THE MAN FROM STRATFORD featuring SIMON CALLOW

An excellent one man Show about Shakespeare called "The Man From Stratford" by Simon Callow ( who was one the performers in the famous waiting For Godot production we saw in Edinburgh).

You can get more details about Callows work and career in this link , especially his unique work on Dickens.I can vouch for every one of the comments in the piece now that ive had the pleasure to see it myself.Not one of them are exaggerated.

The whole experience is less like a play , rather an enthralling entertaining masterclass from a world class scholar-actor to be enjoyed by all ages.

Below is an eloquently told background to this stunningly successful project from Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate:



You can also get Simon Callows inside views of the immense project from the plays dedicated youtube channel.

You can also get background and rewiews to the play in the wonderful official website for the production.

The play brings a deeper understanding of the world of Shakespeares age as well as his personal development through life.

Especially enlightening is the type of education he would have received.It consisted of rote Latin to English ( at the time an undeveloped language) and translating back to Latin , day in day out.Also was instilled the discursive argumentative writing contained in the purist line of Rhetoric as espoused by the Aeneid of Virgil and the Greek and Latin Masters , this consists of bringing out the positive values of both arguments and then presenting the enhanced positive value in the conclusion of your argument rather than the negative of running the other argumentative position down in a negative way , a best and better way of looking at options as opposed to partisan support of an entrenched ideological position.When you look at Shakespeare from this understanding one can sense his style was consistent with demands of his age.

As Jonathan Bate states , one of the feelings you will come away with is the wonderful thing about this show that when you go away from it you will not be scared or imtimidated by Shakespeare as the set texts of todays education and unfamiliarity of language may make appear.

ANDY ZALTZMAN at the Edinburgh Stand

I first saw Andy Zaltzman in 2004 , Celtic had just beaten Barcelona and Shaikh Yassin had just been assassinated , oh and the Madrid Bombings.

A brave man made light and comedy of the situation unlike much of the audience , well two hecklers who , having gone through the rigmarole of buying tickets for a night of comedy suddenly developed a faux mocked outraged drunken offence.Admirable , was that Andy was a signatory of the Jews for Justice for Palestinians and , remember there was a full blown intifada going on at the time, held fundraiser evenings for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.This was when he was far from "making it" and could have taken a less principled road to success by getting short of the politics and taking the least resistance path to the observational dollar.

Today Andy has "made it" , and has still not forgotten those less fortunate , he will be doing a fundraiser for Gaza later in the month.

The name of his Fringe residency show is 'Andy Zaltzman Swears To Tell The Truth, Half The Truth, And Everything But The Truth.A "thesis" as he describes himself , about the non-truth and lies you hear from politicians and media.

A very funny and accomplished show fulfilling the promise from 6 years back.

Below is an example of his understated dry witty penetrating humour , when addressing some young lawyers: