Genre: Fringe Theatre
Review: My Father Held A Gun
"A passionate, storytelling show with live cinematic music about war and peace, acts of heroism, and the love for life."
Review: Blue Sky Thinking
Many arts-driven people forced into the corporate world might well see this play answers their condition like few others.
Review: Whaddya Know – We’re In Love!
There’s first-class musical entertainment here, crouched under the disguise of a schoolboy plot. Irresistible.
Review: When the Wind Blows
BLT have produced in less than two weeks two outstandingly fine full-length productions. This latest offering confirms this theatre’s confidence in producing stark contrasts: an unfashionable yet horribly topical drop of silence into a bustling city.
Review: One Woman Alien
I can predict that by the end of its run, this should be the most outstanding one-person show you’ll see in the last week.
Review: The Odditorium Tribute to Ken Campbell
of you and won’t let go. Most theatre makers of whatever stripe are pretty clear Ken’s a game changer.
Review: Under The Skin
An uninvited journalist knocks on the door of a Holocaust survivor, for an unexpected interview.
Review: Waiting For Curry
Susanne Crosby’s Waiting for is a four-hander with a social reckoning, and very unexpected plot point. The audience was packed. There’s a quietly sad magic to this low-key play; people recognize themselves in it. It speaks.
Review: Pigspurt’s Daughter
Guardian obituary, 2008. ‘Ken Campbell was one of the most original and unclassifiable talents in British theatre of the past half-century.’ It just happens that his daughter Daisy is both that and far more. She’s one of the most cunning crafters of comedy and storytelling in the anti-business
Review: The Sorrowful Tale of Sleeping Sidney
This is a gem of many colours. Do see it. The miraculous construction’s matched by Jordan’s storytelling and sense of dark mischief. In Jordan’s hands it’s a re-possession of lost innocence by a strange sleight of a knowing child.
Review: The Jurassic Parks
A masterclass in storytelling using physical theatre, puppetry, song and dance, and audience interaction
Review: Metamorphosis
If you decide on one storytelling piece of theatre in this half of the Fringe, I doubt you’ll do better than experience this.
Review: Three Sisters
Poignantly well balanced exploration of the themes of a Chekhovian classic by a disabled company perfectly able to produce quality theatre
Review: The Engagement
James Allen’s new version of The Engagement proves one of the absolute highlights of 2018’s Hove Grown Play Festival.
Review: Large Trash Print
This very fine 2007 work by Jonathan Brown strikes a blow for tolerance and inclusivity now as it did a decade ago. Brown’s superlative writing and acting is ridiculously confined to this city.
Review: Old Boy
Entrancing, delightful and honest portrayal of manly relationships and their value in a world where cynicism holds sway.
Review: In Memory of Leaves
On a moored barge Natasha Langridge re-enacts her own In Memory of Leaves updated from a run last year to include this year’s tumultuous events. This is a fine, necessary work inevitably in progress. Let it settle in the water a bit more, and glitter.
Review: Cosmic Scallies
A two hander that effectively and sensitively explores the nature of childhood friendships when one of those friends may not suit the expected norms
Review: Tinder Tales
Social Media stories well told episodically as a warning and celebration of liberation
Review: Half Breed
An astounding solo performance that covers all sorts of prejudice and leaves you the better for it
Review: Cult – Ure
A fascinating tale that has a beginning, an end like its beginning and an intriguing middle
Review: Mengele
A terrifying confrontation, set on a beach in Brazil in 1979, but really in all of our memories of a time that seems to be closer than we think.
Review: F*ck Boys for Freedom
Late night comedy that saws the knuckle off rather than comes near it.
Review: Out of the Bad
A touching tale of the morning after the night before, commemorating 103 days of yesteryear that thankfully avoids nostalgia but still make us think of the past
Review: Shell Shock
And astounding performance in both a measured and frantic performance that brings PTSD from Tommy's living room into your conscience.
Review: The Edelweiss Pirates
A very theatrical and competent account of a highly brave movement in counter activities to the Hitler Youth that ended tragically for some of their number.
Review: Chips and Cheese
A popular Glaswegian snack turns into a funny comic journey round yer nan and yer papa meeting yer English boyfreend.
Review: Fred and Rose
A powerful look at how the two of the most infamous Gloucester residents almost evaded capture.
Review: The Last Queen of Scotland
A largely one woman show that manages to effectively tell the tale of how the Ugandan Asians, thrown out of their country ended up in the UK through the eyes of one of the children who came across and ended up in Dundee, like…
Review: Whore: A Kid’sPlay
An episodic trip through what your mom is from the perspective of children and young people who find adulthood a scary place.
Review: Mia: Daughters of Fortune
A poignant and heart wrenching indictment of “caring” for, rather than with, the learning disabled who wish to be parents
Review: Out of Love
An exceptionally well structured tale of friendship and love between friends which is tested constantly
Review: The Tale of the Cockatrice
A superior piece of children’s theatre that tells an ancient tale with plenty of new tricks.
Review: Hide
An enthusiastic and youthful rendering of a dystopian future which is challenged by rebellion.
Review: Atlas
A dramatic and engaging trip back to the 17th Century when four thinkers thought outside of a box and changed philosophy and science forever.
Review: Performers
A black comedic dramatic trip back to the 60’s where films were made and sex was cheap with a couple of gangsters who are just a pony short of the full shilling.
Review: Sink
A highly effective retelling of the loss of arguably China’s greatest 20th Century writer thanks to the persecution he suffered at the hands of his own government.
Review: Wall
An enthusiastic musical which promises to view the world from an alt left American perspective given current world posturing
Review: Jason and the Argonauts
An impressive modern take on the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece with contemporary power and focus.
Review: Meeting at 33
An immersive meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with truth, dignity and power in the performance
Review: North Haven
A stark look at the values of empathy deficit dramatically told with the fleeing child from one form of oppression into the world of another before she escapes to where? We can but imagine.
Review: Happier or Better
One woman goes to find herself in a dramatic journey that takes us from waking up physically to waking up emotionally.
Review: Silent
A mesmeric and enthralling 90 minutes in the company of the dignified dispossessed, given voice in a solo performance of majesty, poise and grace.
Review: The Blue Door
A look behind the door, blue, of life in a facility for mentally ill young people.
Review: The Effect
A superb way to get to know a superb play. It’s difficult to conclude anything but a kind of dopamine’s got into BLT recently; perhaps we absorb it there too. Everything they touch is enhanced, there’s a uniform excellence of cast and production here that’d look perfectly in situ in any off-West End theatre.
Review: Blink
This is the most affecting bittersweet piece of theatre seen at the Fringe for a while and a masterly play. That Hall and Lacey invest it with such pathos humour and delicacy whilst working to pinpoint direction is equally winning, equally devastating and makes you dream sequels. It’s a must-see.
Review: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton
Fox and Hound Theatre Company’s trio of Tennessee Williams are a must-see. Not just because they premiere the 1981 Ivan’s Widow adding the 1953 Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen but the gem: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton from 1946. already famed for a Edinburgh Fringe sell-out. A superb piece superbly played.
Review: Bethnal Green
A harrowing recount of terrible tragedy on 3rd March 1943, when 173 men, women, and children were crushed to death on an East End air raid shelter.
Review: Trainspotting
Startling immersive stage production of the classic film; Fast, furious, stomach churning, shocking and gritty.
Review: How to Walk Through Hell
When an author entitles her experiences in How to Walk Through Hell as based on her own, you might wonder if we’re close to stories of abuse and terror. Yes, the abuse is a virus. Lyme disease. The acting of both Sam Wright and Kizzie Kay is exemplary, some of the finest naturalistic acting seen on the Fringe this year, indeed consummately professional.
Review: The Elephant Girls
It’s history, so believe it. For over a century an all-woman gang marauded London from Elephant and Castle. Margo MacDonald’s explosive one-woman play which she both wrote and acts in, asks what you might expect in a series of evenings with Maggie Hale, an amalgam of two Maggie Hs, in 1937. MacDonald’s riveting throughout, rasping her laments, lusts and long views to the dogged interlocutor. A superb performance of a remarkable play and subject, whatever its provenance.
Review: The Missing Special
It’s all in the maths obsession. Think Nick Payne’s Constellations with a tighter focus on one event and its outfall and rewind. It’s a clever but also heartening play, which also asks what time does to two individuals who dream of the one direction but wake up without interpreting each others’ dreams, or finding when they do they’re different. And what to do.
Review: Bug Camp
Paul Macauley’s garnered outstanding praise and Bug Camp adds to his reputation. All four cast give exemplary performances though Douetil and Spencer hit a top register of something teetering on tragedy, laughing over an abyss.
Review: Blocked
It’s as if Billie Piper’s Yerma does stand-up. Caroline Byrne’s Blocked reveals a writer whose images stamp a scream-out-loud theatre drawn into an arc of devastation. Curnick inhabits a performer’s meltdown from a technique and emotional agency as strong as… a recording black box. Why? Find out. Superb theatre.
Review: Blooming
It’s not a sequel to Patrick Sanford’s award-winning Groomed. Blooming’s an outstanding work still developing, but judging by Sandford’s original deployment of images and the interaction between performers, it’s becoming a definitive statement. There’s much to discover, especially for many at the Q&A. If you care for the human condition, you must see this.
Review: The Cocktail Pianist
The Cocktail Pianist is ultimately radiant with self-knowledge. Hatchard is a phenomenally gifted pianist even on an electric keyboard. His touch, mercurial dispatch are not of the medley kind. A first rate show with enduring things to say, it’s also a comment on how we treat our gifts and they us.
Review: When Love Grows Old
Could this be the pilot to a melancholically-observed sitcom like Vicious? One audience member suggested it. Whilst The Romance of the Century is beautifully observed and deftly revivifies a much-fictioned historical turning-point, The Weatherman is outstanding comedy, as are the performances.
Review: Richard III
This is an outstanding distillation of an exceptionally prolix if often brilliant early Shakespeare history drama. It could not really be executed more compellingly.
Review: Model Organisms
Donkin’s artistry as writer isn’t in doubt, and Newton-Mountney’s performance is compelling. This is eminently worth seeing especially if you like dystopian narratives of the possible near-present. The story’s complete, but this journey’s just begun.
Review: The Forecast
The Forecast is an unforgettable experience on many levels - a horrifying, yet ultimately hopeful story about a future that is already pulling into the driveway
Review: Fall of Duty
Not so much another First War narrative but a parallel rediscovery of singalong music, song and dance, stars and tears in their eyes. Tightness of video, the engagement of audience and extremely well-counterpointed denouement makes this a memorable show. And did I mention the Childs can sing?
Review: Protect and Survive
Imagine it’s three minutes to midnight before a nuclear winter. And that’s slipped on January 26th this year to two-and-a-half. Jonathan Williamson’s created a laconic take on the old 1970s-80s nuclear holocaust warnings.
Review: Blindfold: The Night of the Hunt
Four actors led by writer/director Sofia Stavrakaki enact what’s clearly a prison of a circus, people forced to perform a ritual of trouping for the delectation of a whip-cracking elite. A summary hardly does justice to the atmosphere this production evokes or the meta-language burning through the glares of hallucinated prey. You’ll know whether it’s for you if you like Beckett or European theatre
Review: Eglantyne
What’s in this name? Eglantyne means a prickly rose and smells by any name bittersweet. Founder of Save the Children who burned herself out in its service. This is enlightening and moving in equal measure, not only rendering a great service, but asking after Eglantyne Jebb’s breath-taking leaps of empathy, how far we’ve come since.
Review: Pals
It’s not been done like this before. This play fully deserves its accolades. Though we associate the First War Pals Battalions with the north (the Accrington for instance) this show localises it to every community it tours.
Review: According to Angelica
‘It’s about this nurse.’ Angelica, former nurse to the Capulets sets out her moonlight vegetables quite literally. The essential point is that’s it a fascinating take, and a compelling story.
Review: Tina C’s President -C
Witty, wonderful and warming politics meets drag queen meets country singer...in a tent on an intersection.
Review: Mobile
Fringe theatre at its best. A unique intimate experience with outstanding production values.
Review: Waiting For Curry
Susanne Crosby’s Waiting for Curry – a title suggested by friends as they indeed waited for a takeaway – is a four-hander with a social reckoning, a denouement, and a very unexpected plot point. An excellent play and cast needing wider circulation; the audience was packed.
