Made In Edinburgh
The Beatles Were A Boyband
★★★★☆ Deeply affecting
The Beatles Were A Boyband, Rachel O’Regan’s Fringe First winning play for F-Bomb Theatre, returns to the Gilded Balloon for a short run this year. Written in the wake of some high profile murders, it sadly still feels relevant a year on.
Hamlet / Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
★★★☆☆ Pacy and ★★★★☆ Slick
New Edinburgh amateur company Necessary Cat make their debut performances for the last week only of the fringe with the elegantly twinned pairing of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Kitchen Underwear
★★★☆☆ Enjoyable and engaging
Kitchen Underwear by Fringe debutants Hey Thanks! Theatre Collective is an enjoyable and engaging two-hander about flatmates who clearly have significant feelings for each other.
Come Die With Me: The Murder Mystery Musical Parody
★★★☆☆ Exuberant
Happy Sad’s Come Die With Me: The Murder Mystery Musical Parody, at Just the Tonic @ The Grassmarket Centre, is often as unwieldy and potentially confusing as its title. However, the end result is undoubtedly good-hearted and good fun.
Sir Percival and the Jabberwock
★★★☆☆ Epic ambition
There is a poetic sensibility at work in Kestrel Eye Production’s Sir Percival and the Jabberwock, at Greenside @ Infirmary Street, that overcomes huge difficulties to create a fascinating result.
Enquiry Concerning Hereafter
★★★☆☆ Philosophical
Enquiry Concerning Hereafter, produced by Adam Smith’s Panmure House, is a touching evocation of friendship mixed with philosophy.
MANikin
★★★★☆ Breathtaking performance
One of two plays that Saltire Sky Theatre are bringing to Leith Arches for this year’s Fringe, MANikin looks at society’s views on obesity and obsession with body image.
Photon StarBlaster and the Suicidal Spaceship
★★★★☆ Seriously creative
Bonnie and Braw’s Photon StarBlaster and the Suicidal Spaceship at C aquila shows a wonderfully large heart, and boundless imagination, in its exploration of difficult themes.
Brief Candle
★★☆☆☆ Fllickering
Brief Candle, from Blushing Caligula at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall, is not the first play to take inspiration for its title from Macbeth. Unfortunately, its attempts at tragic grandeur do not match up to such a reference.
Lilies on the Land
★★★★☆ Beautiful drama
Following on from the success of their production of David Haig’s Pressure in April, Arkle Theatre have returned to World War 2 for Lilies on the Land as the early evening Fringe offering.