Theatre, 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.

Disney's High School Musical

28 Feb 2008

MUSICAL Playhouse, Edinburgh, until Sat 1 Mar If the cast-iron chastity, remarkable level of racial harmony and general abstemiousness of the teenagers represented in this stage version of the hit Disney Channel film don’t seem to ring true of the…

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…

A Conversation with Edith Head

9 Aug 2007

Hollywood costume designer Edith Head worked on almost 500 films in her 54-year career. She dressed Mae West, Dorothy Lamour and Barbara Stanwyck in their most iconic outfits. She played with the big boys at Paramount (and later Universal) and her onyx…

Risk

Tron Theatre, Glasgow. Now touring

12 Feb 2007

NEW PLAY Whether we’re crossing on red or skydiving for kicks, we live in a world of calculated risk. If we stopped to think about it, we’d rarely leave the house for fear of the consequences. Actually, to stay in the house would only expose us to…

Romeo and Juliet

16 Aug 2007

Having finally got over Baz Luhrmann’s version, it feels like we can move on to a new approach to this popular, if flawed, old Shakespearean standby. If Peter Meineck’s version for Aquila doesn’t quite make for a new ‘standard’, it certainly…

The Last South: Pursuit of the Pole

9 Aug 2007

Between 1910 and 1912 two competing teams, one British one Norwegian, set out to become the first men to reach the South Pole. Only one managed to return home to tell the tale. Constructed from the diaries kept by the British explorer Captain Robert…

Mamma Mia!

10 Apr 2008

MUSICAL SECC, Glasgow, until Sat 27 Apr Truly global phenomena are becoming something of a cliché: there’s a McDonald’s on every street corner, a Nestlé product in every home, and a production of Mamma Mia! running in every country in the world…

Hamlet Solo

16 Aug 2007

To do justice to Hamlet is no easy task, but to render the Danish play as a one man performance is almost laughable in its ambition. There is, of course, the obvious novelty value to witnessing Hamlet being performed by one man. But Hamlet Solo is far…

A Glance at New York

9 Aug 2007

Another year, another excellent off-Broadway New York company debuts on the Fringe. Unlike their predecessors The Riot Group and T.E.A.M, however, Axis Theatre Company aren’t blazing trails with their original scripts. They’ve managed to create one of…

The Merchant of Venice

3 Jul 2008

OUTDOOR THEATRE Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until Sat 12 Jul Don’t be put off by Glasgow’s unpredictable weather and miss this summer’s Bard in the Botanics. Cheerful and casual in its approach to theatre, the outdoor play season is a big hit with…

Scottish Ballet's Romeo and Juliet

22 May 2008

NARRATIVE BALLET Theatre Royal Glasgow, Wed 4–Sat 7 Jun Big narrative ballets are filled with opulent sets and long drawn-out scenes – right? Not this time. Scottish Ballet has taken a different approach to Shakespeare’s tragic love story. Gone is the…

Sleeping Beauty (King's Theatre, Glasgow)

13 Dec 2007

The pitch It’s time for Princess Beauty to put away childish things, say goodbye to her childhood friend Chester the Jester (aaawwww!) and get ready for some right royal action. Carrion the witch and Norval her son (or is he?) have other ideas, however…

Peer Gynt

4 Oct 2007

For as long as people question their identity, pondering who they are and what role they play in the world, Peer Gynt will occupy a prominent place in the culture. It would, indeed become still more notable were all productions of Ibsen’s classic of…

Follow Me

16 Aug 2007

While the recent executions in Iraq shone a light, briefly, on the issue of capital punishment, there hasn’t been much public discussion of the matter since Mrs Thatcher lost her free vote on the subject in the late 80s. This, along with the relative…

Strangers, Babies

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 17 Mar

13 Mar 2007

NEW WORK Does our behaviour depend upon where we’re from, or where we are now? That hoary old chestnut, the nature versus nurture debate still rages on in every field of human knowledge. So it is that while it emerges quite plainly that the woman at…

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

17 Jan 2008

MUSICAL Playhouse, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Jan Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s enduring piece of theatrical bubblegum may have started life as a modest school production, but the atmosphere in the packed Playhouse auditorium is as feverish as a…

White Christmas

29 Nov 2007

MUSICAL Edinburgh Playhouse, until Sat 8 Dec Starring in a soap opera can leave you typecast forever. So it’s testament to Craig McLachlan’s ability that in White Christmas he’s most definitely Bob Wallace, ex-soldier turned performer – and not…

The Producers

15 Nov 2007

MUSICAL King’s Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 17 November It’s a rule of thumb that celebrities cast in touring musicals to pull in floating punters will require some degree of propping up by the singing/dancing pros in the company. Certainly…

They Make These Noises

15 Nov 2007

NEW PLAY Arches, Glasgow, until Fri 16 Nov The noises in question emanate from the rumbling stomachs of the old boys living in a godforsaken hostel where the theft of a splash of milk can lead to a bloody stabbing. This is where Brian Ferguson’s…

Desire Under The Elms

1 Nov 2007

MODERN CLASSIC Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 17 Nov O’Neill’s 1925 experiment in modern tragedy has been acclaimed as a powerful, elemental drama, so it might ill-behove me to question its status. But Jeremy Raison’s production at the Citz…

Ae Fond Kiss

Greer Ogston

23 Aug 2007

Not to be confused with the 2004 film of the same name, Anne-Marie di Mambro’s play focuses on an awkward teen, Zed, who arrives for his birthday present – an hour with Lola. But Lola is not quite what he expected, in more ways than one. This tender…

Breaker Morant

23 Aug 2007

Kenneth Ross’ great Australian tale of official injustice still feels powerful in the telling. In it, three Australian officers are put on trial for the murder of prisoners in the dog days of the second Boer War. Great courage is shown in the face of…

Dogfight

23 Aug 2007

Serial streaker, Mark Roberts, narrowly avoided an Asbo for his ‘performance’ at the Ryder cup. Thankfully, a judge with a sense of humour and an ounce of brain power dismissed the case but it’s this legislating against the insignificant things while…

Apollo/Dionysus

16 Aug 2007

‘Naked’, is the first word that springs to mind but prurience is slowly replaced by curiosity as philosophical questions are posed; about right and wrong, good and bad, religion, love and family. This piece examines the age-old relationship between man…

Johnson and Boswell – Late But Live

16 Aug 2007

We’re presented with a modern day chat show starring James Boswell, whose guest is none other than his revered Dr Johnson. He gives an account of the pair’s Highland tour of 1773 quite at variance with Boswell’s. We might speculate about the question of…

Venus as a Boy

9 Aug 2007

In this intriguing and highly emotional adaptation of Luke Sutherland’s award winning novel, adaptor and actor Tam Dean Burn plays a dying rent boy who claims he is turning to gold. Burn, accompanied by Sutherland, who provides a riveting electrical…

Arlecchino’s Revenge

Tramway, Glasgow, Fri 13 - Sat 14 Apr

9 Apr 2007

DEVISED WORK The arrival of buccaneering Aussie practitioner Clark Crystal has reinvigorated Lung Ha’s, Scotland’s leading company for people with learning disabilities, with a creative and collaborative spirit that many a more auspicious company…

All My Sons

Sons and slaughters

16 Jan 2007

A brilliant, but profoundly uneasy evening awaits the ‘Well, Saddam was a son of a bitch, so the war was justified’ school of thought at the Lyceum. So, too, the ‘we can only vote for the Tories in power or those awaiting power’ mindset will face some…

Cinderella - Perth Theatre

Cinderella

13 Dec 2006

The Pitch Pity poor Baron Hardup, as feeble as a bowl of watery broth with a dicky ticker to boot, blitz-fully wedded to arch shrew Dodda Mutton, stepfather to a pair of hideous harpies who could give Lucrezia Borgia a run for her money in the…

Sweet Bird of Youth

Dundee Rep, until Sat 11 Nov

26 Oct 2006

CLASSIC Ladies, step this way. If you’re up for a sexual thrill, just check out the opening act of Tennessee Williams’ magnificent Sweet Bird of Youth and see Alan Turkington preening around in his pyjama bottoms, flexing his clean shaven chest and…

Merchant of Venice, The

The Merchant of Venice

2 Oct 2006

CLASSIC It’s easy enough to see, in Britain’s current climate of religious intolerance, why Mark Thomson should wish to open the Lyceum’s new season with Shakespeare’s tale of money and racism. It is one of Shakespeare’s trickiest pieces. Our 21st…

Educating Agnes

8 May 2008

NEW TRANSLATION Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, run ended; Perth Theatre until Fri 9 May When Molière’s L’école des femmes was translated as Let Wives Tak Tent by Robert Kemp in 1948, it set in motion a half-century tradition of Scottish reworkings of…

6 Characters In Search Of An Author

28 Feb 2008

CLASSIC Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until Sat 8 Mar, then touring We’ve all heard the stories about soap actors being approached and abused in the street, not for what they’ve done, but for the misdeeds of their characters. While we might chastise the…

Cinderella (Pavilion Theatre)

13 Dec 2007

The pitch Poor Cinders: Her life sucks — for one thing, her old boy has married the worst thing since C Difficile. Can she break away from her domestic bondage? Only with help from her friend Buttons and some heathen magic from her fairy godmother. Will…

Blood Brothers

18 Oct 2007

MUSICAL Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 27 Oct There’s no flying car, singing animals or pyrotechnics, yet Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, which explores class, poverty and unemployment, remains one of our longest running musicals. Just…

Hamlet

4 Oct 2007

The widespread belief that society is in deep moral decline is hardly unique to our age – indeed, there have been few times in history when this wasn’t a preoccupation of the public at large. What makes our society a little more unique, and renders Guy…

Corpus Christi

23 Aug 2007

Terrence McNally’s controversial retelling of the New Testament places Jesus in 50s Texas and involves the son of God in a sexual relationship with Judas, whose consequent jealously results in the betrayal. Despite slick direction and clever ensemble…

Dickens Unplugged

16 Aug 2007

Unless you were brought up in a workhouse, you’ll be familiar with at least one of Dickens’ many tales. Beginning with Oliver Twist, this musical, is not quite as Dickens intended. We embark upon a full speed tour of his books, ending with A Christmas…

I Am My Own Wife

16 Aug 2007

Is it right for us to turn someone’s life, warts and all, into art after their death? When Doug Wright set out to write this play, he intended to create an appreciative portrait of a person he admired, however when he discovered discrepancies in her…

I, Lear

16 Aug 2007

Two bumbling actors (Andrew Jones and Ciaran Murtagh) share their wisdom of the theatre, including tricks of the trade such as Marmite up the nostrils for upset and spray cream foaming at the mouth for anger. They teach us techniques from the likes of…

Macbeth: Who is That Bloodied Man?

Nicola Husband

16 Aug 2007

Macbeth, like most of Will’s plays, has suffered from many strange interpretations, including a film that transposes the action to a 90s rave and an American theatre version that quite literally strips the characters bare. These wacky interpretations…

Phil Jupitus & Andre Vincent: Waiting for Alice

16 Aug 2007

The title tells the more literate everything they need to know about this piece, for its peculiar mix of Beckett and Lewis Carroll makes a link between two different eras of absurdism and surrealism. In it, two performers, Dee and Dum, dressed in…

Popsicle’s Departure, 1989

16 Aug 2007

It's 1989. Seattle’s mighty Sub-Pop label dominates the grunge scene, Dido can’t get hold of her dealer, and tonight Jeremy’s band have totally got a gig supporting the Lemonheads. On film these characters would be played by Matt Dillon and Winona…

Spawn and Die

Steve Cramer

16 Aug 2007

Sometimes we treat the laws of sexuality as if they were written by Derrida. Instead of obeying primal instincts that might lead us to the kind of blissful state that would render conflict redundant, we obey a repressed, materialistic, competitive mind…

The Pitch

16 Aug 2007

As audiences desert the theatre in favour of cinema, could this one-man show provide the answer? A screenwriter has an hour to rewrite his script and plan a pitch before presenting to studio executives. Taking on all the roles, from Catherine Zeta-Jones…

CHAV! IT’S A MUSICAL INNIT

9 Aug 2007

The Debden in which this show is set is the town of David Cameron’s nightmares. Union Jack thongs are flashed, bus stops are vandalised and groups of unemployed teens impregnate each other like Lambrini addled rabbits.

La Femme Est Morte or Why Should I Not Fuck My Son

9 Aug 2007

Britney is in a state of crisis. She split from her husband, shaved her head, drove with her son on her lap and allegedly tried to have his teeth whitened, and of course it’s all the media’s fault, just as they are held responsible for Phaedra’s demise…

Fergus Lamont

Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, Wed 11 Oct, then touri

9 Apr 2007

ADAPTATION The question of what precisely it means to be Scottish, of where and from whom a nation’s sense of itself derives, are bound to be at the forefront of public discourse over the next few months. Gerry Mulgrew’s production for Communicado…

Scottish Dance Theatre

Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Tue 27 Mar

13 Mar 2007

MODERN DANCE Diversity is fast become the calling card of Scottish Dance Theatre. Visiting Edinburgh as part of its UK tour, the company will perform three works which, although choreographically distinct, have one common factor - an emotional…

The Winter's Tale

19 Jun 2008

OUTDOOR PERFORMANCE East Quadrangle, University of Glasgow, Until Sun 22 Jun Back in the day, going to see a show meant turning up at your village green or hostelry garden. Things have moved on since the 1500s, and there’s much to be said for modern…

The Drawer Boy

22 May 2008

SCOTTISH PREMIERE Tron, Glasgow, until Sat 24 May All of us live by personal myths; stories we tell ourselves about our own past actions that justify the present. It seems easy enough to uncover these in others, but much harder to identify our own…

Nova Scotia

8 May 2008

NEW WORK Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 24 May Next time you’re trapped behind an oldie trying to use a cash point, quietly contemplating the benefits of euthanasia, you might want to reflect on Phil and Spanky, and buy yourself some patience.

Heelie-go-Leerie

10 Apr 2008

CHILDREN’S THEATRE Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 11–Sun 13 Apr Clichéd though it sounds, kids often get more fun out of the box something comes in than the expensive product within. Imaginary play with cardboard tubes, dressing-up clothes and…

The Wizard of Oz

13 Dec 2007

The Pitch If we aren’t in Kansas, Toto, Edinburgh makes for a pretty convincing substitute. Dorothy (Denise Hoey) moves from twister to twisted into the surreal world of Oz, where that absolute shoeligan the Wicked Witch of the West (Julie Austin) is…

Cinderella (Brunton Theatre)

13 Dec 2007

The Pitch With an utterly Hondless dad, two suspiciously virile sisters and buttons the besotted servant to contend with, Cinders has her hands full. The sisters, who already have access to more balls than you’d think, are determined to keep her away…

Rupture

4 Oct 2007

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 6 Oct NEW WORK I suppose that in a society obsessed with surveillance and security there’s bound to be a certain level of paranoia among our citizenry, and this itself can turn into neurosis. This certainly…

Babble

23 Aug 2007

A monologue based on the Jorge Luis Borges short story ‘The Library of Babel’, Babble focuses on a secluded librarian’s (Jonathan Clarkson) quest for the answers to all life’s puzzles in his stacks of books. Though the fundamental ideas behind the play…

Best Western

23 Aug 2007

Although listed under comedy and written/directed by Fringe favourite, comedian Rich Hall, Best Western is far from a light-hearted romp. It looks at two interlinking families in a middle America Motel, where the owners are being forced to sell and the…

Bomber’s Row

23 Aug 2007

In a maximum security prison in Colorado, three of the most dangerous terrorist bombers alive mix with a Cuban drug lord. From their cages in an exercise yard they converse, then a female barber with a secret cuts their hair. Based on true events and…

Canadian Bartender at Butlins

23 Aug 2007

If the basic purpose of theatre is to tell a story (and an entertaining one at that), then TJ Dawe has it covered. Recounting the experiences of a summer working at a holiday camp, this monologue has the feel of a fireside ghost story, interspersed with…

Escaping Hamlet

23 Aug 2007

Is life predetermined, or do we have an input into our own destiny? This is the primary question asked by this fantastical reworking of Hamlet. Keeping the basic plot of the prince who discovers that his uncle killed his father and seeks revenge, this…

Fatboy

David Laing

23 Aug 2007

With our current culture of consumerism and our seemingly endless desire to rid the planet of its natural resources, there is unlikely to be a more fitting or biting satire at this year’s Fringe than John Clancy’s Fatboy. An updated version of Alfred…

Game Theory

23 Aug 2007

At the end of a war with some resemblance to the Yugoslavian conflict, a succession of scenarios unfolds. Three government officials negotiate fruitlessly over responsibility and territory, a woman returns to her abandoned, vandalised home with her two…

Phaedre

23 Aug 2007

Stuffy studio venue after stuffy studio venue can drive the average Festival–goer mad, so why not escape the city for the rugged ramparts of the medieval Craigmillar Castle, where Racine’s classic Phaedre comes to life through skulls, sword fights and…

Subway

23 Aug 2007

Perhaps understandably, the number of people who feel pessimistic rather than optimistic about Britain’s future has grown exponentially over the last few years, according to a flurry of recent surveys. This smart and stylish production from Vanishing…

The Florists

23 Aug 2007

Take one florist with no flowers, a sad sack, his terminally ill sister and his mail-order bride, mix them all up in a fairly implausible, badly written script and you’ve got the premise of this bizarre and pointless comedy. If the play left out the…

The Man Across the Way

23 Aug 2007

Police are being given more money to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and the public are being asked to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity. It is understandable in the context of the war on terror but you have to wonder…

What’s Your Poison?

23 Aug 2007

An addiction to crystal meth devours the personalities of the young couple in William Chadwick’s play What’s Your Poison? The piece explores the couple’s reliance on someone, or something else, to get through life. While the abuse of drugs is no new…

An Air Balloon Across Antarctica

16 Aug 2007

We all cope differently with grief, however we can probably assume that very few of us are likely to grab a hamster, jump in a hot air balloon and journey across Antarctica in the style of this slightly surreal play’s protagonist. Talking hamsters with…

Dead Living

16 Aug 2007

Multinational corporations usually come under fire in climate change debates, but just last month, one such giant, Coca-Cola Enterprises, announced plans to cut down the amount of water it uses by six percent and reduce energy used for lighting by 50…

Emergence-See!

16 Aug 2007

Set on an otherwise unremarkable day in 2006, slam poet Daniel Beaty’s one-man show Emergence-See! begins with New York City’s descent into chaos as a slave ship floats up from the Hudson Bay. Bobbing just below the Statue of Liberty and stacked with…

Famous Last Words

16 Aug 2007

Two poets and a soldier face their mortality as an angry mob draws ever closer to the castle in which they are hiding. The soldier wants to die fighting and the poets wish to die writing, but before they go, they all want to tell their stories and leave…

IS THIS ABOUT SEX?

16 Aug 2007

Christian O’Reilly’s contemporary sex farce isn’t a lot more than the kind of piece we saw from Brian Rix in the 70s, which, in those days, attracted pop cultural phrases like ‘adult’ and ‘sophisticated’. Even so, it contrives to be amusing from end to…

Jihad: The Musical

16 Aug 2007

The magic of the musical genre is that you can get away with so much. If you can’t say it, sing it. This show is a perfect example. Catchy songs like ‘The Jihad Jive’ whisk us through Sayed’s story. In it we follow a young naïve Afghan flower seller who…

Natasha Wood: Rolling With Laughter

16 Aug 2007

Natasha Wood likes to move. She rushes you through the story of her life at breakneck speed, mimicking her parents, her doctor, her lover and her brother. Her monologue flows in and out of family holidays and past conversations and across continents…

POPPEA

16 Aug 2007

One of the most powerful leaders in the world abuses his position by having an affair and ignoring the will of the people – it’s a concept as familiar today as it was 2000 years ago for the Romans, on whose machinations Claudio Monteverdi based his…

The Bacchae

16 Aug 2007

There have been many and varied interpretations of Euripedes’ classic over the years. There’s the conventional reading, contrasting the straight-laced and controlling personality against the sensual hedonist (witness the various productions of the 90s…

The Racket

16 Aug 2007

Richard Walker’s one-man, two character, show begins with Simon, a war correspondent, sharing his views on war and the suffering he has seen in Baghdad. No amount of Scotch can make up for the never-ending ‘racket’. The second half looks at free spirit…

Transformation

16 Aug 2007

Transformation is a compelling tale of one woman’s extraordinary life. An actor, dancer and environmental campaigner explains what she calls the transformation cycle, beginning in chaos and progressing full circle to order. Using her physicality and…

Cash In Christ

9 Aug 2007

Leaders of the Sunrise Church, husband and wife team Bob and Fanny Comfort, take us through a sing-along sermon as they try to recruit us into a church where we can get rich in Jesus. Teachings of Sunrise include the need for women to be beautiful, the…

Famished

9 Aug 2007

In this hammed-up musical, as our heroine awaits the safe return of her lover from some faraway land, singing/dancing zombies hit Victorian London.

Truckstop

9 Aug 2007

Few people would say parenting is easy and parenting a teenager can be a particularly thankless task, trying to decide when to rein them in and when to let them go. The role of the parent is further complicated when the child is mentally ill. Katalijne…

Michael Clark Dance Company

Tramway, Glasgow, run ended

13 Mar 2007

MODERN DANCE Bare breasts and the Sex Pistols - it could only be Michael Clark. Over the past 20 years, Clark has invented his own mini genre; a style of dance that pushes boundaries, dancers’ abilities and audience expectations. Performed as part…

Distracted

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 25 Nov

13 Nov 2006

NEW WRITING Morna Pearson’s piece forms part of the trilogy of new work presented in this new departure for the Traverse, each show performed in repertory by the same small company of actors, all directed by Lorne Campbell and designed by Lisa…

Les Parents Terribles

19 Jun 2008

REVIVAL Dundee Rep, until Sat 21 Jun The repression of our natural sexual urges was, in Freud’s view, a necessary step in the production of a civilised society. Mention this along with his theories on the Oedipus complex, and you can expect…

Swindle and Death

19 Jun 2008

NEW PLAY Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Thu 19 & Fri 20 Jun, then touring until Sat 28 Jun Great drama usually boils down to a battle between the rational and the irrational. It is the buttoned-up Pentheus fighting with the anarchic Dionysus. It is the…

The Sound of My Voice

5 Jun 2008

ADAPTATION Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 7 Jun Most people live a life torn between the conformities of consumerism and some more primal urge for happiness, yet we only really notice this schism when a person goes off the rails. One such…

The Wasp Factory

8 May 2008

REVIVAL Regal Theatre, Bathgate, Thu 15 May, then touring Our fractured, alienating and individualist society is bound to produce some disquieting anomalies among its youth. In a world where the first priority is self, our capacity to empathise with…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

24 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Dundee Rep, until Sat 26 Apr, then touring This popular modern fable focuses on introverted songbird Little Voice (Debbie Saloman), who retreats to her bedroom to escape the attentions of her boisterous mother, Mari Hoff (Elaine C Smith).

Romeo and Juliet

27 Mar 2008

CLASSIC Dundee Rep until Sat 29 Mar Is Romeo and Juliet really ‘the greatest love story ever told’? The breathy publicity for Dundee Rep’s latest production, featuring young, beautiful, talented actors Hannah Donaldson and Kevin Lennon as the…

The Unconquered

27 Mar 2008

REVIVAL Dundee Rep, Thu 3–Sat 5 Apr then touring Perhaps the greatest education we can receive is a sudden reorientation of perspective, and Torben Betts’ play, here revived by Stellar Quines in preparation for a tour ending in New York, makes this…

Bailegangaire

13 Mar 2008

When an elderly loved one prefers to live in the memories of the past, it often falls to their children and grandchildren to care for them in the present. Such is the case in Andy Arnold’s swansong as artistic director of The Arches, as Tom Murphy’s…

Static

28 Feb 2008

NEW WORK Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Feb, then touring It sometimes takes a brush with death to remind people of the truly important things in life, the shock instantly cutting through the meaningless static that surrounds us. Evoking memories…

Great Expectations

14 Feb 2008

ADAPTATION Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Fri 15 & Sat 16 Feb; Paisley Arts Centre, Thu 21 Feb; MacRobert, Stirling, Tue 26 Feb Much of Charles Dickens’ most successful work draws on his own life experiences. Strange, then, that perhaps his most…

Clarinda

31 Jan 2008

MUSICAL If all the plays about Robert Burns produced over the last two decades were laid end to end, they’d surely build a bridge to Belgium, yet there’s still an appetite for such pieces at this time of year. And why not - there’s no shortage of…

Translations

31 Jan 2008

MODERN CLASSIC The astonishing achievement of Brian Friel’s 1980 reflection upon colonialism and its consequences, here produced with some style by Andy Arnold’s Arches company, is the subtlety with which it springs its trap. From a quiet beginning…

The Glass Menagerie

17 Jan 2008

MODERN CLASSIC Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 9 Feb For all its insight into character and human emotion, Tennessee Williams’ earliest hit is perhaps the least of his major plays, with the excesses of sentiment in the text too often…

St Nicholas

29 Nov 2007

ONE MAN SHOW Eastgate Theatre and Arts Centre, Peebles, Thu 13 Dec, then touring. Reviewed at Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow) Critics may well shift awkwardly in their seats during this piece, and it’s nothing to do with the hard benches in the Citz…

A Sheep Called Skye

29 Nov 2007

CHILDREN’S THEATRE Duns Volunteer Hall, Langtongate, Sat 1 Dec, then touring If the question of identity plagues people throughout their adult life, it might seem a good idea to get a start on resolving the problem early on. This seems the central…