Edinburgh
Simon Thompson
The National Youth Choir of Scotland have the most easily pronounceable acronym in Scottish music: everyone up here knows who you’re talking about when you mention NYCOS.They’ve been going from strength to strength under their Artistic Director, Christopher Bell, and their Edinburgh International Festival concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (★★★★★) showcased two very different sides of their considerable skills.The first thing you noticed in their performance of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb was the clarity of their articulation of what is a very chewy text, but they turned Read more ...
David Kettle
The Grand Old Opera House Hotel, Traverse Theatre ★★★The Traverse Theatre’s biggest, most lavish production for the 2023 festival is bold, colourful and joyful. It’s also, however, a somewhat patchy creation. Aaron (a gangly, gormless Ali Watt) has just started working at the institution of the show’s title, but he quickly hears rumours of its former life as an opera house, and is almost immediately smitten by a mysterious opera-singing figure (Karen Fishwick, in fine voice) he encounters. Is she a ghost, or someone more earthly?Phantoms aren’t the only element in The Grand Old Read more ...
David Kettle
Adults, Traverse Theatre ★★★Outside the festival madness of August, Edinburgh is a bit of a village. So it’s no surprise if you keep bumping into people you know. For entrepreneurial Zara, however, it nonetheless comes as a shock that the latest client at her fair-pay sex-work collective is her former teacher Iain, there to try things out with a guy for the first time. The awkwardness levels crank up even further, though, with the arrival of Jay, Iain’s partner for his allotted 45 minutes, as well as Jay’s crying baby, and a mobile phone that can record the whole affair.There are Read more ...
David Kettle
Casting the Runes, Pleasance Courtyard ★★★★ A viciously critical review gets its unfortunate writer driven mad and sent to an untimely death in this adaptation of a macabre MR James chiller. In that case, I’d better be careful what I say about British movement and puppetry company Box Tale Soup’s fluent two-hand staging. Though to call their Casting the Runes a two-hander isn’t strictly correct: actors Noel Byrne and Antonia Christophers (who also adapted the tale for the stage, adding in a few choice elements from elsewhere in James’s output) are joined by three puppets in Read more ...
David Kettle
Trojan Women, Festival Theatre ★★★★★You can feel the white-hot intensity radiating from the stage virtually from start to finish of this remarkable, hypnotic production from the National Changgeuk Company of Korea and Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: the show has been around since 2016 and has already toured internationally to enormous acclaim, before stopping off for its three International Festival performances.But that’s not to detract from the sheer overwhelming power of Trojan Women. Ong has collided together the austere, ritualistic Korean Read more ...
Simon Thompson
It’s an everyday story of festival folk. The festival’s Queen’s Hall concert on Wednesday morning was meant to be a song recital from Günther Groissböck, but he cancelled at (I’m told very) short notice due to illness and the festival team had to scrabble around to find a replacement pronto.Luckily, Edinburgh hosts several good singers at this time of year, not least thanks to the fact that the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are rehearsing The Magic Flute for this weekend. Step forward Turkish tenor Ilker Arcayürek, who will sing Tamino on Saturday. He stepped into the breach to sing alongside Read more ...
David Kettle
FOOD, The Studio ★★★There’s no denying it: Los Angeles-born Geoff Sobelle is a theatrical magician (quite literally – it’s how he began his career). Through a string of visually spectacular shows on the Fringe and more recently at the International Festival, he’s unleashed wildlife into the streets of Edinburgh, drawn aeons of history from a cardboard box, and even constructed an entire house on stage.So it’s perhaps no surprise that, for his new FOOD unveiled this year, Sobelle has transformed the Festival Theatre’s smaller Studio space into the setting for an immense dinner party Read more ...
David Kettle
Heaven, Traverse Theatre ★★★★★It’s a rare show that combines form and content to quite such devastatingly potent effect. The storyline of two-hander Heaven from Dublin-based Fishamble theatre company might seem simple: a middle-aged couple return to their former home town, where they encounter old (and new) flames, leading to a reassessment of their partnership, love and hopes.Despite the narrow focus of the material – examined in forensic detail in Eugene O’Brien’s penetrating script – there’s nonetheless a mythic quality to these two everypeople, buffeted by forces greater than Read more ...
David Kettle
Stuntman, Summerhall ★★★★★Masculinity and violence are hot subjects for theatrical examination – and dance theatre two-hander Stuntman from Scottish company Superfan is far from the only Fringe show that investigates them this year. What makes Stuntman stand out, though, is a particularly playful, even tender perspective on those forbiddingly thorny issues, and a joyfully light-touch appraisal of their crucial impact on male identity and relationships.The show might begin with gleeful live-action re-enactments of shoot-em-up hyperviolence from the two swaggering performers, all Read more ...
Simon Thompson
And we’re off! This concert marked the beginning not just of the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival but, perhaps more importantly, of Nicola Benedetti’s tenure in charge as the EIF’s Director. She came onstage for a chat before a note of music was played. Part of her mission as director appears to be to make the arts more accessible, and if her introductory chat wasn’t much more than a gentle hello then it still did the job. Any aim to demystify classical music has to be welcomed.That brief seems to have been passed on to violinist Stefan Jackiw, the artist around whom this programme Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Ed Byrne Assembly Rooms ★★★★★ Ed Byrne has frequently referenced his loved ones in previous shows but this new hour is one he would never wanted to have written, as it was prompted by the death of his younger brother, Paul, last year. Its title, Tragedy Plus Time, is taken from an aphorism attributed to Mark Twain about the definition of humour.But this is no misery memoir, far from it – Byrne is too talented a comic for that, and it’s a gag-filled hour, albeit one that deals with death and its impact. Byrne also poses some questions about the nature of sibling love and rivalry, and the Read more ...
David Kettle
The Death and Life of All of Us, Summerhall ★★★★Victor Esses was 16 when he first discovered his grandmother had a sister – someone the family had never discussed. It was just a year after his own first illicit visit to a gay sauna.Esses’s deceptively slight show – just him, a couple of microphones, some clips of video interviews and characterful musical contributions from guitarist Enrico Aurigemma – might begin as something of a whodunnit mystery tale, as Esses tracks down the mysterious elderly woman to a golf club outside Rome. But it quickly moves on to profounder – and, Read more ...