Edinburgh International Festival
The decline of Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival was established to champion the civilising power of European high culture in a spirit of postwar healing.…
What a slippery, hateful toad Fred Goodwin was
Make It Happen is a portrait of a bullying control freak, Fred Goodwin, who turned RBS into the largest bank…
The excruciating tedium of John Tavener
The Edinburgh International Festival opened with John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple, and I wish it hadn’t. Not that…
Aggressively jaded: Edinburgh’s Marriage of Figaro reviewed
‘Boo!’ came a voice from the stalls. ‘Boo. Outrage!’ It was hard not to feel a pang of admiration. British…
Fun, frenetic and only a little gauche: Declan McKenna, at the Edinburgh Playhouse, reviewed
Towards the end of Declan McKenna’s snappy, enjoyable 90-minute set at the Edinburgh International Festival, something quite powerful occurs. The…
Edinburgh has turned into a therapy session
Therapy seems to be the defining theme of this year’s Edinburgh festival. Many performers are saddled with personal demons or…
A performance with teeth
It’s the Edinburgh International Festival, and Barrie’s back in town. Once, Edinburgh was pretty much the only place that you…
Vintage whine
The American Whine is one of the key vocal registers in rock and roll. You can trace that thin disaffected…
Saved from slim pickings
With the major companies largely on their summer breaks, the Edinburgh International Festival struggles to programme a high standard of…
Doctor doctor
In a new hour-long monologue, Burn, Alan Cumming examines the life and work of Robert Burns. The biographical material is…
A legend comes to town
‘Human beings are in trouble these days,’ says Herbie Hancock, chatting to us between songs. ‘And do you know who…
Another Albion
As August unwound, the EIF settled into the cavernous gazebo that is Edinburgh Park, and things began to loosen up.…
Melodic genius and trainspotter
For some reason, I’d got it into my head that the main work in the Gringolts Quartet’s midday recital at…
Happy cross-pollination
This year we must love Edinburgh for her soul rather than her looks. The EIF should be commended for making…
Mum’s the word
The virus has broken Edinburgh. The shattered remnants of the festival are visible on the internet. Here’s what happened. The…
The original Edinburgh festival
James Sadler’s 1815 balloon flight, a Fringe first, heralded the greatest musical extravaganza that Scotland had ever seen, says John D. Halliday
‘The only place I can’t get my plays on is Britain’: Sir Peter Brook interviewed
‘Everyone of us knows we deserve to be punished,’ says the frail old man before me in a hotel café.…
Why are so many operas by women adaptations of films by men?
Opera’s line of corpses — bloodied, battered, dumped in a bag — is a long one. Now it can add…
Why this première felt important: James MacMillan’s Fifth Symphony reviewed
All symphonies were sacred symphonies, once. Haydn began each day’s composition with a prayer, and ended every score with the…
West Side Story’s flick-knife-to-the-guts thrill never landed its final blow
It was as though Damien Hirst had confessed a secret passion for Victorian watercolours, or Lars von Trier had admitted…
Bracing and provocative – but would Wagner have approved? Arcola’s Rheingold reviewed
When it comes to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Mark Twain probably put it as well as anyone: ‘Out…
A Beggar’s Opera that beggars belief in Edinburgh
Robert Carsen’s new updating of The Beggar’s Opera is a coke-snorting, trash-talking, breakdancing, palm-greasing, skirt-hiking, rule-breaking affair — and every…
An exalted experience even without a convincing central character: Siegfried in Edinburgh reviewed
There’s one big problem with Wagner’s Siegfried, and the clue’s in the name. None of Wagner’s mature works hangs so…
Conversations with a penis, having a laugh about Brexit and why titles matter: Edinburgh Festival reviewed
David Greig has written the international festival’s flagship drama, Midsummer. This farcical romance is performed as a party piece by…
Washed-up junkies, Trump the director and a cash giveaway: Edinburgh Festival round-up
Trump Lear is a chaotically enjoyable one-man show with a complicated premise. David Carl, an American satirist, has arrived on…
