Theatre and Reviews

Stonewall

9 Aug 2007

Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.

Debbie Does Dallas - The Musical

23 Aug 2007

There’s a very fine line between a send-up of a ropey cultural item and something that’s just plain ropey. Almost from its shrill opening bars it becomes crystal clear that Debbie Does Dallas – The Musical has crossed the line. The fundamental…

Circus Oz: 30th Birthday Bash

Acrobatics with an Aussie accent

7 Aug 2008

Characters in colourful costumes exchange banter with the audience, the live band plays a constant stream of Gogol Bordello-like polka and one act involves a dramatic take on Frankenstein's monster. This isn't your average circus. Far more theatrical…

Fame

22 Jan 2009

MUSICAL Running through the list of musical numbers in the programme your heart slowly starts to sink. Clearly the creators of this stage version of Fame couldn’t afford the copyright to songs from either the film or TV versions. What, no…

Britt Ekland: Britt on Britt

A Swedish sexagenarian’s exploits

14 Aug 2008

‘Who is Britt Ekland?’ So the former Bond girl and one-time wife of Peter Sellers begins her frank and surprisingly funny whistle stop tour of her enchantingly colourful life. Offering glimpses of the young starlet who entranced the likes of Rod Stewart…

Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, Duke of York’s Theatre, London

27 Jul 2009

David Leveaux’s West End revival of Stoppard’s Arcadia is the first since its 1993 premiere, not because it’s not good (it’s excellent) but because it’s daunting. It is a play of big, basic questions; of eroticism and advanced mathematics; of…

Anne Boleyn

Howard Brenton's iconoclastic historical drama is a hands-down crowd-pleaser

9 May 2012

You can see why the original Globe theatre production of Anne Boleyn sold out, and why Howard Brenton’s iconoclastic re-imagining of Henry VIII’s second wife was subsequently sent on a tour of the UK: the show is a hands down, no-arguments…

All the Queen’s Children

An impressive, unflinching piece of fluid theatre

9 Aug 2010

The teens of Reading Youth Theatre devised this unflinching, impressive piece of fluid theatre themselves around the stories of real-life teenage asylum seekers (some of whom are in the company). Samuel is forced to swim to shore, swaggering, glam Lule…

Faust

Dark, thrilling and unsettling adaptation of Goethe’s classic

20 Aug 2009

Surely one of the Edinburgh International Festival’s most ambitious projects, Silviu Purcarete’s grand adaptation of Faust takes over, and fills, the huge warehouse space at Ingleston’s Royal Highland Centre. Based on Goethe’s treatment of the German…

Ecstasy

MDMA-fuelled love story

7 Aug 2008

Based on ‘The Undefeated’, one of three stories from Irvine Welsh’s 1996 novel Ecstasy, this piece centres around Lloyd (Jack McGowan), an ageing clubber who wants more out of life than living for the weekend. In the meantime, though, he’s content to…

The King and I

This stylish production of the musical classic can't disguise the script's patronising tone

6 Jan 2012

Like most of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s quintet of hit musicals, the deceptively light surface action in The King and I struggles to keep the lid on the problematic themes rumbling away underneath. Where the culture clash between prim, feisty governess…

Leo

Tobias Wegner's vitruoso performance is engaging and imaginative

11 Aug 2011

Leo (played by multi-talented German performer Tobias Wegner) finds himself trapped in a box room. With a charming innocence, he uses his imagination, his hat, his suitcase and a piece of chalk to ease the anxiety and the tedium. As he does so we see…

Pinocchio

Physical comedy and collaborative effort makes for excellent alternative to mainstream panto

15 Dec 2010

The intimate nature of this seasonal production makes for a wholesome take on Carlo Collodi’s boy puppet tale. Seemingly one for the Santa-believing contingent of the population (I am rarely ever the tallest person in any room, but was definitely top…

Equus

9 Mar 2010

Peter Shaffer’s endlessly revived classic about a troubled boy who blinds four horses and the psychiatrist who treats him is an odd mix of compelling mystery and disarming theatricality that frequently runs the risk of getting bogged down in its own…

The Fall of Man

Paradise Lost in a bedsit

12 Aug 2009

An affair between middle-aged, middle-class Peter and his children’s Slavic nanny is told with contemporary dialogue and passages from Paradise Lost. Milton’s long lines feel rushed and therefore unlike real-life musings, but powerful body language…

Nederlands Dans Theater 2

19 Jun 2008

CONTEMPORARY DANCE Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 20 & Sat 21 Jun Given the enormous influence Jirí Kylián has had over Nederlands Dans Theater during the past 30 years, it should come as no surprise that even when he’s not there, his presence is felt.

Top Hat

Loving tribute to the Fred'n'Ginger classic, starring Tom Chambers and Summer Strallen

24 Nov 2011

According to legend, screen hoofer Fred Astaire was such a perfectionist that, during the 40th take of a scene from Swing Time (1936), his partner Ginger Rogers’ feet started to bleed through her satin slippers. In this stage adaptation of one of…

A Slow Air

Nationhood explored and deplored

8 Aug 2011

In David Harrower’s new play a struggling middle-aged builder (Lewis Howden), haunted by an entirely inadvertent contribution to the Glasgow Airport bombing, is provoked into reflections about his estranged sister (the performer’s real-life sister…

Frances Ruffelle: Beneath the Dress

Cheeky, sexy and surprising cabaret-esque show

23 Aug 2010

Given Ruffelle’s showbiz background – she’s the daughter of London theatre school founder Sylvia Young and a Tony Award-winning star of West End and Broadway musicals such as Les Misérables and Chicago – it’s unsurprising that her cabaret-esque Fringe…

Lovelace: A Rock Musical

Respectful tribute to the Deep Throat porn star

10 Aug 2010

This rock opera goes a long way to rescuing its subject, Linda Boreman, from the ignominy of being forever associated with her screen persona, Linda Lovelace, and the 1972 porn film Deep Throat. The film made history for being the first to become a…

The Grind Show

Carnival slapstick and profound questioning from the TBA Collaborative

19 Aug 2009

A mix of slick physical theatre and naturalistic dialogue, The Grind Show follows wide-eyed ‘Boy’ through a surreal circus. Underworld characters, including the double-bodied Miss Von Ambourg (whose act involves splitting apart to throw daggers at her…

Morecambe

Show-stopping comic tribute

10 Aug 2009

This funny-sad account of the life and death of the man who was dubbed Britain’s ‘comedian of the century’ is already a big hit with Fringe crowds. It’s fair to assume that the prospect of seeing the late, great Eric Morecambe brought back to life on…

The Man Who Lived Twice

Stylish, striking and poignant study of 1930s dramatist Edward Sheldon and actor John Gielgud

28 Mar 2012

For a few years in the early 20th century playwright Edward Sheldon was the toast of Broadway, with melodramas such as Romance notching up lengthy runs and inspiring movies with Garbo and Dietrich. Crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, he withdrew…

Of Mice and Men

Quietly shocking aftertaste of Lyceum Steinbeck adaptation

27 Feb 2012

Director John Dove breaks his run of eminently solid productions of Arthur Miller plays at the Lyceum with this solid adaptation of John Steinbeck. And in a similar style to shows like 2010’s The Price, the sets here are towering, intricate and…

Slavery to Star Trek

Autobiographical show taking in Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

8 Aug 2011

Andreea Kindryd has lived a fascinating life. She knew Martin Luther King, was friends with Malcolm X and worked on the original Star Trek series. She’s an engaging storyteller whose tale starts in the days of her great grandparents and slavery…