Theatre, Previews
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Actor William Troughton on Graham Linehan's The Ladykillers
18 Oct 2012
The stage adaptation of the Ealing comedy classic also stars Shaun Williamson and Clive Mantle
Fans of The Ladykillers may have been sceptical when Graham Linehan’s stage adaptation of the film premiered last year. But the Father Ted creator’s version of the classic Ealing comedy – in which a gang of petty criminals occupy an old lady’s house as…
Solar Bear's Therapeutic Theatre strand presents Inside Outside In Our Stride
18 Oct 2012
The production will take place as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival
Solar Bear theatre company’s Therapeutic Theatre strand was created five years ago for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, and it’s now developed into a process of engagement for its participants which culminates in a show at the…
Cast member Abby Ford discusses Simon Stephens' London
18 Oct 2012
For ford, the play is about 'ordinary people who share a loss of self in one way or another'
Simon Stephens is fast developing a reputation as Britain’s most prolific playwright, having given us Three Kingdoms and Morning this year already. His latest offering with Paines Plough, London, incorporates two previous plays: Sea Wall, which featured…
An inside look at The Arches' revival of Alien War
17 Oct 2012
The Arches revival of the infamous terror experience from a first-person perspective
For as long as I can remember ghost trains have been a part of my life. The first time I went on one I filled my long socks with urine. The second time I jumped from the train and had to be led out by an employee with a white sheet draped around his…
Actor Blythe Duff takes the lead role in Rona Munro's Iron
15 Oct 2012
The Taggart star is to play a convicted murderer who is visited in prison by her daughter
After 21 years as DS Jackie Reid on the TV series Taggart, now Blythe Duff is on the other side of the prison walls playing inmate Fay in Rhona Munro's drama Iron. Though, she insists, her choice of genre is nothing more than coincidence; 'I wouldn't…
Acclaimed playwright Morna Pearson on The Artist Man and the Mother Woman
8 Oct 2012
Pearson's new play focuses on an art teacher's awkward relationship with his mother
Geoffrey Buncher is a fortysomething art teacher who is still living at home with his over-protective and infantilising mother, Edie. The discovery that his chosen profession is, according to one media outlet, amongst the 'sexiest' jobs leads him to…
Tom McGovern discusses his role in a new adaptation of The Cone Gatherers
11 Sep 2012
Robert Jenkins' Scottish novel is being brought back to the stage by Aberdeen Performing Arts
Following their adaptations of Sunset Song and Silver Darlings, Aberdeen Performing Arts take another great Scottish novel to the stage, Robert Jenkins’ The Cone Gatherers. Telling the story of two cone gatherer brothers and the devastating effect they…
Rising playwright Mike Bartlett talks about his newest adaptation, Medea
7 Sep 2012
The play will star Tipping the Velvet's Rachael Stirling in the title role
Mike Bartlett has gained a reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting young playwrights, with original plays like Love, Love, Love and Cock. But in 2012, he’s been focusing on adapted works: first with his stage version of Chariots of Fire, which…
Andy Arnold to resurrect Dermot Bolger's 1994 adaptation of Ulysses
7 Sep 2012
The Irish playwright's vision for James Joyce's seminal text finally able to hit the stage
When you think of the big ol' modernist masterpieces, James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses has probably inspired more hype, more academic criticism and more dispraise than any other, and yet it was inspired by a minor drunken tiff. One night in 1904 Dublin…
Johnny McKnight discusses The Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam
7 Sep 2012
The play will transplant a superhero story into an average secondary school
A play about superheroes has been a long time coming from Johnny McKnight, writer and director of See Thru Sam, which heads to the Tron this month courtesy of Random Accomplice. It’s the story of an ordinary boy with the extraordinary power of…
Linda McLean discusses her latest production, Sex & God
7 Sep 2012
The play takes the form of four interlinked monologues with feminist subtexts
Religion and sex are the hot topics in Linda McLean’s latest theatrical offering, the focus of which revolves around four women, each living at different points in the 20th century. In a narrative that’s far from linear, the play begins in each era…
Grid Iron's Ben Harrison talks Ella Hickson and The Authorised Kate Bane
7 Sep 2012
The promising young dramatist is bound for great things
Ella Hickson. If you don’t know her name already, you’re sure to soon. Author of the award-winning drama Eight – in which eight very distinct characters are explored in monologue – the young dramatist is currently under commission to the Royal…
Glasgow-based Ankur Productions celebrate The Olympics of the Everyday
3 Aug 2012
The new show celebrates those boring, mundane achievements of everyday life
As the eyes of the world are fixed upon the London Olympics and the superhuman exploits of Usain Bolt and his colleagues, Scotland’s leading black, Asian and minority ethnic arts company, Ankur Productions, will be celebrating The Olympics of the…
Writer, actor and director Katherine Gibbons on Playing Fate
27 Jul 2012
An adapted version of the comedy-drama is heading back to the Fringe in 2012
In 2010, Katherine Gibbons, an actress and playwright from Newbury near Reading, took on the Fringe with her first ever scripted play, Playing Fate. She was inspired to write the piece after a few years in London and a series of classic out-of-work…
Simon Jones to star in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show - Live!
15 May 2012
Neil Gaiman and Billy Boyd to perform cameo roles
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!
15 May 2012
The new Cameron Mackintosh production is stopping at Edinburgh's Playhouse
‘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…
Gordon Barr on Bard in the Botanics 2012
15 May 2012
The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It to be staged in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens
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
15 May 2012
Caliban and Ariel also adapted as female roles in new production
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
15 May 2012
Featuring Pygmalion, Man of the House and Pulse 12
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
15 May 2012
Director Dominic Hill discusses his productions of Krapp's Last Tape and Footfalls
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
15 May 2012
Director Niall Henry discusses the fêted production
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
15 May 2012
The actress discusses Willy Russell's much-loved script
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…
New production Lady M re-examines Macbeth
16 Apr 2012
Mary McClusky discusses The Scottish Play's continuing relevance to modern audiences
As artistic director of Scottish Youth Theatre and a frequent contributor to Oran Mor’s Classic Cuts season, Mary McCluskey is no stranger to slimming down a Shakespeare play to its essential components. And in the year of the World Shakespeare…
Visible Fictions to revive Zorro
2 Feb 2012
The theatre company's popular swashbuckler to play at Scottish Youth Theatre
In case you didn’t know, the word ‘zorro’ is Spanish for ‘fox’, and that’s exactly what this cunning fictional hero does – fox those around him, not just with his deeds but his entire persona. Starting life as a serial in a 1920s US magazine, the tales…
An Appointment with the Wicker Man
1 Feb 2012
Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic to become the play-within-the-play for new NTS production
‘There are many films that people would love to see adapted cleanly onto the stage,’ says Greg Hemphill, and if current trends are anything to go by, he looks to be right, ‘but when we discussed it with Vicky [Featherstone, National Theatre of Scotland…
