Theatre and Previews

Simon Jones to star in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show - Live!

Neil Gaiman and Billy Boyd to perform cameo roles

15 May 2012

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!

The new Cameron Mackintosh production is stopping at Edinburgh's Playhouse

15 May 2012

‘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

The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It to be staged in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens

15 May 2012

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

Caliban and Ariel also adapted as female roles in new production

15 May 2012

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

Featuring Pygmalion, Man of the House and Pulse 12

15 May 2012

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

Director Dominic Hill discusses his productions of Krapp's Last Tape and Footfalls

15 May 2012

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

Director Niall Henry discusses the fêted production

15 May 2012

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

The actress discusses Willy Russell's much-loved script

15 May 2012

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 the Macbeth story

Mary McClusky discusses The Scottish Play's continuing relevance to modern audiences

16 Apr 2012

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

The theatre company's popular swashbuckler to play at Scottish Youth Theatre

2 Feb 2012

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

Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic to become the play-within-the-play for new NTS production

1 Feb 2012

‘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…

Preview of 2012 - King Lear

New Citizens Theatre boss Dominic Hill brushes up his Shakespeare

6 Jan 2012

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

The musical is to be directed by War Horse's Tom Morris

6 Jan 2012

‘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

Highlights of the 2012 theatre and puppetry festival programme

19 Dec 2011

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

Matthew Zajac of Dogstar Theatre to play Gaelic music preservationist Captain Simon Fraser

19 Dec 2011

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

A puppet theatre performance that lets you join in – all you need is an odd sock

13 Dec 2011

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

Change in family dynamics as children reach middle age

28 Oct 2011

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

The writer and actor on his upcoming one-man show

21 Oct 2011

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

The Tanika Gupta-penned play deals with issues of death, age and vulnerability

21 Oct 2011

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

Pilot Theatre's production will star George Costigan and Charlie Covell

21 Oct 2011

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

The play examines themes of aging, loneliness, faith and science

20 Oct 2011

‘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

The play deals with the drug addiction and recovery of Scottish women

20 Oct 2011

‘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

Morrissey at your birthday party? Glasgay! performer Amy Lamé wants to make it happen

17 Oct 2011

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

The new production will premiere at this year's Glasgay! festival

21 Sep 2011

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

Immersive theatre project hopes to recreate the intellectual gatherings of late 19th century Paris

21 Sep 2011

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

Kenny Miller of Theatre Jezebel is set to restage Owen McCafferty's Belfast-set adaptation

21 Sep 2011

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)

Catherine Gillard and Peter Clerke of Benchtours embark on a cabaret adventure

21 Sep 2011

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

Real life-inspired drama about road-building on Raasay

21 Sep 2011

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

Matthew Lenton and Vanishing Point further explore the themes of 2009's Interiors

13 Sep 2011

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

Theatre director Phillip Breen discusses forthcoming adaptation of Peter Nichols' play

13 Sep 2011

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

Over 30 performances of challenging theatre and live art

24 Aug 2011

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

Lyceum and Dundee Rep co-production of Liz Lochhead's classic

24 Aug 2011

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

The Gwangju uprising in 1980 explored in Edinburgh Fringe show

10 Aug 2011

‘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

Nadira Janikova presents Edinburgh Fringe production of classic work

10 Aug 2011

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

Edinburgh's rough and ready creative hub closing down

10 Aug 2011

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

Artists talk about The Indirect Exchange of Uncertain Value exhibition

3 Aug 2011

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.

Alma Mater - One-person experience blending film and promenade theatre

Sneak preview of what might well be the future of the Fringe show

26 Jul 2011

In the vast sun-drenched glass-ceilinged foyer of Glasgow’s Briggait, there’s a room within a room -- a rudimentary windowless wooden box of about 18 cubic metres. It might resemble a wonkily-constructed homemade garden shed, but it’s the collapsible…

Doris Day Can Fuck Off - Greg McLaren interview

2011 Edinburgh Festival show based on singing to strangers

26 Jul 2011

It’s a sunny Saturday in Stoke Newington, North London, and I’m competing in my very first ‘allotment Olympics’. Specifically, a shot putt event that swaps the usual metal balls for hefty, organic potatoes. The games have been organised by Stoke…

Theatre picks for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011

20 Jul 2011

A Celebration of Harold Pinter A starry triumvirate of elements conspires to make this one of the hottest tickets on the Fringe. Hollywood star John Malkovich directs British actor Julian Sands in a loving tribute to the late Nobel winner, drawing on…

Four site-specific shows to catch at Edinburgh 2011

What Remains and You Once Said Yes among highlights

20 Jul 2011

What Remains. Theatre company Grid Iron celebrates ten years on the Fringe with this eerie piece set in the bowels of Edinburgh University. Music comes courtesy of composer David Paul Jones. Even in Edinburgh/Glasgow Poet Ishbel McFarlane takes the…

Edinburgh Festival of Politics 2011 - Highlights

Richard Holloway, Sarah Boyack and David Greig among highlights

8 Jul 2011

The Festival of Politics may be one of the junior members of the August fraternity, but it just keeps coming of age. An array of events, speakers and themes are on the agenda this year with technology and the upheavals across north Africa and the Middle…

Theatre, music and dance highlights from the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Semiramide and King Lear among picks

7 Jul 2011

The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) has been a benchmark for quality and innovation in the performing arts since its inauguration nearly 65 years ago. This year artistic director Jonathan Mills builds his programme around the multi-faceted…

Casablanca: The Gin Joint Cut

Morag Fullarton's classic compact, lunch-hour friendly show

15 Jun 2011

It’s nothing new of course, but the Oran Mor has been incubating many a theatrical hit in its lunchtime theatre slot of late, and the latest to make the jump into the evening hours and bigger stages is Morag Fullarton’s Casablanca: The Gin Joint…

Siobhan Davies Dance: Rotor

Experimental cross-artform dance from nine commissioned artists

15 Jun 2011

‘I hate the word inspiration,’ says Siobhan Davies. Which may seem ironic, given how inspirational she has been to budding young dancers and choreographers over the years. But for Davies, inspiration implies a light bulb moment, when something just…

Interview: Celebrity choreographer Arlene Phillips

Strictly Come Dancing judge on her inspirations and what she looks for

15 Jun 2011

The producer of Midnight Tango, which stars Strictly Come Dancing’s Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace talks about her life in dance What made you want to be a choreographer? I became a choreographer by chance. Dancing was always my first love, and it…

The theatre shows to look out for at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011

Dance Marathon, Ten Plagues and Tuesdays at Tescos among highlights

9 Jun 2011

As ever the theatre programme of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe is overflowing with keen ideas, exciting stories and risk-taking. The Traverse Theatre maintains its position as the beating heart of the Fringe, with Dominic Hill’s final programme…

Generation

Glasgow theatre company Glas(s) Performance looks at the political views of today's teenagers

27 May 2011

Following swiftly on from a winter of discontent that was nowhere more pronounced than among our nation’s young people, comes a new show from Glasgow company Glas(s) Performance looking at the perspectives of today’s 17- and 18-year-olds on life, the…

Knives in Hens

Belgian theatremaker Lies Pauwels adapts David Harrower's pre-industrial drama

27 May 2011

Until a few months ago, Lies Pauwels had never read Knives in Hens, David Harrower’s pre-industrial tale of a woman’s progress from ignorance to literacy. Now, the Belgian theatremaker is directing a new National Theatre of Scotland production of the…

Spring Awakening

Frank Wedekind's controversial play given the music treatment by theatre company Sell a Door

27 May 2011

Frank Wedekind’s original German language play caused a stir throughout the early 1900s due to its hard-hitting themes and liberal attitudes towards the problems teenagers face growing up. The 2006 rock musical adaptation doesn’t stray far from this…

Entre Nous

A showcase of physical theatre by Adam Smith College diploma graduates

27 May 2011

Fife’s Adam Smith College has recently been criticised for the planned closure of its theatre arts courses but its Diploma in Physical Theatre, based in Glasgow, is in rude health as its graduation show Entre Nous will prove later this month. Now in its…