Anne-Louise Fortune

Midsummer! Is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The original play is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known. It has been adapted and revived on numerous occasions. It has been filmed for the screen, and features on many a High School curriculum. Here, adapter Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony Award for writing Avenue Q, has taken the original Shakespearean language, and added some more modern flourishes.

Bad Girls of History is described as ‘an immersive audio-visual dance party celebrating all the bad girls who changed the history books’, and that’s a pretty accurate summary of what this is. Taking place in the mercifully high-ceilinged ‘Live Room’ at The Three Sisters on Cowgate, DJ Carly Gray, dressed like Bondage Barbie (/positive), bounces onto the stage and blasts into the opening sequence of the show. Gray’s crowd-work is excellent.

Frat is a play that is at times difficult and challenging. It’s about four members of an American college fraternity organisation, and how the fraternity deals with an allegation of bad behaviour against one of its members. The cast of four play various members of the organising committee of Beta Chi Omega. We learn that there have been elections for the various roles, and that there’s some disquiet amongst the four characters we meet, because of who has won each role.