Mark Bolsover
A Walk at the Edge of the World
✭✭✭✩✩ Beautiful but rambling
A meditative walk through the beautiful environs of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art leads into a slightly rambling dramatic monologue in Magnetic North’s A Walk at the Edge of the World.
Sanitise
✭✭✭✭✭ smart, accomplished physical theatre
Set in a suburban bathroom, Sanitise focusses on one woman’s struggle between her (thinly) repressed and inarticulate sexual desires and the obsessive need for cleanliness that her shame over these desires precipitates.
Review – The Lives of the High-Rise Saints
✭✭✭✭✩ Absurdly tragic
Sharp, dark and brilliantly realised, Ad Spectatores present Agata Kucinska’s one woman puppet show adaptation of Polish playwright Lidia Amejko’s The Lives of the High-Rise Saints to Saturday as part of the Polska Arts in Edinburgh season at Summerhall.
Review – Ban This Filth!
Gender and sexual identity are on the agenda as Alan Bissett returns for a one-off performance of his one-man show Ban This Filth!, to benefit the Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre.
Review – One Giant Leap
There’s an energetic – though somewhat wide-of-the-mark – performance by Iain Johnstonein in this brief history of humanity’s relationship to space from Wee Stories in an NTS co-productionThere’s an energetic – though somewhat wide-of-the-mark – performance by Iain Johnstonein this brief history of humanity’s relationship to space.
Review – Dark Matter
✭✭✭✩✩ Beauty lacks substance:
Vision Mechanics present an exquisitely executed piece, which makes fantastic use of the beautiful and intimate surroundings of its suburban garden setting, but which disappoints in a lack of substance and emotional stakes from Chris Lee’s overwrought script.
Review – The Witness
Strong, confident performances from Thrive Theatre, in association with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, mark out Alex Hope’s cleverly-written and intriguing hypothetical thought-experiment.
Review – Shattered
Chimaera Productions presents an accomplished abstract piece of verbatim theatre, combining simple yet on the whole effective physical performance with material taken directly from the shattering the stigma blog:
Review – The Man Who Planted Trees
★★★★★ Beautiful, entertaining morality tale:
With simple but elegant staging and charming puppets and puppetry, Puppet State Theatre Company presents a genuinely touching and engrossing adaptation of Jean Giono’s novel.
Review – Bobby Gould in Hell
David Mamet’s tongue-in-cheek thought experiment on speech, action, the nature of the conscience and atonement is given an engaging and energetic production by New Celts Productions and Northern Spark Theatre Company.
