On edinburgh-festivals.com today...

NEWS

Former film festival director rails at 'devalued brand'

A FORMER artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival has launched an outspoken attack on the decline of the event since he was in charge – claiming it has now become a "badly devalued brand".

India to be a generous partner for Festival from 2012

India will become a major partner of the Edinburgh International Festival from 2012, spending millions of pounds in the city from the London Olympics to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014, the head of the country's leading cultural organisation has told The Scotsman.

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PREVIEWS

Interview: Paul Sinha, comedian

Paul Sinha is British-Asian, "openly gay" (his phrase), a qualified doctor, a stand-up comedian with a show at the Fringe and one of Britain's top quizzers - a skill which has just got him his own TV slot.

Meet the two performers bringing the legend of Doris Day to Edinburgh

A BOUNCY, fresh-faced blonde, dressed in classic Mad Men style in diamante-trimmed turquoise chiffon, is daintily sipping a frothy coffee in an Edinburgh cafe. Sitting nearby is a balding guy, in satin bomber jacket, T-shirt and jeans, tackling a bacon roll and a mug of caffeine.

After he helped his former wife to assisted suicide, Chris Larner was determined to confront the subject on stage

CHRIS Larner was pacing up and down outside a chic hotel in Switzerland when he realised he wanted to write a play. He was in Switzerland because he had helped his ex-wife, Allyson, who had multiple sclerosis, travel there to end her life with assisted-dying organisation Dignitas. He was pacing because this was the day it would happen.

REVIEWS

Comedy review: Vikki Stone & the flashbacks: Big Neon Letters

As well as a hugely entertaining canter (in song and picture) through the Vikki Stone story so far, the perkily likeable Ms Stone reveals her lifelong passion for Phillip Schofield in a powerful ballad featuring Gordon the Gopher on backing vocals, and displays a gloriously graphic way with a pop song parody.

Theatre review: Somewhere Beneath It All, A Small Fire Burns Still

Phil Nichol launches this rapid-fire one-man show with a description which confuses the ordering of dessert in the local caff with his doing something unspeakable to the pretty Lithuanian waitress. Nichol plays Kevin, a man who wilfully and habitually confuses reality with fantasy.

Theatre review: Mission Drift

You don't need to be more than 20 years old to remember a time when the idea of America - "the world's only superpower" - still bestrode the world like a colossus; but now, it seems the colossus is toppling, or at least crumbling at the foundations.

COMPETITION

Win tickets to the E4 Udderbelly Comedy Festival at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Magners has several pairs of tickets to top shows to give away. The winners will also get access to the Magners Golden Draught Pasture Bar.

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