Anne meets Ukrainian band at Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo rehearsal
She watched international teams perform their displays of military drill, music and dancing ahead of the show's run beginning at Edinburgh Castle later this week.
Anne viewed a Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo rehearsal (Jane Barlow/PA)
As well as military bands from the UK's armed forces, this year's show will feature performers from the US, Poland and Switzerland.
This year will see members of the Centre for Military Music of the Ukrainian Navy make their debut.
The Odessa-based orchestra are engaged in rehabilitation projects as well as a number of cultural programmes.
This year will also be the first time Alan Lane has stepped in as the Tattoo's creative director.
A theatre director by trade, he is also a reservist with the Royal Engineers.
Members of the US Air Force Honor Guard rehearsed their role in front of Anne (Jane Barlow/PA)
The theme for this year – the 75th for the Tattoo – will be 'the heroes who made us' – with each night of the show's run celebrating a significant figure.
Mr Lane told the PA news agency: 'The team here are fantastic, they've been making shows for decades, so I'm very confident they're a great team and they'll do a great job.'
He added: 'International acts have always been an important component of the show and this year's no different.
'I'm absolutely delighted to welcome our brothers and sisters from Ukraine.
'Like all international acts, they've come to represent the best of their nation.
'We have some extraordinary Ukrainian military music and some Ukrainian cultural dancing as well so I think the audience are going to really enjoy that.'
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Edinburgh Reporter
an hour ago
- Edinburgh Reporter
Fringe 2025 – top tips for this week
The Fringe programme is amazing and sprawling as always. To help you make your picks here are three of our suggestions that you might like to include in your Fringe mix. Top Show from a Scottish artist – Lunchbox Pleasance Courtyard (The Green) @ 16:45 PHOTO Tommy Ga-Ken-Wan Scottish Pakistani female actress, comedian and writer Lubna Kerr is well known on the Scottish circuits. She's been at the Fringe in recent years with her shows Tickbox and Chatterbox – an insightful trilogy about her own upbringing, looking at race, perception and identity. Now she's back with part three; Lunchbox explores similar themes but also delves into bullying and belonging and confronts the prejudice and challenges that many young people must navigate during their formative school years. Set in a secondary school in Glasgow, this powerful solo show delves into the dynamic between two teenagers who live on the same street but experience the world very differently. Taking on all the roles, Kerr examines the impact of bullying through the eyes of these two young people as directly influenced by their environments and upbringing. This multi-rolling even involves playing Steven, a troubled Scottish boy, and Lubna, a Pakistani girl! On a quest to find her true passion, Kerr seeks refuge from the challenges of adolescence in her lunchtime drama club, whilst Steven seems destined for a life as a perpetrator. Told through the nostalgic lens of playground politics, this compelling and timely piece asks whether our paths are defined by where we come from or whether we can rewrite our own stories. Lunchbox presents a deeply personal exploration of cultural identity, adolescence and the long-lasting impact of childhood encounters. And if you're curious to go further back to time Kerr will also be performing Chatterbox from 18th – 25th August at Pleasance Courtyard (The Green) at 13:00. Top Musical – Midnight at the Palace Gilded Balloon Patter House (Big Yin) @ 21:30 Be prepared to get on your feet with this edgy new musical that you won't want to miss. It's directed by acclaimed director and choreographer Paul McGill (Fame, 2009; Man on Wire, 2008; Smash, NBC). The Edinburgh Reporter team have heard some of the original music a bit ahead of the Fringe and we were wowed. Do you remember The Cockettes? The iconic and flamboyant drag ensemble from the 1970s, who paved the way for artists from Prince to David Bowie, and RuPaul to Madonna. Well, this new musical is inspired by them. Think raucous hilarity, think rebellion, think disco, think pop, think outlandish and outrageous. You're on the right lines. Midnight at the Palace is a lens into this genre-pushing world in an eccentric and dazzling celebration of the queens who came before. Midnight at the Palace dismantles the lines between art and showbiz, politics and performance. Audiences are invited to join the original 'F*ck You Counterculture' troupe for a night of radical joy and glitter-encrusted anarchy. A fever dream of gender-bending hippies, freaks and drag queens, Midnight at the Palace invokes the real-life story of The Cockettes. Radical founder Hibiscus (then George Harris) is the renowned subject of one of the 20th century's most recognisable photographs when they put a flower into the muzzle of a soldier's gun during a Vietnam War protest. The group became a symbol of authenticity in an era of civil strife and unrest. Paying homage to the multi-decade journey of this legendary group, the original score from Brandon James Gwinn (Two Birds & One Stone, Trixie Mattel; It Takeis Two, George Takei; Small Town Story, Village Theatre, American Theatre Group) brings to life the electricity and excitement of The Cockettes in the 1970s for a modern-day audience. Brandon James Gwinn comments, As a huge fan of the music and culture of the late '60s, it has been nothing less than a party to create music that tells the story of this incredible troupe of visionary weirdos. The goal is to use the palette that comes with the sounds of the times to create something as uniquely queer, imperfect and passion-filled as the original Cockettes. The challenge becomes to make theatre that honours their story, but make it wacky, asymmetrical, even transgressive, to honour their spirit. Rae Binstock adds, The Cockettes were a bunch of young people in a world that was falling apart. They dealt with it by making art and connecting with each other and being outrageously, monstrously, deliciously themselves. Writing this show has brought me back into my own present, into the pain and importance of being alive moment to moment, and strengthened my faith in the power of art to keep the world spinning. Midnight at the Palace. Gilded Balloon press launch. © 2025 Martin McAdam Top play – Beth Wants the D Pleasance Courtyard (Baby Grand) @ 13:45 Tickets here One in twenty people live with serious mental illness and this show is all about writer and performer Beth May's own struggle with bipolar disorder. Raw and real, Beth doesn't hold back telling us what she's been through and what her life looks like – it's honest, oh so personal and utterly hilarious. Offering a comedic insight into intrusive thoughts, Beth Wants the D confronts death and delusion as Beth takes audiences through the extreme highs and lows to the scariest thing of all – a future full of hope. With wit as sharp as it is self-aware, renowned podcast host and actor Beth May unravels her experience with bipolar, suicidal thoughts and the razor-thin line between sanity and madness. While Beth Wants the D embraces the absurdity of the chaos of the mind through a fast-paced comedic lens, it never loses sight of the very real consequences of mental illness. A surprisingly relatable cathartic experience for audience members in response to Beth's own turbulent journey. Beth May's story is one of strength, survival and finding humour in the darkest of places; sometimes, the best way to face your demons is to laugh in their faces. Writer and performer Beth May comments, I think this show might be helpful for people. People with mental illness, particularly those who deal with psychosis or have substance use issues, are often feared and vilified, and many times they haven't survived to share their story. My story can't bring them back or even do justice to their experiences, but it can show people that the curtain between sanity and madness is shockingly thin, and that our values are sometimes fragile. I think this show makes the case that even when things are so bleak and even when you feel like you're CRAZY, you can come back from this. I think that's a message worth spreading. Or maybe I'm just an ego-maniac! PHOTO Brandon Dougherty Like this: Like Related
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
The Fringe show charting 20 years of Scottish pantomimes
McKnight will not only be in full panto dame costume throughout the performances of his show 'She's Behind You,' but will be venturing off stage for audience interaction, and reinventing some of his favourite material for the Fringe. Read more: The show, which will see McKnight revive his hugely-popular Dorothy Blawna-Gale character, will explore Scotland's enduring love affair with panto and how it can be traced back to the country's music hall traditions. It will also examine the dramatic changes the writer, director and performer has seen in the material performed on stage, audience tastes and attitudes, and how roles are cast. Johnny McKnight is appearing in the National Theatre of Scotland show She's Behind You. (Image: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan) She's Behind You will also be partly autobiographical as McKnight his own personal relationship with his on-stage alter egos. The late-night Traverse show, which has been jointly commissioned with the National Theatre of Scotland, has evolved from a talk delivered at Glasgow University less than 18 months ago. Johnny McKnight is the star of the Fringe show She's Behind You. (Image: Ian Georgeson) He had been invited to take part in a new lecture series instigated by former student John Tiffany, who would go on to become one of British theatre's most successful theatre directors, in honour of his former lecturer Alasdair Cameron. McKnight recalled: 'When John and I started talking, the lecture was really going to be about the history of pantomimes. I started doing a lot of digging, but when I was about half-way through it just felt that it wasn't something that I would do. 'We really started off again and it became about my own history as a pantomime dame. 'I wanted to look back over the last 20 years at how Scotland has shifted, how comedy has shifted and how panto looks now compared to 20 years ago. 'The show is about being a panto dame and what panto has meant to me. It's become autobiographical and a theatrical show set in the world of panto. 'It's a bit of a surprise to both of us that it is even happening given that the original lecture was only meant to be a one-off thing.' McKnight, who was brought up in Ardrossan in Ayrshire, can trace his panto story back to his first experience as an audience member when he was taken to the [[Ayr]] Gaiety theatre as a child. He said: 'I remember being absolutely terrified when the dame come out in the audience. 'My favourite thing about panto is doing audience interaction stuff and terrorising people. 'There is something definitely weird that a therapist should probably to me about in that the thing I was most terrified about is the thing I love most about panto. 'I can still remember that feeling of danger of suddenly being part of the show.' McKnight, who studied at the then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, got his first panto work at the Carnegie Hall, in Dunfermline, working with Scottish comedy writer and performer Tony Roper, who was directing its annual production. He recalled: 'Tony was brilliant. We had 10 days to rehearse and he taught me everything. I really took it for granted at the time. 'After the first preview, he pulled me aside and said: 'I'll be back in a week. Don't you be saying these same words. You listen to the audience. Don't care about the rest of the actors on stage. This is for the audience. Keep it alive. Don't stick to the script.' 'I just assumed that's what you were meant to do in panto. He taught me so much.' McKnight can recall the 'cultural appropriation' in the first versions of Aladdin he performed in and the male-dominated casts he appeared in, but also the impact on pantos of key political decisions, such as the legalisation of gay marriage in Scotland. Tiffany, who started his theatre career working at the Traverse, said he had first developed an interest in Scottish pantomimes while he was studying in Glasgow He said: 'I grew up in Yorkshire. Every year we would get on coach and go with my dad's company to see one of the big commercial pantos in Manchester. 'There would always be folk off the TV in them, like Cannon and Ball, or Little and Large. 'It was always great fun, but it was only when I moved to Glasgow, started studying theatre and went to the pantos at the King's Theatre with actors like Gerard Kelly that I realised it was an art form alongside the ones I was learning about. 'The pantos felt political – they punched up, instead of down. I became really interested in it as an art form.' McKnight has worked extensively on the pantos at the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling and the Tron [[Theatre]] in Glasgow over the last 20 years. He said: 'We take panto seriously in Scotland. Theatres that don't produce anything throughout the whole year still want to make a panto which is specific to their panto. Audiences that don't come out the rest of the year will all come out for that show. 'I think it comes down to the fact that our theatre history in Scotland is music hall, it's not Shakespeare. 'It feels like panto is embedded in our culture. It comes back to the fact that you're guaranteed a good night out. Good will triumph. 'The audience are there to have a laugh, they're there to have a good night out and have the previous year reflected back at them. 'The people on stage are there to make them laugh about crap stuff like the fear of welfare bills getting cut and sort of find a punchline for stuff that might be unbearable. 'I read so many articles about people saying had their night at the theatre ruined by people singing. When did we get so po-faced in a theatre so that singing has become a joyless activity? In panto, you want people to join in and shout out. You want it to feel anarchic and fun. 'I did an Adele song one year and the weans would all join in. I felt like Robbie Williams at Knebworth, although I didn't sound like him! The audience sing along because they love it, not because they're bored.' Tiffany, a regular collaborator with the National Theatre of Scotland since he directed one of its first productions, Black Watch, is back working on a Traverse festival show for the first time since the award-winning play Gagarin Way - by the same writer, Gregory Burke, in 2001. He said: 'I've taken work to a lot of festivals around the world since then. But there is just nothing to touch Edinburgh. 'When we knew there was going to do a three-week run of She's Behind You I said to Johnny that I wouldn't only do it if he actually learned the script! 'We're kind of taking all the accoutrements and transposing them into the world of the Fringe. There will be songs, call and response, shout outs, terrible old jokes and a lot of audience interaction. 'We have gone for a late-night slot. A slightly merry Traverse audience is going to be perfection for us.' To purchase tickets, please click here
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Vittorio Angelone on Kneecap, the Troubles and the Edinburgh Fringe
The Irish-Italian comedian is no stranger to voicing his own opinion, having made a name for himself online with nearly 500,000 followers across social media. He made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2022, where he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the [[Edinburgh]] Comedy Awards. This year, Angelone returns with his brand new show, "you can't Say Nothing any more", which plays on three main themes: The concept of offensive comedy, growing up in the wake of the Troubles, and the responsibility on comedians to be activists. (Image: Rebecca Need-Menear) On the third point, Angelone has been frequently vocal about his support for Palestine, and has frequently defended Irish rap group Kneecap, who are known for their pro-[[Palestine]] views. The trio were recently axed from Glasgow's TRNSMT festival, with organisers citing "police concerns". Reflecting on the decision to remove Kneecap from the line-up, Angelone said: "I think it's pathetic that they thought it's going to cause some kind of riot because Kneecap are performing. READ MORE: I'm performing at the Fringe but fear I won't be allowed to re-enter the US "It's a bit cowardly, especially on a weekend in Glasgow where there's far more hateful events taking place," he adds, referring to the more than 50 Orange Walks which took place in the city ahead of the festival. He continued: "From my experience at Kneecap gigs, it's not about anybody getting hurt, it's just about high energy and expressing ourselves and having a good time. "Maybe it does come down to Palestine and speaking out about it. But that's part of running events: You have to have a bit of balls and put the thing on, people want to see it." In his Fringe show – which has mostly sold out – Angelone considers the "guilt" that he felt for not being around during the Troubles. The comedian reflected on growing up in Belfast, which he described as "a peaceful place that was very recently a violent and dangerous place". He told The National: "There is a feeling of guilt in that most adults that I grew up around are deeply traumatised, and we're sort of standing on their shoulders. "I think there's also a bizarre, I hesitate to use the word jealousy – but that is what it feels like, especially when you're 19 or 20 – of the people who were involved in the violence. "You just want a cause. You've got so much energy and such a lack of your own identity, you have so little self worth that I think somebody grabbing you by the arm and going, 'this is where you should point all your energy, this is the right thing to do' – it solves a lot of the problems that young people face." (Image: Rebecca Need-Menear) Angelone has previously described himself as "always Irish, sometimes Northern Irish, but never British". So where does he stand on Scottish independence? "With Ireland, it feel very obvious because it's one island, and then Scotland, it isn't," Angelone told The National. "I think we can all admit that being Scottish is a very distinct thing from being English, unless you're in Edinburgh," he joked. READ MORE: I was homeless and using drugs. Now I'm playing at the Edinburgh Fringe He went on: "Even though I grew up on the Catholic side in Belfast, I try to take a step back from the tribal element. I don't think the Republic of Ireland's a perfect place, and I don't believe in us being absorbed into the Republic of Ireland as it currently stands." Angelone added that any political solution for both Ireland and Scotland had to be about "whatever gets the people a bigger say". He told The National: "Scotland has a legitimate cultural reason, and arguably the economic feasibility, to be an independent place where everyone would have a bigger voice in how they're governed. "I can see that as a positive." 'I've got some plots and schemes to make very stupid things happen' Angelone's Monkey Barrell has already sold out – leading him to announce two extra shows at McEwan Hall, the historic graduation hall at Edinburgh University. (Image: Connall McHugh) "I've never been in McEwan Hall, and I'm quite excited. My cousins graduated there, and they're annoyed that it took them four years of hard work to get there," he told The National. "But I would argue it's probably taken me four years of hard work – this is my fourth year at the Fringe. I'm sort of graduating from the Edinburgh Fringe." With the venue being so much bigger – at a capacity of more than 1000 people –Angelone implied that he had "some plans, plots and schemes to make very stupid things happen", particularly given his first show happens to coincide with Oasis's return to Edinburgh. READ MORE: 'Joy, celebration and warmth' of Palestinian art to be showcased at Edinburgh Fringe "I might have to do a little nod to the Gallaghers," he hinted. "If you had a Venn diagram of Oasis fans and Edinburgh Fringe-goers, it would be two separate circles for the most part. "My gig is at 11pm. I'm not sure what time Oasis are due to finish at Murrayfield, but I hope it's late enough that none of them can come to my show." Vittorio Angelone: you can't Say Nothing any more is at Underbelly's McEwan Hall venue on August 8 and 22 at 11pm. The show's Monkey Barrel run is sold out.
