https://youtu.be/d4IQuwxRLm0 Written by Caryl Churchill Directed by Joanna Bowman Review by Anna Burnside Tickets from £15.50 ★★★★ On a minimal set, a row of mottled legs end in well-used feet in comfortable sandals. Three women of bus pass-carrying age in mismatched chairs are drinking tea and discussing the things that absorb neighbours - the state of the … Continue reading Review: Escaped Alone – The Tron Theatre, Glasgow
https://youtu.be/T8GQUmNvdgA Directed by Jonathan O'Boyle Music and Lyrics by Gary Barlow and Tim Firth Tickets from £13.00 ★★★★★ Calendar Girls The Musical somehow still feels like a breath of fresh air in 2024, over twenty years since the real-life women of the Women’s Institute posed for their calendar in aid of charity. The Bill Kenwright LTD … Continue reading Review: Calendar Girls The Musical – The King’s Theatre, Glasgow
Written by David Greig Directed by Wils Wilson Tickets from £16.00 ★★ Nostalgia is a notoriously dangerous drug: addictive, encompassing, distracting, but oh-so nourishing. It clouds judgements and fractures our ability to move from the past and adapt - entirely apparent in David Greig’s new play Two Sisters, in a co-production with Malmö Stadsteater and the Royal Lyceum, … Continue reading Review: Two Sisters – The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Direction by Bex Anson MHz Movement Artists - Philip Alexander McDonald, Rita Hu, and Suzi Cunningham ★★★★ Easily earning itself the most influentially abstract of the Manipulate Festival 2024 pieces, Bex Anson MHz’s highly visual expressive dance performance Ruins (performed by Suzi Cunningham, Rita Hu, and Philip Alexander McDonald) commands an entire spectrum of life. Three beings, the last humans on Earth, become … Continue reading Review: Manipulate Festival 2024 – Ruins at The Studio, Edinburgh
Direction by Alex Bird Original Direction by Ross MacKay and Arran Howie Tickets from £13.00 ★★★★★ Under the gaze of the one-eyed deity, the world below is changing. A golden age of peace and prosperity - infected with avarice, hatred, and endless aggression. Winter has failed to ebb, and the sun hangs low in the sky, … Continue reading Review: Manipulate Festival 2024 – Ragnarok at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Directed by Nicolas Alline and Dorothée Saysombat Tickets from £13.00 ★★★ Mercifully, theatrical expressions and writings surrounding colonial conquest are prying open the locked eyes of ignorance with growing abundancy: Enough of Him, Blood and Gold, Meaning of Zong, the National Theatre of Scotland’s Ghosts, and at the previous Festival Fringe there was tremendous success with Dark Noon. A conversation and discussion often … Continue reading Review: Manipulate Festival 2024 – La Conquête at The Studio, Edinburgh
https://youtu.be/IfePa4DHrq0 Adapted and Directed by Alex Harvey and Charlotte Mooney - Ockham’s Razor Devised by Alex Harvey, Charlotte Mooney, Macadie Amoroso, Joshua Frazer, Lauren Jamieson, Lila Naruse, Victoria Skillen, Leah Wallings and Nat Whittingham Choreography by Nathan Johnston ★★★★★ Ockham’s Razor, the world-class and award-winning aerial theatre company presents a simple conundrum: can you really tell a Thomas … Continue reading Review: Manipulate Festival 2024 – Tess at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Minna Gillett Associate Direction by Marina Funcasta Tickets from £8.00 ★★★★ The Taming of the Shrew holds a peculiar reappearing position amongst full-blown productions and grassroots community theatre. Odd, given the bleak finale and grinding boot of submission this play entrenches itself. It’s a tale in which the titular ‘shrew’, … Continue reading Review: The Taming of the Shrew – Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh
Scenography and Composition by Wannes Deneer Dramaturgy by Marie Peeters ★★★★ Here’s the not-so-subtle secret about putting on a show: it's expensive. So Belgian choreographer Ugo Dehaes, forced into a corner by paying their dancers a living and deserving wage as part of his company Kwaad Bloed, instead seeks to remove the human element from their future dance performances and instead do what … Continue reading Review: Manipulate Festival 2024 – Simple Machines at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh
L’Amour du Risque Staging by Olivier Rannou Construction & Performed by Morien Nolot and Olivier Rannou ★★★★ The first in two shows at Manipulate that fringe into the dreaded realms of the ‘killer of creativity’, AI and robotics, Compagnie Bakelite’s L’Amour Du Risque reminds gleeful and invested audiences that perhaps, just now, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be … Continue reading Review: Manipulate 2024 – L’Amour du Risque and Envahisseurs (Invaders)
