Design For Living, Old Vic Theatre

Sumptous sets, cracking lines, but Coward doesn't catch fire

Design For Living is one of Noël Coward’s less performed plays but it fair crackles with bons mots - you know you’re in good hands when delightfully old-fashioned words like “horrid”, “bloody”, “cheap” and “vulgar” are tossed around with, well, gay abandon. What a shame, then, that Anthony Page’s production, while wonderfully easy on the eye and despite some spirited performances from its three leads, doesn’t quite catch fire.

Edinburgh Fringe: Patrick Monahan/ Asher Treleaven

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With the charm-cum-cheek of a naughty schoolboy, Patrick Monahan is an instantly likeable presence whose latest show, I Walked, I Danced, Iran, is a lop-sided but very funny hour-and-a-bit of observational comedy. Monahan is a veteran of several Fringes and a regular on The Paul O’Grady Show on Channel 4.

Edinburgh Fringe: Greg Davies/ Apples/ Carl Donnelly

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Comic Greg Davies has made us wait for his solo debut - he’s in his early forties, appeared at the Fringe as part of sketch group We Are Klang for a few years and more latterly has been starring in The Inbetweeners on Channel 4 as Mr Gilbert. Before that he was a drama teacher in a secondary school for 13 years. But boy, was it worth the wait.

Edinburgh Fringe: Stuart Goldsmith/ Steve Mason/ Peter Straker

Stuart Goldsmith: he looks clean-cut, but likes to live a bit on the wild side

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You may think the very well-presented comic Stuart Goldsmith - clean-shaven and wearing sensible Merrells (“which says I’m not wearing a fleece but I own one”) - is the sort of  bloke your mum always hoped you would end up marrying or having as your best friend. His show is titled The Reasonable Man, and Goldsmith is indeed utterly dependable, he tells us, plus he comes from that most nondescript of towns, Leamington Spa. But he would like to break out a bit.

Edinburgh Fringe: Daniel Kitson/ Leisa Rea/ Misconception

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Daniel Kitson only occasionally performs at comedy venues at the Fringe these days - perhaps a late-night spot here and there, though not a full set - but it has become almost a tradition that he writes a new piece for the Traverse each year. On the cusp of comedy and theatre is, surely, storytelling and Kitson, winner of the Perrier comedy award 2002, has become a storyteller of excellence.

Edinburgh Fringe: Tiffany Stevenson/ Fair Trade/ Gutted: A Revenger's Musical

Tiffany Stevenson: her new show is about mums, celebs and bastards - what a combo

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After making her Edinburgh debut last year, Tiffany Stevenson returns with another cracking show, Dictators. Ostensibly it’s about Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, et al, but in reality she cleverly  manages to do a show about the mother-daughter relationship and our obsession with celebrity in the guise of a political theme. Mums, celebs and bastards on the same bill - it's a stroke of genius.

BBC Two announces The Crimson Petal and the White

crimson_petal_coverKeen to boost its credentials as “the home of intelligent and ambitious drama”, BBC Two has announced details of its dramatisation of Michel Faber’s bestselling novel, The Crimson Petal and the White. Adapted into four 60 minute episodes by playwright and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon and directed by Marc Munden (of The Devil’s Whore and The Mark of Cain fame), The Crimson Petal stars Romola Garai, Gillian Anderson, Richard E. Grant, Chris O’Dowd and Mark Gatiss.

Edinburgh Fringe: Late Night Gimp Fight!/ While You Lie

'Late Night Gimp Fight!': fast-paced sketches on the sexually deviant side

Deliriously deviant sketches; and an aimless adult drama

Going to a late-night comedy show at the Fringe is always taking a risk, not least because every drunken fool in the place, with their oh-so-funny heckles, thinks they’re funnier than the performers. And so it proved at the performance I saw of this deliriously funny sketch comedy, performed by five fit young chaps, in which the payoff to one skit involves one of them going buck naked.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Composer and couturier enjoy a tumultuous, possibly fictional liaison

She glides on the arm of a tail-coated swain into an elegant Belle Epoque drawing room. Music swirls, eyes swivel. And no wonder. Her thin black dress hugs a gamine frame, a look of masculine confidence rests on her face. Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, better known to all and sundry as Coco, is making an entrance. Another one.

DVD Release: Black Narcissus

The Powell and Pressburger classic gets the scholarly treatment

Violet may be the most violent colour in the spectrum, but its emotional equivalent in the cinema of Michael Powell is red, which frequently symbolises overwhelming sexual and artistic desire. Powell fetishised redness - and redheads like Deborah Kerr and Moira Shearer.