Friday, August 23, 2019
Scottish Storytelling Centre, EdinburghDrawing on her dual Scottish and Kenyan heritage, Mara Menzies weaves together an exquisite set of stories about the power of language to liberate and …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:12PMRoyal Lyceum, EdinburghThis full-blooded agitprop cabaret comprises 10 monologues about resistance and emancipation, based on true stories about the treatment of women in Nigeria
In a week w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMSummerhall, EdinburghLaura Dalgleish is magnetic as a woman marauding through the Newport night after family pressures become too much
Theatre is a laboratory where we put a character centre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMWednesday, August 21, 2019
Festival theatre, EdinburghThe avuncular storytelling sage leavens seven-and-a-half-hours of myth-recounting with boyish enthusiasm and silly voices
Stephen Fry is lying prostrate on the st…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMTuesday, August 20, 2019
Summerhall, EdinburghTim Etchells’ thought experiment doggedly asks what if you could go back and right the wrongs of your past?
Tim Etchells is surely a master of the late-night pub conve…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:33PMMonday, August 19, 2019
Drawing from folk music, Celtic myth – and a drunken night out, three plays are imbued with a deep sense of terrain
Karine Polwart’s Wind Resistance, which makes a welcome return to Edin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:36AMSunday, August 18, 2019
Summerhall, EdinburghAhmed El Attar’s bruising two-hander dives into the long lead-up to 2011 in an attempt to determine what causes mass revolt
What causes a people to rise up? Is it a si…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:18PMFriday, August 16, 2019
Kings theatre, EdinburghAn updating of Sophocles’ classic, set on election eve, has such political resonance you can imagine Boris Johnson not far away
The play has hardly begun and alread…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:36AMThursday, August 15, 2019
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghSasha Frost sparkles as a curious and vulnerable Kay searching for her birth parents, but this unfocused production fails to capture the intimacy of the soul-searching…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03AMWednesday, August 14, 2019
A trio of performances – Daniel Bellus in Beat, Alexander Fox in Snare and Mick Berry’s Keith Moon: The Real Me – put drums centre stage
It must be something to do with being at the b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMRobert Softley Gale’s show Purposeless Movements turns the involuntary gestures of cerebral palsy into choreography
Becoming a parent for the first time can be nerve-racking for anyone. Kn…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMTuesday, August 13, 2019
Summerhall, EdinburghIn a series of autofictional shows, Traumboy and Traumgirl offer insights of varying quality amid the intimate revelations and erotic dancing
‘I’m not the person mos…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMMonday, August 12, 2019
Plan your schedule with our roundup of top shows, ordered by start time. This page will be updated daily throughout the festival
BoutSummerhall, 10.20am, until 25 AugustAn exploration of bro…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:12PMTraverse, EdinburghMale psychotherapists feel the heat in pantomimic telling of a true story about the voyeuristic exploitation of a female patient’s private disclosures
If you search onli…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:48AMSunday, August 11, 2019
Church Hill theatre, EdinburghThe 1927 company became darlings of the festival scene after their first fringe outing, but this showcase of traditional tales lacks urgency
When the Margate co…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:03PMUnderbelly, Cowgate, EdinburghThis slight drama, in which a woman sifts through old possessions and memories, leaves so much unsaid one wonders if there is any meaning at all
The premise of …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:42AMSaturday, August 10, 2019
Traverse, EdinburghSet in South Armagh during the Troubles, Meghan Tyler’s anarchic and OTT revenge fantasy hits back at the patriarchy and turns into a bloodbath
It turns out Killing Eve …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AMFriday, August 9, 2019
The Studio, Festival theatre, EdinburghTim Crouch plays a messianic cult leader prophesying catastrophe in a formally adventurous show about the dangers of environmental fatalism
And, lo, as…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:24PMThursday, August 8, 2019
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghThere’s lots to love about the polished and fizzy scenes of this family drama, but too many themes leave its message unclear
There’s lots to love about this…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:03PMAssembly Rooms, EdinburghFrances Barber stars as Zelig-like chanteuse Billie Trix, in this one-woman spinoff from the band and Jonathan Harvey’s 2001 musical Closer to Heaven
Despite her g…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:03AMYour home, EdinburghDaniel Bye enlists the help of his five-month-old son in an unpredictable hour-long exploration of nature versus nurture
A show can have the same words, same actors, same…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:54AMWednesday, August 7, 2019
Zoo Southside, Edinburgh The pioneering Ontroerend Goed company takes on a conceptually daring view of environmental apocalypse
Three years ago, the pioneering Belgian company Ontroerend Goe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:24AMTuesday, August 6, 2019
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghVolunteers are game in YESYESNONO’s lively show that uses drama-school exercises to investigate the nature of truth
Jim from the Wardrobe Ensemble has been in…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:03PMGilded Balloon Teviot, EdinburghIn her playwriting, Sheila Atim puts a female scientist on stage with the pharaoh to chat about music, men and misrepresentation
Sheila Atim, the Olivier awar…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 05:36AMGilded Balloon, EdinburghEve Nichol’s play combines songs from the Glasgow band’s well-loved album with an ambiguous narrative
‘We’re seeing other people – at least that’s what w…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:33AMMonday, August 5, 2019
Traverse theatre, EdinburghBreaking down a thrown burger into its constituent ingredients is a way of confronting assault in this sassy, humane show
Behind Travis Alabanza is a container ful…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 03:06PMSummerhall, EdinburghThis vivid production shows both sides of the care system through the eyes of a nurse and a patient
The spirit of Nye Bevan floats over Alan Harris’s monologue for Nat…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:42AMSummerhall, EdinburghCardboard Citizens’ gutsy and gut-wrenching stories of the homeless focuses on people instead of just grim statistics
Someone at Cardboard Citizens has noticed a patte…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:18AMSunday, August 4, 2019
Pleasance Courtyard, EdinburghJessica Ross doesn’t come anywhere close to making moral or dramatic sense of why four nurses killed elderly patients
How to account for the four Austrian nur…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:18PMUnderbelly Cowgate, EdinburghNicola Wren deploys considerable charm in a not-really-showbiz story of childhood pantos, movie bit-parts and self-acceptance
The Edinburgh fringe is good at bri…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AMSaturday, August 3, 2019
Songs in the Key of Cree, Deer Woman and Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, three shows by Canada’s Indigenous artists, are presented at the Edinburgh festival
This summer, Canada’s National I…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AM 
