✭✭✭ Many will remember her as Martha Fraser, one of the many love interests of Ken Barlow (Bill Roache) in Coronation Street. She was a prisoner in Bad Girls and in Tenko, though perhaps Stephanie Beacham’s most fabled role was as Sable Colby in the 1980s series Dynasty and its spin-off The Colbys in which she sparred with Joan Collins and […]
Festival
Review: Reginald D Hunter, A Work in Progress
✭✭✭✭ While many comedians have traditionally done work in progress shows in London and around the country before coming to Edinburgh, Reginald D Hunter is one of an increasing number of comedians who seem to be using Edinburgh as a place to road test material ahead of a national tour. Maybe it’s a hangover from […]
Authors lose the plot in fossil fuel drama
Threats of boycotts over Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of the Edinburgh Book Festival are missing the point, says DAVID GAFFNEY The best authors devote countless hours to conducting research on every aspect of their work. So I was surprised to hear that more than 50 writers and participants in this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival had threatened […]
Review: The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo
✭✭✭✭ All photos by Terry Murden, DB Media Services Amid the ever-changing menu of the Edinburgh Festivals, one “act” has remained a constant. Undiminished by the pandemic and offering a blessed relief from some of the grim realities of life, the Tattoo is a burst of all that is good about pomp and ceremony, a […]
Review: The Standard Short Long Drop
✭✭✭✭ Hangings used to be public spectacles but, as condemned horse thief Ludley finds out, the felon has long since gone to his grave unnoticed by no one other than the hangman himself. Lewis “Ludley” Thornhill resorts – appropriately – to gallows humour , describing his sentence as “a bit of an over-reaction” as he […]