by Laura Kressly
About four and a half months since seeing last seeing live, in-person performance, I’m in a park 20 minutes away from my flat, about to watch a one-person, outdoor show. It feels slightly surreal given the times we live in, but Bard in the Yard embraces that, and truly lifts a mirror up to pandemic life today.
by Laura Kressly
Between Ben Yeoh and David Finnegan, there’s an impressive array of interests, knowledge and skills. Theatre, economics and climate change are among them. Their lecture-performance amalgamates these three topics into an engaging, informative and interactive presentation that gives a wide-angle view on what we can do to save the planet.
by Euan Vincent
This is Tim Crouch’s retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night through the eyes of the
blighted and picked-upon puritan, Malvolio. It’s the fourth time Crouch has written such an adaptation, which he hopes will “unlock Shakespeare for young audiences”.
by Bryony Rae Taylor
A Faustian farce, Get Fit With Bruce Willis stars Chris Brannick as Mike, an ageing Jimmy Somerville impersonator, on a quest to find fame and fortune. His wife (Karen Kirkup) is looking outside of their marriage for lust and excitement. After figuring out he’s more Harry Hill than Jimmy Somerville in the looks department, he decides to re-brand himself somewhere in the middle – as Bruce Willis.
by Euan Vincent
In 2002, Suzan-Lori Parks set herself the task of writing a play a day for 365 days. Parks
would eventually release the performing rights for $1 per play, sparking a continent-wide theatre festival that took Parks’ work, and theatre, to a host of new audiences and venues. Theatre Uncut follow a similar ethos.
by Grace Bouchard
When she was three years old, Alice fell into an orangutan enclosure. Now, as a 24-year-old woman, she recounts the story directly to us, though she makes a point to let us know she doesn’t tell people this story often. Years of being called ‘Monkey Girl’ in school has scarred her somewhat, despite the fact that orangutans are not monkeys – they are apes – something Alice reminds us of frequently throughout.
by Dora Bodrogi
Lockdown-schmockdown, the show must go on! While live shows and immediate feedback are usually at the heart of stand-up, comedians have had great successes through DVD sales and streaming services such as Netflix or YouTube. Edinburgh’s The Stand Comedy Club is still standing even without a live audience, as yesterday’s broadcast has shown, one of the first of its kind. Live comedy in the time of COVID-19. Can it work?
by Bryony Rae Taylor
Notflix is performed by an all-women musical improv troupe. They ask audiences to suggest a film which has not yet been made into a musical, so that they can make it into a musical – and then they make it into a musical.
The film on the night I am there is The Holiday, the one where Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz house swap and LOVE HAPPENS. You know the one.
by Bryony Rae Taylor
This is an ambitious, interactive new video-game inspired musical, melding a tale of the trials and tribulations of a contemporary family with an 8-bit video game aesthetic. Each audience member is given a ‘controller’ (a bit of card which is blue on one side and red on the other), and at certain points in the narrative, they gets a say in what direction the plot turns. Towards the latter part of the show, the narrative rewinds and you see all of the alternative paths that could have been taken.
by Grace Bouchard
Perhaps one of the most shocking things about Border Control by Michelle Sewell is the fact that it was written five years ago, before Brexit and at the very beginning of the European Migrant Crisis.
