Writer: Sofia May At the age of 19, fleeing the grip of her narcissistic parents and feeling a connection between her life and Buddhism after reading the phrase ‘All Life is Suffering’ in a Buddhist publication, Sofia May sought out a new life in a secluded Tibetan Buddhist community deep in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately for her, the female leader of the cult was equally narcissistic and this was only part of the problems she encountered in the seven years before she escaped a grip that was more mental than physical and returned to normal life. In The Buddha…
Author: The Reviews Hub - Scotland
The Reviews Hub - Scotland
The Scotland team is under the editorship of Lauren Humphreys. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. We aim to review all professional types of theatre, whether that be Commercial, Repertory or Fringe as well as Comedy, Music, Gigs etc.
Writer: Mark Vigeant Director: Joanna Simmons In this wonderfully inventive show, Mark Vigeant plays Larry, a 37 year old engineer, who ventures into the Alaskan Wilderness armed only with a camera, a satellite phone and primitive instruments for shooting the wild animals he intends to survive on. He’s recording the experience so that he can put it up on You Tube and get one on over all those other would be explorers that have been nowhere near as brave or reckless as him. Over the course of an hour the nature he connects with comes in the form of basic…
Meet Bunny: an aspiring starlet who decides the fastest way to eliminate the competition is to literally eliminate them. Streamlining the Scottish talent pool through cold-blooded murder, Bunny has knocked off local companies and big hitters alike in a desperate bid to land her big break. Craig Manson commands the stage with electric, high-camp energy from the moment he launches into a rewording of Hairspray’s “Good Morning Baltimore” (“The Edinburgh Fringe and Me!”). Locking the doors and promising an evening of pure culture, Manson executes a brilliant tonal pivot—flooding the room with blood-red light and a spine-chilling horror score as…
Creator & Choreographer: Joel Bray Collaborating Director: Stephen Nicolazzo Collaborating Choreographer: Niharika Senapati The audience enters to find Aboriginal choreographer Joel Bray lounging seductively on a pink candy-floss cloud, clad in nothing but tight pink lycra short-shorts. From the outset, Daddy promises a candy-coloured party of sugar and flirtatious participation. Yet beneath this playful, queer-coded exterior lies a deeply moving, vulnerable exploration of generational trauma and colonial disconnect. Bray is a master of audience connection. Demonstrating warm spontaneity, he takes the time to introduce himself to almost everyone, holding onto names and inviting the crowd to sit on the floor…
Writer: Samantha O’Rourke Director: Milly Sweeney Anyone who survived high school drama classes will instantly recognise the tropes: synchronised movement, dramatic unison speaking, and heavy-handed moral warnings. In Hot Mess Productions’ Our Town Needs A Nando’s, a group of small-town schoolgirls attempt to satirise this exact style while collaborating on a class project. Yet, in a frustrating stroke of irony, the production itself frequently falls into the very traps it parodies, relying on surplus physical theatre sequences that feel overly serious and disconnected from the text. The story follows four friends stuck in a dead-end town with nothing to do…
Director: Francesca Montanile-Lyons It begins with a dishevelled Uber Eats driver bursting into the venue searching for a customer named Kevin, only to spot his own iconic artwork lining the walls. “I am not homeless, I am an artist,” Vincent van Gogh declares to a bewildered crowd, realising with mounting fury that the audience paid for tickets while he remains completely broke. “It kind of makes me wanna kill myself… again!” So begins Donna Oblongata’s brilliantly unhinged, delightfully anarchic hour of fringe theatre. What follows is a satirical assault on the commercialisation of art. Van Gogh slides through a deck…
Writer: Linus Karp Director: Linus Karp & Joseph Martin Just days before Fringe 2024, Linus Karp (Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story) was the victim of a homophobic attack in London. The case never made it to court—until now. Known for their signature camp, audience-interactive spoofs, Awkward Productions’ latest offering feels tonally distinct yet unmistakably theirs. Framed around a hand-sketched London backdrop and role cards distributed at the door, the show recounts the attack, the harrowing 999 call made by his then-fiancé Joseph Martin, and the frustrating aftermath. Karp masterfully navigates jaw-dropping realities—stark statistics on queer hate crimes, system failures,…
Disco music and lights set the stage for Johnnie McNamara Walker, sporting a shirt that proudly reads “100% Fruit.” The premise of The Heterosexuals is an absolute open goal: an undercover report on the straight community, complete with door-screening to ensure the audience is “100% unapologetically queer.” They walk among us, but why are there so many tragic gender reveal fires? And how many times must Glenn Close leave an awards ceremony empty-handed before we admit the straights are not okay? When the show leans into this sharp, inverted satire, it hits high notes. Flipping straight talking points back onto…