Theatre, Issue 639

Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival 2009 launches

Singer Karine Polwart is just one of the many names putting her name – and voice – behind this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. Now in its third year, the festival explores mental health in its broadest sense with almost 200 events…

The House of Bernarda Alba preview

Rona Munro on her latest theatrical endeavour

It’s been a big year for Rona Munro. Just weeks after the premiere of The Last Witch at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Scottish playwright is gearing up for the first performance of her adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba, by revered…

The Beggar's Opera preview

The publicity images for Vanishing Point and the Royal Lyceum’s new adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera don’t look like your average promotional material for a classic work of 18th century satire. In fact, from a first glance, the backlit…

Arches Live!

We preview the latest efforts at the Glasgow venue's theatre festival

We preview the latest efforts at the Glasgow venue's theatre festival As ever, this September’s Arches Live! festival has far too many acts to catalogue here. So too, there’s a great variety of approaches and forms to experience, but artistic…

Afterplay

Haunting Chekovian elegy

Over the years, there have been a number of examples of dramatists borrowing characters from other writers’ works and giving them life elsewhere, but no version of this kind of experiment could be as striking as Brian Friel’s reflection on the later…

The Sun, The Moon and a Boy Called River

Wee Stories Theatre isn’t afraid to tamper with a title. In recent years, the company has given us The Emperor’s New Kilt, Jock and the Beanstalk, and now they’ve taken an East European fairytale known as Old Man Almanac, and transformed it into The…

Confined Human Condition preview

Inventive musical theatre from Cathie Boyd's Cryptic

Cathie Boyd’s Cryptic have long been associated with inventive, often visually striking presentations of music. There’s often, as well, an exploratory and creative use of multimedia running through the work. But with this latest piece, the electronic…

The Silver Darlings

There’s something cinematic about Kenny Ireland’s staging of the Neil M Gunn novel, adapted here by Peter Arnott. It’s in the sepia photographs of crofts, brochs and cliffs that form a backdrop to Hayden Griffin’s open set of layered coastal rock. It’s…

Bright Black preview

Vox Motus return with the theatre of illusion

Unless something goes drastically wrong during the ‘sawing a lady in half’ trick, death and magic don’t usually mix. At Vox Motus, however, the art of illusion lies at the heart of all they do. And now, the Glasgow-based theatre company which wowed…

Theatre hitlist

Arches Live! The Arches continues to push performance boundaries with a mouth-watering season of shows, many of them by non-traditional theatre-makers. Arches, Glasgow, Thu 17–Sat 26 Sep. The Cherry Orchard Dundee Rep ensemble turns its…

La Befana

A play, a pie and a pint at Oran Mor

If it’s Autumn it must be time for another series of lunchtime plays courtesy of Oran Mor and that old reliable, the Play, a Pie and a Pint season. The season gets into its stride with this collaboration between artist Adrian Wiszniewski and composer…

Warehouse 364

Clichéd and flat

A case of mistaken identity leads a part time prostitute to the doors of Warehouse 364, a place where ‘good things happen to bad people.’ Clichéd and flat from the very beginning, this piece is let down by its underdeveloped and repetitive plot.  This…

Bedtime Stories

A fun tribute to an essential piece of furniture

One double bed and nine darkly comic vignettes form the basis for this show, which has returned to Edinburgh with a brand new cast. A talented team deliver stories as diverse as a stressed bed salesman, to an unbelievably embarrassing one night stand…

Ward No. 6

Entertaining and tragic adaptation of Chekov's work

Chekhov’s classic tale of insanity and ruthless ambition is brought to the stage in this slick and energetic interpretation by DogOrange. Highly physical and original, this adaptation is both entertaining and tragic as the concepts of alienation and the…