Revival

An Inspector Calls

19 Feb 2009

REVIVAL Before Oscar glory reached British director Stephen Daldry, he won plaudits at the English National Theatre in 1992 with a powerful re-imagining of JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. The production won four Tony and three Olivier awards, and…

Educating Rita

5 Feb 2009

REVIVAL If there’s a consistent thread that runs through the work of Willy Russell, it’s the need for escape, usually from a stagnant class system that oppresses his protagonists. Yet his work is more nuanced, less moralistic than you might expect.

The Wasp Factory

10 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Tron, Glasgow, Thu 17–Sat 26 Apr The remarkable aspect of Iain Banks’ disturbing Grand Guignol first novel is its capacity to continue to fascinate 24 years after its first publication. The story revolves around alienated Frank, a teenager…

Abigail’s Party

24 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Brunton Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 1 & Fri 2 May Neighbourhood cocktail parties, with their inevitable cheese and pineapple sticks, are something of a quaint 70s throwback, but notions of an aspiring middle class have altered little in the past…

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

Lyceum and Dundee Rep co-production of Liz Lochhead's classic

24 Aug 2011

For director Tony Cownie and the cast of the Lyceum and Dundee Rep Ensemble’s new co-production of Liz Lochhead’s 1987 Scots classic, the Edinburgh Festival is over. Already they’ve had Lochhead in to give advice on pronunciations and, in the middle of…

I Was a Beautiful Day

22 Mar 2010

These are the concerns at the heart of I Was a Beautiful Day, the play commissioned by the Traverse to launch An Lanntair Arts Centre in Stornoway in 2005, now showing for the first time in Glasgow in a revised and considerably trimmed-down version from…

Andy Arnold directs Lee Hall's play Cooking With Elvis

23 Jul 2009

The American comedienne Carol Burnett once observed that ‘comedy is tragedy plus time’. Never has this axiom been more aptly applied than in the case of Lee Hall’s Cooking With Elvis. The subject matter, which includes child abuse, alcoholism, eating…

Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness

5 Mar 2009

There’s a sensitivity and warmth to writer Anthony Neilson that a cursory glance at his plays would not make immediately apparent. Works such as Normal, a story based on the exploits of a serial killer, and Penetrator, which features an army veteran…

The Man Who Had All the Luck

22 Jan 2009

REVIVAL Arthur Miller’s first play to be mounted on Broadway closed after only four performances, and was barely revived until a successful production in 2002 led to renewed interest in the work. While undeniably flawed it provides a fascinating…

Heartbreak

30 Oct 2008

Stuck between two separate camps of zeitgeist-grabbing greatness, East London based duo Heartbreak are both flag-bearers for the much name-dropped Italo disco revival, and also affiliates of the ever-high quality scene based around Australia’s Modular…

Noises Off

18 Sep 2008

REVIVAL Bringing farce to the fore, Michael Frayn’s 80s parody is touring once again, revealing the merry antics of a second-rate theatre company both on and off stage as it struggles with its ludicrous sex comedy, Nothing On. Nestling at the core…

Humble Boy

18 Sep 2008

REVIVAL Following its 32-week sell-out nationwide tour of Abigail’s Party, London Classic Theatre returns to Musselburgh with Charlotte Jones’ award-winning Humble Boy. Artistic director Michael Cabot has mixed memories of his last visit to Scotland…

Absurd Person Singular

4 Sep 2008

Alan Ayckbourn's decades-long journey through English suburban angst was seldom better exemplified than in Absurd Person Singular. Central to the story is the compulsion of people to consume and accumulate wealth to the detriment of their emotional…

Blackbird

5 Jun 2008

REVIVAL Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 9–Sat 14 Jun The gruesome ongoing discoveries in the Jersey abuse scandal and the uncovered horrors of Austrian Josef Fritzl’s secret basement have done little to quell the worst nightmares of parents. It is into…

Reality

22 May 2008

REVIVAL Tron, Glasgow, Thu 29–Sat 31 May A good three decades have passed since the talking heads of the media first declared masculinity to be in crisis. If at times this idea has been overplayed, there can be little doubt that the role of men in our…

Sleuth

22 May 2008

REVIVAL Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 26–Sat 31 May Since Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth first appeared in 1970, its countless revivals and two film versions attest to its capacity to intrigue audiences. But will the much-hyped, though ultimately slightly…

The Wasp Factory

8 May 2008

REVIVAL Regal Theatre, Bathgate, Thu 15 May, then touring Our fractured, alienating and individualist society is bound to produce some disquieting anomalies among its youth. In a world where the first priority is self, our capacity to empathise with…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

24 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Dundee Rep, until Sat 26 Apr, then touring This popular modern fable focuses on introverted songbird Little Voice (Debbie Saloman), who retreats to her bedroom to escape the attentions of her boisterous mother, Mari Hoff (Elaine C Smith).

Trumpets and Raspberries

10 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Apr–Sat 10 May Even winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature have bad days at work. It might surprise you to know that Dario Fo felt he’d had one of these after the first preview of what, subsequently…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

27 Mar 2008

REVIVAL Perth Theatre, until Sat 29 Mar, then touring Scotland’s own Terry and June, Elaine C Smith and Andy Gray are brought together for this touring production of Jim Cartwright’s now familiar urban fairytale, which focuses on a young girl who…

The Unconquered

27 Mar 2008

REVIVAL Dundee Rep, Thu 3–Sat 5 Apr then touring Perhaps the greatest education we can receive is a sudden reorientation of perspective, and Torben Betts’ play, here revived by Stellar Quines in preparation for a tour ending in New York, makes this…

The Unconquered

13 Mar 2008

Following its UK tour, Torben Betts’ The Unconquered, an adventurous piece of new work which netted the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland’s new writing award, will be travelling on to New York for a shot at American audiences. Stellar Quines…

Single Spies

13 Mar 2008

The murky exchanges between the Russian and UK intelligence services that have captured so many column inches over the last year or so were bound to have an impact on the theatre. It might seem an apt time to reappraise two plays about cold war…

Bailegangaire

13 Mar 2008

When an elderly loved one prefers to live in the memories of the past, it often falls to their children and grandchildren to care for them in the present. Such is the case in Andy Arnold’s swansong as artistic director of The Arches, as Tom Murphy’s…

Bailegangaire

14 Feb 2008

Few oral traditions could be as vital in a modern day society as that of Ireland. Storytelling is part of its culture, and, if the work of such writers as Conor MacPherson and Tom Murphy are anything to judge by, very much part of its theatre. In…