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Scotsman
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh Fringe Theatre reviews: Aether
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Aether Summerhall (Venue 26) ★★★★☆ How does one make a piece of theatre about dark matter, the material which makes up most of the universe, but which we cannot see and don't really understand? It's a tall order, but Emma Howlett, the writer and director behind TheatreGoose's Fringe hits, Her Green Hell and Sisters Three, is determined to give it a go. Aether | TheatreGoose In a fast-moving production packed with energy and inventiveness, the four women performers power through the stories of five women operating on the edge of the unknown, playing everyone and everything from Nobel Prize winning physicists to different types of quark, referencing styles which range from a science lecture to a TV games show. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sophie is a particle physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider at Cerne, but she's on the verge of quitting her PhD because the Great Unknown is not showing any signs of giving up its secrets. She – and the company – look to the past for inspiration, settling first on Hypatia, a female mathematician and astronomer in 4th century Alexandria who met a violent death at the hands of a mob. Via a teenage medium in London in 1874, and vaudeville magician Adelaide Herrmann, known as the Queen of Magic, we arrive at Vera Rubin, the American astrophysicist who provided the first widely accepted evidence for the existence of dark matter. It makes for a piece of theatre which hurtles around like the particles in the Large Hadron Collider, firing out stories, ideas and information in all directions. It's packed with research, and so much science it's in danger of leaving a significant percentage of its audience behind. While it does need a greater degree of focus, and perhaps a little less material, it's a well-written and endlessly surprising look at humankind's fascination with the unknown, the different ways we have pursued it, and how it has affected us. SUSAN MANSFIELD until 25 August Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad READ MORE: How Summerhall Arts are supporting artists like never before this festival r/Conspiracy Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower (Venue 140) ★★★☆☆ For twentysomething Alex the internet is a place, one she feels at home in and comforted by. Yet it's also somewhere danger and darkness can be found, albeit at the far remove of mutual anonymity and scary places observed on online maps. She trawls the popular internet forum Reddit, looking in discussion groups called things like r/Local, r/Crime and r/Conspiracy, and pieces together a fantastical, fragmentary understanding of the world. Others like her are out there, including anonymous user Hipnotic, who reveals Alex's local park is the locus of an online conspiracy theory about a masked figure known as 'the machete man'. Intrigued, she finds clues which reinforce this theory, and decides to break safety protocols by meeting Hipnotic in real life. Writer/performer Ella Hällgren and director Emma Ruse wrong-foot the audience with the tone from here, because the play's not so much a journey into the internet's heart of darkness as it is a creepy but Scooby Doo-ish adventure in which an insular and directionless young woman finds herself and her people, first online, then in reality. In particular, it comes thoroughly recommended for the measured and captivating solo performance by Hällgren, who sells every twist and emotional turn with versatile accuracy. DAVID POLLOCK until 24 August Shirley: A Ghost Story theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall (Venue 53) ★★★☆☆ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Far from a straight biography, more a hall of mirrors, this weirdly compelling one-woman show is inspired by the life and work of Shirley Jackson with reference to the ghost stories of M.R. James. Initially, this appears an odd pairing as Jackson's psychologically acute uncanny tales feature characters who are haunted by something ghost-like rather than James' more traditional phantoms. Similarly, the Shirley (an impressive Jasmin Gleeson) here is not Jackson but like her. After finding success with her short stories, Shirley is pressured by her husband to write a more conventional supernatural tale as a novel. Bridling at this, Shirley recalls her formative years (now reimagined as in Gleeson's native Ireland rather than Jackson's California) prodding at her memories, searching for what haunts her. Josh King's script is largely fictitious but it seems apt — like something Jackson would write for one of her own characters. It's not true but it feels true. While Shirley scorns the cursed tomes that furnish more antiquated ghost stories, King rather rushes his story toward an almost Jamesian reveal which, while admittedly more psychological, feels a little at odds with the nature of Jackson's writing — which would have probably preferred to leave things unexplained. RORY FORD until 23 August Baby in the Mirror Summerhall (Venue 26) ★★★☆☆ This first production from new theatre company SecondAdolescence explores the fraught process of a queer family considering parenthood with sensitivity and humour. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Lena and Joey are a couple that want to have a baby. Lena is a woman. Joey is trans. Last year, Joey got cold feet about conceiving via a sperm donor. Now, the two of them have moved into a new flat and decided to start a family, DIY-style, with their gay best friend Ollie. Lena will be the baby's mum, Joey its 'Dappy', and Ollie its 'Spuncle.' Over three long scenes, though, things fall apart. Resentments about past behaviour surface. Anxieties about bodies emerge. Tensions over parenthood boil over. Co-created by Sammy J Glover and Stella Marie Sophie, Baby in the Mirror authentically articulates some tricky topics, its overlapping dialogue and cardboard-cluttered set effectively evoking an angsty atmosphere. It also features three nicely naturalistic performances from Sophie, Zoë West and Derek Mitchell as Lena, Joey and Ollie. The play's fast-paced conversations are overwritten at times – too slick, too sitcom-like – and it ends somewhat abruptly, but this is a promising debut from SecondAdolescence nonetheless: a pained portrait of planning for queer parenthood. FERGUS MORGAN until 25 August Almost Everything Braw Venues @ Hill Street (Venue 41) ★★★☆☆ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Becca meets Charlie when she's looking for a room in a London flat. They bond, bicker and become best pals. Both are haunted by events in their pasts, and they weather good times and bad together. But when Becca's vivacious sister Emily arrives in town, the friendship turns into a love triangle. Writer/performers Lauren Barrie and Ben McGuinness set out to create a drama about contemporary relationships in the vein of Sally Rooney's Normal People or David Nicholls' One Day. The result is a play which feels a bit like it should be a novel; it's hard to keep up pace and tension when tracing your characters through the course of several years. There are strong performances from McGuinness (Charlie), Barrie (Becca) and Imogen Eden-Brown (Emily), and Tiffany Yu has created a stylish domestic set, but the dialogue sometimes lacks the necessary sharpness and some of the plot twists are straight out of central casting. However, the play has something meaningful to say about the things which trip people up, which hold them back from taking the risks which will determine whether they gain or lose almost everything. SUSAN MANSFIELD until 24 August Wilde Women Greenside @ George Street (Venue 236) ★★☆☆☆ A backstage audience with Lily Langtry as she prepares the titular celebration of the playwright's eminent ladies, this frustratingly bitty show by Texas-based performer Krista Scott doesn't really work as tribute to Wilde or the illustrious actress. Scott is fine as Langtry but the piecemeal nature of the material is barrier to engagement. Neither a wedge of exposition from An Ideal Husband or an unusually lengthy recounting of the plot of The Importance of Being Earnest provide much in the way of entertainment or insight. Although less than edifying, the production is at least handsomely mounted and looks authentic. RORY FORD until 16 August Flora Macdonald and Zombies Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) ★★☆☆☆ until 16 August Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Given that the novelty of appending 'and Zombies' to an unlikely partner lost its appeal about 10 years ago you could be forgiven for expecting that this show from Debbie Cannon might have an ace up its sleeve. Unfortunately, that optimism is misplaced. This pairing of the 'Jacobite pin-up of 1746' and the 'un-woke' is rambling and largely bereft of wit. Cannon — writer and performer of a well-regarded retelling of The Green Knight — is an energetic performer but her charm can't disguise the fact that almost all the scenes in this entirely untrue, scattershot adventure through the Highlands go on far too long and would test the patience of anyone — living or dead. RORY FORD until 16 August
The Guardian
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Aether review – dazzling lecture about a medium, a magician and a mathematician
There are known knowns, there are known unknowns and there is Emma Howlett's play, a smart feminist take on the mysteries of the physical universe and the eternal limits of science. If that sounds too weighty a theme for a night out at the fringe, well, Howlett, who also directs, has planned ahead and built a fluid, ever-shifting production that spins her ideas with a dazzling lightness of touch. This is pure ensemble theatre: you cannot put a match between Sophie Kean, Abby McCann, Anna Marks Pryce and Gemma Barnett as they weave five historical stories as a tight unit, breathing as one. Supported by a residency by the Hugo Burge Foundation and written with Summerhall's Anatomy lecture theatre in mind, Howlett's production for TheatreGoose exploits the academic setting by turning the audience into students (pens and whiteboards in hand) and the actors into public speakers, using an overhead projector to put them in the spotlight (neat lighting design by Ed Saunders). Two of the stories are unexpected; not the one about Hypatia, the ancient Egyptian mathematician and astronomer who was murdered by angry Christians; nor the one about Vera Rubin finding evidence of dark matter in the 20th century; and not the modern-day tale about Sophie, a PhD student drawing on data from Cern in the hope of breaking new ground, while her obsessiveness drives her girlfriend away. More surprising are those of Adelaide Herrmann, famed for performing the bullet-catch magic trick in her vaudeville show; and of Florence Cook, a 15-year-old medium, hoodwinking a credulous scientific establishment with her messages from beyond. Howlett is intrigued by fiction as well as fact. Juxtaposed and intercutting, these stories form a collage of truth and illusion, one that embraces the existential fear of always having more to learn about an evasive universe. As concerns go, it is on the esoteric side, but Aether is never less than accomplished. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
The Guardian
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Aether review – dazzling lecture about a medium, a magician and a mathematician
There are known knowns, there are known unknowns and there is Emma Howlett's play, a smart feminist take on the mysteries of the physical universe and the eternal limits of science. If that sounds too weighty a theme for a night out at the fringe, well, Howlett, who also directs, has planned ahead and built a fluid, ever-shifting production that spins her ideas with a dazzling lightness of touch. This is pure ensemble theatre: you cannot put a match between Sophie Kean, Abby McCann, Anna Marks Pryce and Gemma Barnett as they weave five historical stories as a tight unit, breathing as one. Supported by a residency by the Hugo Burge Foundation and written with Summerhall's Anatomy lecture theatre in mind, Howlett's production for TheatreGoose exploits the academic setting by turning the audience into students (pens and whiteboards in hand) and the actors into public speakers, using an overhead projector to put them in the spotlight (neat lighting design by Ed Saunders). Two of the stories are unexpected; not the one about Hypatia, the ancient Egyptian mathematician and astronomer who was murdered by angry Christians; nor the one about Vera Rubin finding evidence of dark matter in the 20th century; and not the modern-day tale about Sophie, a PhD student drawing on data from Cern in the hope of breaking new ground, while her obsessiveness drives her girlfriend away. More surprising are those of Adelaide Herrmann, famed for performing the bullet-catch magic trick in her vaudeville show; and of Florence Cook, a 15-year-old medium, hoodwinking a credulous scientific establishment with her messages from beyond. Howlett is intrigued by fiction as well as fact. Juxtaposed and intercutting, these stories form a collage of truth and illusion, one that embraces the existential fear of always having more to learn about an evasive universe. As concerns go, it is on the esoteric side, but Aether is never less than accomplished. At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 25 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
