by guest critic Tom Brocklehurst
This show does what it says on the tin.
We spend an hour in the company of Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed, who plays some of his songs, and talks through some of the things he finds troubling about modern life. In this respect, the show is more like a performance poet set – John Hegley meets Professor Branestawn.
Eggs Collective are after the #bestnighteva with this joyful show modelled on the great British night out. Gold sequinned dresses, blue eyeshadow, and WKD by the bucketload are vital ingredients of this playful tribute to one of this country’s most venerated institutions.
Marnie’s a 22-year-old single mum from Bermondsey and every day is a fight at the moment. Her mum’s harbouring Marnie’s abusive ex, the guy she’s in love with has a new bird who’s using the legal system to keep them apart and her daughter’s dad isn’t around. Marnie currently lives in a woman’s refuge and the shadow of social services is hanging over her.
Things that are good about Lists for the End of the World
1. It’s funny, sad and moving all at once
2. Though the concept is simple, it’s structurally dynamic
3. It makes you laugh and think at the same time
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Actor and writer Milly Thomas is an unstoppable force refusing to shy away from tough material. A First World Problem, her most recent play, lays bare the cruel adolescent world of a top girls’ private school. Her two shows at the fringe are stylistically different from each other, but both are similarly confrontational. Brutal Cessation forces the audience to examine the gender stereotypes within an abusive, cishet relationship and Dust, the significantly stronger of the two works, is a monologue on mental health and suicide.
A woman falls asleep in front of the telly waiting for her teenaged son to come home. Instead, the police knocking on her door wake her up at 3 am. Her son’s fine, but he’s done something so horrendous she refuses disclose it.
by guest critic Maeve Campbell
Landing onstage in glitzy hazmat suits, Soho Theatre veterans Gourgeois Bourgeois (George Heyworth) and Maurice Maurice (Liv Morris) struggle to start their set. Thank goodness that global warming is just a myth and skins are shed to reveal ridiculous nude allusion onesies. This opening visual gag is a good sign of things to come as Bourgeois and Maurice, reflecting on their impressive ten-year enterprise, are a hoot from start to finish in this seventy-five- minute show.
Mowgli, a ferocious boy-child raised by wolves in the jungle, has been kicked out of the pack. He’s trying to figure out what to do next when he meets a mysterious creature from another world – or rather, another story. Puck has been watching Mowgli with unusually keen interest, so the two might be able to help each other out.
by guest critic Rebecca JS Nice
Fall Out is one of very few solely tap shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Old Kent Road are a London-based company of hoofers whose vocabulary is developed out of improvisation in response to a jazz accompaniment. The results mean the dancers’ tap shoes become a percussive instrument that create a highly complex jazz melody over the top of their band. Rhythm tap is far more mathematic than the ballroom based jazz tap and musical theatre styles. These performers are musicians as well as dancers. Above all, they are super-cool.
To celebrate their tenth year of creating superb physical theatre, Theatre Ad Infinitum bring two of their early works back to the Fringe. Their one-man Odyssey, touring since 2009, and the 2011 non-speaking Translunar Paradise aren’t a return to form – because the company doesn’t have one. They pride themselves on not replicating style from one piece to the next, so every show is a unique blend of physical theatre and innovative storytelling.
These two productions, whilst with less prominent design elements than their more recent work, are just as different from each other as they are the other shows in the company’s repertoire. But similarly, they are phenomenal examples of physical theatre and storytelling structures.
The Play's The Thing UK 