Invisible Show II, Edinburgh
If this year's Edinburgh festival fringe is characterised by one thing, it is undoubtedly theatre's attempts to engage playfully with technology. Coney, Blast Theory and Fish And Game are just a few of those engaging with the possibilities of film and persuasive media, while the city has offered festival-goers a series of downloadable virtual adventures at locations around Edinburgh. Joining the fray is fringe survivor Red Shift, a company that may date back to the 1980s, but which is forward- looking in its use of technology. Played out in the Pleasance Courtyard amid the unsuspecting crowd, the audience have access to what the actors are saying via wireless headphones while real life continues all around. Sounds good.
Pleasance, Sun to 27 Aug
Lyn Gardner
Halcyon Days, London
Suicide has a particular significance in Japanese society: think of the kamikaze pilots of the second world war or the suicide of writer and actor Yukio Mishima. Playwright and director Shoji Kokami's Halcyon Days looks at the rise to cult status of so-called suicide websites reflecting their proliferation in recent years, particularly in Japan and South Korea. In the play, which gets its English language premiere at the Riverside Studios, three people and a ghost encounter each other on such a website, which Kokami sees as arising out of depression caused by conflict around the world and our powerlessness in the face of global forces. Indeed, the author, whose play Trance was at the Bush four years ago, asks whether everyday life itself has lost meaning as a result.
Riverside Studios, W6, Tue to 18 Sep
Mark Cook
BAC Take Out, Edinburgh
It's great to see London's BAC having a strong presence in Edinburgh, and at a brand-new venue on the other side of the Meadows that, with Forest Fringe and St George's West, is bringing an experimental spirit to the fringe. Work ranges from Curious' heartbreaking show The Moment I Saw You, which places its audience in life rafts, to Lundahl & Seitl's unsettling Rotating In A Room Full Of Images, which is filled with a ghostly air. Melanie Wilson and Abigail Conway return with their cinema experience Every Minute Always and Coney offers the experience of The Loveliness Principle. Add to that Me And The Machine and Hannah Ringham, plus gigs from Little Bulb and it's looking irresistible.
Summerhall, Sun to 27 Aug
LG
The Faith Machine, London
With his first play, The Pride, Alexi Kaye Campbell had an enormous hit at the Royal Court, winning an Olivier award for outstanding achievement, the Critics' Circle award for most promising playwright, and the John Whiting award for best play. He returns to the scene of his triumph this week with The Faith Machine, which centres on a young couple, Sophie (Hayley Atwell, currently in the film blockbuster Captain America) and Tom (Kyle Soller, terrific in The Government Inspector at the Young Vic). Tom is persuaded by his partner into a momentous decision that will change their lives and take them over 12 years from New York to Britain and a remote Greek island. The relationaship between faith (Sophie's father, played by Ian McDiarmid, is an ex-bishop) and capitalism, and the nature of love underpins this piece, with direction by Jamie Lloyd, who also directed The Pride.
Royal Court, SE1, Thu to 1 Oct
MC
The Adventures Of Wound Man And Shirley, Edinburgh
With his first play, The Pride, Alexi Kaye Campbell had an enormous hit at the Royal Court, winning an Olivier award for outstanding achievement, the Critics' Circle award for most promising playwright, and the John Whiting award for best play. He returns to the scene of his triumph this week with The Faith Machine, which centres on a young couple, Sophie (Hayley Atwell, currently in the film blockbuster Captain America) and Tom (Kyle Soller, terrific in The Government Inspector at the Young Vic). Tom is persuaded by his partner into a momentous decision that will change their lives and take them over 12 years from New York to Britain and a remote Greek island. The relationaship between faith (Sophie's father, played by Ian McDiarmid, is an ex-bishop) and capitalism, and the nature of love underpins this piece, with direction by Jamie Lloyd, who also directed The Pride.
Royal Court, SE1, Thu to 1 Oct
LG
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Edinburgh
The past and its buried secrets are unearthed in this stage version of the novel by the western world's favourite Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. It tells of an ordinary man called Toru Okada, whose life takes an unexpected and often bizarre turn when his cat goes missing. Then his wife disappears too, leading Okada into a world where dreams and reality meet as he tries to solve the mystery not just of what has happened to the cat and his wife, but of his own life. The novel itself is a mysterious thing, with a strong hallucinatory quality and, if this stage production by Stephen Earnhart does it justice, this should be a strange but compelling theatrical experience.
King's Theatre, to Wed
LG
End Of The Rainbow, Northampton
Returning one last time to the venue where it first began, Peter Quilter's play about the acting and singing legend Judy Garland at the end of her life as she attempts to make one last comeback at London's Talk Of The Town in 1968, certainly deserves its encore. Quilter's play is nothing special but it is made extraordinary by the performance of Tracie Bennett, who consistently gets the audience on their feet as the doomed former MGM star whose Yellow Brick Road is about to finally run out. Bennett does far more than simply impersonate Garland. It feels as if she is living every setback and every kick. She carries all before her and she carries the show.
Royal Theatre, Thu to 3 Sep
LG
One Thousand And One Nights, Edinburgh
The Edinburgh international festival theatre programme is not a sparkler this year, but the one production that really glitters with promise is Tim Supple's version of the ancient tales gathered from across India, Persia and the Arab empire. Supple's Indian A Midsummer Night's Dream was raved over a few years back and here his cast from across the world share the stories told by the queen Shahrazad to stop her new husband King Shahrayer from beheading her after their wedding night (as he has with all his previous brides). It's a story about the transforming and healing power of storytelling and Supple has proved a past master at the art with shows such as Grimm Tales.
Royal Lyceum, Sun to 3 Sep
LG
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/20/this-weeks-new-theatre
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