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Dave Johns review – heartwarming tale of late-in-life change from I, Daniel Blake star

August 10, 2017TheGuardian

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
Johns was ready to quit standup until Ken Loach came calling. His fringe return is full of humility and unpretentious good humour

Cinderella can’t touch this. Two years ago, Dave Johns was about to quit standup after 30 years and start selling donkey rides. Then Ken Loach came calling; according to Johns, a kestrel just appears outside your window. The rest is movie history: I, Daniel Blake – Loach’s film about benefit cuts – won 23 awards internationally, turned the tide of Britain’s political conversation, and changed Johns’ life. Our host has got an incredible rags-to-riches story to tell, and does so in this fringe return with humility, starry eyes and unpretentious good humour.

Edinburgh festival 2017: the shows we recommend

August 9, 2017August 23, 2017TheGuardian

Plan your viewing with our list of top shows, ordered by start time. This page will be updated throughout the festival Continue reading…

Trans tales and rogue cabarets: Edinburgh festival 2017 – in pictures

August 5, 2017TheGuardian

From Sara Pascoe’s new standup to a strange evening with Martin Creed, via acrobats, Samuel Beckett and a wild girl from Borneo, here are the sights so far

All photographs by Murdo MacLeod

Bigfoot and me: Roddy Bottum on his avant garde monster opera

August 5, 2017TheGuardian

He was one of the first openly gay men in metal. Now, after losing everything in a house fire, Faith No More’s Roddy Bottum is bankrolling an opera featuring crystal-meth arias and interspecies duets

In a top-floor flat overlooking Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, Roddy Bottum is talking me through his fringe show Sasquatch: The Opera. Bottum is the keyboard player in Faith No More, whose twisted take on hard rock propelled them to global success in the 90s, and he’s at the festival with a cast of opera singers and experimenters from New York’s avant garde performance art scene. Though it’s a few days until curtain-up, they want to give me a preview. In true fringe style they perform four scenes right here in the living room, to music played on his laptop.

Did Axl talk to me about being gay? Not so much

Edinburgh festival 2017: 10 shows to see

August 4, 2017TheGuardian

A puppet blockbuster, a Bigfoot opera and a Northern Soul dance marathon all feature in the lineup of the 70th Edinburgh festivalEdinburgh Playhouse Continue reading…

‘We haven’t made a profit for five years’: risky business at Edinburgh fringe

July 19, 2017TheGuardian

Running a festival venue is about more than booking acts and selling tickets. From converting lecture rooms to spending £25,000 on Astroturf, we reveal the costs of putting on a show

Ten years ago, at the Edinburgh festival, Anthony Alderson became the not very proud owner of 44 Vauxhall Astras. Alderson, the Pleasance’s director, had bought 22 of the cars from a scrapyard for a show called Auto Auto, staged in the Grand, the largest of the Pleasance venues. But it turned out they were the wrong kind of Vauxhall Astra. The show turned cars into comedy percussion instruments and these all had sun-roofs. So Alderson had to buy another 22. “I think the scrap dealer thought he’d hit the goldmine,” he recalls ruefully.

One year, a large dance company made back the costs of their entire Edinburgh run with a single gig in South America

It’s tough to run a venue, and it’s getting tougher. People do it because they are addicted to Edinburgh in August

The 10 best things to do this week: Lovebox and Painting Pop

July 7, 2017TheGuardian

Frank Ocean tops the bill at the east London festival, while Abbot Hall in Cumbria celebrates Blake, Hockney, Boty and more

Dog-friendly screening
Dog lovers and fans of stop-motion animation rejoice! London’s Picturehouse Central is hosting a special dog-friendly (well-behaved canines only, please) screening of My Life As a Courgette on 9 July. Water bowls and blankets will be provided (for the dogs, obvs).
At Picturehouse Central, W1, 9 July

The 10 best things to do this week: Lovebox and Painting Pop

July 7, 2017TheGuardian

Frank Ocean tops the bill at the east London festival, while Abbot Hall in Cumbria celebrates Blake, Hockney, Boty and more

Dog-friendly screening
Dog lovers and fans of stop-motion animation rejoice! London’s Picturehouse Central is hosting a special dog-friendly (well-behaved canines only, please) screening of My Life As a Courgette on 9 July. Water bowls and blankets will be provided (for the dogs, obvs).
At Picturehouse Central, W1, 9 July

Emotional rescue: can art ever be cathartic for its creators?

May 12, 2017TheGuardian

Jonathon Young’s dance-theatre show Betroffenheit explores his grief after a family tragedy. The author Max Porter, comic Jayde Adams, performer Mojisola Adebayo and Young himself discuss their artistic responses to personal traumas

Jonathon Young sits on a hard bed, the kind that speaks of institutions. Green light tinges the walls around him on the stage. This is “the room”, a space triggered by an event referred to as “the accident” throughout his show Betroffenheit. “The night of the accident we’re all asleep,” his character recites. “The alarm wakes me and … I run. I’m the first on the scene and they’re in there. I try to help them get out but it’s too late.”

Eight years ago, Young was on a family holiday north of Vancouver when the cabin in which his daughter, 14, and two cousins were sleeping, caught fire. Young tried to save them, but the flames were 150 feet high. All three children died.

I’m there on the stage, appearing as though I am present and experiencing these events anew. But of course I’m not

There is something about a release that is a letting go, the body relaxing … But for me it was the opposite

‘My body shall be all yours’: the startling sex letters of Joyce, Kahlo and O’Keeffe

May 2, 2017TheGuardian

An eye-wateringly explicit new stage show celebrates erotic correspondence sent by famous figures through the ages

“I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter.” He might be celebrated for his epic and allusive novels, but James Joyce came straight to the point when writing to his partner, Nora Barnacle. This was the opening salvo of a letter from 1908 and is just one of scores of explicit missives he sent her.

A new stage show is celebrating such letters of desire sent by famous figures through the centuries, whether explicit or coded, erotic or romantic. Theatre-maker Rachel Mars is curating a selection to be read aloud in the performance which is part of the Hotbed “festival of sex” at Camden People’s theatre in London. These will be interspersed with anonymised modern messages: texts, tweets and dating app sexts.

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