Category Archives: Rated: Outstanding

Work that aims high and hits every mark.

‘Alice in Wonderland Musical’ (Greenside @ Riddle’s Court)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals, EdFestivals 2023, Musical Theatre, Other, Rated: Outstanding by

“SOME REAL STARS HERE AND SOME REAL STAR TURNS”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

It would be fair to say my youngest daughter is an Alice in Wonderland aficionado. She has various copies of the bookd. She knows every word of the Disney film. Burton’s work is on her radar. Her World Book Day get-up is normally Carroll-esque.

It was pretty clear  as soon as spotted an Alice-based show in Fringe we would be off to Riddle’s Court – a suitably Carroll-esque venue for the show – and down the rabbit hole of corridors to watch.

The show was packed and we were told that the show was a sell-out. My daughter sat next to me in full Cheshire Cat costume holding a Cheshire Cat stuffed toy. Breath, as they say, was baited. Few Fringe goers are as dedicated as this.

Over the next 45 minutes the young cast sing, dance, and dazzle their way through a range of songs whilst sticking to the well-known story of Alice. All of the famous characters join us as we build up to the famous croquet scene. (NB: there was post-show debate as to whether Tweedledum and Tweedledee are considered ‘canon’ as they appear in Through the Looking Glass but they appear in the Disney and Burton films. On balance their omission was considered acceptable).

There are some real stars and some real star turns. Charity Bielicki as Alice has a stunning voicewhilst Avi Walton is a wicked Queen of Hearts: she played the audience extremely well and her back and forth with the Playing Cards was very funny.

The songs though are strong throughout. The first song Let’s all go to the fair was a good, strong show tune starter although I’ll confess I wasn’t sure how it related to the story. Things picked up from there though The Song of M was clever and became suitably madcap when all the characters sing different songs at once. Everyone is Mad was fun as was the White Rabbit’s ‘Backwards Song’.

The director, Tim Nelson, treats us to some swing, some blues and some barbershop throughout and almost everything comes off. Ultimately it really whistles along with humour and brio.

I asked my Alice addict what I should give it out of 5. She said a hundred. This may seem like special pleading: she loves Alice and therefore would always give it a strong score. That is to misunderstand a true expert in her field: she went in a little worried that they would do it wrong; concerned that it wouldn’t be good enough. That she sat utterly rapt, no demands for snacks, whooping and cheering throughout suggests it really was a good show. I thought it was just lovely.

At the end of the show Alice went outside to have pictures with any children that wanted one. Mine, of course, went hunting out Cheshire Cat. The entire cast seemed utterly delighted the show was sold out and couldn’t have been friendlier or kinder to the children who went to speak to them at the end.

 

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‘Apple of My Eye’ (Venue 29, until AUG 19th)

Posted in *Written Interviews, 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“A tight and pacy insight into genius, spotlight with songs that even the most pompous and jaded critic of musical theatre as a legitimate genre cannot overly object to.”

Editorial Rating: 5 (Outstanding)

One year, and I’ve been telling myself this for a decade now, I’m going to spend a day at EdFringe at just one venue and see all the shows performed there from sunup to sundown. Doing so, I reckon, will be the best way to encounter great scripts and performances that I would otherwise miss. A trawler net in place of a fishing rod. If I ever do make good this plan, I hope the results will be as pleasantly surprising as ‘Apple of My Eye’ which I went into on my way out of the previous show at my favourite EdFringe venue.

Chances are that you’ve heard of Steve Jobs. The people untouched by this genius and innovator are now curiosities, clutching their Nokias like anyone would bother to steal them. Jobs rose and fell young then rose, phoenix-like, again before succumbing to a tragically early death. A true trailblazer he achieved astounding professional successes despite infamous personal shortcomings.

Early Mornings Productions is the vehicle for Joel Goodman and Jan Osborne’s musical mini masterpieces including their acclaimed biography of Alan Turning – and no, the Turing connection to the Apple logo is just a legend. What’s delivered in ‘Apple of My Eye’ is a tight and pacy insight into genius, spotlight with songs that even the most pompous and jaded critic of musical theatre as a legitimate genre cannot overly object to. The signature refrain ‘Abandoned, or Chosen’ roots this fine portraiture in the character and contradictions set in motion by Job’s adoption as a baby.

As Jobs, Stephen Smith owns the stage exuding a confidence and magnetism both authentic and essential. Smith is more reflective than apologetic, treading a fine line between ego and mania. Despite a technical glitch – one of the four auld iMacs used to amply Smith’s performance with AV is on the fritz – we are treated to a sense of just how much work has gone into doing justice to a life spent in pursuit of design simplicity. This is a show that sticks in the mind for all the right reasons.

Come for the portrait of a titan of our times. Stay for a production that hits all the high notes. Get your turtlenecks on and go see this!

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‘Madame Chandelier’s Opera Party for Kids’ (Venue 13, until AUG 15th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“As extra-curricular activities go, this is the bee’s knees and spider’s ankles.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Look, you’re busy. I’m busy. It’s halfway through EdFringe which was exhausting enough in our 20s before kids. So let’s just say what needs saying and try to get Tabbitha and Ossian through their next 8 shows without any more tears – clears throats, goes for fortissimo – ‘Madame Chandelier’s Opera Party for Kids’ is the one show you cannot, must not miss.

It is art. It is artistry. It is informative. It is bucketloads of fun. Where else are you going to watch a classically trained opera singer gag on one of the Harribos she’s given to the kids in the front row to throw into her mouth when she hits the high notes?

As Madam Chandelier, Canadian-British opera singer and comedian Delea Shand is the best discovery at the Fringe us parents and carers can make. It’s opera, so it’s classy. It’s opera done well, so it’s really good. It’s opera done clever, which makes it comprehensible. It’s opera done knowledgeably, which makes for a lot of in-jokes buffs can smugly chuckle at. As extra-curricular activities go, this is the bee’s knees and spider’s ankles.

Daughter 1.0 (8 years) wrote this in her notebook, the one with Elsa dressed as la fille du régiment on the cover: “I went to madam chandelier’s opera party for kids! When I walked in there was a big suitcase on a stool and a lady standing next to it. Madame chandelier talked about lots of opera singers and we Played a few games. I also liked when she was a mermaid and we had a pool party with fish and bubbles and pretend warter! She played the accordion. I realy liked the bit when we had to throw gummy bears at her (only on the high notes). and she got to be all of the charecters! I liked when we had a party at the end. I really enjoyed it”

There’s no filter on children. It’s what makes them unlike grown-ups. Grown-ups know how to pretend to like things. Grown-ups don’t tell you they’re bored or fidget when stillness is what’s needed. Grown-ups compromise themselves to conform with expectations. It’s what makes children impossible and impossibly fun to be around. So when you are in a room with dozens of happy, laughing children who are enjoying themselves too much to notice they are also learning, you know you’re on to a great and wonderful thing.

Come for the opera because opera is high art which good for you. Stay for a biggest, bestest, sometimes bizzarest show that reminds us why we have kids and will travel many miles to see great performers hitting all the high notes. Get your opera capes on and go see this!

 

‘Sh!t-faced Shakespeare®: Romeo and Juliet’ (Venue 150, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 4*, Comedy, EdFestivals, EdFestivals 2023, Pleasance, Pleasance, Potterrow & Teviot, Rated: Outstanding by

“A Fringe Institution”

Editorial Rating: 4 (Outstanding)

Gone are the days where you can have a glass of lunch and return to work. It is hard enough to get a way with a couple of snifters let alone get full-blown trollied. So as one of those who hanker for the good, old days it was pleasing to see the old ways continuing at Sh!t-faced Shakespeare.

The premise is simple. A cast of classically trained actors perform a whistle-stop Shakespearean play (this year: Romeo and Juliet). The twist being that one of the cast is, well, shit-faced.

And boy was she shit-faced.

The compere got the audience going outlining exactly how much the actor had put away. She explained how some audience members could get involved. There was a genuine buzz (NB: not easy in the EICC! A venue that is generally reserved for dreary conferences about tax).

How much had she drunk? A bottle of lager and half a bottle of voddie. That’s a decent knock. A cider was also mentioned.

The compere was involved throughout to intervene throughout as an ad hoc health and safety consultant: running on to ensure the drunk actor doesn’t actually play with a sword; ensuring the drunk cast member didn’t fall into the crowd; reminding the cast to do some Shakespeare etc.

The show started with a small dance scene. It was very obvious, very quickly which one of the cast was drunk. The evening I went along it was Benvolio (Maryam Grace) although I believe the night before it had been Juliet.

She, of course, absolutely steals the show whilst the rest of the cast desperately try to keep up as she does everything in her power to knock them off track. If there was any semblance of a fourth wall Grace rampages through it at every turn.

There was one hilarious moment of audience dialogue where Grace drops the ‘C bomb’, the compere runs on to tell her off and Grace  gets the audience to agree that in Scotland the word really is a friendly greeting. At another point she whipped the audience into a frenzy by shouting ”Fuck the patriarchy”. Throughout she is gold-dust and the audience absolutely love her.

Admittedly, at points some actual high-quality Shakespeare breaks out but never for too long as Grace tramples in.  The other actors just about manage not to be put off entirely and adeptly manage the mayhem that is ensuing around them and improvising their own gags.

Somehow, despite all this, the show just about runs to time and the feels incredibly slick. I’d be keen to see it again to see Grace sober and one of the others drunk (Romeo leathered would, I think, be quite something).

It is easy to see why this is a Fringe institution. The venue was full and the crowd cackled away throughout. It was clear that many have seen the show, or at least the concept, before and return for more… but isn’t that quite something when there is so much competition here in August?

I was as sober as the rest of the cast and, I suspect, that had I sunk a few beforehand the show would have been an entirely different beast.

Come for the concept. Stay for the Shakespeare. Get some beers in and go and see this.

 

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‘The Madwoman’ (Venue 29, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“One of the most visually exciting shows this EdFringe.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

We enter to be pleasantly surprised by the drapes. Oscar Wilde famously (and accurately quipped) that violence was endemic in America because the curtains were so ugly. These hand-painted, floor-to-ceiling, mini-mega masterpieces are a delight, exactly the kind of thing you would imagine a company funded by a mural painting day job would have on tap. I especially like how the statues shown seem to be stepping off their pedestals and at least one has (appropriately) been decapitated.

Centre stage, imprisoned in a world of her own is Théroigne de Méricourt. She has been held captive for twenty years, stepping out of the French Revolution and into an asylum. Thousands of other wide-eyed revolutionaries have lost their heads, she’s lost her mind. She ekes out an existence, meditating on the wheel of fortune which has taken her from the life of a provincial orphan to grand places in the company of grand people.

Born in Belgium, Théroigne de Méricourt became an opera star and orator. She was among the women who marched on Versailles in October 1789. Dressed in a man’s riding habit she attended key National Assembly meetings in the run up to the passing of the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’. She organised. She agitated. She was too pro-Girondin to survive the emptying of Marat’s bathwater. She became a problem. She became an inmate.

This is a production of supple strength and subtly. A family affair in which two Texan mural-painting sisters (with costumes by their mom, who also sewed the drapes) have brought together one of the most visually exciting shows this EdFringe. As Théroigne de Méricourt, Cara Johnston is intense like being stuck in an elevator with an angry swan is intense. A reference to the Hot Crazy Matrix would not go down well these days, so I won’t make it. But if I did, Johnston’s performance would be off the charts. The details of her performance are exquisite, from her browned-up teeth to her pitch-perfect vocal work. Nothing is out of place. Every stitch of canvas is set to keep this hell for leather script on course. Johnson turns our favourite bijou space in Edinburgh into a tardis – infinitely, impossibly bigger on the inside than on the out.

Come for the history lesson about a woman who must not be forgotten. Stay for one of the most interstellar, and yet movingly down-to-Earth, performances you’ll see. Get your tailcoats on and go see this!

Read the company’s #EdFringeTalk with us here!

 

‘The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria’ (Venue 23, until AUG 28th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“Quite simply the best historical writing to appear at the Fringe in years.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Vox Populi vox dei. The best thing about EdFringe is how each year one or two shows mysteriously break away from the hurly-burly and have a super successful run ft. packed houses and glowing reviews. The wisdom of crowds is rarely celebrated by the curators of our culture and politics. But democracy works. People power rights more wrongs, fights more injustices, and slays more dragons than the whole banal host of 2D cartoon superheroes. So it’s pleasing to me (and the high horse I ride around town) that the breakout success of EdFringe ‘23 is a play about how individuals working together can make good things happen, or rather make bad things slow to a stop.

Out of the Forest Theatre is the company that wide-eyed creative children should dream of running away to join. They blend live production elements like master champagne makers blend vintages. The results are sparkling.

Joseph Cullen & Sasha Wilson’s script is quite simply the best historical writing to appear at the Fringe in years. Eastern and Central Europe – past, present, and future – have been visited often by us Brits, but the full discovery is still someway off. Vikings yes. Columbus no. Ostentatiously reading the Daily Mail in Brooke’s Bar before the show, because I love the sound of tutting, I read that Albania is finally being recognised as the destination tourist hotspot such wonderful people and such a spectacular place deserve. The British horizon is widening beyond the channel and the Rhein, waltzing towards the Blue Danube. Similarly, Cullen & Wilson’s chronicle of Bulgarian 20th-century history plants a flag for many of us (oh how British) marking territory deserving of being less incognito. It’s witty. It’s intricate. It’s monumental. In the year Georgi Gospodinov became the first Bulgarian to win the Booker Prize, this drama is a landmark achievement.

And it’s upstaged by Hannah Hauer-King’s direction which is brisk without being busy, fun but never fussy. The staging is in turn upstaged by the performances which are as sharp and to the point as the original penmanship of the Pernik sword. As Boris, Cullen seduces the audience, portraying the monarch in a grayscale rainbow of loveable contradictions. There’s more than a little of Terry Jones’ in Cullen as he Chapmanesequly plays the one main character while the rest of the company twist and turn like a twisty turny thing, morphing into a host of supporting roles bold and subtle.

There’s much that is bold, little that is subtle, and nothing that is not tremendous about Lawrence Boothman’s performance as the king’s first minister. Neither is there anything banal about his evil, he is the iron-hearted fist in a bloodsoaked velvet glove on Ernst Röhm’s bedside table the morning after the night before. David Leopold is solid and unsparing kicking at the fourth wall like Luca Brasi told him to do some damage but not go too far. Leopold keeps the production pacy, like how a waterfall makes a river move faster. Sasha Wilson didn’t write herself a part as fun as Boris, but she delivers much of the piece’s range, nuance, and no-nonsense edge-of-your-seat delivery, the hallmark stamps that confirm the solid gold content. As the curtain falls it is Clare Fraenkel who wears the crown. She is the lynchpin, the beating moral compass which makes this production tick so, so many boxes.

Come for the faintly Marina Lewycka obscurity of the subject matter. Stay for the best writing, staging, and performances you will see at this (and many other) EdFringe vintages. Get your Bulgarian sheepskin coats on and go see this!

Read the company’s #EdFringeTalk with us here!

 

‘Olaf Falafel’s Super Stupid Show (20% More Stupider)’ (Venue 33, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“This show has pace like you’d feel on the inside of a barrel at the edge of a waterfall.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Olaf Falafel is an EdFringe favourite on course to become an EdFringe legend. Hugely admired for his adult stand-up, it’s the material tailored to kids which will win him immortality. We enter to find him on stage and filling the room with energy levels that put Krakatoa to shame. Many a true word is spoken in jest and his opening remark that “fun needs structure” hits the nail on the proverbial. “How does a laser cut?” I’m forever asking my girls. “With focus!” they (are supposed) to reply. Olaf’s genius is his structure and, like William Henry Barlow did with the roof of St Pancras station, he leaves his engineering in plain sight to the wonder and amazement of all. Without structure, there would be no pace and this show has pace like you’d feel on the inside of a barrel racing towards the top of a waterfall.

Daughter 1.0 (8yrs) wrote in her notebook (the one with a picture of William Henry Barlow bungee jumping off the Clifton Suspension bridge on the cover): “I went to Olaf fluffel’s Supa Stupid Show! when I walked in I saw lots of chairs and a big screen. In the Show We Sang Songs went fishing for insults, Played don’t look at the horse and we played can you get your sausage in my funny bag. He also told lots of jokes. I liked the bit were we drew bum-faced snails and when at the end I got a new book I had lots of fun.”

I’m not a super huge fan of the Sponge Bob Square Pants section, but maybe I’m more of a prude when my girls are in the room than when I’m flying solo at a late-night Adults Only Magic Show. The show was such a joy because the laughs were directly shared with Daughter 1.0. Oftentimes, producers put in two levels of comedy with some jokes and references saved for the grownups. By contrast, Olaf’s is a sprawling bungalow of blissful belly laughs delivered fast and furious. Come for the legend, stay for the perfection, get your bum-faced snail coats on and go see this.

 

‘Dom – The Play’ (Venue 20, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“Fresh from a sell-out run in London, this Fringe transfer had the Assembly Ballroom on George Street packed out with an audience laughing from start to finish.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

If there’s one thing us Brits do well it’s political satire and this already critically acclaimed hit did not disappoint. Fresh from a sell-out run in London, this Fringe transfer had the Assembly Ballroom on George Street packed out with an audience laughing from start to finish. This slick production from Bill Kenwright and Turbine Creatives lifts the lid on the whirlwind political career of Dominic Cummings, leaving no stone unturned in the process.

Just for the record, the citizens of Barnard Castle and the employees at their local branch of Specsavers can rest easy; very early on in the show, Dom grudgingly acknowledges his infamous trip to the Teesdale town to get his eyes tested. With that safely out of the way, Dom narrates his rise to, and abrupt fall from, the Westminster merry-go-round. Chris Porter plays the title role with an assured, cynical ferocity. Cummings was never a likeable figure, but Porter raises laugh after laugh from the audience in the opening ten minutes as he reveals the dark arts of data-scraping that drove his campaigns for Vote Leave and the 2019 General Election. The scene well and truly set, there was soon a roar of recognition from the audience as Boris Johnson strode on in the shape of Tim Hudson – every inch the blustering nincompoop, from his mop of unkempt blonde hair to his flapping shirt tails. All other incidental roles were entertainingly played by Thom Tuck and Sarah Lawrie. Tuck’s mimicry of a moon-faced Michael Gove drew chuckles of recognition, whilst the mobile eyebrows of his John Prescott were an amusing reminder of what already seems like a prehistoric age in British politics. Lawrie was no less versatile, with her lightning vignettes as the late Queen and Theresa May, but the greatest howls of laughter from the Edinburgh audience came with her vivid evocation of a diminutive Nicola Sturgeon.

Over the next hour, the turbulent years of recent British political history are brilliantly portrayed as the Westminster farce they so often seemed back in the day. With a quickfire pasquinade of merciless caricatures, our political masters are lampooned and ridiculed. Like an oversized, Woosterish ringmaster, the buffoonish Johnson flails desperately to keep his government on track at the centre of things; whilst to one side of the stage, lurks Cummings, the Machiavellian puppet-master and the PM’s Svengali. It’s an amazing tradition in British political satire how much we can afterwards laugh at events that once seemed so traumatic. But laugh we did, though I can only agree with one lady behind me who chuckled to her partner over the rapturous applause at the end; “It didn’t seem quite as funny as that the time, did it?”

This show is running for the rest of the month, but I wouldn’t hang about if you want to go; I’d say it’s one of the hot tickets for this year’s Fringe. So, whether you’re from Barnard Castle or not, get your coats on and go see it! Go for the political satire. Stay to hear Cummings explain the dark arts of psephological data mining. Leave in the hope that the great British voting public will never allow itself to be fooled again.

 

‘Casting the Runes’ (Venue 33, until AUG 27th)

Posted in 5*, EdFestivals 2023, Pleasance, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by

“We quickly left the outside daylight behind for a haunting and foreboding vibe whose icy fingers crept into every corner of the auditorium from the outset..”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

Fans of the classic ghost stories of M R James will be familiar with the TV adaptations that grace our screens each Christmas. Now, here in Edinburgh, on a deceptively sunny lunchtime, the chilling horror of one of his best tales is vividly brought to life in close-up.

The Box Tale Soup theatre company faithfully reflect the master storyteller’s art in lifting his chilling tale off the page and onto the stage. We quickly left the outside daylight behind for a haunting and foreboding vibe whose icy fingers crept into every corner of the auditorium from the outset. The story itself is classic James: the safe, scholarly world of academe gradually subverted by the creeping menace of some much older, darker force that belongs between the pages of dusty medieval tomes rather than modern textbooks.

A cast of two are aided by some skilful use of puppetry for minor characters, including the decidedly creepy Mr Karswell. Noel Byrne, who looks suitably like Peter Cushing’s worrisome young brother, plays Professor Dunning, an academic with an interest in the occult. With the help of a new acquaintance, he explores a number of mysterious messages and a weird picture that seems to have a life of its own. Antonia Christophers, who plays the acquaintance, does a nice line in quivering fear and wide-eyed terror, as well as operating and voicing the often unsettling mannequins. A simple set is put to effective use, evoking a suitably Edwardian gothic vibe, with door handles that seem to turn themselves, creaking hinges, and a swirling mist worthy of any Hammer horror. No spoilers here, but there was a sudden lighting reveal that made the two ladies behind me audibly squeak as they jumped in their seats. A coup de theatre, that – you seldom get those sitting in your armchair at home.

The sense of fear so skilfully manipulated by James and the cast of this play echoes similar feelings evoked by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, some telling lines from which are quoted at one point:

“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round walks on
And never turns his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread…”

I know I was not the only one in today’s audience who felt the tingling anticipation of a disembodied tap on the shoulder at certain points during the show.

Situated in a venue that’s part of the popular and lively Pleasance Courtyard complex, the haunting quality of this show is emphasised all the more as you emerge at the end into the contrasting, unfamiliar daylight. Though, this being Edinburgh, the leaden skies were throwing down a moribund shower of rain in ironic tribute. So get your coats on and go see this! Come to see a tale by a master storyteller. Stay for the creepy puppets and creaky hinges. Leave safe in the knowledge that no ghosts will follow you home in the daylight as you head off for lunch.

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‘Be Not Afeard: A Sensory Telling of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest” (Bedfringe, 22 July 2023)

Posted in 4*, Bedfringe 2023, Rated: Outstanding by

“Like all the best Shakespeare done proper, ‘Be Not Afeard’ can be enjoyed by those of us who live and breathe the bard as well as those who couldn’t give a honk about the Swan of Avon.”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Outstanding)

Theatre is a sensory experience. Arguably, theatre was the first sensory experience conjured by the earliest humans that was indisputably distinct from the natural world. The Victorians liked their theatre grand and pagentrick, a feast for the senses, which is why they favoured scripts such as ‘King John’ with its many parading princes. The original Globe Theatre burnt down as a result of a prop cannon gone wrong. Costumes, properties, scenery, standing with one’s legs apart shouting lines at the audience – these are all variations of the conjuring art of Theatre.

The Tempest lends itself to such magic. It is possible that Shakespeare wrote the part of Prospero for himself at the end of his star-studded career – “Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own.” What a closing night that must have been. Percy Stow’s pioneering 1908 silent movie version of The Tempest makes this paragraph’s point far better than I can.

So it’s wonderful to see a live production, aimed at us CBeebies viewers, delivering such a wealth of sensory charms, none of which would be out of place in a grown-up version, and delivering the same with such artistic precision. For the script, Collar & Cuffs Co. have taken inspiration from the underpinning themes of The Tempest without getting bogged down in the occasionally cumbersome plot. It’s the elegant equivalent of summarising Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana with just a picture of a potato and a pipe of tobacco. Like all the best Shakespeare done proper, ‘Be Not Afeard’ can be enjoyed by those of us who live and breathe the bard as well as those who couldn’t give a honk about the Swan of Avon.

Daughter 1.0 (8yrs) wrote in her notebook – the one with Arthur Rackham’s etching of Disney’s Maui arm wrestling Caliban on the cover:

“Yesterday I went to the tempest. When I walked in I Saw a big mat and three bins and a tent. We were asked to sit on the edge of the mat. The story was about all of us going on a long journey to find a magic artist and take them home.

I liked when they sprayed us with warter and balls I realy enjoyed it and it looked like the little kids did too!”

What this show did need was more bustle and less bossy. Bustle is Widdow Twanky or Captain Mainwaring taking themselves far more seriously than anyone else in the room. We can all giggle at that. Bossy is being slightly hungover at a raucous kids’ show and being endlessly told what to do in a way that might make artistically-minded disruptive kids want to throw a chair at their constricting early years teacher.

This is the show that Shakespeare would have taken his son Hamnet to if the latter hadn’t been so taken with the snake roll’d in a flowering bank With shining chequer’d slough. It’s a show that will stick long in the mind for its artistry and ingenuity.

Reviewer: Dan Lentell

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