thetempohouse Review: Aye, Elvis February 27, 2018 • Spoilt Victorian Child Photo: Leslie Black Sometimes, all you need is a flying suit and a big dream. Or so it seems. Morna Young’s rather bonkers, but sweet, play for PPP, focuses on the eternal dreamer, Aberdonian woman Joan, whose devotion from childhood to Elvis Presley takes on aContinue reading “From The Archive: Aye, Elvis”
Category Archives: Review
Archive Theatre Review: BATSHIT
close search menu BATSHIT More than just a provocative title ★★★★ theatre review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes Batshit Photo by Joel Devereux The Very Best of the Edinburgh Festivals 2024 By Lorna Irvine Published 03 Aug 2024 With a typically taboo-baiting Edinburgh Fringe title, Leah Shelton’s one-woman show, directed by Ursula Martinez, could have been aContinue reading “Archive Theatre Review: BATSHIT”
Book Review : Twee by Marc Spitz
Marc Spitz was a fine writer, and it’s clear he had an eye for the vagaries of pop culture, but Twee didn’t always convince me. What he described wasn’t a tribe, but an aesthetic. This would have been okay, were it a style guide (he was no stranger to a cute bow tie and fiftiesContinue reading “Book Review : Twee by Marc Spitz”
Overlooked Classic : Sonic Youth -EVOL (1986)
The front cover shows Lung Leg, in a still from Richard Kern’s notorious film Submit To Me, doing her typically fucked-up, possessed writhing. Kern of course had collaborated with Sonic Youth on the ‘Death Valley 69’ video, but EVOL, which remains my favourite Sonic Youth album beside Daydream Nation, is a much different beast thanContinue reading “Overlooked Classic : Sonic Youth -EVOL (1986)”
Film Review: Days Of The Bagnold Summer
If this was an American film, lessons would be learned and resentment eased, in a neat “I was never the same after that summer” trope. But it’s not: it’s British, full of warm days and familial complications. Effortlessly directed by comic actor Simon Bird, it’s a little like Mike Leigh, if lighter and more incidentalContinue reading “Film Review: Days Of The Bagnold Summer”
Overrated Crap: Moulin Rouge!
I absolutely hate this film. I saw it with some girlfriends at the cinema and seemed to be the lone naysayer. I don’t hang out with those women anymore. Baz Luhrmann’s fin de siecle “spectacular” is like Cirque De Soleil for pre-teens who’ve never seen films-or the circus- before. It’s an absolute disaster.Worse yet, itContinue reading “Overrated Crap: Moulin Rouge!”
Vintage Film Review: A Place In The Sun
George Stevens’ 1951 film eschews his usual screwball comedy genre for a melodrama focusing on an extremely toxic love triangle. Montgomery Clift is George Eastman, a social climber who dates Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) a dowdy co-worker in a local factory. But when he discovers the beautiful Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) a society lady, heContinue reading “Vintage Film Review: A Place In The Sun”
Theatre Review: Saint Joan
Perth Theatre, March 4th, 2026. Director Stewart Laing makes work that occupies liminal spaces, so it was perhaps inevitable that he would take on an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan, in his characteristically complex, radical style. By adapting Shaw’s unfinished film script and transposing it to stage in a raw, sparse styleContinue reading “Theatre Review: Saint Joan”
Archive Theatre Review: Girl In The Machine
The List . Love is not the only drug in Stef Smith’s eerie sci-fi two-hander Share: Author: Lorna Irvine Love is not the only drug in Stef Smith’s eerie sci-fi two-hander It’s the near future. On the surface, Polly (Rosalind Sydney) and Owen (Michael Dylan) seem a well-matched couple: attractive, and witty thirty somethings (she’s aContinue reading “Archive Theatre Review: Girl In The Machine”
Film Review: Emma
How bad is Autumn De Wilde’s adaptation of Emma? The awful Miranda Hart has a “comic” turn in it as Mrs Bates, that’s how bad. Anya Taylor -Joy takes the lead as Emma Woodhouse, depicting her as the spoilt, unlikeable gossiping brat with a peripatetic accent, who spends all her time matchmaking and studiously tryingContinue reading “Film Review: Emma”
