Review: Flat 2
The uses of sound throughout are incredibly effective, adding something different to the portrayal.
Genre: New Writing 0
Review: Son of a Bitch
Captured by social media at the worst moment in her life a mother’s frantic attempt to hold on to what matters most
Review: Freak Out!
A theatrical response to a serious issue of our time along with a dollop of end-of-the-pier entertainment.
Review: Ever Yours
Played by Alex Wanebo, Olivia is beautifully portrayed, her pain feeling tangible throughout.
Review: Or What’s Left of Us
Sh*t Theatre are lost and found through folk in a show that lingers like a loved refrain
Review: A Play by John
An absurd piece of drama which delivers and hints at more possibilities than can be imagined, or not.
Review: Beyond Krapp
A beautifully poised solo drama filled with caution for the dying and the hope that the living can still listen.
Review: Letters From My Dad (Who is Dead)
Youthful company’s dramatization of growing up in the shadow of a lost parent.
Review: Pillock
A searing performance funny and tragic in turns about loneliness and a quest for romantic love
Review: Gilbert and Sullivan’s Improbable New Musical….and Helen
Helen, the power behind the Gilbert and Sullivan throne?
Review: The Ghost of Alexander Blackwood
A dramatic and emotional account from a deaf company of a founding father of deaf language and culture in Edinburgh
Review: Weathergirl
Screwball comedy taking the fast car on the highway to climate change hell as California wildfires roar near
Review: MacPlebs
A chaotic, hilarious, and utterly daft and delightful comedy retelling of a classic.
Review: Playfight
A taut, well acted new play that does not hold back about emergent female sexual activity
Review: Half Man//Half Bull: Daedalus
Exhilarating and cathartic theater- if you can see only one thing this year- see Half Man//Half Bull.
Review: How I Learned to Swim
A poetic and witty soul searching solo show melding words and soundscape to frame a journey through grief.
Review: Half Man//Half Bull: Theseus
Exhilarating and cathartic theater- if you can see only one thing this year- see Half Man//Half Bull.
Review: Oran
Theatre as it ought to be – exciting, visceral, challenging and filled with entertainment.
Review: Because
And that's when we realise, this is the life of someone who hears voices or has intrusive thoughts.
Review: The Martyrs
any zeitgeisty theatre director should jump at the chance to produce this play fully staged.
Review: Read the F***ing Manual
Thought provoking theatre on the importance of taking care of yourself and others in a hostile world. The potential to be a play for our times.
Review: An Unexpected Hiccup
Absurdist knockabout comedy with sinister undertones showcasing local talent from established Edinburgh company Lung Ha
Review: I Am Not Black
This play must be seen. Look out for it and if if pops up anywhere near you. Make sure you catch it.
Review: My Mother’s Funeral: The Show
A powerful piece of sharp, witty and, at times painful, theatre
Review: Forked
A thought-provoking, captivating, and emotionally layered exploration of culture, laced with laughter and skilled caricature.
Review: The Years
This production reminds us it’s often the least theatrical, least tractable works that break boundaries, glow with an authority that changes the order of things.
Review: The Promise
Clare Burt’s Wilkinson, racking asthmatically across the play, is indelible, crowning the evening in an arc of sacrifice, Essential theatre-going, an education.
Review: After Sex
Deservedly hugely popular. With uber-smart dialogue, Dromgoole ensures that under the brittle wrap, there’s an ache and overriding desire for connection.
Review: The Hot Wing King
Hall, following Nottage in particular, emerges as one of the most exciting US dramatists.
Review: ECHO
Ultimately, the most telling line ”We are all immigrants across time” defines what remains an extraordinary experience
Review: Bindweed
Laura Hanna is outstanding in a play that ought to establish itself and playwright Martha Loader; and should enjoy a much longer run.
Review: Mnemonic
Mnemonic is treasurable, eloquent, a rare passport. It remembers what hope, connectedness and peace smelt like. It’s worth remembering that.
Review: The Constituent
This extremely fine play is even more prescient than Penhall and Warchus intended, with an earlier election. The Constituent though, will survive it till August.
Review: Surrender
The writing will snare you, Phoebe Ladenburg will hold you, and you’ll lean over the fourth wall.
Review: Crown of Straw
A hint, a soupcon, a mint, from a rehearsed reading o muckle glister tae follae.
Review: Some Demon
A superbly uncomfortable edge-of-seat revelation. Groundbreaking, it’s also definitive on something we often see far too dimly.
Review: Geneva Convention
As this gets quieter, it shouts more loudly. Exciting as this is, it will devastate when it finds its arc. This might ascend into something crucial.
Review: That Witch Helen
An absorbing retelling. Whatever Ridewood and Sibyl Theatre tackles next will be worth waiting for.
Review: Women’s Writes
We’ve been lucky to sit in on the first stage of a very promising conversation collaboration, and theatre piece.
Review: The Trials of Magnus Coffinkey
Of the 115 (mostly London) shows I’ve seen this year so far, it ranks as the most profound, and one of the very finest.
Review: Cold Water
Still in her twenties but vastly experienced, it’s going to be exciting to see where Lawford breaks out to next.
Review: The English Moor
Richard Brome’s 1637 The English Moor marks a new departure for Read Not Dead. You might say with this play it’s Read to be Dead.
Review: Sappho
A bit of theatrical democracy invoking pre-democracy crafts an exquisite irony for a rainy afternoon. Do see it.
Review: Kunstler
An outstanding production persuading us such a self-narrating show can enthral as well as inform. A hidden gem.
Review: Lived Fiction
Unique, spellbinding, groundbreaking; above all makes everyone more alive to the possibilities of being human.
Review: Six Characters In Search Of Pirandello
"There is someone in my life, and I know nothing about him" (Pirandello)
Review: Rock, Paper, Scissors
A joyous revival. Though working in TV production, Hayden’s writing is too good, too well-shaped not to develop in theatre instead.
Review: Dawn Again: A Rap Opera
Elliot has a problem: two girlfriends, both giving birth on the same day in the same hospital
Review: Magpie
This really has no place in the Brighton Fringe. Perhaps the Festival. What is a slice of the darkest Sean O’Casey doing at a 9pm slot? Outstanding.
Review: Laughing Boy
Stephen Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation.
Review: The Other Boleyn Girl
Mike Poulton’s text gleams and snaps. Lucy Bailey’s production of it thrills and occasionally overwhelms, dazzling in its maze of missteps. A must-see.
Review: The Pull of the Stars
World premiere of Emma Donoghue’s new play set in a maternity ward during the Spanish Flu pandemic in Dublin, directed by Louise Lowe.
Review: Boys on the Verge of Tears
It’s an exciting, fragile world Sam Grabiner’s promised us in the future.
