Music Theatre, the genre which gave us Andrew Lloyd Webber and the tribute show, combines the worst aspects of music with the worst aspects of theatre to create a mutant hybrid that is the worst form of live art that exists. There are few aspects of human artistic endeavour that are of less moral or…
During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a few years ago a cab driver asked me who my favourite stand-ups were. I mentioned Billy Connolly amongst the usual international top ten. The cab driver explained that he hated Billy Connolly because he was ‘too English.’ I didn’t know what this meant exactly. Was it perhaps that Connolly…
In the late 80’s Margaret Thatcher, the then prime-minister, took a tour of our University. In a library she stopped and asked a young woman what she was studying. “Norse literature,” she replied. And Thatcher said, “What a luxury.” Now, Njal’s saga might not be to everyone’s taste, but in a civilised country surely we…
The American motivational speaker has rapidly become a staple of character comedy, which returns to the fringe in cycles of approximately three years. On paper then, Will Adamsdale’s Chris John Jackson, author of Maximum Jackson and inventor of the philosophy of Jackson’s Way, is not an appetising proposition. But Adamsdale merely uses this familiar trope…
Like all good mythical heroes, King Arthur is all things to all men. For the poets of the middle ages, his legend provided the perfect empty vessel into which to pour the ideals of Courtly Love. For Henry II, who attempted to legitimise his own rule via Arthurian precedents established in Geoffrey Of Monmouth’s semi-spurious…