Theatre

This is a "Wind" worth catching at the Playhouse for the rest of the week. It’s a Bill Kenwright presentation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman version of ‘Whistle down the Wind’. It's based on the novel written by the late Mary Haley Bell and created as a film starring her daughter Haley Mills back in 1961.

“Not another one!” This was the only thought in my mind as I fumbled through the Porridge program, eagerly awaiting the lights to dim so that my pained face could be disguised.

Communicado really knows how to put on a show. There’s music, singing, dancing, drama, comedy, fabulous costumes, imaginative effects, and terrific acting - aa in the wan gless. Oh, and a message. How good is that?

Shattered Head is the title of a piece of sculpture made by Scots Italian artist, Eduardo Paolozzi in 1956. This short play shows the acclaimed artist in the last years of his life when he is confined to a wheelchair and the inside of his own head has been shattered after his stroke in 2001.

There is so much bad comedy on the television these days. And most of it, it saddens me to say, home-grown.

Over recent years, aside from the odd flash of brilliance (The Office, Spaced, The Green Wing), we have produced uninspired, lazy shows that seek out cheap laughs from start to finish.

Now Martin McDonagh has been thrust into the spotlight for award-winning short films and his Oscar nominated feature length In Bruges, it seems only fitting that the Lyceum present his first major

Given the success of theatrical forays such as The Vagina Monologues and Grumpy Old Women, one might have had high hopes for Julie Coombe and John MacIsaac's Sex and The City meets HRT themed romp, Hormonal Housewives.

Last year’s innovative lunchtime theatre series "A Play, A Pie and A Pint", a successful collaboration between Glasgow’s Òran Mór and the Traverse Theatre, is back in Edinburgh for the next 5 weeks.  This time they have had the good sense to include the classic meat pie (Òran Mór’s own, I am told) among the choice and very good it is too. Aussies take note!

Situated at the corner of Bonnington and Newhaven Road, Guilty Lily is an unexpected surprise with its chandelier, bright silken cushions, high wooden barstools and fairy lights. 

A prodigious playwright, Douglas Maxwell will have at least 5 of his plays performed this year - including a musical for Cumbernauld Theatre. 'Promises, Promises' however is a monologue written in the voice of a primary school teacher who feels drawn to protect a mute six year old Somalian girl, allegedly possessed by the devil.

Entering Traverse 2 to see Pamela Carter’s play What We Know, was like passing invisibly through your neighbours' kitchen and witnessing their intimate universe of two. You were seeing them, but weren’t part of their world as Jo (Paul Thomas Hickey) and Lucy (Kate Dickie) move about chatting naturally but silently, having the occasional snog.

I’m not going to lie to you. When I walked by our beautiful Kings Theatre, some cold morning not too long ago, and saw a poster for Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, I was suddenly struck by a raging bolt of fury. There is something about Gary Wilmot and Lee Mead’s smiley, shiny, sparkly faces that just stirs a deep violence within me.

Footloose has a number of well known songs including the title song,  "Let’s Hear It For The Boy" and "Holding Back For A Hero". In some ways, either with the type of songs or being first night, it seemed the cast were holding back until "hero" midway in the first half. After this number the show really took off with a much bigger performance from the cast as it worked its way through pathos, comedy and energetic dance numbers culminating in a great finish where "Footloose" is reprised.

Fear: a feeling of anxiety or distress caused by the presence of danger and a genre of performance that is popular with modern culture.

Audiences throughout history have enjoyed the adrenalin rush of being scared witless, as illustrated in the enduring popularity of modern ‘slasher’ films going all the way back to classic Hammer Horror.

Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel creates a chilling live action thriller that grips the audience in the eerie story with no cushions to hide behind or power off button on the remote to reach for.

‘What were you trying to achieve?’ was the question asked by one of this reviewer’s former tutors. It’s worth asking of Spymonkey’s ‘Moby Dick’.

As the theatre packed to the sound of speakeasy style music, that jivey, jazzy stuff of another era that creates such an atmosphere of smoky, sleazy anticipation, it seemed the scene was being set

The Edinburgh International Festival may have come first, but generally it's the Fringe that Edinburgh is best-known for. There's really nothing quite like it: "the largest show on Earth" they say. The latest stats seem to bear that out: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009 saw 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows at 265 venues. It's a sprawling, anarchic, sleepless month of live performances.

Tim Burton meets Jim Henson in a beautiful and poetic masterpiece from German puppeteer company Figurentheater Tübingen.

I have never had as much trouble starting a review and formulating a clear opinion as I have this evening following the night's "experience" that was the sound sculpture 1945.

I’ve always thought Passing Places to be a little bit of an odd one. It doesn’t read like a play particularly. Frequently described as ‘a road movie for stage’, it doesn’t perform like one either. It is, much like its two main characters, neither here nor there. Caught between two different worlds, unsure of what it is or where it wants to go.