Archive for May, 2023
Imaginate 2023
Edinburgh International Children’s Festival
This year’s Edinburgh International Children’s Festival features a total of 14 productions that represent work from 11 different countries in a programme that spans circus, comedy, dance, music, performance art and spoken word as well as theatre.
Dear Billy
★★★★★ Joyous
Everyone has a Billy Connolly story. Ask around on any Scottish High Street, and folk will have a story about the Big Yin. Which is both the premiss and the promise of Dear Billy, at the Traverse for three nights only.
Perfect Days
★★☆☆☆ Antenatal
A quarter of a century on from the premiere of Liz Lochhead’s witty, fast-paced comedy Perfect Days, Leitheatre find that the truths which underpin the laughs still hold, but struggle somewhat to explore them.
Anna Karenina
★★★★☆ Powerful
The glowing passion of this Anna Karenina comes as much from the staging as from the characters. Written by Lesley Hart after Leo Tolstoy, and directed by Polina Kalinina, the Lyceum’s co-production with Bristol Old Vic is an urgent and thoroughly contemporary affair.
Copenhagen
★★★★☆ Stimulating and engaging
In Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at the Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group tackle a difficult, sometimes impenetrable, play with intelligence and skill.
Love The Sinner
★★★★★ Masterful
Imogen Stirling does not miss a beat in Love The Sinner, an enthralling fusion of poetry and electronic music created in collaboration with Vanishing Point at the Traverse for two nights only.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
★★★★☆ Star car
The car is, of course, the star in Southern Light Opera’s production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Festival Theatre all week, but it would be nothing without a tight and committed cast around it.
Bright & Wild 2023
Lyra presents two weekends of fun
The Bright and Wild festival 2023 features four productions, commissioned and performed by the young participants at Lyra, the youth performing arts company in Craigmillar, staged at its Artspace venue.
The Lady Vanishes
★★★☆☆ Magnificent hokum
The Lady Vanishes provides for an entertaining evening up at the Church Hill Theatre, where the Threepenny Theatricals draw on 1930s English sensibilities for this train-set period thriller.
