Sketch comedy is a funny beast, as troupes can easily swing from ecstasy to agony, or vice versa, between festivals. More often than not they slip from greatness and it is clear that the Durham Review have suffered this decline.
It’s not that they aren’t funny anymore, as the young crowd are continually baying for more, [...]

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You might be wondering why Hairline is reviewing Vegas as part of the festival this year. You might even be shocked that we are pre/reviewing a club night as part of our music section. Well it is in our opinion that Vegas (who also put in lots of hard work during the rest [...]

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Ironklad Productions’ first offering for the Fringe is a strong idea: what would happen if Alice returned to Wonderland, and how would she be welcomed by it’s inhabitants? However, it’s a strong idea that doesn’t quite fulfill it’s potential.
The characterisations are well thought out, with Samantha Morris’ portrayal of a grown up Alice as a [...]

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Every so often you get the opportunity to take part in one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments and, in the case of Mark Watson’s latest endeavour, you really had to be there for fourteen plus hours to get the full effect.
Lauded as a shameless act of self-publicity, Mark Watson’s Overambitious 24hour Show [...]

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Ben Elton’s Popcorn meant to be a biting satire that combines the media glamour that surrounded Natural Born Killers and the geekiness and pretension of Quentin Tarintino to grand effect? I thought so, so why did Rattlesnake Theatre churn out eighty-odd minutes of dull, bland theatre under the [...]

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The opportunity to take a wander through Christopher Walken’s mind seems to good to miss and thankfully this is the case with Loboista Theater’s delightfully entertaining Citizen Walken.
Essentially this production hinges on Peter Loureiro’s uncanny resemblance to a young Walken and his ability to replicate the unusual speech patterns and diction that Walken is so [...]

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It now seems inevitable that every Fringe will have at least one show with a celebrity cast member. This year has been no different with at least four shows boasting a former celebrity in their programme, the least prolific being Men, which stars Jonathon Dutton aka Tad from Neighbours.
As with anything that a ex-resident of [...]

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This show is living proof that great comic talent does not guarantee you an audience when you’re performing at The Fringe. Anvil Springstien really is a hidden gem of this year’s Fringe Festival, though since he achieved four-star reviews last year this really is a bit of a mystery.
Whatever the reason for the low audience [...]

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From the moment you see the stage you know that you are about to experience something out of the ordinary. The set design is amazing and it immediately transports the audience to the putrid town of ‘Helkaville’ out on the frontier of the American Wild West.
Play Dead- Show 115 is experimental theatre and is the [...]

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We’ve had some pretty poor luck with sketch comedy this year but thankfully Stickmen have given us renewed hope in the genre.
With a solid sixty minutes of quick fire, slightly twisted skits the Stickmen thoroughly bolster the genre and manage to rack up a decent amount of hits. There are a number of flops in [...]

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