REVIEWS:

Scotsman awards 4 stars - 'Some venues detract from the performance. Others enrich it to the point where the actors and the backdrop appear to be made for each other. Edinburgh University's Victorian McEwan Hall, designed to resemble a Greek theatre...is transformed into the magical forest of Shakespeare's comedy by the graphical wizardry of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA), which lit up the opening ceremony of the Olympics in China last year ' Read full review here

 

Edinburgh Guide awards 4 stars - '...a unique theatrical experience, it is hugely successful.  I have to check my ticket to confirm that it was a Fringe and not an International Festival production.' Read full review here

 

AlltheFestivals.com awards 4 stars -'The Beijing Film Academy has produced a showcase for the talents of their young cast and the wizardry of their production crew. It may not be Shakespeare, but it is a real visual treat and well worth a visit.' Read full review here

 

Three Weeks awards 4/5 -'...Visually tantalising and refreshingly performed throughout!' Read full review here - located at bottom of page

 

Edinburgh festival: my first Fringe picks

The Fringe festival programme was unveiled this morning – here's my list of the best shows. What's on yours?


Last week I met two people promoting shows on the Edinburgh Fringe. In the space of an hour, one of them told me it was going to be a year of feelgood theatre as companies laughed off the recession with big doses of knockabout entertainment. The other insisted it was shaping up to be a highly polemical Fringe, as comedians such as Mark Thomas and Stewart Lee directed their attentions at the state we're in.

It'll be a while before we can digest the 200-odd pages of the newly published programme, but my hunch is that both are probably right. So you'll excuse me if I hold off deciding what this year's lineup tells us about the mood of the times. In the meantime, here's an initial pick of the shows that look promising.

On the international front (see also the international festival, the lineup for which was announced in March), Mercy Madonna of Malawi promises an African perspective on Madonna's adoption story as part of the World festival at St George's West church. Showing similar ambition, the Beijing Film Academy is fusing online gaming technology with Chinese martial arts in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the McEwan Hall.

Thanks to the Scottish government's Edinburgh festivals expo fund, there is an increased presence of Scottish companies this year, many of them reviving well-received productions. Midsummer by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre, Susurrus by David Leddy, Year of the Horse by Tam Dean Burn and The Sound of My Voice by the Citizens, Glasgow, are all recommended.

Meanwhile, Maureen Beattie – still remembered for her formidable Medea in 2000 – will star in an adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel The Girls of Slender Means, a production by Stellar Quines to which the author gave her blessing shortly before her death. Spark completists can also see the recent Northampton staging of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Anna Francolini. Both plays will be on at the Assembly Rooms.

The Traverse is extending its reach to include the Barony Bar on Broughton Street – where site-specific experts Grid Iron will be adapting the stories of Charles Bukowski in Barflies – and the Mercure Point hotel, where the wonderful Belgian company Ontroerend Goed (who wowed the Fringe last year with their teenage show Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen) stages Internal, a one-on-one speed-dating-style project. There's loads of other promising stuff on at the Traverse, too, including new performances by Dennis Kelly, Stefan Golaszewski and Daniel Kitson.

You'll also find interesting examples of cross-generational and cross-dressing collaborations, as Mark Ravenhill teams up with Bette Bourne for A Life in Three Acts. In similarly biographical mode, the Clod Ensemble works with Peggy Shaw of Split Britches on Must: The Inside Story.

Now in its third year, the Forest Fringe, a sort of fringe of the Fringe, is still buzzing with new ideas. Forest is already producing its own graduates: the much-admired Paper Cinema, which appeared in Edinburgh last year, is moving up to the Scottish Storytelling Centre with an adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Other well-received companies making return visits include Analogue, following up Mile End with Beachy Head, and the team behind last year's Paperweight with the medically themed Icarus 2.0.

But that's just the earliest of early skims – what else do you recommend?

From Mark Fisher | Stage | guardian.co.uk


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