Edinburgh News: theatre

I have just escaped from a claustrophobic cellar, where a madman held an audience for 90 minutes.

We shared the basement with Frederick, butterfly collector and his abducted prize specimen, beautiful, spirited, art student, Miranda. 

I seem to remember that when I was a youth there was a sign in the local swimming pool that went along the lines of "No running, no bombing, no petting".  All of this and much more happens in this production of Chekhov's "Ivanov".

Political satire is hardly a new concept, but this piece by Tom Basden (if.comedy Best Newcomer 2007) manages to humourously inject new life into the subject with a fresh approach in an effortlessly delivered hour of fun.

The American short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was first published in 1892 in the New England Magazine and now regarded as a prime work of feminist fiction.  The first person narrator, an unnamed young woman,  presents a personal memoir of her nervous breakdown suffering from post-natal depression.

It's not every day that you see almost completely naked performers pull pieces of chocolate out from between their pants and crotch and offer this not quite so tempting where-have-they-been-morsels

Power Plant consists of 22 sound and light installations by five artists threaded through and around the glasshouses of the Royal Botanic Garden.

I had never heard of the Dusseldorf Ripper. Come to think of it, I had never heard of Dusseldorf. I hated Geography at school. Mrs Haynes was a nasty old witch. She didn't exactly inspire interest. Only a desk of intricate doodles.

I do feel a bit guilty about calling Beggars Belief a rather bloated episode of Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. It's not really that bad. In fact, of all the shows that I have seen so far in the fringe this year, this would be the one that I would recommend for ‘a good laugh before hitting the town on a Friday night'.

Brought to Edinburgh by members of North Carolina theatre and performance troupe Concrete Generation, this was an impressionistic wander through the lives of two of the most inspirational, and aesthetically controversial, figures in American 20th century jazz: Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

A colleague from book-trade days used to tell the story of how, whilst busking in London, the late John Betjeman sat on his fiddle at a party. The tale has the right mix of humour laced with sadness to almost make a Betjeman poem in itself.