The stage is set at Pleasance Courtyard – a black box space, literally no props. But less is more here : two superb performers, a sharp script, with the most current of issues as a backdrop, deliver a funny, questioning performance. Rachel Thorn (Holly) is no stranger to Edinburgh Fringe, usually performing comedy and improv, but she takes the plunge here into drama, albeit with a comedic throughline. Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi appropriately sets the scene before Thorn

Shell shock was a term coined during World War I to describe the reaction to the intense warfare experienced by soldiers. It often had stigma attached, having connotations of cowardice. The brutality of World War II saw a new swathe of soldiers suffering its effects. Soldiers returning from WWII would be encouraged to man up and leave their experiences on the battlefields. Some 80 years on, we have gained a better insight into the condition, now more accurately described as p

Edgar Allen Poe was an acclaimed American writer from the first half of the 19 th century. He is probably best known for his Gothic Horror style of writing. Stephen Smith is performing four pieces of Poe works in pairs on alternate days. This show looks at his renditions of The Black Cat and The Raven . The Black Cat journals the demise of a man through alcoholism. Smith is already in situ upon entry, sat at a desk, attempting to write but in turmoil and apparently wracked

We meet the cricket obsessed schoolboy Ismail Akhtar (Qasim Mahmood). Except nobody calls him Ismail : at school he is ‘Smiley’. Even at home he has a variety of monikers, often his father settling on The Little Master , homage to probably the greatest cricketer of all time, Sachin Tendulkar. We enter the three-quarters rake Pleasance Beneath venue to be met with cricket stumps (although curiously no bails), a bat and a ball on a green wicket. There is a trace of cricket audi

Does everything have to have a reason ? A woman is on a park bench, legs tucked beneath her body, dressed in white as a ballerina. She is obsessively making paper swans and letting them fall to the ground, unaware of anything else around her. A security guard approaches. Actually, let’s re-examine that. While he ostensibly is a security guard and eventually states that this is his role, his attire in fact appears to be more akin to a pilot. And approaches is a stretch – he r

Hitler’s Third Reich lasted a dozen or so of their projected thousand years in the 1930’s and 40’s, but managed in that time to inflict catastrophic misery on millions of people. They systematically murdered peoples not deemed worthy of the gift of life within their new order. Many groups suffered terrible losses, including gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals – but the term Holocaust itself usually refers to the murder of millions of people of Jewish ethnic origin in de

Kate Bush is a musical phenomenon. She began writing her own songs as a child and such was her precocious talent that she caught the attention of David Gilmour, from Pink Floyd. Refusing to bow to studio pressure, her first single was the avant-garde  Wuthering Heights  and went to number one in the U.K., making her the first female artist to reach the top spot with a self written song. While still a teenager. Her career saw 25 top 40 singles, 9 top 10 albums and a plethora o

Brett Epstein is alone on stage. Or is he? We enter Surgeons’ Hall venue to find a table on stage. We are asked to submit a question to Brett, anything at all. He takes the stage - a bundle of nervous, but charming, energy. A 30-something LGBTQ+ New Yorker, he presents to a sizeable audience a cross-section of his life. He shares aspects of his romantic life, his acting achievements and aspirations. He has had co-starring television roles many times, but, such is human nature

We enter the lovely Bedlam Theatre to find four actors, seated on chairs stage left and right facing each other. There are intriguingly two paint pots on the floor. The play begins, stylistically, with all four now standing downstage. We learn that a couple is visiting another couple’s house. The power couple, Colin and Charlotte, are trying for a baby. Their house appears to be something of a showhome and the visiting couple’s curiosity is further piqued by a strange circle.

This is a fictional account of a Scottish women’s football team playing at the Homeless World Cup in Italy. However, at its core is a depiction of a real event. Homeless Football World Cups were established towards the end of the last century and now take place annually, with worldwide participation. There are two main aims : to transform the lives of participants and to change attitudes to homelessness. There are a myriad of factors that give rise to homelessness including (

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea, is generally considered to be a pariah state. Amnesty International regard it as having the poorest record on the planet for human rights. Its nuclear testing gives widespread consternation to USA and Japan in particular. It is a totalitarian dictatorship, a one-party military state with dissent not tolerated. It has a cult of personality around the ruling Kim family, even with its own philosophy,  Juche

Kicking back with old friends. What could be better ? Milo is having a couple (Liane and Davie) over to his place for drinks and a take-away, in an archetypal middle-class setting in Glasgow. Now in their forties, they are very old friends. They usually have a familiarity, ease and comfort together that are commensurate with the passing of time and shared experiences. After a comically rapid coital act, Davie and Liane are getting ready for the evening out when Davie drops in

We are about a quarter of the way through the 21st century, allegedly enlightened times. And yet, homosexuality remains banned in more than 60 countries. In many cases it can attract the ultimate sanction of the death sentence. In previous centuries of course, the world was even more unforgiving and  Ascension  relates the tale of an 18 th  century Dutch sailor left on uninhabited Ascension Island as punishment for sodomy. It is always a moment of joy to return to Bedlam Thea

Before I can even get to describing this simply superb production, it is hugely beneficial to contextualise. The roots of World War 2 can be traced back to the end of World War 1. When the guns finally fell silent, those on the losing side ceded territory, had their armies forcibly reduced and were burdened with devastating financial reparations. But we’re not talking about Germany now, this is Bulgaria and its relatively unknown part in twentieth century European history. Bu

Corporate-speak, a form of Orwellian buzzword language only really employed within the confines of large organisations, has been around for decades. Blue-sky thinking, straw man, paradigm, mission statement, KPIs – Key Performance Indicators, if you were wondering. And if you’re still wondering, well… What manner of entity might have spawned such a culture ? We’re about to gain an insight. We enter the, sold out, Space venue to see a woman (ONE, played by Anna van Miert) surr

Die Hard  was a seminal 80’s movie, starring Bruce Willis. If you haven’t seen the film, you might well get more from  Yippee Ki Yay  if you watch it first, but a quick plot summary is as follows : It’s Christmas Eve and New York cop John McClane has set out to visit his estranged wife and children in Los Angeles. The film opens with McClane on a plane, then chauffeured to his wife’s swanky workplace, a 40-odd storey tower where the remainder of the action takes place. A grou

The year 2020 started with high hopes for many people ; maybe there was something about it being a fresh decade. But COVID-19 was coming down the road, initiating in Wuhan, China, but in this era of globalisation nothing is ever truly local. It soon became a global pandemic. Notwithstanding notable exceptions, countries chose to shut down. Most people were compelled to remain indoors, isolated from loved ones, in some cases tragically not being able to say goodbye. It is with

Bram Stoker’s infamous nineteenth century tale was not only a classic in its own right, its influence has proven pervasive for a century and a quarter since and shows no signs of relenting. Cinema, radio, television and literature. And Fringe theatre, as it turns out. The stage is set with two partially transparent screens left and right and a sort of command gantry centre downstage, its multi-use becoming evident as the show progresses. There are no other props. The quartet

Edinburgh Fringe is a smorgasbord of shows, catering for a variety of tastes and interests. Many prospective audience members might recoil from a show about Greek mythology, perhaps for fear of their threadbare knowledge being exposed. Furrowed brows may even be involved – and that would be the tragedy in this case, because  Ad Infinitum  have devised a dazzling, high octane, entertaining show that everybody can appreciate. Ad Infinitum are, of course, no strangers to the Fri

Today Germany is a modern, progressive, inclusive nation, who could teach plenty of other countries a thing or two about the value of democratic institutions. Sadly, as everyone knows, it was not always that way : Hitler’s Third Reich lasted a dozen or so of their projected thousand years in the 1930’s and 40’s, but managed in that time to inflict catastrophic misery on millions of people, the detail of which is not always widely known. This included terrorising their own cit