loss.   For all the suit’s discomfort, it becomes a kind of unwashed security blanket to cling to, as one might wear a former lover’s left behind sweater or jacket. As BearGirl embarks on her new life alone, her recent past with Jake is brought home by a series of flashbacks, as well as various present day encounters, including one with a Dolly Parton themed fortune-teller.    BearGirl’s assorted foils are all played by Jimmy Kavanagh in Kate Stamoulis’ production for ...

Assembly Roxy Four stars   Old Krapp looks like he’s been waiting some time to have a rummage through the acquired detritus that passes as his archive in this new look at Samuel Beckett’s 1958 solo play. Originally written for Irish actor Patrick Magee, the play has survived into the twenty-first century despite technological advances that make Krapp’s endless spools look like something left over from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.    Performed here in actress Stockard Channing’s production by David Westhead, it begins with a silence worthy of John Cage before Westhead begins the elaborate business of unlocking his desk and unpeeling a banana. This becomes a mini performance by itself in a routine perfected long before Andy Warhol started unzipping the abstract.    As Krapp finally turns to the meticulously catalogued recorded accounts of his past, the interplay between recorded and live voices, the noises off and the sound of silence see the old boy rewind on wh...

Traverse Theatre Four stars    ‘We are living in complicated times’ is a phrase that inevitably pops up in Jenny Lyn Bader’s dramatic speculation on what might have gone on in a prison cell in 1933 Germany. The real life occupant is the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who finds herself arrested with her mother by the Gestapo and imprisoned for eight days after being accused of copying seemingly seditious literature in the library where she spent her days.     Hannah is arresting officer Karl’s first catch since he was promoted from the criminal police to the political police, and is keen to show who is boss. He may be out of his depth intellectually, but he’s not stupid enough to realise Hannah is being fitted up. With Hannah also receiving a visit from lawyer Erich, in a world where peaceful protest is a crime and certain library books are verboten, she has clearly become a marked woman.    Ari Laura Kreith’s production is an intense affair pla...

Gilded Balloon Four stars   One would never guess what the jolly old Austrian man sat at his desk for the final time who just invited us to pay witness to his work has been through in Tom Dugan’s solo play. In Christopher C. Gibbs’ avuncular portrayal of charming but obsessive real life Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, however, Dugan’s script presents a man as far removed from the idea of a hardcore vigilante as you can get.    Directed by Mark Liebert, Dugan’s set up gives us a close up of a man whose laborious and methodical tenacity forced surviving Nazis who took an active part in the Holocaust out of hiding and put them in the dock. What emerges out of a play first seen in 2009 is not just a plea for humanity in the face of atrocity, it is a depiction of the humanity that is possible beyond that as a direct result of Wiesenthal’s actions.   Gibbs brings all his experience to bear here in his portrayal of a man who on the one hand was a survivor of Nazi concent...

Gilded Balloon Three stars    Meat is murder - almost - in  Ruaraidh Murray’s latest trawl through Edinburgh’s off-grid underbelly (no, not that one) in a scurrilous pre Christmas yarn. This involves dodgy goings on in and around one of auld Reekie’s finest New Town butchers, where the choicest cuts are up for grabs. This is especially the case where the extended family led by Archie, his long suffering wife Karen and their son Thomas are concerned.    Michael Nardone’s lo-fi production begins with an actual stake out as the trio scope out the legendary Smedley’s butcher’s shop, purveyors of quality meat products for quality people. As played by Murray, Reanne Farley and Sean Langtree, the trio case the joint with a potty mouthed banter that initially at least suggests an after hours sitcom in the making. The scene where all are trapped on the wrong side of a giant freezer trying to get out is priceless, and it is in set-piece routines like this w...

Browns of Leith Five stars    Where do lost boys go to die? The cool kids who have read Andrew O’Hagan’s novel will already be in the know before they step into the converted Leith warehouse space where Edinburgh site specific auteurs Grid Iron’s big new stage version takes place.    For those who don’t know the story, it revolves around the life long bromance between Tully and Jimmy, aka Noodles, two small town Ayrshire boys with ideas above their station weaned on books, records and films. In the post punk eighties of Thatcher’s Britain, these things were both education and lifeline.    The first half of the show sees our likely lads embark on a great adventure over one glorious lost weekend in Manchester seeing the Smiths, New Order and The Fall at the Festival of the Tenth Summer. This was the celebration of the city’s music scene a decade after it was ignited by the Sex Pistols’ incendiary appearance at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. A few decade...

Shedinburgh was one of the most striking artistic initiatives of the pandemic. With live events closed down along with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in its entirety in 2020, throughout August of that year, its online pop-up programme provided a lifeline for a world that had been forced to shut up shop.   Initiated by Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producer Francesca Moody with Harriet Bolwell and writer / performer Gary McNair, Shedinburgh live-streamed 25 performances from two sheds set up in the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and London’s Soho Theatre, reaching over 5000 people worldwide.   As the world slowly reopened, 2021 saw Shedinburgh offer up a mixed Edinburgh programme of live and digital presentations. It was 2025, however, when the venue came into its own as a full on live programme showcasing thirty-six shows by more than 100 artists.   With Francesca Moody Productions at the helm, this year sees Shedinburgh bursting at the seams with some 150 performances of new wor...

Pleasance Dome Four stars   Take three women. This is what the late Arnold Wesker did back in 1981 when he pieced together a quartet of monologues spoken by a trio of independent women of very different stripes and gave voice to their stories.    Forty-five years ago actress Nichola McAuliffe took Wesker’s compendium of monologues  to London’s West End, morphing into all three characters. Now she revisits Wesker’s indomitable trio for an anniversary production that updates things for a very different twenty-first century in this new production that transfers to London’s Finborough Theatre following its Edinburgh dates.    The changes are most notable with Anna, the working class student about to go on a date, and who these days carries a TK Maxx bag, shops from Amazon and conducts her insecure affairs via social media on her mobile.   Next up are two very different sides of Annabelle Wharton, initially a nicely spoken middle class novelist with 19...

Traverse Theatre Four stars    When Andy meets Joe while out busking, the creative bond between them is there from the start in Cora Bisset’s mini musical. Andy is a down on his luck singer/songwriter doing what he can to get by. Joe too has a love of music, but as a deaf person isn’t taken seriously by a music industry only interested in finding the next big thing. Out of this chance meeting, however, comes a brand new set of songs that may get Andy noticed, though where Joe fits into all this remains to be seen.   Based on a short film by Bissett and Jamie Rea, who plays Joe, this new venture is a collaboration between Dundee Rep and D/deaf theatre company, Solar Bear, in collaboration with Aberdeen Performing Arts. With KT Tunstall providing the songs, narration comes from Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Petre Dobre as a cartoon styled double act who also play a couple of music industry ghouls. They do this with a comic grotesquerie that gives things a fantastical air highlig...

Traverse Theatre Four stars   Matters of life and death are top of the bill in Morna Young’s new play, in which ageing actress Viv gathers her extended family around her for one last hurrah on her eightieth - and final - birthday before she takes her lastl curtain call. Her cross generational cast includes her old luv of an ex husband Bill, her grumpy son Geoff, God fearing daughter Lily, her newly pregnant granddaughter Sasha, and milksop grandson James, who comes with his rock star girlfriend Cass in tow. Then there is Carol, her partner who has already been part of the family in other ways.   Viv holds court in what looks and sounds like some latter day Chekhovian soap opera on Richard Kent’s grandiloquent looking set that includes the grandest of pianos, which someone eventually plays. Everyone involved has their own drama to contend with as old resentments and new responsibilities see the family get caught up in the fallout of who gets what in the will. Not to be upstaged...

Gilded Balloon Patter House Four stars    Alexa and Thomas used to drive each other crazy, ever since they met on a blind date in that bar where they could barely hear each other over the music. Or was that another night? Wherever and whenever it was, seven years on they are stuck in traffic in Kathryn Mincer’s short play, with the perils of couples therapy the only thing to aim for to try and alleviate the boredom. What happens instead by way of being forced to share the same space whilst getting nowhere fast is a series of sense memories of crucial moments past that defined their relationship, both good or bad. Out of this comes a reminder of how they got here, and where they may or may not go next.   Following a brief run in Glasgow earlier in the year, Dominique Mabille’s production of Mincer’s play gets a second outing by way of this Fringe run that once again showcases the talents of those behind the play over its forty-five minute duration. Mincer’s set o...

Traverse Theatre Four stars   The cult of Bryony Kimmings has long provoked a serious fan base to rise up and champion her candid fusion of live art and autobiographical theatre. In other hands such a genre fluid description might make for the sort of indulgence that would cause audiences to either flee or else squirm in the face of such warts and all soul baring.  As it is, Kimmings’ true life confessionals over the last decade or so have been funny, moving, painfully honest, and perhaps most importantly, beautifully crafted works of art.    Kimmings’ return to the live arena is no exception with her new show, in which she relates the story of how her former misadventures prompted her to move to the country. While this was ostensibly to get her head together as has been the way with mercurial entertainers such as her since time immemorial, what emerges from the move is an unexpected affinity with this new way of life. What comes next, however, provokes a very person...

The Studio Four stars   When the sound of a gun going off pierces the air in this remarkable new interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s moving treatise on life, love and art, however expected it might be, the noise it makes comes as something of a shock. Up until that point, and for all but a few seconds of what follows, not a word has been said out loud, although communication between the eight-strong ensemble on stage has been as impassioned as the play demands.   For ninety-nine per cent of  Stijn Van Opstal’s production for the Antwerp based Olympique Dramatique, the actors have been talking using Flemish sign language, while translations of what they are saying appears on increasingly playful surtitles. With the audience sat either side of a gloriously ramshackle makeshift stage by designer Damiaan De Schrijver with Van Opstal, the exchanges between Yana Wuytjens’ would-be writer and his equally would-be lover Nina, played by Yousra Boukantar, become those of adolescents ...