Amy Hanson - Page 3

The ancient Greek tragedy Antigone is a hugely versatile piece, lending itself well to adaptations to situations far beyond its original Theban setting.  In this new adaptation by James Beagon, the play is set in the near future, where Brexit has resulted in a hard border with Ireland and consequent return to sectarian violence.  This is a setting that works well with the themes of rebellion, religion and family relationships of Sophocles' original text.

All the way from New Zealand, Javier Jarquin has always wanted to be a ninja.  With martial arts lessons proving disappointing and traditional weapons like nunchaku hard to master, Javier instead dedicated his time and effort to adapting playing cards into deadly shuriken.  In this show, he attempts to pass through a series of trials that proves he has what it takes to be a true ninja.

Here at the world's biggest arts festival, creatives and artists from all over the globe are tackling truly important questions, with surely none more crucial than what the result would be if Shakespeare had written seminal 80s classic Ghostbusters. REDuck Producktions have slapped Shakespearean language, costumes and setting on to the story of disgraced "philosophers" saving the public from the supernatural.

Theatre, we are informed at the outset of the show, is a dying art.  A potentially controversial statement at the Fringe, but luckily for everyone, underappreciated actor Garry Starr is on a mission to save the art form.  Over the course of sixty minutes, he will attempt to perform every single genre of theatre in order to inspire his audience to new-found appreciation and enthusiasm for everything from melodrama to maskwork.

We are all time travellers in our own way.  After all, what else is a to-do list but a message from a past self?  But what would happen if you started getting messages from a future version of you?  That is the intriguing premise of Passionate Machine, a one-woman show written and performed by Dr Rosy Carrick.

Thom Bee is a wrestling fan who wants to share his passion for the art of the squared circle with Edinburgh audiences.  He does this with the aid of comedy tag-team partner Balthazar Dark (Andrew Marsh), whose career failures have led him to something of an existential crisis.

In 1662 Morayshire, Isobel Gowdie works for zealous and ruthless witch-pricker John Dixon, torturing suspected witches into confessing their crimes.  When a ragged man appears, claiming to be the real John Dixon, and that the witch-pricker is a disguised woman named Christian Caddell, Isobel must reconsider the figure in whom she has placed her trust and affection. A dark and unsettling piece based on a true story, Heaven Burns is the 2018 winner of the Assembly Roxy Theatre Award.

Sheer anarchy is about the only way to describe John Robertson's latest stand up effort. Sweaty, Sexy Party Party is a difficult show to summarise, as if there was a theme or set to it, it was quickly discarded in favour of riffing off of audience members to hilarious ends. Luckily, the Australian comedian best known at the Fringe for the perennial cult hit The Dark Room proves just as effective a showman with the lights on.

After jukebox musicals became the latest trend in theatre, it was nearly impossible to listen to any greatest hits compilation without dreaming up how it could be adapted into a West End smash hit. We've Got Each Other takes its cue from these often formulaic musicals, but with its own spin.  It's billed as an "almost entirely imagined Bon Jovi musical" with no band, no costumes, no set or sparkling costumes; simply one man describing the show to you.

Who can you trust? Make the wrong choices and you will end up dead! While Werewolves is in the theatre section of the Fringe brochure, it is better described as an interactive role-playing experience, with the audience involved as participants throughout, striving to survive.

Nearly 30 years old, Assassins manages to remain fiercely relevant in 2017.  Stephen Sondheim's interpretation of disillusionment with the American dream is explored through those who have tried to kill Presidents of the United States.  As we see how historical figures chose deadly violence to react against real or perceived injustices, it is hard to escape comparisons between the recent unrest in the USA and the show's sentiment that "every now and then the country goes a little wrong".

Musical comedy duo of brothers Ed (the thoughtful, if slightly filthy-minded, guitarist) and Tommy (the shirtless rocker brandishing a balloon cutlass) make up Jollyboat, a vaguely pirate themed double-act who are a definite Fringe cult hit.  They have two shows this year, a "Best of" show celebrating several successful sell-out years on the Fringe, and #Jollyboat: Why Do Nerds Suddenly Appear?, featuring new material alongside a few favourites that delighted the audience of evident fans packing out Subway.

Stemming from a childhood wish to emulate Hulk Hogan, comedian Darius Davies takes us on a journey into pursuing his dream of becoming a professional wrestler, and how it all went wrong.

A monologue on the themes of technology and identity, Pixel Dust features teenager Daniella, always online in some fashion, vlogging her hopes and dreams into cyberspace.  An outcast at her new school, she escapes into the internet, taking on different identities even as she seeks to discover her own.  She feels liberated and empowered online, but the dark side of the internet is always there, saving her humiliation in the cloud, sowing doubt about her friendships and amplifying her need for validation.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a rocking rollercoaster ride through the last thirty years in Britain, from the Thatcherite late 80s, through Cool Britannia, to Brexit Britain.  Focusing on two working-class kids from Hull, Leah and Chris, it portrays their unfulfilled dreams and increasing neuroses, even as an asteroid screams towards the planet.  It's not quite a play, not quite a musical and not quite a rock concert, taking elements from each to create what production company Middle Child describe as 'gig theatre'.

Things really are rotten right now, aren't they?   We've got resurgent racism, the Welfare State's continual erosion, a terrible economy and climate change.   But will any of this get better in the next few years?  Luckily, Ross McCaffrey has travelled to the future, and as part of this show he explains to friend Jake Walton and the audience what we can expect to change between now and then.

In the 1980s, the era of Thatcher, managed decline and "the enemy within", a crack formed between the northern and southern parts of England, splitting them apart physically as well as socially.  This is the backdrop to The North! The North!, written and performed by Christopher Harrisson, a twisted dark fantasy of a young man's homecoming to the far side of that crack to avenge his mother's death.

Foreign Radical is a piece of interactive theatre focusing on surveillance and suspicion in an age of prominent terrorist threat.  At its heart, it is about our complicity in a system that condemns people without evidence, presented in the style of a twisted gameshow. 

Adapted by Pelle Koppel from the controversial young adult novel by Janne Teller, Nothing tells the story of a class of young people searching for the meaning of life.  On the first day of school, classmate Pierre-Anthon announces that life has no meaning and nothing at all matters.  To persuade him otherwise, his peers give up personal treasures to a heap of meaning in an abandoned sawmill.  As each child nominates what the next must sacrifice to disprove Pierre-Anthon's nihilistic taunts, the play takes a disturbing turn.

Two for one is more commonly applied to tickets at the Fringe rather than the plays themselves. Evidently keen to push against such boundaries, Doughnut Productions have taken a play by Andrew Bovell and separated it into two productions.  Running in tandem with a linked piece Speaking in Tongues: The Lies at the same venue, this part of the play depicts a series of relationships around the central event of the disappearance of psychiatrist Valerie Summers.