L’Addition
This surreal, sometimes “maddening”, but “very funny” work from the comic duo Bert and Nasi (Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas), sees the two offer multiple riffs on one scenario: that of diner and waiter in a restaurant, says Mark Fisher in The Guardian. “Like a volley of Ken Dodd jokes”, L’Addition “tickles its audience into submission and succeeds through sheer force of will”.
Summerhall, Edinburgh until 25 August; Battersea Arts Centre, London SW11, 5-16 November
A History of Paper
Don’t be fooled by the “arid” title: this beguiling musical by Gareth Williams and the late Oliver Emanuel is a “little gem”, says Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. A tale of the love between a “dejected bookseller” and his prying neighbour, “it’s a beautiful love letter, in effect, to the people who mean the world to you, and what happens when you have to let them go”.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week’s Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Traverse (Two), Edinburgh until 25 August; Dundee Rep, 29-31 August
Please Right Back
This “twisted little story” from the theatre company 1927 is “not to be missed”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. It’s a “high-wire act” of animation and performance in which four actors juggle more than 20 parts to tell the story of a family whose father has disappeared. Wonderfully entertaining but with serious themes, it is “unique, moving and beautifully constructed, for kids and adults alike”.
Touring 25 September to 21 December (19-27.co.uk/tour-dates)
Cyrano
This modern-day spin on Edmond Rostand’s classic, created by and starring the Australian performer Virginia Gay, is a “dazzlingly clever piece of theatre that manages to be witty, knowing, satirical and heartfelt all at once”, says Fergus Morgan in the FT. Gay’s queer reworking of the tale is “Rostand by way of Pirandello, with a big dollop of knockabout Aussie humour”.
Traverse (One), Edinburgh until 25 August; then Park Theatre, London N4, 11 December to 11 January 2025
Bellringers
Could the debut playwright Daisy Hall be the new Beckett? Her alluring, elusive and “devastatingly poignant” play, set in a church steeple in rural Oxfordshire, “suggests so”, says Anya Ryan in The Times. It’s about two men, Clement and Aspinall (Luke Rollason and Paul Adeyefa), waiting to ring the bells “in hope of ending the raging storm outside”. The writer’s “natural poetic skill is unfaltering”, and Jessica Lazar’s production is an impressive feat.
Summerhall, Edinburgh until 26 August; then Hampstead Theatre, London NW4, 27 September-2 November
