The big event this month was the annual Edinburgh Festival and I managed to make a few “visits”. No atmosphere of course, but on the plus side no travel, no exorbitant hotel rates and no rushing from venue to venue. I managed to see/hear no less than 17 shows all of which were reviewed (see below); even though the Festival is officially over, some of these pieces can still be accessed online. Nationally speaking, there have been a few attempts to get things back on stage – all socially distanced and Covid secure – but with threats of a “second wave” of the virus I’m unlikely to return to live reviewing any time soon. And so the bank of online reviews keeps getting bigger and stands at just shy of 200 shows (full index here) with at least one show being tackled everyday for the last 153 days. The Theatre Online lists (here and here) continue to evolve and have now been accessed well over 2,000 times with 999 downloads (perhaps you’d care to make up the numbers??). However, the initial tsunami of new and revived online material has slowed considerably so, from today updates to the lists will be regular rather than daily. Happy watching!
In the circumstances it seems inappropriate to offer star ratings for theatre productions as the same criteria simply cannot apply. However – all shows received a full review. Click on titles to access them.
Theatre
| Scrounger | Athena Stevens |
| As You Like It | William Shakespeare |
| It’s True. It’s True. It’s True | Breach Theatre |
| Place Prints 5 – 8 | David Rudkin |
| Measure For Measure | William Shakespeare |
| Moment Of Grace | Bren Gosling |
| Watching Rosie | Louise Coulthard |
| Timon Of Athens | William Shakespeare |
| Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks adpt. by Rachel Wagstaff |
| Alice: A Theme Park | Zoe Seaton (featuring Charlotte Keatley) |
| Place Prints 9 – 10 | David Rudkin |
| Ghost Light ** | Hope Dickson Leach |
| At The Ghost Light ** | J.J. Lepnik |
| After The Turn: The Mystery Of Bly Manor ** | Henry James adpt. by George Cooper and Ellie Hardwick |
| Haunted ** | Nia Williams |
| Matchbox Theatre | Michael Frayn |
| The House Of Bernarda Alba | Federico Garcia Lorca |
| Ghost Quartet | Dave Molloy |
| The School For Scandal | Richard Brinsley Sheridan |
| The Greatest Wealth | Various |
| Albion | Mike Bartlett |
| The Plague Thing ** | Marcia Kelson |
| Stranded ** | Marcia Kelson |
| A Young Man Dressed As A Gorilla…..12 ** | ????? |
| Front Window ** | Karen Louise Linton |
| Now Maybe Sunbeam ** | Justin Maxwell |
| Lockdown Drag-Out ** | Jane Martin |
| The Unknown Island | Jose Saramago adpt. by director Ellen McDougall & Clare Slater |
| Spirit Of Carnival | Emma Dennis-Edwards |
| Enough | Abi Zakarian |
| September Skies | Jessica Butcher |
| The Playboy Of the Western World | John Millingon Synge |
| Behind The Fridge | Peter Cook & Dudley Moore |
| At Home With The Brontes ** | Joan Greening |
| Wasted | Christopher Ash & Carl Miller |
| Things We Chose To Save | Clown Funeral |
| Contemporary Political Ethics (or, How To Cheat) ** | Jamie Cowan |
| Removed ** | Fionnuala Kennedy |
| Proxy ** | Heather Alexander |
| Those Girls ** | Abigail Cook |
| Declan ** | Kieran Hurley |
| Beyond The Fringe | Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller & Dudley Moore |
| For Quality Purposes | The cast, Craig Stephens and James Yarker |
| The Ockendon Witch | Richard Margrave |
| My Arm ** | Tim Crouch |
| Showstopper! The Improvised Musical | The cast |
| Showstopper! The (Socially Distanced!) Improvised Musical | The cast |
| The Price Of Everything | Daniel Bye |
| Rabbit Catcher ** | Rebecca Martin |
| Doomsdays ** | Conor O’Loughlin |
| Matterhorn ** | Amy Rhianne Milton |
| The Water Cooler ** | Uma Nada-Rajah |
** Edinburgh Festival/Fringe
Best Of The Bunch
Stan’s Cafe
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For my Theatre Online list (suggestions and news of newly released productions) please click here. This list is supplemented by regular updates on Twitter (@johnchapman398)
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