Theatre and Previews

Three Sisters

19 Mar 2010

Having found innovative new ways to serve up Brecht and Shakespeare to modern-day theatre goers, it stands to reason you’d cast around for another old guard figure to re-invent. So now, the formidable partnership of Filter theatre company and director…

The Hobbit

19 Mar 2010

Peter Jackson spent over £200 million filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and bought himself some pretty nifty visual effects in the process. But there’s more than one way to lift JRR Tolkien’s words from the page, as theatre producer Vanessa Ford…

If That's All There Is

19 Mar 2010

If the maudlin humour and languid disenchantment of the Peggy Lee number ‘Is That All There Is?’ appeals to you, then this new piece which riffs an entire tepid kind of romance from Lieber and Stoller’s song should appeal. Inspector Sands’ debut…

Filter theatre company tackle Chekhov's Three Sisters

9 Mar 2010

Having found innovative new ways to serve up Brecht and Shakespeare to modern-day theatre goers, it stands to reason you’d cast around for another old guard figure to re-invent. So now, the formidable partnership of Filter theatre company and director…

Eurydice production bound for Traverse Theatre

9 Mar 2010

The tale of lovelorn musician Orpheus and his efforts to bring back his wife Eurydice from the Underworld has fascinated artists for millennia and been immortalised in the poetry of Ovid, countless operas and operettas, and even a bawdy ballad by Nick…

Inspector Sands - If That's All There Is

9 Mar 2010

If the maudlin humour and languid disenchantment of the Peggy Lee number ‘Is That All There Is?’ appeals to you, then this new piece which riffs an entire tepid kind of romance from Lieber and Stoller’s song should appeal. Inspector Sands’ debut…

Northern Ballet Theatre's Wuthering Heights comes to Edinburgh

4 Mar 2010

There are no shortage of love affairs in the annals of English literature, but few burn with the passion of Cathy and Heathcliff. The tragic hero and heroine of Emily Brontë’s 19th century novel Wuthering Heights have been lifted from page to stage and…

The National Review of Live Art 30th anniversary

25 Feb 2010

It all seems wrong. The National Review of Live Art has built its reputation on change. It never looks back and never stays still. The annual bonanza of what used to be called the avant garde has doggedly embraced the disconcerting, the deviant and the…

Mayfesto: Something Old, Something New

25 Feb 2010

Inspired by the long-gone Glasgow theatre of the same age, the Tron’s Mayfesto season is hoping to capture some of its namesake’s former glory. The brainchild of artistic director, Andy Arnold, it plans to celebrate often politically-charged new plays…

National Theatre of Scotland's tfd season targets teenage audience

23 Feb 2010

‘Teenagers aren’t aliens, they’re just us but younger.’ It’s a fact easily forgotten but one that playwright Rob Drummond and the rest of the team behind a new season for young people from the National Theatre of Scotland are keeping firmly in mind.

Tom Paulin produces Northern Broadsides' new take on Medea

23 Feb 2010

Barry Rutter, artistic director and performer for Northern Broadsides, is what you might call Medea savvy. In bringing this touring version of Euripedes' greatest tragedy to Scotland, he has plainly thought carefully about both the locations in which…

Greenwich Theatre and Rapture co-production of Hamlet tours Scotland

23 Feb 2010

Scotland’s Rapture theatre company has teamed up with the Greenwich Theatre in London to create a modern, accessible take on Shakespeare’s most famous play. Rapture’s updated Hamlet is set in the contemporary Glasgow underworld, where Hamlet is caught…

Dundee Rep take on Peter Schaffer's pony tale Equus

18 Feb 2010

It’s not entirely down to Daniel Radcliffe’s torso that Peter Schaffer’s 1973 work Equus is undergoing something of a renaissance, but it was certainly the prospect of naked boy wizard that reignited interest in the play. It’s the kind of interest that…

Poppy and Dingan

18 Feb 2010

Imaginary friendships are a part of life for many children and, just like real ones, they come with no guarantees. When Kellyanne Williamson, a young girl living in the Australian outback, loses her invisible pals in Pobby and Dingan, life is never the…

Tron to stage Martin Crimp's The City

10 Feb 2010

It is in the nature of cities, capital cities in particular, to juxtapose the trivial with the weighty. As city dwellers we are at once individuals with worries about bus tickets and groceries, and also part of something much bigger – the city itself…

What We Know

10 Feb 2010

One of the changes at the Traverse since Dominic Hill’s appointment as artistic director is the theatre’s determination to mount a wide range of small scale work in its studio theatre. The success of David Greig’s Midsummer over the last year bears out…

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

10 Feb 2010

‘Someone said to me once that Ireland just skipped the 20th century and went from the 19th to the 21st,’ muses Scottish-born, Irish-bred actress Cara Kelly when asked about the ‘Irishness’ of her current role, in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of…

Tom Dale Company: Roam

10 Feb 2010

The universal need to explore new territory – whether you’re a lion prowling a desert plane or a teenager leaving home – was the starting point for choreographer Tom Dale’s new work, Roam. ‘I wanted to find a parallel between the human need to explore…

Backbeat - Stuart Sutcliffe story comes to Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow

And the beat goes on

3 Feb 2010

This season’s major show at the Citizens Theatre is more than just a Beatles biopic. Writer/director Iain Softley explains why to Jonny Ensall

First Word: Catherine Czerkawska

1 Feb 2010

Playwright and novelist Catherine Czerkawska’s career has gone from strength to strength since she stopped ‘watering her Dylan Thomas adjectives’. Just don’t ask her if she’s ‘still writing’. Here she reveals her love of Lennon, linen and lace…

NTS history and Gutter magazine latest National Library of Scotland events

1 Feb 2010

Eagle-eyed readers of the Around Town listings may have already noticed that change is afoot at the National Library of Scotland. Over the last few months, there have been an increasing number of interesting, well thought-out, exciting and downright…

Clutter Keeps Company

26 Jan 2010

Davy Anderson’s oeuvre, which has been fairly prolific since the mid 2000s has shown a consistent impulse toward the social diagnostic. From his examination of alienation within a council flat, incorporating a commentary on our culture’s propensity to…

The Government Inspector

26 Jan 2010

Back in the 1980s, Scottish theatre audiences could count on the likes of Communicado, Wildcat and 7:84 to maintain a live, lively commentary on contemporary events, often by drawing analogies sourced from Scottish history. It’s perhaps a force that’s…

The Zeros Keep Going

26 Jan 2010

The numbers speak for themselves: worldwide, pornography is estimated to earn $3075.65 per second. The sexualisation of culture and the media is a burning issue, and one that has inspired the latest production by Glasgow-based theatre company…

Neil LaBute Triple Bill

26 Jan 2010

‘Like a long distance runner who is asked to fill in for a sprinter at the last minute, you find yourself using a whole different set of muscles that you didn’t know you had.’ Neil LaBute regards short play writing, it seems, as a sort of artistic…