EdFringe 19
Heir Heads
★★★☆☆ Considerable zip:
Heir Heads, Pretty Knickers Productions’ comedy at theSpace on North Bridge, has a cacklingly amoral glee that gives it some force.
Cadaver Synod
★★★☆☆ Gore of yore:
Cadaver Synod is an engaging historical comedy-horror from RFT at the Sweet Grassmarket that crosses boundaries of genre and taste with equal relish.
Heroes
★★★☆☆ Fails to soar:
Two well established Edinburgh based companies working in physical performance, All or Nothing Aerial Dance Theatre and Room 2 Manoeuvre, bring their new family show about superheroes to this year’s Fringe.
Rowan Rheingans: Dispatches on the Red Dress
★★★★☆ Quietly compelling:
Dispatches on the Red Dress by Rowan Rheingans at the Storytelling Centre, is one of the increasing number of productions coming from the folk scene that meld theatre, storytelling and music; it can certainly hold its head up with the best of those.
The Collection of Professor Novak
★★★☆☆ Old-fashioned:
The Collection of Professor Novak, an understated combination of storytelling and trickery upstairs at the Outhouse, charms almost despite itself.
Krapp’s Last Tape
★★★★☆ Authentic Krapp:
Wistful and careful, Arkle’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape brings out the humanity in Beckett’s masterpiece. Often seen as a forbidding play, there is nothing remotely inaccessible about this.
She Can’t Half Talk
★★☆☆☆ Unconvincing lives:
She Can’t Half Talk, EUTC’s Fringe production at the Bedlam, is a varied set of stories that contains much of promise but fails to convince as a coherent whole.
Nancy’s Philosopher
★★★★☆ Polished and Impassioned:
Nancy’s Philosopher, the story of unfulfilled love between David Hume and society beauty Nancy Ord unearthed and written by David Black, was first performed at the fringe in 2016.
Burns for Brunch
★★★★☆ Anti-Brexit Rabbie:
Robert Burns wakes up hungover among empty bottles. He’s the real Rabbie, even though he talks about Brexit in Theatre Objektiv’s hilarious Burns for Breakfast at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.
The Happiness Project
★★★★★ Queering the scene:
The first thing that strikes about The Happiness Project is the colours. Shocking pink and neon yellow on a plain background and plastic-grass floor.
