Theatre
Ivory Wings
★★★★☆ A soaring success:
Ivory wings at the Assembly Rooms is a beautifully written and performed new one woman show by Susie Coreth, which explores Alzheimer’s and the effect music can have on memory.
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.
At the Book Festival
Theatrical life in Charlotte Square:
The Edinburgh international Book Festival continues to provide a commitment to theatrical elements as well as the customary squelchy grass and ice-cream cones.
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.
