There’s Barry with his chamois who loves to buff, and Brian in a chicken mask going to the dungeon room. Brenda roams the corridors holding her dead husband’s skull and Gary, a newly-wed petrol-head, keeps saying ‘oil.’ They, together with Barbara Backhander from Uganda (that’ll be me), comprise the guests at Hotel Yes Please, the […]

‘There are three people on stage. Don’t tell the Beckett Estate. Shit!’ Turns out that Edward Beckett sees the benefit in making uncle Samuel’s work more accessible. Eureka! He allows Jess Thoms, aka Touretteshero, to adapt the work to suit her particular physical and neurological requirements. Many of Beckett’s characters are disabled. Think of Endgame: […]

In a festival renewed for the speed of its turnarounds, to arrive in a space that resembles the scrappier back end of a charity shop, where the hard-to-categorise items – an ironing board, a scruffy giant teddy – are piled unceremoniously, is immediately intriguing. It’s a charity shop with a difference, however, as the staff […]

There is a man is an oversized, cartoonish lion costume centrestage. He introduces himself in cod-Scots: he is Lionel McLion. Just glimpsed in the darkness of his mouth is a second mouth, human: this is performance-maker Mamoru Iriguchi. But it’s no naive design flaw that discloses his presence, we can see Mamoru because he’s just […]

Total Theatre Awards 2017 have been announced!   The Total Theatre Awards, which have been running since 1997, recognise ‘innovative and artist-led performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’. 28 peer assessors, who looked at 538 shows across the first 11 days of the festival. The nominees shortlist was announced on 17 August. The nominated shows […]