Theatre, Previews
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Preview of 2012 - King Lear
6 Jan 2012
New Citizens Theatre boss Dominic Hill brushes up his Shakespeare
Take on the Citizens Theatre and you take on the past. Any artistic director of the Glasgow institution can only be aware of the building’s history. Opened as the Royal Princess’s Theatre in 1848, it became home to James Bridie’s Citizens’ company in…
The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon discusses theatre production Swallows and Amazons
6 Jan 2012
The musical is to be directed by War Horse's Tom Morris
‘I don’t think of myself as much of a collaborator...’ muses Neil Hannon. A chuckle follows, the irony of his statement kicking in. When he’s not being frontman to The Divine Comedy, the Northern Irish pop star has written music for Father Ted and…
Interview: Simon Hart, artistic director of the Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival
19 Dec 2011
Highlights of the 2012 theatre and puppetry festival programme
What can we expect from this year’s Manipulate programme? A great festival with an eclectic international mix: of stylish and sophisticated object theatre, digital projections, animations – and lots of water – in the Theatre Sans Soucis’ Hamletmachine…
The Captain’s Collection
19 Dec 2011
Matthew Zajac of Dogstar Theatre to play Gaelic music preservationist Captain Simon Fraser
The latest production from Inverness-based company Dogstar is a rich tale about a composer and former British Army officer who courts fame by publishing his volumes of Highland music. The piece, which is being performed in Glasgow as part of Celtic…
Lost Sock Princess
13 Dec 2011
A puppet theatre performance that lets you join in – all you need is an odd sock
Try as you might to wash and dry them together, socks have a way of parting company somewhere between the laundry basket and underwear drawer. It’s at that point you need the Lost Sock Princess to help you reunite the estranged pair. Or do you? One…
Writer Donna Rutherford on KIN, an exploration of parent-child relations
28 Oct 2011
Change in family dynamics as children reach middle age
In a project started in 2010 as a collaboration between the CCA and NHS in Glasgow Clyde, ‘listening posts’ were placed in doctors’ waiting rooms, which played soundbites of conversations between parents and their older children. The snippets are taken…
Grant Smeaton on Martin O'Connor's Ch Ch Changes at part of Glasgay! 2011
21 Oct 2011
The writer and actor on his upcoming one-man show
What drew you to Martin O’Connor’s script for Ch Ch Changes? I’ve been thinking about doing a one-man show for a long time. Never done one before. The nearest was the solo performance I did in Spend a Penny at the Arches a few years ago where my…
Director John Binnie on aerial production Mind Walking
21 Oct 2011
The Tanika Gupta-penned play deals with issues of death, age and vulnerability
Tanika Gupta’s new play Mind Walking is like an ‘Asian King Lear’, according to its director, John Binnie. In it, a 74-year-old Indian man, having lived in Britain for all of his adult life, reverts to his native tongue in old age. Combing a…
Revival of David Harrower's Blackbird coming to the Tron
21 Oct 2011
Pilot Theatre's production will star George Costigan and Charlie Covell
David Harrower’s Olivier Award-winning Blackbird is among the Scottish playwright’s most acclaimed works, but six years after its Edinburgh International Festival debut it remains a controversial one. Inspired by the real life crimes of Toby Studebaker…
Theatre director Vicky Featherstone discusses Abi Morgan-penned drama 27
20 Oct 2011
The play examines themes of aging, loneliness, faith and science
‘You’re such a journalist,’ says Vicky Featherstone when I ask her whether 27 is going to ruffle feathers among scientists and Christians. The play is, after all, about a crisis of faith in a convent provoked by a scientist’s request to study the nuns…
One-woman theatremaker Lisa Nicoll returns with Home Run
20 Oct 2011
The play deals with the drug addiction and recovery of Scottish women
‘You train as an actress, writer, director or producer for years, but meeting real people and telling real stories is what makes really great theatre,’ says Lisa Nicoll, the one-woman theatre-making machine behind 2008’s Acceptance and short film ‘Truth…
Interview - Amy Lamé’s Unhappy Birthday
17 Oct 2011
Morrissey at your birthday party? Glasgay! performer Amy Lamé wants to make it happen
Steven Patrick Morrissey. Icon. Owner of the best baritone in the biz. Vegetarian, animal rights activist and moulder of the most vertigo-inducing quiff since Johnny Bravo? Yes, yes, yes. But warm, approachable, fan-embracing performer who would jump…
Liz Lochhead discusses her new play, Edwin Morgan's Dreams – and Other Nightmares
21 Sep 2011
The new production will premiere at this year's Glasgay! festival
It’s a sprightly Liz Lochhead who comes into Edinburgh’s Urban Angel for a breakfast coffee – latte with an extra shot – in the midst of a typically whirlwind calendar of deadlines, poetry readings and confabs with theatre directors. This summer she had…
Director Stewart Laing on The Salon Project
21 Sep 2011
Immersive theatre project hopes to recreate the intellectual gatherings of late 19th century Paris
Show us the man or woman who isn’t even a little excited by the thought of dressing up and becoming someone else for the night, and we’ll show you a liar. Now best known as a director, but originally a designer, Untitled Projects’ director Stewart Laing…
Days of Wine and Roses
21 Sep 2011
Kenny Miller of Theatre Jezebel is set to restage Owen McCafferty's Belfast-set adaptation
JP Miller’s dark 1958 television drama, which marries the subjects of alcoholism and dependency, is bravely re-imagined by Owen McCafferty’s 2005 adaptation, in which the central lovers are Belfast natives relocated to London. In the piece the naive…
Apocalypse (A Glamorously Ugly Cabaret)
21 Sep 2011
Catherine Gillard and Peter Clerke of Benchtours embark on a cabaret adventure
Two years after they folded their lauded theatre company, benchtours, Catherine Gillard and Peter Clerke are touring with a new outfit: Occasional Cabaret. Apocalypse, their first full-length production, is developed from a two-week residency at…
Calum’s Road
21 Sep 2011
Real life-inspired drama about road-building on Raasay
It’s been nearly 40 years since Calum MacLeod single-handedly built a much-needed stretch of road on Northern Raasay, after decades of unsuccessfully campaigning the local council to do so themselves. Now, this inspirational islander is the subject of a…
Saturday Night
13 Sep 2011
Matthew Lenton and Vanishing Point further explore the themes of 2009's Interiors
In 2009, one play dominated the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland. Picking up the gongs for best director, ensemble and production, Interiors by Glasgow’s Vanishing Point was a performance of startling originality. Inspired by a play by Maurice…
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
13 Sep 2011
Theatre director Phillip Breen discusses forthcoming adaptation of Peter Nichols' play
Phillip Breen is only 32, but already he has the honour of straddling three regimes at the Citz. Straight out of university in 2003, he was taken on by Philip Prowse to direct The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, returning at the invitation of Jeremy…
2011 Arches Live! theatre programme is biggest yet
24 Aug 2011
Over 30 performances of challenging theatre and live art
As Edinburgh’s yearly festivities wind down, Glasgow’s Arches steps up with another packed out schedule of new, challenging theatre and live art. Often regarded as a platform for exciting young Scottish artists, 2011’s Arches Live! programme is the…
Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off
24 Aug 2011
Lyceum and Dundee Rep co-production of Liz Lochhead's classic
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…
Theatre production Jasmine Gwangju celebrates South Korean democracy
10 Aug 2011
The Gwangju uprising in 1980 explored in Edinburgh Fringe show
‘Pfweee! Pfweeeeeeeeeee!’ Jun-tae Kim is recreating the noise of fighter jets swooping over the South Korean city of Gwangju. It was 18 May 1980 and he was a young geography teacher, on the streets with thousands of other students and citizens…
The personal connection I feel to the character of Medea
10 Aug 2011
Nadira Janikova presents Edinburgh Fringe production of classic work
Medea represents a huge challenge for any actress: trying to convey on stage the power of somebody who is a demigod; and finding the human side of somebody who commits the most unnatural and terrible of all crimes – the murder of their own…
Edinburgh arts institution the Forest Cafe gears up for its final Fringe
10 Aug 2011
Edinburgh's rough and ready creative hub closing down
Many Edinburgh-dwellers agree that it will be a sad day when the Forest Café finally closes its doors at the end of this summer. The rough and ready creative hub will be badly missed, but at least it’s staying open long enough for the Forest Fringe to…
Interview: Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan
3 Aug 2011
Artists talk about The Indirect Exchange of Uncertain Value exhibition
It sounds like the (thankfully unpublished) wheezy plotlines to one of Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings... adventures. Posh Edinburgh private school – one time cradle to dastardly turncoat bullies – gets taken over by bohemian artists with a hidden agenda.
