EDINBURGH 2007
As we reviewed more than 180 shows, we've put them on several pages, to save you excessive scrolling. Here's our first page of reviews...

Adventure Fantastique - Age of Angels - American Poodle - The Art of Swimming - As The Mother Of A Brown Boy - Ashes - Dan Atkinson - Bacchic - Ballerina Who Loves a B-Boy - Bards of Bangkok - Barnaby Brown - Basic Training - Battle of Stalingrad - Bed and Breakfast - Believe - David Benson - Best Western - Blood Confession - The Book Club - Break Out - Breaker Morant - Faith Brown - Busy Night - Cabaret Decay - Cambridge Footlights - James Campbell - A Canadian Bartender at Butlins - Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Change - Cherry Smoke - Paul Chowdhry - Cinderella - Classic Entertainment - Company - The Container - Nina Conti - A Conversation With Edith Head - Chris Cox

Adventure Fantastique - The Durham Revue   Underbelly
Hurrah! At last a student revue that is actually funny! I've been critical of past Durham revue teams for not being able to convert sketch ideas into actual sketches, but at least they've kept trying, practically the only university company outside Oxbridge to keep sending a show to Edinburgh. Well, this year they've got it right. Not only do they have good concepts (generally built around the running theme of exploration), but every sketch is actually funny and every one is performed with real comic flair. What's more, almost every one features throwaway lines or non-sequitors that catch you by surprise and make you interrupt one laugh with another. A very funny movie trailer, a new take on Scott of the Antarctic, a German-run adventure camp, a director's commentary track for a film DVD, and proof that Benny Hill hated squirrels are among the highlights, but there really isn't a dud in the bunch. That's a lot harder than it looks, so congratulations all around.   Gerald Berkowitz

An Age of Angels Assembly Rooms
Mark Soper's solo play imagines the events leading to a mass killing on the Los Angeles streets, with Soper playing ten characters who unknowingly have a part in the process leading to the tragedy. A pedophile hangs around a schoolyard watching one girl, who notices him but is more interested in the boys playing ball. A nerdy kid tries to impress her by kicking the soccer ball and somehow sends it over the fence into the street. A motorist annoyed by the traffic jam this produces tries to speed away and draws the attention of a cop, but another driver stops to get the ball, which a street crazy imagines to be a space alien come to take him to his home planet, and so on. Each step is essentially innocent, each character makes sense, but somehow they lead inevitably to someone pulling a gun and firing wildly. Actually, a couple of characters in the chain don't really seem necessary to the story, and only a few, notably the helpful driver and the cop, are developed or presented fully enough to really come alive. So one senses more authorial manipulation and less natural inevitability than Soper the playwright might wish, especially since Soper the actor does not quite get inside some of the secondary figures. Gerald Berkowitz

American Poodle Assembly Rooms
Like some stand-off between rival DJs, this brace of separately penned monologues pits two rival views of the UK and the US head to head. The result is a funny and often thoughtful whizz through our linked history and culture. First off is a race through the colonisation of America from the British angle. Directed by Peter McNally, Guy Masterson gets a laugh the instant he opens his mouth as a laconic Welshman indignantly explaining how the Welsh really got there first. He changes to a harder-nosed Londoner who is more concerned with the bigger picture, how Britain wrested a whole continent from its rival powers France and Spain. But just as America at last becomes British, the colony then breaks with the motherland. The colonists' 'Can't Pay Won't Pay' attitude to tax leads to the Boston Tea Party and, handily, American independence. Sprinkled with modern references, the narrative allows Masterson to bring an infectious physicality to his roles, rolling across the stage, for example, as the mad flatulent King George III while getting in neat digs at George W. Bush in the process. In part II we meet an American just off the plane in London for a business meeting. Directed by John Clancy, David Calvitto launches into a verbal diary reminiscent of a 19th-century traveller describing the splendours of some fabled kingdom in the east. He sees what he expects: a land of Shakespearean culture, Pepsyian splendour and Victorian poverty. He wonders which airport corridor leads to 'Scot Land', and sees driving on the left-hand side of the road as one big prank, He is interested in discovering 'what God a second-tier nation prays to' and marvels at the dinkiness of institutions such as No. 10 Downing Street. His ditty about all the good America has given the Brits provides as many insane rhymes as it does laughs. Calvitto's trademark motor-mouth delivery creates a carousel of ever improbable images that reel you into this satirical Dystopia. Although these are meant to be arty digs by one nation against the other, both pieces in fact hold a mirror up to Britain which is no bad thing. Masterson's own script keeps the momentum and satire high but occasionally slips, notably in not providing any meaningful climax for his otherwise energetic performance. It is in the middle of his piece for Calvitto that author Brian Parks lets things sag somewhat - for example, the riff on fat-bottomed Americans clogging up escalators unfairly causes the performance to drag. However the real fun, of course, is in comparing and contrasting the very different styles of both actors and writers. Nick Awde

The Art of Swimming  Traverse
Modest almost to the point of invisibility, this solo show by Lynda Radley quietly knocks on the door of our awareness and asks politely to be allowed a few moments (an hour, actually) to tell the story of Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Minimalism is itself too big a word to describe Radley's performance. She does climb a ladder at one point to suggest a high dive, and stands gently swaying in place to evoke swimming, but for the most part she simply tells the story in an almost affectless manner, in what flirts dangerously with the borders of a parody of amateurism. What saves her from slipping over that line is her absolute control over her tone, along with flashes of evocative imagery, as when Gleitze's childhood in Brighton is encapsulated in the opening of a picnic basket. The story itself proves to have little of drama in it, but Radley's  deliberately unflashy presentation never tries to make more of it than there is.  Gerald Berkowitz

As the Mother of a Brown Boy Zoo Southside
More of a cultural phenomenon than a straightforward dance theatre company, Chickenshed prides itself on having produced some really significant work over the last 30 years, especially in the area of cultural integration and in using art to make a difference to people's lives. Friends with the royalty and Oscar-winning actors as well as dancers with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy - this company's outreach track record is simply impressive. If this is your first encounter with Chickenshed, it's a good place to start. Dealing with the real life event of the accidental death of the 19 year old mixed race boy Mischa Niering during a flight from a crime scene, the piece is a transporting combination of live music, storytelling and dance. Artistically, great value is placed on stillness as well as movement, breadth as well as depth, spoken text as well as song - Natsai Gurupira's live blues effortlessly meeting Christine Niering's recorded monologue. But ultimately, the main concern of this piece is the value of human life itself, as well as motherly love and healing through shared grief. Duska Radosavljevic

Ashes Pleasance Dome
Ali Muriel's earnest play has the inescapable feel of theatre-in-education about it, the sense that performances are meant to be followed by teacher-led discussions on the topics it raises. Even if that's not where its roots lie, it remains more a thesis-driven thought piece than a fully-developed drama. We meet four characters in some kind of Limbo, where they are painfully forced to relive their lives, with the other three actors playing supporting roles in each scene. Since the stories are told in alternating fragments, it takes a while before the pattern develops. All were martyrs to the cause of freedom - a seventeenth-century woman accused of witchcraft, a twentieth-century partisan, and so on - and all died in fires, and the job of the play is to discover whether their deaths accomplished anything and whether what was accomplished was worth it. I'm sorry if that line sounds like a discussion question, but the play feels like a series of such questions. It's well acted, for what it is, and thoroughly well-meaning, and probably good for you. Gerald Berkowitz

Dan Atkinson Knows That He Knows Nothing Pleasance
Under the deliberately goofy face staring out at you from what is one of the more attractive posters on the fringe this year, Dan Atkinson conceals a rather fine brain. Not only that, he also has rather sophisticated tastes. Add to that a trademark gruff laconic delivery, and you have an individual who is perfectly qualified to pass acid comment on our dumbed-down green and pleasant land. Sex shop superstores and megamalls in obscure parts of the nation cause him bemusement. He wearily asks what a Cheeky Vimto cocktail has to offer that a cup of tea does not, before launching into a list of his favourite put-downs for hecklers, a snappy dissection of the economics of performing at Edinburgh and hen parties. People from Leeds get a special going over, although Atkinson is happy to admit that even posh neighbour York has more than its fair share of scallies. Still, he gloats how natural selection might work its way through York's chav population thanks to the deep waters of its fast flowing river. He speaks of many other weighty matters. In fact, Atkinson would be quite a social commentator really, if it wasn't for the fact that he sidetracks himself with what you suspect is his real love, words and crosswords. His riff on cryptic clues is as fascinating as it is funny - well, to those who care about such things probably (which would endear you forever to the man). His rapport with the crowd is instant and you believe his self-effacing claims that it's all bollocks - just so long as it's funny, obviously, which he does an excellent job of guaranteeing. Nick Awde

Bacchic Gilded Balloon
We have come to expect that a piece of theatre is either script-led or performance-led and that rarely the two will be equally outstanding. Especially when it comes to physical performance, our expectations plummet in relation to almost everything else other than the physical skill and prowess of the performers. On the other hand, a textual re-reading of a classic would only tentatively consider dealing with its key themes by nonverbal means. All that changes in Tamsin Shasha and Jonathan Young's exquisite piece with the Actors of Dionysus. Reinterpreting Euripides' play about worship and cynicism as a modern day parable about the power of celebrity, this one-woman show makes a really inventive and seamless integration of scripted and physical theatre. Shasha is a highly competent performer who effortlessly combines her physical and psychological resources to create crisp, delicate and layered characterisations, and she also finds a thousand uses for the end of her rope, which transforms in seconds from a grubby tea towel into a luxurious sofa. Primarily imagination-led, this is indeed a rare piece of theatre. Duska Radosavljevic

The Ballerina Who Loves a B-Boy ClubWEST@the Hilton
An enormous hit in Korea, this high-energy, high-octane breakdancing musical seems likely to be just as successful in the West. Its plot, told entirely in dance, is summed up in the title - at first annoyed by the noise of street dancers outside her studio, a young ballerina comes under the spell of break dancing and of one dancer in particular, and gives up her tutu to join the crew. Except for a brief scene-setting ballet sequence and a delightful challenge dance between ballerinas and hip-hoppers, the dance vocabulary is entirely modern, starting with the sort of break dance challenges kids were doing on the streets of New York thirty years ago, but blended with more sophisticated Hammer-style and club dancer hip-hop and, most importantly, the tight choreography and discipline of theatre and music video dancing. Of course there is precedent for mixing dance modes, with Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, and before them Jerome Robbins choreographing such crossovers, and one small disappointment is that, unlike them, the creators of this show did not find ways to let classical ballet affect and enrich the street dance vocabulary. Still, while the result remains a relatively limited set of movements, there is no denying its excitement or the virtuosity of the large company of dancers, whose fast footwork, various styles of spinning, and gravity-defying leaps and cartwheels have the audience cheering all the way through (and one of the house rules is that cheering, photographing and recording are encouraged).  Gerald Berkowitz

The Bards of Bangkok C Soco
In Paul Lewis's new play four men at loose ends in Bangkok meet regularly under the pretense of being poets, but mainly to drink and talk about women. One of them, the rather wet poet Philip, announces that he's in love with a woman he's just met, but she turns out to be one of playboy Tony's recent flames. Rather than passively let the men fight over her, Amina declares herself both judge and prize of a poetry contest open to all four, leading to the display of very different attitudes toward love and women.  With Philip's sentimentality and need contrasted to Tony's have-fun-while-it-lasts cynicism, we also see the coarseness of Ronnie and the etherealness of Arnold, along with Amina's own above-it-all amusement. Unfortunately, despite all the self-exposure, none of the characters is really very interesting, nothing new is really illuminated about romance or sex, and as Amina comes to seem more manipulative and less attractive, we have difficulty caring who wins. In fact, one soft and sentimental ending is immediately followed by another, as the play itself seems unable to do much with the questions it has raised, and solid performances by David John Watton, Gareth McChlery and Helen Millar in the central roles can't really bring the characters alive. Gerald Berkowitz

Barnaby Brown: Orphan Extraordinaire Pleasance Dome
In the grand Fringe tradition of fast-moving, anything-for-a-laugh, multiple-role-playing comedy, this delight from the Dog-Eared Collective leaves no pun unspoken, no sight gag unseen, no entendre left singular in its take-no-prisoners campaign for laughs. The mock-Dickensian story has orphan Barnaby, rejected by his rich and eccentric uncle, falling prey to all the dangers of evil London until a last-minute happy ending. This is the sort of show in which a doctor named Lawyer carries on both professions simultaneously, in which a character is as likely to ride an elephant through the mango groves of India (scent courtesy of an air freshener spray) as to encounter a revivalist clairvoyant from the American South, and in which Thomas Cook kidnaps poor people off the streets of London to force them on package holidays. Sight gags are literally thrown away, loose ends openly displayed in their untied state, and a handy balaclava allows an actor playing two roles to wrestle with himself. The cast of four, changing costumes at lightning speed, fill the stage with enough characters to populate a Dickens novel and the hour with more laughs than any three other Fringe shows put together. Gerald Berkowitz

Basic Training Assembly (Reviewed at a previous Festival)
There is actually little that is unique or even especially dramatic in Kahlil Ashanti's autobiographical story, but the personality, versatility and intense energy of the performer make it one of the most entertaining and satisfying hours on the fringe. Ashanti joined the American Air Force but, after a few weeks of basic training, spent his entire tour of duty in the entertainment corps, touring bases around the world as a stand-up comic and occasional singer-dancer-stagehand. Providing a dramatic counterpoint to this upbeat experience was the fact that his mother told him the night before he left that the abusive man of the house wasn't his real father, but refused to help his ongoing attempt to learn more. In telling both stories, Ashanti plays himself and a few dozen other characters, from the loving mother and angry stepfather to a crusty sergeant and a camp entertainer, in a virtuoso display of his range and gusto. Since it is all true, perhaps only a curmudgeon will notice a hint of audience manipulation when, within the last ten minutes, he performs for a dying girl, defrosts his hard-nosed sergeant, stands up to his stepfather, liberates his mother, discovers that the girl's cancer has disappeared, and finally meets his father. Gerald Berkowitz

The Battle of Stalingrad Assembly Aurora Nova
A puppet show about a World War II battle in Russian with English surtitles? Well it's an ambitious undertaking but one of the most magical and technical experiences on the fringe. In 1942-43, Stalingrad was more of a siege than a battle, where up to one and a half million soldiers and civilians died on both sides. Here Tbilisi Marionette State Theatre mixes puppet styles and narrative genres to conjure up the big picture by focusing on the little people, even animals, who contributed to the Soviet defence of the city. Each character has a journey both personal and geographical to the war front. Central to the story is a horse looking for his love, a circus equine, a Jew, a Kazakh, an artist, a Red Army general. All are citizens of the same country and while some of their stories may seem absurd in their insignificance, this is no more absurd than the inhumanity into which they will each be plunged - if we have our private hopes, surely this will convert into a common hope for all. The Nazis also get a look in, in the form of a monocled field marshal whose stiff sophistication is at odds with the carnage on the battlefield. The simplest of props is used to create startling effects - a revolving bucket with windows in its side represents a train racing across the steppes, egg boxes become legions of marching soldiers. Combined with a multi-layered soundscape of music and effects and the inventive precision of the puppeteers, this is storytelling of the highest order. Nick Awde

Bed and Breakfast Underbelly
The landlady of a guesthouse welcomes a new guest, and their small talk moves into oddly personal areas until they seem unsure where to go next. So, to our surprise, they start all over, directing the conversation into a new and perhaps more successful path. At some point we'll twig that this is a lovers' game, but even that realisation will be modified and deepened as author Jennie Coles guides us to some understanding of why they resort to role play and what happens when one wants to end the game. Coles' short play, developed last year through the Royal Court's Young Writers Programme, is clearly still a work in progress, sometimes feeling more like the preliminary sketch for a play than the play itself. But it does have a solid core, and Coles has been wise enough not to stretch it too thin, so that at 40 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome. Strong performances by Samantha Lynch and Perri Snowdon flesh out the characters so fully that there is not really much further for the author to go in developing them, so any further work on the script may have to explore the back story or the situation outside this room. Gerald Berkowitz

Believe Traverse
Fringe veteran Linda Marlowe offers her strongest show in years in this set of four monologues written by Matthew Hunt. The stories of four Old Testament women are retold by imagining modern settings and consciousness for them, giving traditional tales of faith or faithlessness new and believable resonances that Marlowe's signature blend of passion and control brings out fully.  Rahab, a working-class whore, helps enemy spies just because they are the first men ever to ask something other than sex from her.  Bathsheba, a middle class army wife, strains to sustain the mental denial that her affair with the commanding officer had anything to do with her husband's death. Judith consciously works herself into the rage necessary to kill Holofernes by evoking memories of every indignity she suffered at the hands of men. And Hannah describes the torture and killing of her sons with a frightening calm that is a testament to the strength of her faith. Each piece stands on its own, with its own power of writing and performance, and the combination is not only the evocative exploration of faith that the title suggests, but also a convincing demonstration of Marlowe's range and intensity as an actress.  Gerald Berkowitz

David Benson Pleasance Dome
Ten years ago the Princess of Wales died. Nine years ago David Benson was brave enough to look at the orgy of national mourning with a jaundiced eye, in a show that might have come a bit too early. He has revived and adapted it now for the tenth anniversary and, judging from the delighted audience response, the world has caught up to him. Benson is a monologist-comic-singer with considerable personal charm and an attractively bitchy sense of humour, and he takes delight in reminding us, for instance, that the backlash against Diana had already begun before her death, so the same people who mourned her so ostentatiously had been sneering at her a week before. He comments tellingly on things like the curious compulsion the British have to put memorial bouquets on railings, on the responses of TV commentators (Will Richard get Judy to cry?) and on the various conspiracy theories that sprang up almost as quickly as the mourning. He's at his best - that is to say, naughtiest - in taking us through the funeral ceremony, from the entrance march of celebrities, through the carefully rehearsed performances of Blair, John and Spencer, to the burial in what, he reminds us, was traditionally the Spencer family's pet cemetery.  And every time you think he's gone a bit too far, you find yourself and the rest of the audience coming right along with him in the delighted celebration of your shared cynicism.  Gerald Berkowitz

Best Western   Assembly Rooms
Even in the twenty-first century the myth of the American West retains its power, and Rich Hall invokes and evokes it in this dark comedy that turns out to be more successful as a mood piece than as drama.  In the kind of third-string non-chain motel that still dots the American highways, an aged rancher is gathering his courage for a heart operation. He has called for his estranged son to visit, in hopes that he'll take over the ranch, but the son wants none of that. Meanwhile, the motel is run by the rancher's ex-wife, but any fantasies of a family reunion are blocked, at least in part because she has problems of her own, notably a very pregnant and very stupid daughter, and the imminent prospect of the government seizing her property to expand the highway. There's not a whole lot more to the play than that - just the collection of colourful characters (there's also the son's wife, the guy from the highway department and a cynical doctor) stuck in the middle of the kind of nowhere the West is still full of, with the Sam Shepard-like sense that only in this particular kind of nowhere could such characters end up in the same place. And so, although the characters are all grotesques, and not much really happens, you'll believe in them and care about them.   Gerald Berkowitz

Blood Confession    Assembly at Hill Street
[DISCLAIMER: This play was written by my colleague and fellow TheatreguideLondon reviewer Nick Awde. Read what follows in that context.] In an almost deserted police station, two priests who have come on separate errands are reminded by an about-to-retire detective of a tragedy of 25 years ago in which all three were involved. A boy in a Church-run home fell from a window and died, but the cop still suspects foul play, and wants to clear up this case before he leaves the force. The cat-and-mouse game that follows brings in a junior officer who turns out to have his own interest in the case as questions of guilt and innocence, confession and absolution are explored. IF something untoward happened back then, and IF the perpetrator truly repented, then he is absolved in the eyes of God, and what role does human justice have left to play? As the characters in Nick Awde's taut procedural thriller wrestle with these questions, so does the audience, and as stunned as they may be by the shocking climax of the play, they are likely to carry away the moral and philosophical questions as well as the dramatic excitement. Gerald Berkowitz

The Book Club Assembly Universal Arts
A fringe staple for several years, Robin Ince's hour is a mini variety show with a thematic frame. Ince spends a few weeks trolling Edinburgh charity shops for books with odd titles or funny content, and his part of the show consists of displaying or commenting on some of his finds. Sometimes, as with 'What God Does When Women Pray', the title is enough, other times, as with some Mills and Boon romances, Ince reads selected passages or points out the inevitably odd names of the Byronic heroes. From time to time he relinquishes the stage to another member of the company, either to continue with the theme or to do their own thing, and these are almost without exception the weakest parts of the hour. Johnny Candon stretches a persona of not having a clue, here by attempting totally inappropriate poems to famous people, far beyond its limits, and Asher Treleaven puts a paper bag on his head and staggers around the stage blindly, which some in the audience find hilarious. Howard Read sings a scary lullaby, and an operatic soprano and a tap dancer make brief appearances. Clearly very much a hit-or-miss operation, the show would probably be more consistently funny if it stuck with its theme, but audiences like it as it is and Ince may not be inclined to tamper with what works.  Gerald Berkowitz

Break Out Assembly Rooms
Having dazzled international audiences for several years with its family-friendly fusion of martial arts and slapstick comedy, the Korean company behind the hit show Jump has come up with an altogether new type of creation. Consisting almost solely of hip-hop, break-dancing and voiceover, the show's striking Americanisation has also resulted in a cops and robbers type of comedy. Following a group of prisoners on the run and obviously attempting to achieve a tight and believable narrative structure, the show is still bursting with a few too many nice ideas and an overdeveloped beginning followed by a laboured middle and a contrived ending. There is also a baffling attempt to build a magical book into the show, which seems to set off everyone dancing, but otherwise seems quite unnecessary. Still, none of this stops the audience from coming back in droves and obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves. To be fair, the company do have a pleasant audience rapport and their physical skills are jaw-droppingly slick and spectacular. However, I'd much rather have the Korean martial arts, anytime. Duska Radosavljevic

Breaker Morant Udderbelly
Kenneth G. Ross has adapted the 1980s film about the Boer War irregulars executed after a biased court martial as the latest offering of the Comedians Theatre Company, which gives stand-up comedians the opportunity to act, but the story itself proves stronger than its presentation. The script of what is essentially a courtroom drama makes it clear that the convicted soldiers, who were only following orders and doing what is done in wartime, were the victims of military prejudice, of British against Australians, of regular army against irregulars, of by-the-book men against more independent commandoes, and that they really didn't have a chance of getting off. So the suspense of the play lies not in what will happen, but in how far the establishment is prepared to go in perverting justice in order to rid itself of this embarrassment. While the company has had successes with comedians-turned-actors in the past, this production never rises above the level of a fairly good community or amateur theatre, with actors variously wooden, overacting, playing a single note or simply shouting at the back wall. As a result, the story's ironies play as heavy and unsubtle - not totally ineffective, but not nearly as strong as more rounded performances or stronger direction could have made them. Gerald Berkowitz

Faith Brown and her Boys in the Buff Pleasance
With conscious echoes of A Chorus Line, The Full Monty and old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movies, this fast-moving show is a delightful capsule musical comedy that does indeed end with the guys getting their kit off, but doesn't rely on that for its entertainment value, offering a lot of fun along the way. The fictional premise has Faith Brown playing diva-impresario Diana Diamante, who is driven to rescue her down-at-heels seaside theatre by recruiting a chorus line of lads to back her in the buff, all under the jaundiced eye and amused commentary of her cynical pianist. The show takes us through the rehearsal period which, as in A Chorus Line, involves a degree of emotional self-exposure to prepare for the stripping. Enjoyable and energetic songs and dances include one about the fantasy of streaking at a football match and one tracing nudism back to Adam and Eve, while a slightly darker moment evokes memories of being teased as kids for minor physical flaws. The boys try in one song to reassure themselves that Size Doesn't Matter, and their boss encourages them in another to Let It All Hang Out. Along the way, veteran comic and impressionist Brown has fun playing the leader not quite sure of what she has let loose and sometimes not sure where to look, who seems unable to avoid embarrassing double entendres every time she opens her mouth. Brown also takes the opportunity from time to time, and in one big musical number, to run through her repertoire of voices and characterisations, from Mae West and Margaret Thatcher to Tina Turner and Posh Beckham. The final Full Monty number is appropriately the best of all, as the guys go from teasing strip to wild abandon, not only displaying their wares but juggling, tap dancing and/or skipping rope as they do. Gerald Berkowitz

Busy Night Underbelly
Brian is a taxi driver who plies his trade by night, picking up the flotsam and jetsam of drunks and other lost souls and conveying them safely home. As you'd expect, he ruminates on life, the universe and everything, but is less enthusiastic about the chat from some of his fares - and when we meet them we understand why. There's an affable Polish drug dealer, an old woman nostalgic about her youth in the circus, a drunk window-dresser. Simon Goodall plays them all, jumping from seat to seat of his car. Their stories or their behaviour provide the opportunity for impressions, accents and sound effects. He creates a soundscape of opening doors, squelching seats and traffic - a South African dentist is the cue for a string of comedian catchphrases and a vicar for a farm's worth of animal noises. It's a promising premise. The main thing holding things back, however, is that Goodall, both as writer and actor, fails to provide any real indicator that his cabbie is a sympathetic character. Perhaps understandably, Goodall, who in real life drives a cab when he's not acting, lacks objectivity, but we do need to be told that Brian is not just another thieving, racist, misogynistic, bullying taxi-driver who deserves everything he gets. The same goes for his fares - they're one-dimensional, linked together only by their creator's sound effects, and, completely bafflingly, appear one and all to have stepped out of a timewarp from the 1970s. Nick Awde

Cabaret Decay Assembly at Aurora Nova
Decay Unlimited take the Easyjet approach to a funeral wake - they welcome you with irresistible smiles and gooey biscuits, quickly followed by a rubbish-collecting round with a bin liner. This opening to their cabaret about death, disrepair and decomposition is one of their less bizarre numbers which gives them a chance to really connect with the audience. Not that we require them to work very hard, as this quirky Lecoq-trained trio are clearly brimming with natural singing, dancing and comic talent. But their choice of subject, being in the territory of the taboo, is a bit of a self-imposed challenge. Still this won't stop us laughing at the deceased saying his farewell from an urn or a mourner's ecological appeal being upstaged by an involuntary bosom animation. And you'll quickly find yourself delightfully humming along to I Will Survive or clapping to Fame. Only don't just take my word for it - you should really catch them while they are still around. Duska Radosavljevic

Cambridge Footlights Pleasance Dome
The university revue, once a staple of the Fringe (and breeding ground of generations of British comic writers and performers) has fallen on hard times, with few other than Oxford and Cambridge continuing to fly the flag, and those rather limply. The problem is that coming up with the idea for a revue sketch is easy, but writing the actual sketch, with actual laughs in it, is very hard. The current Cambridge edition is full of ideas for sketches, but not the sketches themselves. Gay astronauts? Potential idea, but no jokes. Clown surgeons? Ditto. A song about Mr. Kipling and his cakes? There might be a funny one out there waiting to be written, but they haven't found it. What laughs - and successful flashes of originality - there are tend to be in throwaway bits, like a barrister-barrista pun or the image of the Dalai Lama obsessed with chocolates, or the satire of sitcom catch phrases. And nobody on stage leaps out as the next Cleese or Laurie. Footlights has had better years, and may yet again, but this is one you can safely pass up.  Gerald Berkowitz

James Campbell - The Spinistry of Moonerism Assembly Rooms
Ever wondered what the actors are doing when they are off-stage during a show? In James Campbell's brilliant world of immensely silly children's comedy, they are simply in another show! The Spinistry of Moonerism is part of a simultaneous double bill with Onomatopoeia Society III and therefore becomes a calling point to a whole menagerie of estranged singing and dancing wannabes. Otherwise, it's a 'school for speople who poonerise - animals mainly' headed by a wonderfully ditsy Mazy Crunter, played with a delightful earnestness by Janyce Phayre. Most of the rest of Campbell's cast are so irresistibly charming too that you easily catch yourself guffawing at his perfectly absurd jokes even if you happen to be old enough to know better. I never knew what endless fun there was in a 'round of a paws' for example, but more importantly I never noticed all the more obvious narrative flaws of a play consisting of a string of characters between their entrances and exits. And neither did the thoroughly enraptured kids. Duska Radosavljevic

A Canadian Bartender at Butlins Baby Belly
TJ Dawe is Canadian. That's important because not only does that give the comic a fascinating position from which to hold up a mirror on life in Britain but also because it's something he was reminded of it every second while working at a Butlins holiday camp in the early nineties. What he serves up is an immensely entertaining memoir of what was a grim time, when a holiday in Britain was anathema and holiday camps like Butlins and Pontin's struggled woefully to compete with a fortnight on the beach in Marbella. Bognor Butlins was an undeniably desperate place where Dawe started work as a barman. In his tale he first makes friends with the staff of the countless bars that litter the camp and quickly learns the difference between a lager top and a shandy. In the dingy staff quarters hidden away at the back he endures the jolly japes of his pot-smoking roommate Darren and dreams of the lovely Monica, a real Redcoat. He soon works out he can barely afford to work there on his wages, which are siphoned off him in any case by the subsidised staff bar that strangely offers a very long happy hour each payday. Dawe hooks you in right from the start with his affable delivery and instant characters. Leaping about the stage he creates narrative spaces aided only by a coffee table and the odd sound effect. There is a comforting Lake Wobegon quality about this until, surreally, you realise that this is all based on fact and the people also are real. It's more Rising Damp than Hi-de-Hi! Scary but funny, and worth the price of admission alone for Dawe's rap-like litany of grumbling Brits at the bar. Nick Awde

Captain Corelli's Mandolin Valvona & Crolla (Reviewed at a previous Festival)
We are lucky that bestselling novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin has found its natural home with master storytellers Mike Maran and Philip Contini. Armed only with a handful of props - a cardboard motorbike, wooden goat, three swivelling heads to make up the opera society - and the occasional song, they weave anew Louis de Bernieres' magical tale of Cephalonia. Occupied during the Second World War by Italian and Nazi troops, the Greek island is where Captain Corelli falls in love with Pelagia, the local doctor's daughter. The realities of war, however, conspire against their love and tragedy threatens the gentle comedy of everyday life on the isle. Confidently dishing out the characters between them, Maran and Contini are so relaxed in each other's company that they finish off each other's sentences in conveying the humour, passion and horror of the events that swirl around Pelagia and her beloved music-loving captain. Of course there wouldn't be a story without a mandolin, and Alison Stephens provides haunting melodies on the instrument throughout, adding guitar, tuba and trumpet - and with a snare drum staccato she represents the shock of the firing squad - to Anne Evans' lyrical piano and flute. Their soundtrack is as expressive and emotional as the words they accompany. They've been doing this since 1999 but the production is as fresh as the first day they did it. A spellbinding experience. Nick Awde

Change - The Upcoming War With Iran Assembly at Hill Street
In Mark Soper's new play a low-level American foreign policy analyst is suddenly lifted out of obscurity and moved into the role of senior advisor to the President - not, as he hopes, because of his unique insights into the Islamic world and the patterns of history, but so that his name can be cited to justify political and military decisions that have already been made. His growing awareness of this, his wrestling with whether to allow it, and finally his suspicion that what he says and does probably won't make much difference either way, are the backbone of the play, on which playwright Soper hangs several thought-provoking speeches and debates that are its real meat. A subplot in which the central character's dilemma is mirrored in his domestic life, and the enigmatic figure of an Iranian woman with an important but never actually identified document remain loose ends that are never really integrated with the main action. Director Gordon Carver works to keep the focus steady but is not always successful, nor is he able to curb the tendency of some of his cast to overact. Gerald Berkowitz

Cherry Smoke C Cubed
Winner of the Princess Grace Award, James McManus's play follows the doomed romance of a pair of wounded characters to its inevitable tragic climax. Fish is an uneducated ruffian whose only talent is as a boxer and whose greatest handicap is his inability to restrict his aggression to the ring. Cherry is a homeless girl who has loved him from the time they met as children, and for whom there can be no life without him. In a series of scenes jumping back and forth between their childhood and adult life together, we watch their mutual dependence develop even as the rest of their lives are going nowhere. Providing a point of comparison are the lives of Fish's brother and the girl who picks him as her own, and the way they settle into and settle for a very modest but undramatic life. The process by which Fish's ring career damages his health and his street fighting keeps sending him to jail is perhaps predictable, as is what happens when he finally realises that he and Cherry have no hope of a happy future. More insightful and attractive is what happens along the way, as playwright McManus lets us watch both women slowly breaking through the men's barriers and teaching them how to love and be loved. Gerald Berkowitz

Paul Chowdhry - Lost in Confusion Baby Belly
Paul Chowdhry is playing a cave this year - one of the Baby Belly ones, to be sure, atmospheric but dank and, understandably, not exactly conductive to the comic's quickfire style. A couple of opening gags, however, about Bin Laden in his own cave somewhere in the Afghan hills and he has the audience instantly up and running. By the time a couple of latecomers have actively provided unexpected mirth and a burly but jovial heckler in the front row becomes a part of the act (even attempting to strip at one point), Chowdhry has already covered haggling for illegal DVDs, blaming al-Qaeda for the floods, fascist self-check-in machines at supermarkets and the embarrassment of exposing todgers in the gym. A running theme is that of racism and, just as bad, inverse racism, such as being phoned up by an agent asking him to act as an Arab in a reconstruction for a Panorama special on terrorist bombings. As a Panjabi Sikh he explains why his answer of 'no thanks' meets with baffled indifference. Conversely there's the problem he hits in Indian restaurants: if he changes his natural north London twang to lilting Indian tones to show solidarity with the proprietors he somehow always gets shown the door before he's even got his coat off. Chowdhry keeps up a steady stream of gags and left-field links that fuel what is a fairly unique perspective of observations on British life, and he ties everything up neatly by the end while still leaving the audience wanting more. Nick Awde

Cinderella C Venue
Karina Wilson's inventive deconstruction of the familiar story adds enough fresh touches to keep parents alert without straying so far from the familiar as to upset the 3-6-year-olds (all girls, noticeably) in the audience. The stepsisters' cynical footman attempts to tell his dark version of the tale, only to be interrupted by Cinderella with the truth. She was actually quite content in her scullery, and only the encouragement of a friendly rat, who made her slippers and even taught her how to dance, got her to the ball. Adults may be a little less surprised than their children when the rat turns out to have been an under-an-evil-spell Royal Personage, but it adds a nice dimension to the tale and helps make the point that Happily Ever After is built on more than a single date. Sarah Lark is attractive as Cindy, James Witt amiable as the rat and appropriately manly as the prince, Alastair Watson oily without being too scary as the footman, and Sara Pascoe and Gemma Whelan funny as the very contemporary and Chav-ish sisters. Under Ed Viney's direction, the show zips along nicely, staying well within the attention span of its young audience. Gerald Berkowitz

Classic Entertainment! Pleasance
Like a Music Hall version of the National Theatre of Brent, this double act celebrates an entertainment form while sending it up by presenting in the guise of incompetence. The comical-looking Mr. Winchester, a supremely confident but seriously untalented variety artiste, takes us through his wide but shallow repertoire with the dubious assistance of his even more ridiculous and bumbling assistant Tommy (a last-minute replacement for Mrs. Winchester, whose sudden departure is best not mentioned). And so there are bad and seriously un-PC jokes badly told, an improvisation segment that ignores the audience suggestions, weak songs and stumbling dances, all presented with the confidence of characters who believe themselves great entertainers, and punctuated by insults and squabbling generated by the boss's impatience with his stooge. Portraying incompetence skillfully is difficult, and Dan Skinner and Tom Verrall pull off the delicate trick of being better and funnier than the characters they play. High points include a ventriloquist act that covers oft-seen ground with a freshness that makes it seem new, and a north-of-England version of TV's 24, in which Jack Bauer complains about all his compulsory overtime. Gerald Berkowitz

Company C Venue
It is exactly 50 years since Stephen Sondheim had his major break as lyricist on West Side Story. His 1970 musical Company (book by George Furth), which broke the mould and introduced the format of a concept musical, is now older than its womanising protagonist, commitment-phobe Bobby, who is surrounded by happily married friends but lives all alone. Not that the age of the work really matters in this timeless and beautifully simple production by Michael Strassen. A minor intervention featuring a text message instead of a wedding card both works well and brings the story right up to date - as nothing else really seems to have changed when it comes to romantic relationships. Strassen's ultra-minimalist and mainly presentational production features some top notch performances from an obviously skilled cast. Antonio Mcardle as Robert is suitably slightly aloof in what is essentially his meditation on the mad world around him. Meanwhile, Helen George as the sexy and ditzy stewardess April really stands out of the crowd, but then again she is meant to. Otherwise this is an ensemble performance not to be missed, if you are after a quality musical. Duska Radosavljevic

The Container Udderbelly
There's so word of mouth about this show that I won't be giving anything away by explaining that this thoughtful play is set in a real container trailer. And in the audience goes to perch among the packing crates and boxes. Within these claustrophobic dimensions, lit only by hand torches, we encounter first-hand the very real dangers of illegally entering the UK in the back of a lorry. It proves to be no gimmick as the weary, terrified travellers in the trailer reveal themselves one by one and we learn bit by bit about how they came to be here. It would definitely be giving too much away to go into each character's story. Suffice to say that they come from not quite the deprived backgrounds the tabloids would have us expect, and, because English is the language they have in common, we are allowed to observe them as our peers rather than as a foreign threat come to take our jobs and state benefits. Director Tom Wright gets the best out of the performers William El-Gardi, Mercy Ojelade, Deborah Leveroy, Chris Spyrides, Omar Mostafa and Doreene Blackstock, who each bring a raw energy to their diverse roles and nationalities. He is lucky to have such a finely tuned ensemble, and they have to be, since half the time they can't see each other due to the constricted elongated space or quite simply because they're acting in the dark. Although Clare Bayley's script struggles somewhat to fill 70 minutes, it succeeds not by harping on about how terrible human trafficking is but by emphasizing that these are real people with real lives, even, unsettlingly, those who traffic them. Nick Awde

Nina Conti   Pleasance
After a false start in Edinburgh a few years ago, comic ventriloquist Nina Conti hit her stride and rose quickly to the top of the comedy ladder. The juxtaposition of an innocent-looking pretty girl and a foul-talking monkey dummy proved irresistible, and as Nina's skill and confidence grew, it sometimes seemed that Monkey was the star of the act, quicker thinking and better at ad libbing than his partner. The current show is Conti's first attempt at filling a full hour, and inevitably involves stretching herself beyond the interplay with Monkey.  She auditions some new dummies - a dog, a baby, an alternative monkey - and tries working without a doll, playing an old man talking in his mind with his dead wife. The sad fact, though, is that Monkey is indeed the star of the act, and the sequences without him all fall flat. Fortunately, there is enough of him to carry the hour over its dead spots and to please Conti fans, though it looks like she may be stuck with this one doll, and with the somewhat shorter act that shows him off most effectively.   Gerald Berkowitz

A Conversation With Edith Head   Assembly at Hill Street
Edith Head was chief costume designer for two major Hollywood Studios, Paramount and Universal, from 1923 to her death in 1981. In all, she designed for hundreds of films, winning the Oscar for eight of them. Susan Claassen's staging, written with Paddy Calistro and based on Calistro's book about Head, finds the designer in the last year of her life, reminiscing and answering questions supposedly posed by audience members. She is alternately helped and irritated by one member of the audience, a film buff with an encyclopaedic memory, played by Ramsay Ure. The 'And then I designed' structure inevitably involves a lot of name-dropping, with Head's memories of actresses from Barbara Stanwyck to Grace Kelly. Those hoping for dirt will be disappointed, there being little gossip beyond the news that the young Elizabeth Taylor had a 19 inch waist, Gloria Swanson wore size 2-1/2 shoes, and Dorothy Lamour hated sarongs. The pedant in the audience does force Head to acknowledge that, as leader of a large studio design department, she took credit for some work actually done by her assistants, but that is about as dark as the show ever gets. Susan Claassen captures Head's signature subdued-businesswoman look, explaining that when her stars watched her fitting their gowns in a mirror, they had to see only themselves, undistracted by what she wore. The actress cleverly affects absentmindedness, reaching for names or film titles so the audience spontaneously helps her.  It is not likely that anyone will come away from this slight piece knowing much more than they did coming in, but for those of a certain age, or those with a love of classic Hollywood, it will be a pleasant trip down memory lane.  Gerald Berkowitz

Chris Cox - Everything Happens for a Reason Gilded Balloon
Magician-mentalist Chris Cox's stock in trade is made up of various sorts of mind-reading and prediction illusions, such as appearing to know in advance what card a member of the audience will pick or what word he will choose from a book, since Cox will have the answer already written somewhere. Some of his repertoire was seen in last year's Edinburgh show - the circled word in the Fringe brochure already printed on Cox's T-shirt, the audience member's drawing he can duplicate without having seen it, and the collection of audience suggestions for film credits that magically appear on a DVD that has been held by one patron from the beginning - but they are just as impressive the second time around. . Cox acknowledges that these are all tricks, built on subliminal suggestions, sleight-of-hand and the reading of unconscious giveaways by his volunteers, but if anything that only adds to his impressiveness, since we are clearly in the hands of a master technician. Also contributing to the show's fun is his amiable informality - he chooses volunteers by tossing a toy ferret into the audience - and complete absence of the traditional magician's false pomposity and flashiness. Gerald Berkowitz

(Some of these reviews appeared first in The Stage.)

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Reviews - Edinburgh Festival - 2007