Theatre and Issue 582

Take That

9 Aug 2007

Faced with the prospect of Never Forget, ‘a new musical based on the songs of Take That’, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Mamma Mia, here we go again...’

Damascus

9 Aug 2007

Routines based on the business of translation are a pretty well precedented source of humour in the theatre. What gives a rare quality to David Greig’s new play, which amounts to an entire two-and -a-half hours of this schtick, is the subtlety and…

Scottish Opera appoints new director

News

9 Aug 2007

Italian conductor Francesco Corti signed up as new music director

Long Time Dead

9 Aug 2007

‘On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.’ With these words, French climber Lionel…

ENGLAND

9 Aug 2007

Tim Crouch, who has built a strong reputation at the Fringe with his shows My Arm and An Oak Tree has seemed a guaranteed banker in the months since this year’s show was announced. And this piece is worth the wait. It involves Crouch and performer…

The Walworth Farce

9 Aug 2007

Fringe audiences will be familiar by now with the dark gothic excesses of Enda Walsh’s language. Pieces like Disco Pigs and Bedbound over the last decade have employed his peculiar, violent lyricism to startling effect. There’s plenty of that in Walsh’s…

The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole

9 Aug 2007

Between 1910 and 1912 two competing teams, one British one Norwegian, set out to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Only one managed to return home to tell the tale. Constructed from the diaries kept by the British explorer Captain Robert…

Exits and Entrances

9 Aug 2007

In Athol Fugard’s insightful new play, we find celebrated South African actor Andre Huguenet (Morlan Higgins) reflecting on all that he has sacrificed for his theatre career which is now reaching its end.

Life in a Marital Institution

9 Aug 2007

There can be few more engaging acts on this year’s Fringe than James Braly. There’s a winning, self effacing smile, mixed with the occasional giggle throughout his performance, and despite the, at times, emotionally harrowing subject matter, Braly…

Hitlist: Theatre

9 Aug 2007

• Damascus David Greig’s play will be the toast of the Fringe. A comedy of manners set in the city of the title, the piece involves a Scot on a business visit, and the effects of his cultural assumptions on those he encounters. See review, page 79.

Venus as a Boy

9 Aug 2007

In this intriguing and highly emotional adaptation of Luke Sutherland’s award winning novel, adaptor and actor Tam Dean Burn plays a dying rent boy who claims he is turning to gold. Burn, accompanied by Sutherland, who provides a riveting electrical…

Forgotten Voices

9 Aug 2007

The idea that war can be glorious has long since been purged, and yet the lessons of the past seem not to have been learned. For over ninety years now, World War One should have been used as an example of the human cost of conflict, yet wars continue…

Stoopud F**ken Animals

9 Aug 2007

The question of origins, where or from whom a person comes, and how people create themselves in connection with this has haunted realist drama since the age of Ibsen. This new piece by Joel Harwood travels down this road pretty comfortably, exploring…

A Conversation with Edith Head

9 Aug 2007

Hollywood costume designer Edith Head worked on almost 500 films in her 54-year career. She dressed Mae West, Dorothy Lamour and Barbara Stanwyck in their most iconic outfits. She played with the big boys at Paramount (and later Universal) and her onyx…

Killer Joe

9 Aug 2007

Comedians doing serious theatre is a Fringe staple these days; this year, they’ve moved from cinema adaptations to filmic plays. Still, Tracy Letts’ script, in which an impoverished, lazily-drawn trailer park family strike a Faustian pact with local…

Lady of Burma

9 Aug 2007

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy activist and lady of Burma to which the title refers, is the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to be currently in jail. The country’s ruling military junta is one of the most abhorrent regimes in the world, with its…

The Container

9 Aug 2007

Set in a life size cargo crate, The Container allows the audience to sit in on the fraught interaction between five refugees attempting to make their way illegally to Britain. Certain critics have lampooned some of the site specific shows on offer at…

Hippo World Guest Book

9 Aug 2007

The internet has indeed made the world a smaller place but arguably that little bit more bilious too. As anyone who has spent even a moment on a forum or blog will be aware, faceless interaction can often serve as a Petri dish for the most vile human…

Believe – Linda Marlowe

9 Aug 2007

This series of monologues from Matthew Hurt, performed by Linda Marlowe, evokes tales from the Old Testament in order to explore the nature of faith, and how we find ways of creating it within ourselves.

A Glance at New York

9 Aug 2007

Another year, another excellent off-Broadway New York company debuts on the Fringe. Unlike their predecessors The Riot Group and T.E.A.M, however, Axis Theatre Company aren’t blazing trails with their original scripts. They’ve managed to create one of…

Night Time

9 Aug 2007

At night the world becomes a different place as perfectly innocent objects appear sinister, shadows create threatening corners and noises are amplified. It’s easy for your imagination to get the better of you, an experience Chris (Kananu Kirimi) is all…

Yellow Moon

9 Aug 2007

David Greig’s Yellow Moon is a modern teenage romance for the Burberry generation. Directed by Guy Hollands, the talented cast of four slip convincingly in and out of character as they efficiently narrate the chapters in this episode of a young man’s…

Eurobeat – Almost Eurovision

9 Aug 2007

Lycra, spandex, cheesy hosts, uber-innuendo and even a recorded welcome from Terry Wogan himself; it is indeed, almost Eurovision. There’s a palpable sense of excitement as badges are distributed, flags and clackers are sold and the cast do a warm up…

Tony! The Blair Musical

9 Aug 2007

So much has been said about the former Prime Minister’s ‘legacy’ that it will come as no surprise to find that Chris Bush’s musical version adds little to a personality one occasionally wishes were more enigmatic. For all that though, there’s a zesty…

Auto Auto

9 Aug 2007

Humans like doing what they know they shouldn’t: smoking, though we know it could kill us; drinking, though it makes us ill; eating the food that’s bad for us (ever got a thrill from eating a lettuce leaf?). But in real life, without running the risk of…

Woody Sez

9 Aug 2007

Although the pop star world-saving concert is something we have become accustomed to in recent years, the politically aware musician is not a new invention. Long before Sir Bono or Sir Geldof, storytelling songwriter Woody Guthrie had hits describing…

La Femme Est Morte or Why Should I Not Fuck My Son

9 Aug 2007

Britney is in a state of crisis. She split from her husband, shaved her head, drove with her son on her lap and allegedly tried to have his teeth whitened, and of course it’s all the media’s fault, just as they are held responsible for Phaedra’s demise…

The Spoils

9 Aug 2007

Youtube videos of the final minutes of deposed former dictators give us all pause to consider the human rights implications and responsibilities of a conquering power. Formal shirts and ties may have replaced orange jump suits in Shady Dolls new…

5 Questions: Fiona Evans

9 Aug 2007

Fiona Evans, writer of poignant Fringe drama Scarborough, about the relationship between a 15-year-old boy and his teacher, answers our quick questionnaire

CHAV! IT’S A MUSICAL INNIT

9 Aug 2007

The Debden in which this show is set is the town of David Cameron’s nightmares. Union Jack thongs are flashed, bus stops are vandalised and groups of unemployed teens impregnate each other like Lambrini addled rabbits.

Dai (Enough)

9 Aug 2007

As daily reports of suicide bombings in the Middle East flood into our homes, it’s impossible not to be desensitised. Figures substitute names, as personal stories take a backseat in favour of a delivery of the death toll. However, Iris Bahr’s one woman…

Inside Private Lives

9 Aug 2007

The chance to ask our favourite celebrities questions about their personal lives is one that few of us would turn down. All too often figures in the public eye are shrouded in mystery, and it’s precisely the de-bunking of these myths that producer and…

Hugh Hughes in . . . Story of a Rabbit

9 Aug 2007

Self described ‘emerging artist from Wales’, the endearing Hugh Hughes eagerly addresses the age old question of death: what it is, what happens, and how differently we all react to the inevitable. He intermingles the story of a rabbit’s death with that…

Stonewall

9 Aug 2007

Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.

Teenage Kicks

9 Aug 2007

It’s not the fact that John Peel had such an eventful life that makes it ideal material for a play. In fact, the relative mundanity of his existence is highlighted here.

Extropia

9 Aug 2007

‘Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one?’ So muses Winston Smith, hero of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the basis for machine-operator ‘August Eight’ in The Flying Carpet Theatre’s sci-fi adventure.

PIT

9 Aug 2007

Meat, sand and heat are the main ingredients for Megan Barker’s fascinating play. Three actresses tell the story of one woman’s struggle through life as social workers take her children, her man treats her with no respect, her baby is ill (literally…

Lacrimosa

A tale of human suffering

9 Aug 2007

Polish company Song of the Goat bring us this tale of persecution, fear and terror. The programme note tells us it was based on the aftermath of the plague in the French town of Arras in 1485, where in a totalitarian state the people are persecuted…

Coffee

9 Aug 2007

Before engaging in conversation or flirtation we make a number of assumptions about people based on the way they look, act or dress. Perhaps this is unsurprising in such an image-conscious society, but it is these assumptions that form the basis of…

Change: The Upcoming War with Iran

9 Aug 2007

Since 2001, under the watchful eye of President Bush, America has been waging its War on Terror, leaving a country in ruin and lots of radical Islamists out for revenge. So did they learn any lessons from Iraq?

The Art of Swimming

9 Aug 2007

This neat little combination of narrative and metanarrative from writer and performer Linda Radley is as much about the performer’s quiet obsession with her subject as it is about the forgotten celebrity Mercedes Gleitze, a woman who swam the English…

Blood Confession

9 Aug 2007

It’s priests versus police as these long established institutions collide when an old murder investigation is re-opened. Two priests arrive at the local police station to sign some papers and report vandalism only to find they are to be interrogated for…

Darkness Within

9 Aug 2007

A young cast of three explore the bleak existence of three stereotyped characters; the nympho prostitute, junkie rent-boy and institutionalised manic depressive. By exposing each character’s inner-monologue in various situations within their lives, they…

Options of Life

9 Aug 2007

This unusual piece from Polish company, Impossible Theatre Union, consists of five parables from the Old Testament, interpreted by the famous Polish philosopher, Professor Leszek Kolakowski, best known for his analysis of Marxist thought. In it the two…

Truth in Translation

9 Aug 2007

Can a play really be the solution to conflicts in civil war-torn countries when all else has failed? Director Michael Lessac seems to think so as he takes his play about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to conflict zones, in an…

Truckstop

9 Aug 2007

Few people would say parenting is easy and parenting a teenager can be a particularly thankless task, trying to decide when to rein them in and when to let them go. The role of the parent is further complicated when the child is mentally ill. Katalijne…

A Day in Dig Nation

9 Aug 2007

According to Baudrillard, the apocalypse has already happened through our descent into the hyper-real, our love of convenience and inability to form human relationships, we have destroyed our civilisation, but what if this were only the beginning and…

Famished

9 Aug 2007

In this hammed-up musical, as our heroine awaits the safe return of her lover from some faraway land, singing/dancing zombies hit Victorian London.

Bigger than Jesus

9 Aug 2007

Structured using the catholic liturgy and with more technology than you could shake a crucifix at, Rick Miller takes us on a journey through the beginnings of Christianity. There is a lecture, a sermon, a dramatic interpretation of the crucifixion and a…

Cash In Christ

9 Aug 2007

Leaders of the Sunrise Church, husband and wife team Bob and Fanny Comfort, take us through a sing-along sermon as they try to recruit us into a church where we can get rich in Jesus. Teachings of Sunrise include the need for women to be beautiful, the…

Kelvingrove to host charity art sale

NewsArts sale in aid of breast cancer charities

9 Aug 2007

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is to hold an arts sale in aid of breast cancer charities across Scotland.

Dye Young/Stay Pretty

9 Aug 2007

Gill (Beth Medley), a pregnant Debbie Harry fan from Dudley, decides that before she can succumb to the responsibilities of motherhood, she must fly to New York and meet her idol.