With cancelled events, venue closures and lost work, Australia’s arts industry – from writers, to comics, to festival directors – are finding new ways forward With one tweet, musician Brendan Maclean encapsulated what many artists feel is the Australia…
Continue ReadingOur photographer Murdo MacLeod captures more of this year’s eclectic Edinburgh festival shows, featuring everything from black holes to Basil Brush Continue reading…
Continue ReadingIt used to be that just wearing a dress and lip-syncing was enough. But now drag is mainstream, the bar for this most creative and transgressive art form has been raisedIt’s Friday night at the Edinburgh fringe. Artists are running all over town, weavi…
Continue ReadingMembers of the Hoosiers, Maxïmo Park, Belle & Sebastian and Shed Seven talk about mental health, the pitfalls of the music biz and why they are swapping gigs for theatre audiencesFelix Scoot and Lee Delamere, from one-time chart-toppers Felix &…
Continue ReadingPlan your schedule with our roundup of top shows, ordered by start time. This page will be updated daily throughout the festivalBoutSummerhall, 10.20am, until 25 AugustAn exploration of brotherhood through the motif of boxing, Chang Dance Theatre’s sho…
Continue ReadingPleasance Dome, Edinburgh Kathy Burke directs Amy Booth-Steel’s feelgood, if cliched, ukulele-assisted chronicle of cancer and PTSDFive years ago, Amy Booth-Steel was a jobbing actor, when she was diagnosed with stage three cancer and told she could be…
Continue ReadingThere’s a Belle and Sebastian play, a show in a hair salon, Frances Barber performing Pet Shop Boys songs and top comics including Josie Long and Stephen Fry. Here’s our guide to the world’s biggest arts festivalCrocodile Fever Traverse Playwright Megh…
Continue ReadingSuperstar standups, daring dance, Brexit cabaret and a Bon Jovi musical … Dive into our guide to some of the shows at the world’s biggest arts festival
Continue ReadingPeake is hypnotically belligerent as an ambitious club performer trampling over prejudice and sticky carpets on the 1970s comedy circuit
Maxine Peake dominates the screen as producer and star of this painful, angry film written by Tony Pitts and directed by Adrian Shergold, about a fictional female club comedian fighting her way to the top, or at least the middle, in 1970s Britain.
Maybe without Peake this would have looked merely strident or chaotic; and to be frank, even with Peake, it does flirt with some age-old cliches. Comedians are traditionally given centre stage in a drama on condition that they reveal themselves to be unhappy or empty inside. But Peake gives it a fierce, blazing energy and holds everything together through the magnetic force of her performance. Jim Moir, John Bishop, Kevin Eldon and Diane Morgan provide cameos (perhaps to underline the project’s comedy credentials) and the excellent Christine Bottomley is perhaps a bit underused as Peake’s mum.
Related: Maxine Peake: ‘I’m a Corbyn supporter. We need a coup’
Continue ReadingA puppet blockbuster, a Bigfoot opera and a Northern Soul dance marathon all feature in the lineup of the 70th Edinburgh festivalEdinburgh Playhouse Continue reading…
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