On their website running up to the election, the Tories listed the primary issues they would be concerned with; among such standards as ‘the economy’ and ‘climate change’ was listed ‘women’, reducing, with astonishing glibness, half the population to a mere issue in a checklist. With their startling arrogance in dismantling the welfare state, despite losing the election even with the backing of the entirety of the right-wing press and campaign cash-injections so large they could dent Third World Poverty, it was soon clear that the only women they actually cared about were married ones, with single mothers finding their child benefits slashed by George Osborne – if you’re not going to be a man, so their message seems to say, you better at least be married to one.

Declaring ostentatiously your care for women’s liberation while acting in a contrary manner is how the forces of reaction are getting it done these days, and not just in politics. Oozing smugness and complacency, Edgar Wright recently appraised the lead female (that is, the second fiddle to the male protagonist), in his new film Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, as some kind of mould-breaking role model. Based on the graphic novels of Bryan Lee O’Malley, the film tells the story of a lovelorn dork (the insipid Michael Cena) who must battle the ex-boyfriends of Ramona (the equally flat Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in order to win her. “Ramona isn’t a reward, she’s a person”, Wright recently stated, but whatever the liberal protestations the film or the filmmakers attempt to make, one can’t get past the basic fact that the film’s structure collapses without this win-the-woman ideology.

Mired in the language of videogames, it might seem too obvious to point out the sexist influence of the likes of Donkey Kong, in which an ape must pass several stages before he can win the ‘prize’ princess. That the protagonist of that game is a primate seems fitting; is the plot of Scott Pilgrim really so different from the notion of cavemen fighting over women? The same ideology can be found in other films of similar success; a recent example is Slumdog Millionaire, in which a boy is basically rewarded the girl of his dreams if he can win Who Wants to be a Millionaire?; it’s not that the show is giving away women as prizes, but rather the plot is so structured as to make winning the show the only way to get the girl. That these films make this patriarchy implicit in the plot structure as opposed to explicit in the plot itself is no excuse.

In an early scene from the film, Pilgrim is seduced into bed by Ramona; she gets into her underwear, crawls over to him on all fours and then suddenly turns him down, claiming “I reserve the right to refuse sex”, but this pathetic attempt to convey equality is pre-emptively undermined by the fact that it is she who’s in her underwear, not him; the character might seem autonomous, but Winstead is disturbingly submissive. The scene sums up the contemporary conservative attitude to women; sure, you can declare your independence, just be sure to do so in your underwear love.

Showing @ GRV 7-11th Sep 19:30

Tightlaced Theatre Company is celebrating their second anniversary and it seems nothing says “happy birthday” like lust, obsession and vengeance. The Dress Affair was originally devised by the company as part of a graduate production and now comes to life in a full length version, based on a poem by a Brazilian writer, Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

The story follows Wife (Danielle Farrow) and her psychiatrist (Andrew Henry) as a mischievous dress takes over her mind and soon she is lead down a dangerous path, claiming the dress has stolen her husband.

With a Brazilian Director in the form of Flavia D’Avila and a Scottish writer, Rob David, the play should provide a truly multi-cultural experience with the passion and drive of Latin-America meeting the crazy world of our own Edinburgh head-space. Dress tackles the issue of the female persona head on, being described as both dark and sexy the production is not for the faint of heart but for those who wish to delve deeper into the human psyche and explore the type of people we could become. Does the dress lead the woman or does the woman lead the dress? There’s only one way to find out and it’s by visiting the GRV between the 7^th and 11^th of September. Go on, bring a bit of Latin passion into your life.

Tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of the noughties, director Jason Reitman (Juno) is bringing Up in the Air to kick off the new decade. A movie starring George Clooney about a chap who lives to board planes: “to know me, is to fly with me” and offers a rather romantic picture of the CO2 plopping metal birds. Obviously accused of being employed by the slowly suffocating air travel industry, Reitman maintains that he’s grabbing onto the current attention the media is placing on the skies, and he’s not the only one. Record company Capitol has just reissued Frank Sinatra’s ‘Come Fly With Me’ on vinyl, another desperate move from British Airways perhaps? Whatever the reason for the continued influx of pro-plane-propaganda the 50 years between the song and the film hold in them the expansion and the degradation of a dream and whilst Reitman with his anti-abortion/smoking flicks can’t understand it, the powerhouse combo of revisionist novelist Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men) and uncompromising director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) certainly can with the more humbly named piece The Road. Luckily, this one comes out a full week before Reitman’s.

It’s up to the emerging generation to sort out this one and to get back on the road where we can see each other.

Unlike other doomsday novels, The Road rips apart the skin of civilisation and then challenges the humanity behind the façade to heal the wounds. It’s a deeply apt and important apocalyptical tale of our times, dubbed by activist and journalist George Monbiot as “the most important environmental book ever written.” Set in the aftermath of an unnamed disaster, the collapse of the ecosystem has left a withering, bleached landscape. People are the only living thing forced into cannibalism for survival while the last can of Coke lingers in the background, a grim echo of the corporate regimes our current selves are trapped in. Trudging along the desolate road to the south where the ‘good guys’ reside are the archetypal Man (Viggo Mortensen) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) embarking on the final journey of humanity. Of course there’s plenty of political allegory at work, parallels to the bombed out desert of Iraq and the collapse of corporations in the wake of the credit crunch, but it’s the symbol of the road and the feeling of manifest destiny that calls to our bare feet loud and clear.

Since the first voyages of humankind out of East Africa to the economy defining routes of The Old Silk Road and the Trans-Siberian railway, roads have been the veins of our civilisation. Now, it’s the fleeting trails in the sky that momentarily hint at our domination over the globe. These invisible roads claim to make us more interconnected as a planet than ever. They make the world smaller. An epic voyage of discovery has become a cocktail of microwave foods, recycled air, buzzing headphones and is over in less than a day. No wonder we think flying to Ethiopia to teach kids English is a good idea.

Whilst we pay attention to the road network of our hometowns, our increasing frolics to developing countries seldom get to the heart of the land. Instead, now we can fly over Sudan, Chad or Niger to get to a cushioned safari park in Kenya and revel in the pretty the view. Like Man and Boy, if we were forced to walk through places of depravity and despair, we too would begin to question what went wrong. But then that wouldn’t be in line with the needs of our economy.

The continued exploitation of the East by the West is fantastically visible in microcosm on the tiny island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania. If you were to look at a map, you’d see that all the tarmac roads led to and from beaches with little to no development in the unsightly centre. It is here where Westerners board planes from Dar Es Salaam to the island rather than embarking on a three-hour ferry ride across the turquoise Indian Ocean. You can take a hot shower or wash your swimsuit with running water then dine on oversized portions whilst reclining in a hammock and never set foot off the coast.  All this in a part of the world where in 2009 over 23 million people faced death by starvation and dehydration as a result of the ever increasing drought. Like Bombay for Sinatra, the East for the West is nothing but an exotic bar with locals who’ll toot their flute for you. But if we can’t see it, how can we help it?

As Jack Kerouac realised in On the Road the American Dream is the road itself, the freedom to move, travel and discover. What lies at the end is never as powerful as the journey itself. Whether for the Hunter .S. Thompson’s or the Mahatma Gandhi’s of the world, the road and its nomadic promise appeals to our Western selves and promises a journey of self discovery. Like the father and son duo in The Road or the brothers in The Darjeeling Limited, it’s a symbol for the return to the organic self, it tears us away from technology and isolation and puts us into a deeper philosophical sphere. But the beatniks are gone and the image of suave jetsetter Clooney is filling the void.

Like the years between Sinatra’s song and Reitman’s movie contain the creation and decay of the dream of aviation for all, the centuries between the first steps of humanity out of East Africa and McCarthy’s envisioned final ones, hold in them the entire creation and destruction of civilisation as we know it. The hostile, unknown black lava desert of Ethiopia our ancestors faced is now a network of cracked concrete highways peppered with ash and snow that our protagonists must walk through. The degradation of the road is the symbol of the irreversible damage inflicted on humanity, by humanity. But as long as flying from Addis Ababa to Nairobi is deemed necessary for the central business district, or socially acceptable for the time-restricted traveller, the more likely it is that the inhabitants of countries who barely step foot on planes are going to be kept in the dark.

For McCarthy, this darkness is only lifted by the humanity beneath the tale, the relationship between Man and Boy which remains hypnotic and terrifyingly real in both novel and film form. The light is in the glimmer of hope Boy represents as the baton is passed on and that is something every human on this planet needs to understand, it’s up to the emerging generation to sort out this one and to get back on the road where we can see each other.

Showing @ Pleasance Dome

4 out of 5 stars

Whitebone Productions return to the Fringe with both their original, award-winning one-man show, Bane, and its aptly titled sequel, Bane 2. Once more featuring Joe Bone as the ruthless hired hand and every other character, and also featuring live music from musician Ben Roe, this black comedy that delves deep into the troubled mind of the man himself, whilst unveiling a terrifying new foe, a bloodthirsty creature that’s intent on getting revenge against Bane- at any cost.

Picking up not long after its predecessor left off, Bane 2 follows the eponymous hitman, (Joe Bone) as he finds himself on a much darker path than before that includes some difficult choices. After nonchalantly massacring innocent bystanders he’s sent to see a shrink, and he’s forced to face his past and feelings, as he faces his most dangerous challenge yet.

Taking place in the Pleasance Dome’s ten dome where Bane was performed last year, Bane 2 is a dark and very funny sequel. Containing all of the attributes that made the original show so successful, this new piece recreates some of the characters from last year, whilst creating some unforgettable new ones. Featuring such B-Movie themes as the perils of toxic waste, lovesick teenagers and betrayal, Bane 2 also alludes to some more modern cinematic influences, including, among others, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Ghostbusters. Impeccably performed by Bone, Roe’s musical accompaniment was a character in itself, with the working relationship between actor and musician showcasing a mutual understanding and respect of the other’s work. Slick, professional and above all, entertaining, Bone and Roe’s second film noir parody is a theatrical triumph that successfully reinvigorates a well-worn genre without falling into cliché. If you haven’t seen either of these shows, then you’re missing out on two of this year’s Fringe highlights.

Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard until 30th Aug

4 out of 5 stars

Flying solo after so many years spearheading comedy trio We Are Klang through Edinburgh successes and onto a second (currently airing) BBC show may have seemed as an unnecessarily bold move for the gargantuan Greg Davies. His background teaching drama for over a decade to high school students is both evident in his performance and presentation of the act, using his near 7ft frame to surprisingly animated and rarely bombastic effect.

Many of these scenarios are retold as if Davies is spreading out a deeply personal jigsaw of a story. He ludicrously, sometimes painfully, pieces together an honest tale, before sweeping it neatly back in the box under the laughter, often muttering a post-punchline quip that embodies a braveness over brevity rarely seen at the Fringe.

Davies enviably manages to both touch base with the old guard of British 90’s comedy, whilst having the virility to launch curveball twists which make his solo departure a very justifiable comedic escapade.

Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard

2 out of 5 stars

Following last years award nominated stand-up mission against Virgin trains was never going to be easy for Tom Wrigglesworth. To be similarly inspired this August would have been impressive, but his half cooked wedding debacle certainly isn’t. Opening with a harsh, High School production quality video of his impending plight did little more than unseat the show before it had really began and left many questions untouched until some 45 minutes later.

His talent does shine throughout, narrating his spurious tale with admirable detail and explosive adverbs, but often fails to follow this up with any confident punch lines or payoffs. Flitting between his inner dialogue and deliberations with the audience of the situations he found himself in, ranging from watching the filming of Jeremy Kyle to airport’s religious rooms, he winds through the tale comfortably.

But showpiece moments, such as a voiceover of exploits from a diary he accidentally acquired, raise few laughs and only elongate proceedings before a surprisingly sharp conclusion. Tighter production and more digression from his yarn may have made better use of his abilities than in overtly flat performance. Hopefully Wrigglesworth can cross swords again with someone on level with Richard Branson before next August.

The Last Miner

4 out of 5 stars

The hidden secrets of what once went on under our feet, in the various mines of Scotland is revealed in Tortoise in a Nutshell’s The Last Miner. Developed in association with Catherine Wheels and Ideas Tap, this new children’s play concentrates on the life of one man, as he exists in self-imposed solitude in the shadows and dark recesses of a his own thoughts. Whilst living in a place that just so happens to be a nameless and forgotten old mine.

The Last Miner follows the eponymous title character as he lives out the remainder of his life in the space where he used to work. With only a few treasured artefacts, belongings and a persistently chirpy canary for company, the deteriorating condition of his home leads him to make a difficult choice; should he stay underground, or abandon the mine for a new life on the surface?

Performed using puppets, music and very few words, The Last Miner presents a tender and understanding insight into the decline of the mining industry, and the very human cost of the loss of employment and consequently, identity. Set in an unknown time, this piece moves gracefully through a dark and lonely underground world carved by loss and haunted by memory. Peppered with themes of bereavement, lost love and tradition, this play succeeds in to creating a long-awaited homage to a forgotten part of Britain’s history. But the real message of Tortoise in a Nutshell’s highly atmospheric play is the notion of learning from the events of your past, whilst not getting lost in them, and finally accepting the opportunities that the future holds. Both heartbreaking and uplifting, this is an exceptionally moving and universally appealing piece of new theatre for children and young people from a promising company that have so much more to give.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse Reloaded

4 out of 5 stars

Returning to the Fringe as part of a UK tour, the team that brought you last year’s How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, unleash its unholy sibling, How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse Reloaded, a brand new show onto Edinburgh’s Southside.  And this new piece is one that’s designed to keep you and your loved one’s alive when there’s no more room left in Hell, and the dead walk the earth.

Performed as an exclusive seminar for members of the School of Survival, or SOS, How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse Reloaded takes the audience through the very basics of fighting for survival in a world suddenly populated by the ravenous undead. Presented by glamorous ghoul guru, Dr Dale, (Ben Muir) the show uses improvisation, audience participation and role play to ensure that each spectator will be able to endure living with the ultimate neighbours from hell.

The follow up to 2009’s sell out Fringe show, How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, this production is a witty and light hearted tribute to one of the most popular horror genres of recent years. Drawing similarities to Max Brooks’ novel, The Zombie Survival Guide, this piece brings humour and most importantly, understanding, to an often misunderstood genre. Featuring characters as diverse as pirates, vampires and even the Pope, Zombie Apocalypse’s strength lies in its ability to constantly enthral and educate the audience. While at first glance, the story and the characters involved may seem to fall into cliché, improvisation and audience suggestion make this a production that is as refreshing as it is funny. Featuring double entendres, geeky facts and enviable zombie knowledge, this show could just save your life on that fateful day when a surprise zombie invasion takes over. And while Zombie Apocalypse doesn’t bring anything new to the subject, it doesn’t have to, as its appreciation of the cult appeal of the walking dead is apparent throughout the show, which at just one hour long, is just that little bit too short.

Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard until 30^th Aug 15:25 1h 5m

4 out of 5 stars

Based on a true story Jeffery Mayhew’s Bright is the Ring of Words, like the poem, traces the desire we have to be remembered beyond the grave and settles on the delicacy and vulnerability of a raw human voice as the most evocative and powerful way to do so. Plodding onto the stage young, tubby homosexual Stanley (John Garfield-Roberts) extracts rubber gloves and begins to clean a dirty, dank hovel that houses John (Jeffery Mayhew); a once famous opera singer, now aging alcoholic. As they prepare for the arrival of John’s daughter, the reality of looking after a self-pitying alcoholic prevails over any other message that Bright offers.

On Rosie Mayhew’s decaying set, director Julian Garner and his duo tackle with seeming ease what can only be described as a range of clashing generic styles from kitchen sink banality to broad comedy. Filled with images of past and present and angrily smeared by the generational schisms that prevent the pair from communicating, Bright explores not only a dying man but also a dying art form. Mayhew and Garfield-Roberts have a great physicality between them on stage and the image of death and abundant life manifests in the air between them. Whilst not a particularly original scenario, the sensitivity Mayhew shows in his script and the depth of feeling on stage allows the tale to unravel in a engrossing and suitably distressing hour.

Showing @ Playhouse until 29th Aug until 29^th Aug 19:30 2h 35m

4 out of 5 stars

House cats long to be jungle cats and birds will always prefer the canopy to the gilded cage; this is the lesson of Água, the late Pina Bausch’s ‘ Tanztheater Wuppertal’ hymn to sensuality over the merely sensory.

Nowhere in the world better exemplifies the pull between civilisation and the untamed than Brazil; on the fault lines of culture, history, race and class, this country provides the backdrop to a witty, sharp, sexy and wholly engaging production.

The imagination and committed physicality on display was absorbing and the sheer playfulness of these gifted performers was a joy to watch. Of course Tanztheater means more than simply dance and so there were skits, stories, jokes and audience interaction and the rich mix of ingredients provided intriguing entertainment.

The comedic elements came primarily at the expense of the idle, hedonistic, ultra-rich spending their time indulging in games and searching for the next experience whilst a stones throw away was the wildness of the jungle and the heat and rawness of the street. Enjoyable as this take was it also felt slightly condescending, contrasting their ivory tower lives with the poor, ‘carefree’, rhythm inspired favela dwellers and peasants. Mixing throbbing afro-South American beats with quirky western avant-guard tunes was a great success and perfectly mirrored the conflicting nature of this complicated country. It also helped with the fast paced changes in tone between anarchic kaleidoscopes of colour and muted tenderness, which gave this show much of its vibrant appeal. With huge video projections of jungles and landscapes, designer Peter Pabst complimented the mood on stage, particularly in the final section where the cataracts and spray of water on screen blended with the H2O infected madness on stage.

Much has been said since Bausch’s passing last year as to whether the company could or should remain in existence but on the evidence here the imagination and presence of their gifted leader is still a powerful force in this exceptionally  rich, warm and joyful piece of dance theatre.