Wendy Brindle
baba
★★☆☆☆ Unfulfilled
The Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group brings a new festive folktale to the Pleasance stage this weekend in the form of baba, a new take on the old tales of Baba Yaga and her house on chicken legs. This piece has many ambitions, but falls short of achieving them in its writing and execution.
Macbeth & Dunsinane
Macbeth: ★★★☆☆ Speedy
Dunsinane: ★★★★☆ Bloody
A Necessary Cat have done it again – bringing a powerful double helping of a Shakespeare starter and Shakespeare-adjacent main course to the Fringe in which the whole is better the sum of its parts.
crackers
★★★☆☆ Strong performances
Edinburgh based writer cmf wood’s crackers, at the Royal Scots Club, performed by EGTG explores the stigma attached to mental ill-health, particularly amongst teenagers.
Silent Night
★★★★☆ Warming
Silent Night, from Arkle at the Royal Scots Club for one week only, is a cheering and beautifully assembled production.
Hay Fever
★★★☆☆ Lightly hilarious
Every family has their foibles, but the Bliss family are next-level eccentric in Noel Coward’s delicious comedy Hay Fever – brought to the Assembly Roxy by EGTG for four performances only.
Maryland
There is cathartic release of pent up rage to Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland, which had a semi-staged, script-in-hand performance at the Southside Community Centre on Saturday and returns in a different production to the Traverse this week.
Bug
★★★★☆ Twisted romance
Set in a motel room somewhere in America, Bug begins like a twisted tale of romance but ends as a case study of how conspiracy, paranoia and wild theories can escalate into all-encompassing self-destructive philosophies.
shrapnel
★★★☆☆ Timely
There is a timeliness and emotional truth to Shrapnel, Production Lines’s online play by CMFWood, that is enhanced by being presented live.
EGTG Catch their 22
Pace, Panto and Pathos promised at Biscuit Factory:
Stage adaptations of literature have been pouring off Edinburgh’s stages in the last wee while, but amateur company EGTG has gone to the top of the tree marked Iconic.
The Lark
★★★★☆ Fiery:
There is fire in the belly of EGTG’s telling of The Lark – Jean Anouilh’s take on the story of Joan of Arc – at Bellfield in Portobello to Saturday.
