festivals
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Sea Sick / Vigil / When the Birds ComeSaturday, 10 August 2019
Sea Sick CanadaHub ★★★★ She’s not a performer, Alanna Mitchell tells us. She’s a writer and journalist. But what she’s discovered about climate change, and specifically about its effects on the world’s oceans, has... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Deer Woman / Pathetic Fallacy / Blind DateFriday, 09 August 2019
Deer Woman CanadaHub ★★★ You can feel the fury emanating from the stage in Tara Beagan’s incendiary solo play. Fury at the thousands of Indigenous Canadian women and girls who have gone missing in recent decades, abducted... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: BirthFriday, 09 August 2019
Physical theatre company Theatre Re are virtually Fringe royalty these days, with a several-year history of fine shows under their belts, plus success internationally and at the London Mime Festival. And judging by their assured and richly resonant... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 review: Crocodile FeverThursday, 08 August 2019
Chekhov famously pronounced that if you’re going to bring a gun on stage, you’ve got to use it. Is the same true for a chainsaw? To discover the answer, just head along to Meghan Tyler’s wild, over-the-top, gruesome Crocodile Fever at the... Read more... |
Edinburgh International Festival 2019 review: La repriseWednesday, 07 August 2019
Who’d have thought a play about a homophobic hate crime could be so much fun? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a little. But there are certainly lighter moments in La reprise, provocative Swiss-born director Milo Rau’s production with his... Read more... |
Wilderness Festival 2019 review - marvellous misbehaviourWednesday, 07 August 2019
The thing about Wilderness is that it’s just so jolly decent. Acres of decadence, sprawled safely over the yawning magnificence of Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, combine to create a scintillating country fair reverie – a heady mix of good music, high... Read more... |
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: 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... |
Supersonic Festival 2019, Birmingham review - the weird and the curious get togetherWednesday, 24 July 2019
Friday 19 July2019 is a big deal in the Supersonic universe, as it marks the fifteenth time that the Festival has been held in Birmingham – the Home of Metal. So, what better way to celebrate than to kick things off with a double header at the City’... Read more... |
Florence + the Machine, BST Hyde Park review - mastering the matriarchyMonday, 15 July 2019
It’s a rare thing that musicians sound better live than they do on Spotify. But Florence Welch sings a note perfect set – even when jumping up and down like a pogo stick, whirling and spinning, or sprinting along the front of the stage to meet fans.... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Montreal International Jazz Festival - fabulous at 40Wednesday, 10 July 2019
The Montreal Jazz Festival is vast. It attracts an audience of between 1.5 and 2 million people over its 12 nights. It has been estimated to bring the city more revenue than the Canadian Grand Prix.And yet size, as we were often reminded in this... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2019: hot as hell and a thousand times as funThursday, 04 July 2019
As ever theartsdesk’s Glastonbury report arrives after all other media coverage. Despite management pressure Caspar Gomez refuses earlier deadlines. He told Editorial, “The press tent is like an office, a place of work, full of laptops and coffee.... Read more... |
