Theatre and Mark Fisher

Interview: Alan Cumming on staging a one-man Macbeth

Aberfeldy’s most famous son on the toil and trouble of Shakespeare

25 May 2012

How much doom and gloom can one man take? For most actors, it would be enough of a mental burden to take on the role of Macbeth, the warrior king whose ambition leads to self-destruction. But for Alan Cumming, that’s only the start of it. In a new…

Class Enemy

A different class

14 Aug 2008

When Nigel Williams’ Class Enemy made its debut at London’s Royal Court in 1978, hip hop was still a phenomenon of the American underground. It would never have occurred to a director to incorporate it into this portrayal of a bunch of teenagers in a…

Early mourning - 4.48 Psychosis

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Nine years ago, uncompromising playwright Sarah Kane ended her own life. In an old Warsaw variety theatre, Mark Fisher is shaken by a mesmerising staging of her final work.

Diciembre finds dark humour in Chile's Pinochet years

Teatro en el Blanco go back to basics with politically engaging EIF production

16 Jul 2010

The Pinochet years continue to leave a deep scar on the Chilean psyche. Playwright Guillermo Calderón tells Mark Fisher why Diciembre tackles some dark memories but still finds humour in his nation’s tortured past

Gerry Mulgrew - The Lesson

2 Oct 2008

Gerry Mulgrew is a smart director, but when he’s in the rehearsal room he prefers to work from instinct. ‘I respond to Peter Stein when he says a director should have unlimited enthusiasm and absolutely no idea of what he’s going to do,’ says the man…

Theatre critic Mark Fisher on the Shakespeare productions planned for 2012

Alan Cumming, David Hayman and more to stage the Bard next year

13 Dec 2011

In 1964, the Polish critic Jan Kott published Shakespeare, our Contemporary. The book caused a stir for framing a long-dead playwright through the lens of 20th century totalitarianism. Director Peter Brook was delighted to find a commentator who could…

Just Checking charts bride-to-be whose OCD is getting the better of her

Very physical piece from Taggart actor

16 Feb 2011

For an actor, no job is for life. Not even when you’re the star of Britain’s longest running cop show. So when Blythe Duff (aka DI Jackie Reid) found herself in between series of Taggart in 2009, she thought it would be prudent to have another string to…

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

11 Dec 2008

ADAPTATION If you’re in doubt about the Christian allegory lurking behind the Narnian fantasy of CS Lewis, just look at the treatment meted out to Daniel Williams as Aslan in this stage adaptation. Relinquishing power to Meg Fraser’s scarily…

Moonwalking

16 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY Her play clocks in at less than an hour and will be performed in front of an audience eating their lunch, but you can’t fault Nicola Wilson for ambition. Moonwalking, part of Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint season, considers nothing less…

Jackie and the Beanstalk

Johnny McKnight's panto manages to entertain while challenging traditional gender roles

7 Dec 2011

According to panto dame Dott Von Trott, things have got so bad in the austerity-stricken pantosphere that ‘parents in Bridge of Allan have started firing their nannies and learning their own kids’ names’. Serious times indeed, and there’s something…

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…

Preview: Dennis Kelly's After the End to be staged by both the Citz and Dundee Rep

25 Apr 2011

When actors Jonathan Dunn and Nicola Daley take their final curtain call in June, they will say goodbye to After the End. But fear not. After the end of that After the End, it will be time for another After the End. That’s because, in a rare moment…

The rising stars of Scottish theatre

Interviews with Helen Darbyshire, Gary McNair, Gemma McElhinney, Katy Wilson and Scott Fletcher

7 Mar 2011

Helen Darbyshire Age: 22 Where will I know her from? She’s on Dundee Rep’s graduate scheme, which gives a year-long contract to promising actors straight out of college. Brought up in nearby Cupar, she introduced herself to Dundee audiences in a minor…

The Edinburgh Fringe shows taking human trafficking as a theme

Roadkill and Lost Boy amongst Fringe shows telling refugees' stories

29 Jul 2010

A celebrity endorsement works wonders for your box office and all power to Shatterbox for getting Emma Thompson to put her name to its production of Fair Trade. But that show is only the most high profile in an unprecedented wave of Fringe productions…

Peter Brook's 11 and 12 marks director's return to the Glasgow and Tramway he transformed

22 Mar 2010

Let’s start with some history. Throughout the 20th century, Glasgow was as dangerous as it was dreich. You couldn’t leave your tenement slum without being stabbed. It was a bonus if you avoided a head-butting. A trip to the steamie or even to your…

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…

Balgay Hill - Simon Macallum

28 May 2009

Today we associate Dundee with the enterprising work of Dundee Rep’s ensemble, the world-class art at DCA and the tourist attractions of the City of Discovery. It’s a place the Victoria and Albert Museum can consider setting up a northerly outpost…

Sunset Song

2 Oct 2008

ADAPTATION It was some time in the early-60s when His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, last produced a play of its own, barring the annual pantomime. To return to the fray with a ten-strong company and a mainstage tour after so long was ambitious but…

Offshore

2 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY It’s easy to imagine that the countryside exists without money. With all that fresh air, isn’t cash just a distraction? Of course, just as the wilderness is actually the result of centuries of industrial exploitation, so the rural population…

Don Juan

Juan for the ladies

4 Sep 2008

Misogynist, sex god or libertine? Don Juan is all this and more, as theatre director Jeremy Raison tells Mark Fisher

Hippo World Guest Book/Longwave

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

When Chris Goode called his company Signal to Noise he was thinking about the nature of communication. The two shows he’s bringing to the Fringe this year are a case in point.

Mark Fisher on The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide

Theatre critic's book of essential advice to aspiring Fringe performers

1 Feb 2012

1 Choosing a title takes ages It’s as straightforward as they come, yet The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide was a title born of months of discussion. The subtitle, How to Make Your Show a Success, was arrived at no quicker. My editor couldn’t believe…

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…

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…

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…