Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival 2019 review: Rich Kids - A History of Shopping Malls in TehranTuesday, 06 August 2019![]() You can’t question Javaad Alipoor’s ambition. Ancient Mesopotamian empires, geological layers of chicken bones, the half-life of polysterene cups, Thomas Gainsborough, Susan Sontag, Iranian political history, gold iPhones, mallwave – all that and... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2019 reviews: Below the Blanket / Samson Young: Real MusicTuesday, 06 August 2019![]() Below the Blanket ★★★★ There’s a deep vein of melancholy running through Glasgow producing house Cryptic’s promenade installation Below the Blanket, which currently occupies several sites across Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden.... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2019 reviews: Enough / SplicedMonday, 05 August 2019![]() Enough ★★★★ Immaculately turned out in winning smiles, navy and nylon, cabin crew Jane and Toni dispense comforting reassurance and flirty glances to passengers at 30,000 feet. Down on the ground, though, they’re juggling kids... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019: Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dudamel - detailed judgment day canvasSunday, 04 August 2019![]() Since time immemorial the Edinburgh International Festival has started with a juicy choral epic designed to show off the Festival Chorus and the opulent Usher Hall. So this performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony would normally have been billed as... Read more... |
The Prisoner, National Theatre review - Peter Brook's latest falls sadly flatTuesday, 18 September 2018![]() Of the Edinburgh International Festival’s three productions by 2018’s resident company, Paris’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, The Prisoner is the most gnomic, the most baffling, and, frankly, the most disappointing. Which is a great shame,... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Home / The PrisonerMonday, 27 August 2018![]() Home ★★★★ Philadelphia-based theatre artist Geoff Sobelle has scored highly with two previous Edinburgh Fringe shows. Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, way back in 2010, imagined the natural world wreaking ruthless... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Benedetti, Baltimore SO, Alsop - puzzlingly tameMonday, 27 August 2018![]() The Edinburgh International Festival scored quite a coup in securing the services of Bernstein protégée Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on the very day of the great composer/conductor’s centenary – and for the festival’s penultimate... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Aimard, SCO, Pintscher - psychedelic visionsSaturday, 25 August 2018![]() There were two immediate casualties at Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s high-energy account of Messiaen’s monumental Des canyons aux étoiles… with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.First was one of the strings in the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018![]() La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / BackupFriday, 17 August 2018![]() Orpheus ★★★★ This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist... Read more... |
Greed as the keynote: Robert Carsen on the timelessness of 'The Beggar's Opera'Tuesday, 14 August 2018![]() In the time of composer John Gay, greed and self-interest were the main motives for life; and his work The Beggar’s Opera is an open critique on the way that society behaved. The work’s opening number sets the tone, basically saying: “we all abuse... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / StatusTuesday, 14 August 2018![]() Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★ “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in... Read more... |
