Theatre, Issue 668

Sea and Land and Sky

New play from Abigail Docherty at Tron Theatre

Almost exactly a year ago Abigail Docherty picked up a flyer in the foyer of the Tron Theatre. Already a playwright with showings of her work at Mayfesto, New Works New Worlds and Imaginate festivals in the pipeline, Docherty was attracted to the…

Jeremy Raison's production of A Clockwork Orange

Swansong show from Citizens Theatre director

Jeremy Raison says one of his favourite films is Brazil. Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece is part of a sub-genre known as ‘retro-futurism’, as if someone in the 1940s had predicted what the 1980s would be like. For Raison, who is directing A Clockwork…

Derek McLuckie and Pauline Goldsmith bring Jean Genet’s The Maids to stage

All-male version of controversial play set for Glasgay!

‘It’s about play acting and status games,’ says Derek McLuckie of Jean Genet’s The Maids, an all-male version of which the Glaswegian actor will star in and co-direct at this year’s Glasgay! ‘It’s about how you’re never one person, you’re lots of…

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform Revelations

1960 piece set for Edinburgh Festival Theatre

A visit from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater guarantees a number of things. Great dancing, interesting choreography, uplifting music and, of course, Revelations. Choreographed by Ailey in 1960, the piece is a unique calling card performed at the end…

New Dundee Rep production of Ibsen's A Doll's House

Jemima Levick directs new version of play by Samuel Adamson

In an era where the term ‘banker’ has become disparaging rhyming slang, certain great classics of the theatre can be viewed with a new slant. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the profession of husband and implacable patriarch Torvald implies the utmost…

Licketyspit's Magic Spaghetti a lively theatrical experience

Enjoyable despite humour being fairly thin on the ground

By the end of Magic Spaghetti you’re left with an overwhelming desire to head for the kitchen and start creating. Or at least the adults in the audience will be – little ones will probably be content with just tucking into the results. In this…

Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh collaborate on Panic Patterns at Glasgay! 2010

First collaboration from writing pair

Award-winning writers Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh live together and are in a long-term relationship, but until recently they’d never collaborated. Glasgay! director Steven Thomson asked if they’d be prepared to change that by co-penning a play for…

Wendy Miller and Rachel Amey collaborate on The Bridge at Glasgay! 2010

New play explores theme of teenage suicide

The creative partnership behind one of the chief commissions at this year’s Glasgay! 2010 is one that the festival was itself instrumental in fostering. Wendy Miller met Rachel Amey last year, after Amey was cast in Miller’s Glasgay! 2009 drama Even…

Blaze fuses West End show and club night

Dance show set for Glasgow Theatre Royal

Despite a history dating back over 30 years, hip hop still feels like the new kid on the dance block. Partly because it’s so fresh it could never feel old – but also because only now is it getting the recognition it deserves. Once exclusively…

The Bookie is playwright Douglas Maxwell’s first musical

Let down by complex plot despite suitably murky atmosphere

Playwright Douglas Maxwell’s first musical is unlikely to threaten the market dominance of Stephen Sondheim or Rodgers and Hammerstein or even Andrew Lloyd Webber any time soon. Aly Macrae’s songs, which range from catchy to unmemorable, punctuate the…

Spamalot musical comes to Edinburgh Playhouse

Monty Python's King Arthur comedy

If ever a man was able to look on the bright side of life it is Eric Idle. Whether jumping out of cakes in a tutu for Prince Charles in a comical re-enactment of Swan Lake, or dressing up in wings, mocking the outfit worn by Emma Thompson in Angels in…

Return2you dance theatre piece from Susanna Curtis

For 22 years, choreographer Susanna Curtis has been journeying between the place of her birth and the land where she carved out a home and career. Born in Glasgow but based in Nuremberg, Curtis has drawn inspiration from those trips for her latest work…