David Laing

The Dogstone/Nasty, Brutish and Short

13 Nov 2008

NEW WRITING DOUBLE BILL The ongoing Debuts season presented by the Traverse both confounds and confirms the expectation invited by the listless opening effort Cockroach and the possibly gloomy subject matter (the darker side of the Scottish family)…

Noises Off

18 Sep 2008

REVIVAL Bringing farce to the fore, Michael Frayn’s 80s parody is touring once again, revealing the merry antics of a second-rate theatre company both on and off stage as it struggles with its ludicrous sex comedy, Nothing On. Nestling at the core…

Sunset Song

4 Sep 2008

Director Kenny Ireland is looking to instil some pride in the nation's literary heritage by bringing Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic tale of community, national identity and sexual awakening back to the stage. Set in an early 20th century farming…

Fleeto

4 Sep 2008

The perceived increase in knife crimes on the streets of Scotland is steadily raising awareness of a deadly culture creeping through the nation's young population. Knives continue to be used only in around eight percent of violent crimes, but it's the…

The Factory

Vivid Holocaust journey

21 Aug 2008

'They came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.' Attributed to Martin Niemöller, this sentiment comes to mind during Badac Theatre's disturbing and compelling reconstruction of the death journey of so many of Hitler's final…

The Lie-in, the Itch and the Whore's Robe

Ikea-style physical theatre

21 Aug 2008

This comment on the consumerist ideology that holds us all together like a gargantuan supermarket carrier bag, imparts the notion of an overly ordered life with a fairly diverting blend of dance and rhyme. As a shrieking, nagging housewife coerces her…

Shafted

21 Aug 2008

Three men with motives for murder are trapped in a lift. As the lights flicker out, one succumbs to a macabre death in a straightforward thriller that even Stephen King would struggle to twist to life. Two valiant performances are dwarfed an almost…

Blue on Blue

21 Aug 2008

The subject of Afghan ambushes is pushed into the realm of cliché in this three-hander. Suffering after a possible friendly-fire incident, an American servicewoman shacks up with a Mujahedin rebel. An engaging performance from Arran Shanti fail to…

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…

Wanderlust

14 Aug 2008

Sometimes a performance is only as good as the audience that’s watching. This has never been more true than in Wanderlust, in which ten-foot Fraulein Hilda narrates her surreal life story. From her lowly (geddit?) roots, be-stilted Hilda weaves her…

Three Flying Solo

14 Aug 2008

One of three new plays under the ‘Flying Solo’ banner, Annie George’s Noor evokes striking and vivid images in an intimate autobiographical journey. Charting the details of a tempestuous relationship, Noor narrates her miscarriage and despair, each…

Charlie Victor Romeo

Tense slice of cockpit-set verbatim theatre

7 Aug 2008

The cockpit of an aeroplane is one of those intriguing but concealed nooks – like the vestry of a church or the wings of a theatre – generally forbidden to lay people, but which provide endless fodder for the imagination. What exactly is going on behind…

Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Action-packed Big Top Shakespeare

7 Aug 2008

Making their first ever appearance at the Fringe, the travelling company that started life in a Cornish barn succeeds in proving that there's no such thing as too much when it comes to Shakespeare. Firmly entrenching the view of the Bard's comedies as…

The Expert at the Card Table

Biographical trickery

7 Aug 2008

Never play cards with Guy Hollingworth. Concentrate as you may, those hands are too darned quick. As the crafty conjurer exhibits his prodigious talent at card chicanery, he employs an affable Englishness Hugh Grant would be proud of to relay the life…

The Fooligan

Tall tales by candlelight

7 Aug 2008

Al Seed displays an enviable gift for storytelling alongside a physical prowess to rival Max Wall in this one-man show. A vibrant series of clowning tableaux breaks up this atmospheric tale within a tale, as Seed recounts the exploits of one of the…

Plastic

7 Aug 2008

Mehrdad Seyf's exploration of gender identity descends quickly from a damp, fetid and warm ground-level cellar to cool, white vaults as the audience is encouraged to consider how the body we inhabit determines our sexuality. Like an underworld imagined…

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

5 Aug 2008

Dale Wasserman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, which celebrates one man’s attempt to subvert subtle hegemonic control, is given a treatment here that few texts deserve. Across the clumsy set, which resembles the whitewashed innards of an inside-out…

Outward Bound

5 Aug 2008

Camper than Kenneth Williams in a tent, Dan Hyde and Michele Flatto seize a school excursion as a backdrop for their patchy culture clash comedy. Part coming-of-age drama, part getting-to-understand-each-other buddy movie, this piece’s humour never…

War and Conflict

Theatre of war

31 Jul 2008

There’s always a profit to be made from war. The black market proved lucrative during World War II for the sale of rationed chocolate, coffee and cigarettes, while oil companies such as Halliburton have been kept ticking over nicely by the recent…

Fringe celebs

Star turns

31 Jul 2008

Joan Rivers, the funnywoman and enemy of Loose Women stars in her play on the ups and downs of ageing, Work in Progress by a Life in Progress. Karen Dunbar, the Chewing the Fat star gets serious in Denise Mina’s A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle.

Our House

3 Jul 2008

MUSICAL Theatre Royal, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Jul; Playhouse, Edinburgh, Mon 7–Sat 12 Jul Following in the footsteps of popular jukebox musicals Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You, comes this effort from writer Tim Firth (Calendar Girls), featuring the…

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…

Blackbird

5 Jun 2008

REVIVAL Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 9–Sat 14 Jun The gruesome ongoing discoveries in the Jersey abuse scandal and the uncovered horrors of Austrian Josef Fritzl’s secret basement have done little to quell the worst nightmares of parents. It is into…

Skin Piel (Without Sin)

8 May 2008

NEW WORK The Arches, Glasgow, Tue 20-Thu 22 May Morally questionable animal testing aside, in vivo research has proven its worth through centuries of scientific study, with experimentation on, or dissection of, entire systems providing valuable…

Abigail’s Party

24 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Brunton Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 1 & Fri 2 May Neighbourhood cocktail parties, with their inevitable cheese and pineapple sticks, are something of a quaint 70s throwback, but notions of an aspiring middle class have altered little in the past…

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).

Black Watch

10 Apr 2008

WORLD TOUR Rothes Hall, Glenrothes, until Sat 5 Apr, then touring While many Scots disagree with the continuing troop presence in Iraq, there remains an undeniable sense of pride in and anxiety for our troops overseas, and it’s this sense of a shared…

Gods are Fallen and All Safety Gone

10 Apr 2008

NEW WRITING Òran Mór, Glasgow, Mon 14–Sat 19 Apr The moment when a parent descends from their all-powerful pedestal to become a person just like everyone else can be shocking. Yet, the horrifying thought, as childhood dwindles, that our parents are…

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…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

27 Mar 2008

REVIVAL Perth Theatre, until Sat 29 Mar, then touring Scotland’s own Terry and June, Elaine C Smith and Andy Gray are brought together for this touring production of Jim Cartwright’s now familiar urban fairytale, which focuses on a young girl who…

Zorro: The Musical

27 Mar 2008

MUSICAL King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 25–Sat 29 Mar The renewed interest in superheroes that has taken place in recent years might owe something to the uncertain world we currently inhabit, but the enduring figure of the masked superhero owes a debt to…

Out on the Wing

13 Mar 2008

Oran Mor, Glasgow, Mon 17–Sat 22 Mar Being gay in the armed forces isn’t illegal any longer, but in the male-dominated world of sports, it would appear that, even in the 21st century, boys can only play football professionally if they’re avowedly…

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…

Jack and the Beanstalk (Cumbernauld Theatre)

13 Dec 2007

The Pitch Poor Jack (David Ashwood) spends his time milking the curiously udderless Buttercup in an effort to help his mother (Calum Beaton) stave off the bailiffs. Forced to get rid of the old cow, Jack comes across circus entrepreneur Monbodo (Andy…

Jack and the Beanstalk (Cumbernauld Theatre)

13 Dec 2007

The Pitch Poor Jack (David Ashwood) spends his time milking the curiously udderless Buttercup in an effort to help his mother (Calum Beaton) stave off the bailiffs. Forced to get rid of the old cow, Jack comes across circus entrepreneur Monbodo (Andy…

Tony Blair – the Musical

23 Aug 2007

This slick production provides plenty of laughs and generous helpings of satire as it chronicles the achievements of the Blair premiership. A well-voiced and good-looking cast accompany the plethora of lyrically and musically impressive songs, providing…

Arnold Wesker’s The Mistress

23 Aug 2007

We are all capable of turning a blind eye to the painful or immoral acts that happen all around us. Arnold Wesker’s tale of a lover’s guilt finds fashion designer Sam (Martha Lott) transposing facets of her personality onto her dressmaking dummies as…

Miracle in Rwanda

16 Aug 2007

The 1994 genocide, which resulted in the deaths of almost one million people in only 100 days, forms the backdrop to the powerful and uplifting tale of Immaculee Ilibagiza’s survival. Forced to hide in a tiny toilet for three months with seven other…

Denied

16 Aug 2007

The continued threat of terrorism across the UK, combined with a heightened awareness of honour killings, form the basis for a play that attempts to question the beliefs that cause some Islamic women to be denied what most would consider basic human…

Forgotten Voices

9 Aug 2007

The idea that war can be glorious has long since been purged, and yet the lessons of the past seem not to have been learned. For over ninety years now, World War One should have been used as an example of the human cost of conflict, yet wars continue…

Woody Sez

9 Aug 2007

Although the pop star world-saving concert is something we have become accustomed to in recent years, the politically aware musician is not a new invention. Long before Sir Bono or Sir Geldof, storytelling songwriter Woody Guthrie had hits describing…

The Spoils

9 Aug 2007

Youtube videos of the final minutes of deposed former dictators give us all pause to consider the human rights implications and responsibilities of a conquering power. Formal shirts and ties may have replaced orange jump suits in Shady Dolls new…

Inside Private Lives

9 Aug 2007

The chance to ask our favourite celebrities questions about their personal lives is one that few of us would turn down. All too often figures in the public eye are shrouded in mystery, and it’s precisely the de-bunking of these myths that producer and…

Extropia

9 Aug 2007

‘Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one?’ So muses Winston Smith, hero of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the basis for machine-operator ‘August Eight’ in The Flying Carpet Theatre’s sci-fi adventure.

Coffee

9 Aug 2007

Before engaging in conversation or flirtation we make a number of assumptions about people based on the way they look, act or dress. Perhaps this is unsurprising in such an image-conscious society, but it is these assumptions that form the basis of…

Activity Sports - Snowboarding

Lower Slopes Drifter

27 Mar 2007

David Laing attempts to master one of the fastest growing sports in the world