It is always a delightful experience to watch a show where the line between spectator and performer is tenuous to the point that the audience believes that they are participating in a dialogue, and not watching a theatrical presentation in monologue form. That’s what happens in The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean, created and performed by […]

Summerhall’s main hall is sold out and sweltering, and there is much anticipation around renowned Polish innovators Song of the Goat’s latest production. Never having experienced their work before I had no idea what to expect, but what I found was something quite unique. Director Grzegorz Bral welcomes us and explains that the company have […]

Little Cauliflower’s The Night of the Big Wind is a charming puppet show about a small boy who lives with his father, a fisherman in a small village, and the night that their little community is beset by a great storm. The puppeteers sing and play their way through this simple tale, told with tabletop puppets, plenty […]

Bulgarian puppeteer Milena Milanova has produced a commendable one-woman puppet show based upon Chekov’s one-act play On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco. Nikotine is an hour-long lecture on smoking given by a puppet – called Nikolai Nikotine – in which he uses much of his time to complain about his overbearing wife, drawing comparisons between marriage and the act of […]

Shamelessness is sometimes a virtue. Imagine a group of actors dressed up like lions, but not real lions, no – dressed up in bad fancy-dress lion costumes, as if entertainers at a children’s party. Then, imagine these actors performing almost naturalistically, almost as if they were at home, discussing private matters. Now let’s give them […]