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Aug 23, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 23 Aug 2024 Stephen Viner is a musician from Canada who calls himself a sound miner; he excavates sounds from the world around us which he then makes musical arrangements out of. He tells us a bit about them between the songs he plays but doesn't provide any context except for the superfluous. Explaining his back story and what he does would have really added the human interest that this show needs.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 19 Aug 2024 “I think about the stage as a place where we can dream, and dreaming as a process of becoming,” says Wet Mess sharing from London, while adding the final touches to their Fringe show.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 17 Aug 2024 Back in February, the world went ‘huh… haha’ while looking at funny videos on social media of a Willy Wonka 'experience' gone wrong in Glasgow, before the next viral trend in our attention economy came along. Maybe I’m just more curmudgeonly than I care to admit, but do we really need a 70 minute musical based on this? It seems unimaginative and Willy's Candy Spectacular is as lazy and basic as its source material.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 17 Aug 2024 Director and writer Anne Welenc's QUEENS is a three-hander that blends classical theatre, opera and drag to conjure an afterlife where Elizabeth I, Mary Queens of Scots and other queens revel in the underworld.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 17 Aug 2024 LA-based clown Natasha Mercado's original show about religion and longing brims with ideas and a heart below all the silliness.
We are greeted by Mercado, donned in a priest garb and painted-on beard as she invites her congregation to her first mass. She delivers her sermon 90s boy-band style, in chains and in trills, and it somehow never gets old, the audience hanging onto her every lyric.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 17 Aug 2024 Scottish Dance Theatre are back at the Fringe with two bold new works with visually arresting and utterly contemporary movement. They centre the idea of community and how this involves the melding of individual voices, with absolute trust expected and delivered by the nine dancers. It is 85 minutes of dynamism and versatility, with each work expertly choreographed by two of Europe’s most exciting dance makers.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 16 Aug 2024 Berlin-based contemporary circus collective still hungry is made up of three women who are long-time friends and circus performers. Show Pony, their collaboration with Bryony Kimmings, is a circus piece like no other that explores what it means to be an older woman in a world that demands physical perfection and utter dedication.
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Aug 15, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 15 Aug 2024 ‘Doof doof’ might sound like the start of the EastEnders theme for a Scottish person, but in Australia it ignites memories of EDM outdoor parties. Australian performer Jonny Hawkins, alongside their DJ partner Mikala Westall, brings Bush club culture to Assembly, instilling their ideas of how the dancefloor is a sight of healing and community building to varying degrees of success.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 13 Aug 2024 The horse girl aesthetic has had something of a resurgence in recent years – whether that’s DJs dressed up as them at Berghain, Kim Petras singing about ‘riding her horsey’ or TikTok edits of the Olympic dressage events combining with Brat summer. It’s queer, nostalgic and silly, AKA ripe fruit for a Fringe show.
All the Fraudulent Horse Girls is the show made by Brooklyn Rep to fill this horse-shaped demand.
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Aug 5, 2024 | 
festmag.com | Jack Howse
By Jack Howse Published 05 Aug 2024 plewds is a word that comes from comic book land, denoting those graphic beads of sweat you see come off a cartoon character when under emotional distress. You can see why Katherine Payne has named their one-person show – which has been brought to Summerhall through the Mary Dick Award 2024 – after this. It is an apt name for a show that mixes heady and animated comedy mixed with emotional pathos and queered grief.
