Theatre and Profile

Surviving the Fringe - Richard Fry

23 Jul 2009

Fringe veteran Richard Fry is performing in a pair of shows in Edinburgh this year. Here he gives up his essential guide to surviving the world’s biggest arts festival

Gregory Burke: Hoors

30 Apr 2009

Gregory Burke feels more mellow, more at home with himself than the thirtysomething who entered the public domain with the premiere of Gagarin Way in 2001. At that time there was a sense of a man dazzled by the sudden attention the play brought him.

Henrik Ibsen: Ghosts

30 Apr 2009

Fellow Norwegians Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Munch may have been born 35 years apart but, for a brief moment in the late 19th century, their artistic eras collided: Munch – who was yet to create his legacy, ‘The Scream’ – designed the set for Ghosts, a new…

Copenhagen: Quantum leap

16 Apr 2009

One of the hallmarks of success in almost any profession is precision. It is this attention to detail that first strikes me about Tom Mannion. Forgetting the tram-inspired chaos of Princes Street, I arrive late at Edinburgh’s Blue Blazer and meet him…

Pornography - Simon Stephens interview

Shock values - Traverse Theatre

17 Jul 2008

As the Traverse embarks on its first Edinburgh Festival Fringe season under the artistic directorship of Dominic Hill, Steve Cramer talks to acclaimed dramatist Simon Stephens, writer of Pornography, about 7/7 and a new definition of the pornographic

Overarching drive - Jackie Wylie new artistic director of the Arches

17 Jul 2008

It’s been less than a week since Jackie Wylie was appointed artistic director of the Arches (bringing the grand total of women in that position in Scottish theatre up to three), but the 28-year-old has already jumped in with both feet. ‘I’m excited.

Mind your language

4 Oct 2007

It might seem remarkable that a Booker Prize-winning novelist should be available to write for the stage in Scotland, yet hasn’t been asked to do so for well over a decade. Yet this is the situation James Kelman has found himself in, despite a general…

Exchange Youth Theatre Festival

3 Jul 2007

YOUTH THEATRE It is perhaps the mark of a certain sickness in our society that we pay our policemen more than our teachers, for the priority given to education is certainly the barometer of a culture’s health. So it tells us something about the NTS…

Peter Powers

Profile

2 Jul 2007

Name Peter Powers Who’s he then? Dubbed as a ‘hipnotist’ and the ‘Ali G of stage hypnotism’, he has the ability (or, I suppose, power) to have a man standing about in women’s underwear or find a cure for the most acute of phobias. His TV work…

Brian Ferguson

3 Jan 2007

FACE FOR THE FUTURE He’s not exactly a new face: He’s kicked around the Scottish theatre for three or four years in this reviewer’s recollection, and probably longer, but Brian Ferguson’s 2006 has launched him as a substantial actor on the Scottish…