sat 18/05/2024

Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Benedetti, Baltimore SO, Alsop - puzzlingly tame

The Edinburgh International Festival scored quite a coup in securing the services of Bernstein protégée Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on the very day of the great composer/conductor’s centenary – and for the festival’s penultimate...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Aimard, SCO, Pintscher - psychedelic visions

There were two immediate casualties at Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s high-energy account of Messiaen’s monumental Des canyons aux étoiles… with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.First was one of the strings in the...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of Eddy

 La maladie de la mort ★★★  Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / Backup

 Orpheus ★★★★  This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist...

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Greed as the keynote: Robert Carsen on the timelessness of 'The Beggar's Opera'

In the time of composer John Gay, greed and self-interest were the main motives for life; and his work The Beggar’s Opera is an open critique on the way that society behaved. The work’s opening number sets the tone, basically saying: “we all abuse...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / Status

 Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★  “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Daughter / Huff / First Snow/Première Neige

Launched just last year to celebrate the country’s 150th anniversary, CanadaHub has quickly become one of the Edinburgh Fringe’s most exciting and intriguing venues, presenting a small but richly provocative programme of work from across that vast...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Zimerman, LSO, Rattle - fizzing chemistry

It was Simon Rattle’s first visit to the Edinburgh International Festival for – well, really quite a few years. And the first of his two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra drew, perhaps predictably, a capacity crowd in the Usher Hall, for...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Underground Railroad Game / On the Exhale

 Underground Railroad Game ★★★★★ The game of the show’s title is a fun educational exercise on the US Civil War devised by Teacher Caroline and Teacher Stuart at Hanover Middle School, with the aim of bringing alive the flight of...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Coriolanus Vanishes / Check Up: Our NHS at 70 / A Sockful of Custard

 Coriolanus Vanishes ★★★★ Writer and director David Leddy was himself the original solo performer in his Coriolanus Vanishes when it premiered in Glasgow in 2017. But in this powerful, visually stunning outing as part of the Traverse’...

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Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Ulster American / Cold Blood

Ulster American ★★★★★ David Ireland’s brand new, brutally incendiary black comedy gleefully tosses a grenade into any lazy liberal sensibilities at the festival (and, let’s face it, there are plenty of those). Race, gender, rape, prejudice...

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