Edinburgh Festivals 2015: theatre reviews

It would be silly to deny the fact that this Flemish sign-language take on The Seagull is challenging: the steady stream of punters leaving throughout when I saw it were, I’m sure, not prejudiced against deaf people, but rather struggling with the interval-free two-and-a-half-hour production’s bizarre pace and oft confusing tonal meanderings. It’s probably fair to say that Antwerp’s Olympique Dramatique theatre company has a community-based process that is as much a rationale for their shows as the public presentation of the work. [seagull] was made in collaboration with members of the Flemish deaf community and features a cast that mixes deaf actors and hearing actors who have learned sign language for their role and effectively play deaf people. It’s unusual, yes, but if you can adjust to the odd quirks of Stijn Van Opstal’s production and the fact it is very definitely [seagull] rather than The Seagull then it’s actually charming, poignant and quietly loopy. While many a director likes to indulge the opening scene in which the intense young Konstantin stages an avant-garde play starring the sweet but ambitious Nina, in [seagull] the sequence feels like it takes up about a third of the total runtime. Not because the show overeggs Nina’s performance, which is certainly memorable but over fairly quickly. But the whole of act one is luxuriated over. Characters – from Lobke Leirens’s batshit Masha to Yousra Boukantar’s thoughtful Nina – are introduced slowly. There is a lot...

Wagner Moura’s recent lead role in the hugely acclaimed Brazilian film The Secret Agent made him the first actor from his country ever to bag a Best Actor Academy Award nomination and let me tell you, in person the man has rizz. After opening his countrywoman Christiane Jatahy’s ‘sequel’ to Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People with a tortured Portuguese monologue about about the nature of objective reality, he breaks up to suavely chat with us in English, and despite his warning that The Trial will be ‘99.98 percent’ in his native tongue, he frequently breaks off to talk with us, plead with us, shout at us in English. He is a very big deal, a very charming man and his superstar presence is a very big asset to the production. Which it needs because Jatahy’s high concept show is in danger of foundering on its own conceit, and casting a superstar in the lead role of Thomas Stockmann really does do a lot to paper over the cracks. In Ibsen’s monumental 1882 play, troubled protagonist Stockmann discovers the waters of his home town’s valuable spa are dangerously polluted. He believes it needs to be closed immediately and forces a showdown with the townsfolk, who don’t want to lose money by taking action. He loses, in part because he blows his top and calls his fellow citizens morons and questions the value of democracy if it lets the majority do stupid things. The climatic town hall scene was already a sort of unofficial public trial for him. But here he is, more formally on trial:...

This review is from 2024. The show is probably somewhat different now, although the same basic idea. We tend to think of New Yorkers as pathologically grouchy souls. But primary schooler-orientated NYC wizard Mario the Maker Magician is defined by his infectious elan. Whether he’s goofing around with the petty logic of a seven-year old or accessibly expounding on his love for Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, it’s the giddy atmosphere that the Sesame Street and David Blaine-endorsed Mario fosters in his show that makes it work as much as the actual magic. And the magic is great: a lot of sleight of hand stuff that impresses and winds up the smaller members of the audience in equal measure, plus a fair amount of out-and-out trolling of the adults. And this is the key: while never actually losing control, Mario encourages an air of borderline anarchy that’s extremely good fun (one audience member is required to look after a box and run off if Mario gets anywhere near her… which he does, a lot). His nominal USP is his homemade robots and devices (the ‘maker’ bit), and it has to be said that while these are very much part of the show – there is a very cute extended section with one little DIY droid – his act doesn’t lean on them quite as much as one might expect from the spiel. But that’s hardly an issue unless you’re an obsessive robophile: Mario himself is the main attraction. To be honest, aside from shonky kids’ party entertainers I’m not sure I can remember another...

This review is from the Southbank Centre in London. Evita Too transfers to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2026. ‘What does a woman have to do to be remembered?’ ask Sh!t Theatre, the duo stood naked on the yawning, pink-draped stage of the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room. It’s a good question. Rollerskate in said state of undress while a video of Andrew Lloyd Webber DJing Phantom of the Opera plays? Travel to Argentina, then Spain, in an attempt to track down a living historical figure they’ve become obsessed with? Write a musical about this woman that leads to a lightly threatening (and extremely passive aggressive) email from Lloyd Webber’s legal team? It’s something theatremakers Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole have been thinking a lot about since they became interested in Isabel Perón, the second wife of Argentinian president Juan Perón. Of course, as their earlier project DollyWould proved, a play about a prominent woman is more than a simple biopic when done by Sh!t Theatre. That show explored the inevitability of death by way of Dolly Parton; here, under Ursula Martinez’s direction, they wrestle with legacy, memory, grief, having (and not having) children, and even democracy. The result is a predictably anarchic production, one rife with levity and remarkable profundity. While most audience members won’t have heard of Isabel – I certainly hadn’t – we know of Juan’s first wife, Eva, remembered in life, history, and Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical as Evita. Evita...

This review is from Soho Theatre Walthamstow in 2025. Bog Witch transfers to the Edinburgh Fring in August 2026. Bryony Kimmings has one heck of a fanbase: some big comedy names have played the 1,000-seater Soho Theatre Walthamstow since it opened in May, but none of them have mounted a two-and-a-half week run, as Kimmings has with new show Bog Witch. Still, if you’re unfamiliar with her, it wouldn’t be a shock: she hasn’t done a stage show in seven years, and she is ultimately a performance artist (whose only full-on mainstream achievement to date is co-writing seasonal Britflick Last Christmas).  Press-night audiences aren’t representative, of course, but unless Bog Witch is dead the rest of the run, the fans are real. And deserved. Last decade she was an enchanting, amusing and provocative regular presence on our stages, with a run of funny, inventive, deeply personal and visually arresting shows beginning with her breakthrough Sex Idiot (about her efforts to trace which former partner gave her chlamydia) through to I’m a Phoenix, Bitch (a mini-musical about post-natal depression). Bog Witch is quintessential Kimmings, using funny songs, fun costumes and unfiltered, matey honesty to describe the latest chapter in her life: living off grid after falling for Will, an eco-warrior. That said, Bog Witch is disarming in being more diaristic than narrowly focussed on the headline topic. As illustrated by Will Duke’s beautiful shadow puppet-like projections, it’s really about...