Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghAs a half-horse half-woman who dreams of being a unicorn and performing Swan Lake, Schaal sheds little light but has plenty of sparkleFor a happy handful of years in the noughties, around the time she made her TV name on F…
Continue ReadingTwo Edinburgh fringe shows feature savage send-ups of reviewers. Is this petty revenge or do they have a case? Our writer finds one ‘a hoot’ – and thinks the other let him off lightlyNo one ever built a statue to a critic, they say – but plenty of art …
Continue ReadingAssembly @ St Andrew Square, EdinburghA lusty adaptation by Avenue Q’s co-creator is performed with verve by Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s daughter and her fellow studentsNot every undergraduate Shakespeare show at the Edinburgh fringe makes headlines …
Continue ReadingPleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThis one-man comic play, told at breakneck speed and featuring West Side Story-like dance-numbers, is highly entertainingIt’s as if Joseph Morpurgo had never been away. The Londoner made a splash on the fringe a decade ago…
Continue ReadingtheSpace Triplex, EdinburghFour skaters enter into feral competition in this darkly funny yet flimsily plotted play about female teenhoodThe title refers to the figure-skating legend and Olympian who, in the noughties, captivated the US with her perfor…
Continue ReadingSummerhall, EdinburghHannah Maxwell quits doomscrolling and turns her attention to tech bros’ targeted assault on democracy and our smartphone-addicted complicityLast year, Hannah Maxwell laid out three blueprints for an Edinburgh fringe hit. In her sh…
Continue ReadingSummerhall, EdinburghVengeance for a slaughtered pig is the starting point for a riotous parody that suggests the meat industry poses an existential threat to human survivalThat’s my next hotdog ruined. Shakespeare’s “too solid flesh” is squeezed into …
Continue ReadingPleasance Dome, EdinburghThis is a spiky, interrogative and surprisingly conventional set from an act who usually pushes standup to its limitsYou can fall victim to your own high standards – and few comics have set higher standards than Jordan Brookes….
Continue ReadingMonkey Barrel, EdinburghA comic on the verge of the big time offers a ‘very silly hour’ around the highways and byways of her lifeA former winner of the Sean Lock award for comic originality, Harriet Dyer richly delivers on that promise of oddity in he…
Continue ReadingUnderbelly Bristo Square, Edinburgh There is crackling chemistry between Zofia Zerphy and Rhiannon Bell while their washing gets done but this play remains a puzzleNames go missing like lost socks in this laundry-based, amnesia-laced romcom. With crack…
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