It is November 1963. Roger Clement is a Frenchman living in New York. He works at an advertising agency and it is fair to say that he is a stickler for routine, invariably having a coffee at a favoured outlet, taking the train to work, always being punctual. He has an errant secretary, though he tolerates this as she seems to aid with the creatives. His colleagues clearly appreciate him, though he is apparently somewhat anonymous, as they don’t appear to know his name. That i

Mairead (Janet Moran) and Mal (Andrew Bennet) are a 50-something Irish couple going to a wedding. They have been together for 2 decades or more, with Mal having very quickly identified Mairead as the type of woman he could marry. For Mairead’s part, she recognised that Mal was a decent man. They have been close friends ever since, a true partnership, having a daughter. But, scratch the surface and all is not entirely what it seems. Mal had a heart scare, from which he came cl

Faye (Charlotte McCurry) is suffering from post-traumatic stress, following an encounter with a man who had broken into her apartment. She suffers extreme sleep deprivation and her diet of dry Rice Krispies could hardly be called balanced. The audience witness her conversations with an unseen therapist. She seems to be increasingly isolated from the outside world, having no useful family, disconnected from her only sibling. Increasingly desperate to break out from her situati

According to our protagonist, we spend 16 days a year queuing. That’s an awful lot of waiting. Busy people who are perfectly capable of decorating, gardening, cooking etc. will take short cuts, employing a gardener, or buying a ready meal. It seems, therefore, a logical extension of this idea that the neologism ‘codista’ – professional queuer – should be born. That it emanated from Italy should be even less of a surprise, given their historically legendary levels of bureaucra

The audience settle into their seats and are greeted by a set at first glance consisting trestle tables, tablecloths, rugs, lamps etc.. However, the rear part of the set immediately piques your interest. Why are there seemingly a myriad of entrances and exits, placed in a such a mundane suburban environment ? The set seems to taper away from the audience, suggestive of some modern time tunnel ; will the cast be entering a parallel universe ? And then, before we even meet the

Negotiation. It’s harder than it looks. Estate agents, brokers, banks, insurance companies, hostage specialists, Governments – people are trained in this art for a reason. The premise in  Ultimatum , at first glance, appears to be simple. Two female strangers are in a room with one million pounds. They are given one hour to agree how to split the money. As long as they agree, the money is theirs, with no conditions. If they fail to agree they leave with nothing. The set is mi

Modern popular culture is awash with spy stories : James Bond, Jason Bourne, John Le Carre, Ken Follett, William Boyd et al, going back to Eric Ambler. The reality of spy operations is usually far less glamorous : painstaking, dull monitoring, reporting within a static hierarchical structure. Until we meet Denis Rake. Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) was created during World War 2, with the fate of the free world at stake. Their role : espionage, reconnaissance, organisi

The set conjures up theatre from a bygone era. A wooden puppetry gantry with a variety of red and white curtains seems to bring to mind Victorian/Edwardian times. The use of surtitles before each scene creates the sense of the silent movie age. A series of performances are played out, with the inevitable denouement of puppets meeting their demise in a series of ways, breathtaking in creativity. At times reminiscent of Monty Python, Spitting Image, The Goodies, The Young Ones

Spies Like Us are no strangers to Edinburgh Fringe. Their reputation is established as avant-garde, physical theatre story-tellers. Their set is typically minimalist : a desk, a doorway and 5 telephones. All is not as it seems though. The doorway becomes a phonebox, the desk a blackboard. The telephone lines become existentially an extension of anxiety and stress. All may not be as it seems generally, in fact. Speed Dial is performed by five actors, all in differently colour

Douglas Adams, coveted and bestselling author, is perilously close to an apparently unmissable publishing deadline. So much so, that his publicist has locked him in a hotel suite and refuses to release him until he finishes the manuscript. Douglas Adams will need no introduction to many people, his reputation as one of the greatest and adored writers of the twentieth century being beyond debate. At the moment we meet Adams in his hotel suite, his  Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Ga

A young man forms part of a Lancaster bomber squadron, going out on yet another raid towards the end of World War II. The play conveys parts of the overall journey, with the plane being in almost constant mortal danger. John, the  Wireless Operator , carries out his duties on the plane out of self-preservation and loyalty to his fellow crew-members. However, he is both terrified and wracked with guilt at the devastation wreaked upon the vulnerable population which he can easi

Hitman And Her  is an engaging and funny tale of a jilted wife trying to arrange a hit on her husband, weaving undertones of homage to Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and  The Italian Job . What happens if you stray from your comfort zone ? A woman arrives in a pub and invites herself to join a man, to whom she is apparently unknown. Their clothing and demeanour would suggest that they have very little in common. But, very much in keeping with a theme of this production, all is

Bible John  was the moniker given to a serial killer operating in Glasgow in the late 1960’s. He murdered three women he had encountered at a popular dancehall. Fifty years later, with the crimes still unsolved, four women develop a fascination with the events and turn amateur sleuth. This is a highly competent and engaging piece of theatre, performed by a talented ensemble and adeptly directed by Lizzie Manwaring. At surface level, the piece centres around the bond forged be

James Wormold is a British expat in post World War II Havana. A single father, facing a daily uphill struggle to run his vacuum cleaner business, he is unexpectedly employed by the British Government to seek out and report intelligence and also to recruit agents. While his desire to not let down his homeland provides some motivation, more importantly the windfall allowance granted eases his financial difficulties, allowing him to achieve elevated status within the community.

These are troubling times. Globally, it seems that conflict, armed, political or economic, and general fractiousness are on the rise, irrespective of your political viewpoint. North Korea. Trump. The rise of nationalism in many European countries. And Brexit. The philosopher Santayana observed that those who fail to heed the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. An Elephant In The Garden relates the tale of an ordinary family living in Dresden. In the years leading