Some performances—especially those featuring circus and juggling—can only truly work in a large space. However,  Café de Profundis  has at its core an intimacy, making the Beseda stage at Prague Fringe a fitting venue for this show. The stage is minimally yet intriguingly set: a small table and chairs stage right, and a glowing circular shape affixed to the backdrop. Ofelia Grey enters deliberately and strikingly. Is she stalking? Her movement evokes a flamenco style. She beg

Some people simply don’t have a filter, managing to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Our protagonist is one such person. Gobstopper  unfolds the story of a young woman in a small Scottish town. For the benefit of international readers, gobstoppers are large, round, boiled sweets, best consumed slowly to avoid breaking your teeth. (The word “gob” is British slang for “mouth.”) Given their size and nature, gobstoppers take a long time to consume, inadvertently silencing c

Grand Guignol de Milan presents three vignettes inspired by real-life events. The first of these is  The Butcher . It is just another day for the working ladies at a late 19th-century Milan brothel. However, they are alarmed by reports of a serial killer – a butcher’s assistant – at large in the city. The newspaper article, falteringly read aloud by semi-literate Rosetta (Giulia Mazza), reveals a description of the butcher, complete with an unmistakeable tattoo. The butcher s

It doesn’t seem so long ago that, to go shopping, you’d head for your nearest town centre or mall. The internet drove a truck through that model, though, and click-purchasing has become the norm. So simple is it that consumers can sit at home and bring the world to their doorstep – over and over again. But what if this purchasing became compulsive? Enter Michele Puleio. His character marvels at the simplicity and efficiency of online buying. He is aware of the cost of this sy

Actors As Messengers. We were supposed to be done with this, weren’t we? Children fleeing conflict and persecution in war-torn Europe should belong to the annals of history, it being some 85 years since the Kindertransport saved over 10,000 children. But here we are again - this time it is Ukrainian citizens fleeing their homes for a future that is far from certain, or indeed, not always welcoming. Once Upon a Time in Ukraine  takes personal testimonies of Ukrainian refugees

Nigel Miles-Thomas is no stranger to the Prague Fringe. In fact, it’s fair to say that he has had a prolific and varied career on television and stage. His tale,  Once Upon A Time In Hollywoodland , might just be the most dramatic though. And it’s all true… Miles-Thomas recounts his deeply personal tale at the intimate Café Míšenská. We learn of a deprived childhood in a north London suburb. His father, a major in the Indian army, abandons the family when he is six years old.

Letters have power. Often they’re just junk mail of course, or bills to be ignored, to be paid even, if that is your volition. Then there are happier communications – invitations to weddings, greetings cards and, for those of a certain era, love letters. But then there are those that change your life irrevocably. This is Joe Rawling’s deeply personal story. Spoiler alerts : 1. he has contracted cancer, but survives; 2. this production is funny. Joe is informed, chillingly, di

There is a light and whistle for attracting attention.” A phrase that rings with easy familiarity for anyone who chooses air travel. But why is it the title of a piece of theatre? The copy for this production was a little opaque – to the point that it felt deliberate. Which, of course, turned out to be the case in this simply brilliant production by Play Nicely Theatre. The stage is set, intriguingly, with a chest of drawers and small wooden boxes off stage left and right. Th

Tish (Letitia Delish) is stuck. In more or less every sense of the word, in fact. She is increasingly uncertain of her gender and wishes to explore nascent alternative sexuality. Tish is studying musical theatre in Bognor Regis, hardly a hotbed of cosmopolitan acceptance or tolerance. And then there’s also rent to pay. A chance encounter on Grindr (a dating and social app, popular with the LGBTQ+ community) pushes her into highly unexpected territory. Tish decides to become a

Identity  confusion sits at the heart of this re-telling of G. K. Chesterton’s best-known novel. Chesterton is probably most famous as the creator of  Father Brown  to the modern audience, but this is an intriguing revival of  The Man Who Was Thursday  with modern resonance. The year is 1908 and Europe is witnessing political upheaval, which will ultimately lead to the outbreak of World War I. A variety of groups are pushing for reform and governments are increasingly under p

"Are you having a stroke?" Not exactly what inventor Jim (Paul Richards), pitching an idea to his long-term girlfriend Alison (Ruby Florence), wants to hear. But this does not transpire to be Alison’s most devastating line to Jim; it is, however, a microcosm of the personality gap between the pair. The Half A Camel (the upstairs function room of The Joker) is set with a typical domestic scene, except that Jim is miming to Queen’s  We Are The Champions , as part of his morning

How well can you ever really know anyone? How much do we fundamentally understand about someone, and what are the masks and defences we all employ? A stage solely occupied by a keyboard and microphone greets us at the BN1 Arts Centre. But the Dubious Company’s eclectic cast - Emily Hawkins, Jasper Price, Lex Bluecairn, Aoife Pallister Begadon, Annalena Lipinski, Amber Williams and Aisling Hanrahan - soon fill the space, singing and playing, leaning into the style of the moder

Shakespeare  wrote in  Hamlet  that the function of art is to hold up a mirror to nature. Alter_Azione  is a piece of performance art created and directed by Gaia Gemelli, staged in the lovely Zo theatre, as part of the Catania Fringe. While perhaps predominantly a piece of dance, the production also comprises components of physical theatre and ballet; it is an impressive fusion by  danzarte . Ovid’s  Metamorphoses  is one of the drivers of this show. The theme centres around

There is a plethora of influences and pressures on the modern-day woman. She will be bombarded by advertising, which can be subtly and iteratively undermining. Pretty much any website she uses, either through necessity or choice, demands acceptance of terms and conditions. There is societal conformity with its myriad of forms: education, housing, religion etc. We especially encounter gender expectations, against the prevalent backdrop of patriarchal dominance. Women are still

Playfight is a visceral, fast-moving production from  Theatre Uncut , that relentlessly demands your attention from the first moment to the last. It is performed in Summerhall’s Roundabout arena in the round, a slick choice. The set consists mainly of a ladder, representing a tree, perhaps the only constant in the lives of our three protagonists. The play charts the adolescent development of three friends. They are at first glance ordinary teenagers, with aspirations, hang-up

The   Good Friday Agreement  of 1998 more or less brought to an end a dark period of contemporary UK history. "The Troubles" was the term given to what was regarded by many people as a three decades long, low level, civil war, the status of Northern Ireland being at stake. Opposite factions held that it should revert to Irish rule or continue as part of the UK. The highest profile act as part of The Troubles was the attempt to assassinate the then British Prime Minister Marga

How far can you run in five minutes ? If you are an Olympic champion, primed, fit, alert, with spikes on a professionally prepared track, you could cover in excess of two kilometres. A woman in her 20’s, in average physical condition, awakening from yet another interrupted slumber in a war zone, grabbing her six year old boy together with a prepared backpack, hurtling down several flights of apartment block, in the dark, with panicking people flying out of other doorways, avo

A waiter  pours a glass of wine for a restaurant customer. It hardly seems like a philosophical matter, but not everything is as it seems here. The set is simple: a table, arranged with cutlery on a pristine white tablecloth, with a solitary chair. There is a waiter’s station stage left and two spare chairs. Our two performers, Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, wander on to the stage at Summerhall. This seems unusual, as if they are about to issue a banal health and safety ann

A palliative  ward in a hospice is hardly a cheery portent for an afternoon at the Fringe. This was a charming piece, however, Two men are approaching the end of their days. Henry’s son, Justin, visits him frequently, dealing with a myriad of emotions. There is the obvious pain of watching his father slip away, but he is also wounded that his father kept details from him for so long. This triggers a memory muscle from his childhood. He has also recently split from his wife. H

There's  a band set up on stage, but this is no ordinary music show. It’s snazzy cardigan time! Steve Coogan’s comic creation  Alan Partridge  had various outings on radio and television, but Partridge’s post-BBC era saw the addition of his downtrodden personal assistant, Lynn Benfield. Lynn is at Partridge’s beck and call, underpaid and under-appreciated, despite substantial calls upon her time domestically. His boorish and dismissive attitude to her is tantamount to abuse a