Simon Jones to star in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show - Live!

Neil Gaiman and Billy Boyd to perform cameo roles

15 May 2012

Life, the Universe and Everything are reimagined in a new stage production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, touring to Glasgow’s Theatre Royal this month. Original cast members from the long-running radio series reunite, alongside…

Brian Conley to play Fagin in Oliver!

The new Cameron Mackintosh production is stopping at Edinburgh's Playhouse

15 May 2012

‘Cameron Mackintosh doesn’t do small,’ announces Brian Conley, his warm grin a lifetime away from the Fagin character he depicts in the Scots impressario’s successful revival of Oliver!. TV star Conley’s acclaimed turns in Jolson and Hairspray suggest a…

Sleeping Beauty Insomnia

Israeli War-set play with absorbing characterisation and comedy

15 May 2012

Lebanese playwright Abdelrahim Alawji bounds to the front of the stage. ‘This play is set in a theatre, during the Israeli war, where people used to hide during the...’ Then boom, acrid smoke and the lights go up on two figures clinging on to each…

Martin Lawrance on Dance GB

The Scottish Ballet choreographer will share a bill with English and Welsh national dance companies

15 May 2012

‘Am I allowed to swear?’ asks Martin Lawrance politely, before going on to describe how he felt when Scottish Ballet first knocked at his door. Suffice to say, he was a little nervous. A dancer with Richard Alston Dance Company for many years…

Gordon Barr on Bard in the Botanics 2012

The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It to be staged in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens

15 May 2012

This season, for us as we move into our second decade, is all about discovery, exploration and new horizons so we were looking for plays that tied in to those themes. The link to The Tempest is fairly clear but As You Like It covers some similar ground…

Irene MacDougall to play female Prospero in Dundee Rep's The Tempest

Caliban and Ariel also adapted as female roles in new production

15 May 2012

Irene MacDougall has been a member of the Dundee Rep ensemble since its inception, but 2012 will mark her first turn in The Tempest. Like Helen Mirren in Julie Taymor’s recent film of Shakespeare’s classic, MacDougall will play Prospero as a female. The…

Theatre and dance highlights of the West End Festival 2012

Featuring Pygmalion, Man of the House and Pulse 12

15 May 2012

At first glance, the theatre and dance programme for this year’s West End Festival looks a bit traditional as the team from A Play, a Pie and a Pint offers up Shaw and Jarry classics while The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet are brought back for the Bard…

Beckett double bill to be staged at The Citz

Director Dominic Hill discusses his productions of Krapp's Last Tape and Footfalls

15 May 2012

Following on from the success of his productions of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Shakespeare’s King Lear, Dominic Hill concludes his inaugural season at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre with a double bill of short plays by the great, Irish dramatist Samuel…

Blue Raincoat theatre company to tour Ionesco's The Chairs

Director Niall Henry discusses the fêted production

15 May 2012

After a five-year tug of war over rights, Sligo-based Blue Raincoat arrives in Scotland this month with its fêted production of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs. Director Niall Henry, who co-founded the company in 1991, is thrilled about the tour and cites…

Claire Sweeney takes lead role in Educating Rita revival

The actress discusses Willy Russell's much-loved script

15 May 2012

Whether on stage or screen, few can forget Willy Russell’s young, earnest heroine, in Educating Rita, a working class girl hungry for education who finds herself under the tutelage of a lost, boozed up lecturer, searching for life beyond academia. For…

Dry the River - King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Sun 22 Apr

Unbalanced mix of noisy rock and gospel from the London five-piece

14 May 2012

It’s hard to pigeonhole this band. Not only do the hairy, tattooed Londoners hammer their instruments into a mesh of roaring noise that causes each instrument to become almost unidentifiable from the next, they also sing like choir boys. Dry the River…

Dan Mangan – Stereo, Glasgow, Sun 29 Apr

The Canadian folk-pop tunesmith unleashes his experimental side

14 May 2012

Dan Mangan has previously mentioned that his band members ‘come from an experimental and free-jazz background’ – something that might not be immediately apparent on record but is plainly obvious at tonight’s performance. The brief squalls of noise that…

Scott McWatt – Jekyll and Hyde

Lyrically shallow effort from the former Lost City Lights frontman

14 May 2012

Former Lost City Lights front man Scott McWatt seems to have gone from an amateur Nickelback-esque sound to one far more similar to amateur Idlewild. Though it is evident that dedication and passion have gone into the making of this album -- it was…

Rita Ora, The Blackout and We Were Promised Jetpacks added to T in the Park 2012 lineup

14 May 2012

T in the Park today added more artists to their festival line-up, bringing an eclectic mix of head-banging rock, jaunty blues and even some South African pop with St. Lucia (Jean-Philip Grobler). T welcomes the club/RnB mash-up music of Rita Ora…

Vicky Featherstone to step down from National Theatre of Scotland

Artistic Director to take new post at London's Royal Court

11 May 2012

The National Theatre of Scotland announced today that Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone is leaving to join the Royal Court at the end of 2012. Featherstone joined to help establish the theatre company in 2004 and has presided over a string of hits.

The Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest has moments of solid satire but still feels stale

11 May 2012

From the naked scrotum-in-the-face wrestling of Borat to the manifold outrages of Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen is not a man overly acquainted with subtlety. His latest, The Dictator, drops the improvisational feel of those earlier films, but doesn’t lower…

A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Crispian Mills' directorial debut starts well but quickly loses pace

11 May 2012

A film by the former lead singer of Kula Shaker might not sound an appetising prospect. But before dismissing A Fantastic Fear of Everything, we should remember that Crispian Mills’ film pedigree is pretty spot-on. He is, after all, the son of Hayley…

Casa de mi Padre

Will Ferrell's Spanish-language comedy is at once unfunny and too silly to take seriously

11 May 2012

Funnyman Will Ferrell as a tough rancher in a violent Spanish-language Western? It could only be a joke, and that’s exactly what Case de mi Padre is, a ragged, silly spoof in the Airplane/Naked Gun mode. Unfortunately, as jokes go, it’s a not…

The Pact

An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension

11 May 2012

The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…

Ill Manors

A jarring, grimy and a searing indictment of Broken Britain, from debut director Ben Drew aka Plan B

11 May 2012

To say Ill Manors doesn’t pull punches is like saying Mike Tyson hits quite hard. Raw, uncompromising and brutal, this urban tale of violence, prostitution and drugs smacks you round the face, then kicks you in the groin for good measure. It marks the…

Free Men

A Prophet's Tahar Rahim stars in worthy but flawed WWII espionage drama

11 May 2012

Loosely based on real events, this espionage drama set during World War II focuses on the largely overlooked cooperation between Arabic immigrants and the French Resistance. Tahar Rahim (who shot to fame in A Prophet) plays a North African worker named…

The Innkeepers

A genuinely involving and disconcerting chiller that thankfully eschews any trendy post-modernism

11 May 2012

Having established his credentials as a serious genre fan with a spot-on homage to 80s horror movies in The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West reaches even further back into the past with this slow-burning thriller. Like all good haunted house…

A Royal Affair

A skillfully delivered but coldly aloof period drama from the Swedish Dragon Tattoo team

11 May 2012

Reuniting the writing team behind the original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair is a welcome break from the current plethora of morbid Scandinavian thrillers; instead, Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel have co-adapted an unfamiliar but…

Red Tails

George Lucas pet WWII project suffers from thin characterization, cliché and crude simplification

11 May 2012

Star Wars creator George Lucas used clips from his favourite aviation dramas to stand in for battle scenes in the original rough-cut of Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that several decades later, Lucas has invested some of his personal wealth in an…

T Break 2012 line-up announced

Beerjacket, Randolph's Leap and Capitals among the unsigned acts to appear at T in the Park

11 May 2012

The full line-up for T in the Park's unsigned talent stage has been announced. The T Break stage will host Scottish up-and-coming acts over Saturday 7 & Sunday 8 July at T in the Park. The tent has earned a reputation for highlighting the next big…