Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Assembly George Square, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List In detention with Mr Goodfellow, seven secondary-school pupils are forced – as if by magic – to perform A Midsummer Nig...

My Mess, Your Shit

According to a 2007 study, one in a hundred women in the UK suffers from a clinically diagnosed eating disorder. That’s the highest rate of ...

Review: Mies Julie, Assembly Hall, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Truly great productions of classic texts can reveal the play within the play. Who knew that beneath the staid formality...

Review: Boris and Sergey’s Vaudevillian Adventure, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Nothing covers cracks like cuteness. Boris and Sergey are two faceless leather bunraku puppets that look like reconstit...

Review: And They Played Shang-a-Lang, The Stand, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List If a semi-autobiographical jukebox musical about salad days in Scotland sounds grim -- and it should -- Derek Douglas’ ...

Review: Nothing is Really Difficult, Assembly George Square, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Theatergroep WAK know how to make an entrance. In a wooden box in George Square, a man pushes up a corner of the fl...

Review: Gulliver’s Travels, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival

Written for Culture Wars Gulliver’s Travels , the ultimate in grand tour gap years, becomes a carnival procession in the hands of revered Ro...

Review: How to Start a Riot, theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Mark Duggan’s death at the hands of the police sparked last summer’s riots: four days of violent disorder and looting a...

Review: Monkey Bars, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Written for Culture Wars Two park bench grumblers are moaning about the modern world. Today’s streets are so rife with crime, one says, that...

Review: Beats, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Technically speaking, Kieran Hurley’s Beats is illegal. In accordance with the Public Order Act’s ruling on raves,...

Review: Strong Arm, Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars At 14, Roland Poland – Roly-Poly to his classmates – weighed 20 stone. Not these days he doesn’t. Not after a first...

Review: Chapel Street, Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Insecurity rules, OK? Joe and Kirsty might look down their noses at a world full of “mingers” and dickheads, but be...

Review: Oh the Humanity and Other Emotions, Northern Stage at St Stephens, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Isn’t self-consciousness a ball-ache? It ups the ante, rather, as if all eyes are on you and you’re barely making sense...

Review: Songs of Lear, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Imagine King Lear in pill form, the Shakespearean equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum. Or con...

Review: Perle, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Perle shows a life on pause. A man sits in front of a television, feeding it one VHS tape after another. At first he s...

Review: Rainbow, Zoo Southside, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Playwright Emily Jenkins can’t resist a flourish. In Rainbow, three vaguely interlinked monologues, barely a noun goes ...

Review: Meine faire Dame: Ein Sprachlabor, Lowland Hall, Edinburgh International Festival

Written for Culture Wars When you actually think about it, Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical is pretty, well, fucked up. Based on George Berna...

Review: My Elevator Days, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List What do we leave behind in an ever-changing world? The old man in front of us will never get the 19 million Google resu...

Review: Waiting for Orestes: Electra, King’s Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival

Written for Culture Wars Slow, smooth and silent, bar the creaking stage underneath, five men in wheelchairs roll onstage and form a process...

Review: Tea Is An Evening Meal, Northern Stage at St Stephens, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Sat around a sturdy wooden kitchen table, we’re served tea by Faye Draper, who’s playing mum, as it were. There are...

Review: Thin Ice, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List What sets Thin Ice apart is not so much its narrative – a disjointed love triangle between academics in the Arctic Cir...

Review: 2008: Macbeth, Lowland Hall, Edinburgh International Festival

Written for Culture Wars Macbeth . The title of Shakespeare’s most pulse-racing play even sounds like a heartbeat, so how has TR Warszawa’s ...

Review: As of 1.52pm GMT on Friday April 27th 2012, This Show Has No Title, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Daniel Kitson has done it again. What that might mean, I’ve only a second-hand inkling. Despite eight consecutive F...

Review: Morning, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Simon Stephens’ plays often leave me bruised. The bash me about in my seat, peeling back my abdominals and going to...

Review: Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice, Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice sets its audience a puzzle. It is a triptych of short, almost entirely distinct ...

Review: The Price of Everything, St Stephens / Flâneurs, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars There is a curious three-way conversation at this year’s Fringe. In one corner is nihilism, a foreboding sense that...

Edinburgh Round Up: All That Is Wrong; Mess; NOLA; Coalition

Written for the New Statesman In Edinburgh, the how can sometimes overshadow the what. Fringe audiences are won over by artistry, more than ...

Review: Best in the World, Northern Stage at St Stephens, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Only the other day Usain Bolt declared himself the ‘greatest athlete to live’. Alex Elliott might take umbrage with tha...

Review: Machines for Living, Zoo Venues, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List ‘Writing about music,’ Frank Zappa famously said, ‘is like dancing about architecture.’ Well, there’s plenty of the lat...

Review: One Hour Only, Underbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Do you have to fake it to make in Britain today? That’s one conclusion to be taken from Sabrina Mahfouz’s savvy and...

Review: I ♥ Peterborough, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars Peterborough, for me – as, I guess, for a lot of people – is a train station. A bog-standard train station, in fact...

Review: Would Be Nice Though..., Pleasance off-site, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for Culture Wars The jobs market is in disarray, but it’s got nothing on this site-specific, interactive mess from Odd Comic. Set in...

Review: Hell’s Bells, Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Seventeen years after being dropped one series in by the BBC, Mrs Milliner is back on the television. Well, a televisio...

Review: Irreconcilable Differences, Gryphon Venues, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List A couple. A car crash. Who lives? You decide. In reality, Benjamin and Pollyanna are clinging to life from their adjace...

Review: Nggrfg, theSpace on the Mile, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Aged 16, Buddy aspires to grow up to become Canada’s Prime Minister. His teacher pooh-poohs the idea: ‘Because your bl ...

Review: The Prize, Underbelly Bristo Square, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Gold and silver are mere split seconds apart. Hair’s breadths. There’s just as little between Olympians and Paralympian...

Review: Blink, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List For 40 minutes, Blink tingles. Jonah and Sophie’s peculiar relationship tickles like a feather on a foot or champagne ...

Review: Mr Carmen, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Fringe

Written for The List Try as she might, Bizet’s Carmen can never throw off her determined suitor, Don José. Wherever she runs, he follows, un...