1. Kieran Hodgson: Big In Scotland
In this “brilliant” one-man show, Yorkshire-born Kieran Hodgson, who moved to Glasgow in 2020, explores what it means to be Scottish, said Adam Robertson in The National. It’s less a comedy show, more a hilarious and captivating one-act play in which Hodgson plays all the characters, including a spot-on Gordon Brown, a disgruntled Highland barkeeper, and an over-enthusiastic Gaelic teacher. Hodgson takes “a topic it would be easy to get wrong and manages to get everything so right”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
2. Strategic Love Play
This “effervescent and thoroughly unpredictable” two-hander by Miriam Battye, a writer on the last season of “Succession”, charts a “close-up, blow-by-blow account” of a pub first date, said Clive Davis in The Times. Letty Thomas is brilliant as the “wilful and contrarian” unnamed woman, Archie Backhouse just as sharp as the more conventional man. It’s a fascinating “Rubik’s cube of a play”.
Roundabout @ Summerhall to 27 August, then tours from 6 September to 21 October
3. Bill O’Neill: The Amazing Banana Brothers
This comic tour de force is a “bizarro faux-circus act gone wrong”, said Brian Logan in The Guardian, in which the US performer Bill O’Neill plays both parts of a clowning double act: Kevin Calamity, who promises to slip on 1,000 banana peels, or your money back, and his brother-cumgopher, Joey. An amazing, “twisted” show, full of death-defying pratfalls.
Pleasance Courtyard until 27 August, then Soho Theatre, London W1, 7-16 September
4. England & Son
Ed Edwards’ “blistering” one-man play holds a mirror up to England in the form of a working-class man – played by Mark Thomas – whose life has been dominated by his brutal, wife-beating father, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Thomas gives a superb, agile, nuanced performance.
Roundabout @ Summerhall until 27 August, then tours from 14 September to 9 December
5. The Grand Old Opera House Hotel
Isobel McArthur’s “inventive, uproariously witty comedy” is set in a bland corporate hotel that “once led a much more romantic existence as a home of grand opera”, said Clive Davis in The Times. It blends operatic fantasias with screwball comedy to vastly entertaining effect.
Traverse Theatre until 27 August, then Dundee Rep, 13-16 September
-
Argentina’s Milei buoyed by regional election winsSpeed Read Argentine President Javier Milei is an ally of President Trump, receiving billions of dollars in backing from his administration
-
Trump vows new tariffs on Canada over Reagan adspeed read The ad that offended the president has Ronald Reagan explaining why import taxes hurt the economy
-
Political cartoons for October 27Cartoons Monday's political cartoons include improving national monuments, the NBA gambling scandal, and the AI energy vampire
-
Roasted squash and apple soup recipeThe Week Recommends Autumnal soup is full of warming and hearty flavours
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
-
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into ArtFeature Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Dec. 7
-
Music reviews: Olivia Dean, Madi Diaz, and Hannah FrancesFeature “The Art of Loving,” “Fatal Optimist,” and “Nested in Tangles”
-
Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
-
Ready for the apocalypseFeature As anxiety rises about the state of the world, the ranks of preppers are growing—and changing.
