Mark Fisher

Saturday Night

Matthew Lenton and Vanishing Point further explore the themes of 2009's Interiors

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…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

Theatre director Phillip Breen discusses forthcoming adaptation of Peter Nichols' play

Phillip Breen is only 32, but already he has the honour of straddling three regimes at the Citz. Straight out of university in 2003, he was taken on by Philip Prowse to direct The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, returning at the invitation of Jeremy…

One Thousand and One Nights

Flagship EIF production feels like a rediscovery of a lost classic

There’s a tremendous life force pulsating through director Tim Supple’s reclamation of these ancient folk tales. It’s a life force that exists, most palpably, for Houda Echouafni’s Shahrazad, whose survival depends on her ability to spin a yarn and…

(g)Host City

Edinburgh audio tours from spoken word performers

First thing in the morning, I’m standing on top of Calton Hill looking out to Arthur’s Seat, Princes Street and the Pentlands. It’s a view I never tire of, but on my headphones Jenny Lindsay is giving a different message. ‘Edinburgh, you old tart,…

Und

Tough play with the meaning stressed out

Howard Barker is a playwright loved by academics for the challenges thrown down by his knotty ‘theatre of catastrophe’ and by actors for the chance to get their tongues round his muscular language. His writing is tough, poetic and…

Emergence

Death becomes the Pachamamas

It’s always tricky to deal with grief on stage. By its nature, it is an emotion that comes after the fact, making an audience feel it has missed out on the main event. It cannot be resolved in the way any other dramatic conflict is resolved. This…

The Golden Dragon

Global stories to take away

Roland Schimmelpfennig’s 2009 play, a bit hit in Germany, is a gift for a director. His characters are blank canvases with names such as ‘The Young Woman’ and ‘The Man Over 60’. Much of their dialogue is written in the third person, stage directions…

Allotment

Sweetly observed play taking place on a real allotment with free cup of tea

Whatever happens to Dora and Maddy, the chalk-and-chips sisters at the heart of Jules Horne’s sweetly observed play, you know they will be outlived by their surroundings. The soil beneath their feet, the weeds that have persisted for millions of years…

Man of Valour

Mime and punishment

Haven’t we been through this before? Wasn’t it some time in the 1970s we stopped being dazzled by mime artists? Didn’t we pretty quickly realise the means of telling a story are never as interesting as the story itself? It seems not in the case of…

101

Group hugs, cult chants and it’s all your fault

Back with three new immersive scenarios after causing a stir last year, the 101 team show just how compelling theatre can be with the most elementary of resources. No special effects, no set, scarcely anything you’d call a costume and yet the young…

Elegy

Moving story of a flight from persecution

The last time Douglas Rintoul was in Scotland was to direct a revival of David Greig’s Europe at Dundee Rep. There’s something of the flavour of that migratory play in this powerful production for the internationally minded Transport company, as actor…

The One Man Show

Late-night high-tech deconstruction with Jaffa Cakes

So post-modern it hurts, The One Man Show is a piece of theatre about watching a piece of theatre. It has a mysterious start, a set of emotional states, a philosophical moment where we cough and eat sweets, a cheesy musical interlude and a point when we…

Uncompromising take on One Thousand and One Nights at 2011 EIF

Centrepiece theatre production of Edinburgh International Festival 2011

It begins in classic once-upon-a-time style. 'A long, long time ago lived two kings who were brothers,' goes the opening line of One Thousand and One Nights. 'The elder, King Shahrayar, ruled India and Indochina. The younger, Shahzaman, ruled…

Theatre, music and dance highlights from the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Semiramide and King Lear among picks

The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) has been a benchmark for quality and innovation in the performing arts since its inauguration nearly 65 years ago. This year artistic director Jonathan Mills builds his programme around the multi-faceted…

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

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…

Ivan and the Dogs explores notion of feral children

Theatre piece based on true story of Ivan Mishukov

You wait 18 months for a play about feral children, then two come along at once. Not since NIE’s My Life with the Dogs in the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe have we heard the true story of Ivan Mishukov, a four-year old boy from Moscow who lived with a pack of…

The rising stars of Scottish theatre

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

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…

Sir Derek Jacobi ready to tackle role of King Lear

Michael Grandage director builds production around 72-year-old actor

‘You would never do Lear without an actor in mind,’ says Michael Grandage. The outgoing director of London’s Donmar Warehouse has had just such an actor in mind for several years. He has built his acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy…

Production of Mother Courage and her Children set for tour

Alison Peebles tackles Bertolt Brecht’s study of economic survival

‘She’s like a lioness with her cubs – she keeps them close,’ says Alison Peebles preparing to take on the formidable title role of Mother Courage, the powerhouse at the heart of Bertolt Brecht’s study of economic survival in the 30 Years’ War. She is a…

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

Very physical piece from Taggart actor

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 Rise and Fall of Little Voice set for Dundee Rep

Classic Ugly Duckling story of a young person overcoming life’s obstacles

It was good news for Helen Darbyshire when she checked in with the voice doctor. Before committing to the part of Little Voice in Jim Cartwright’s play, she wanted to be sure her vocal chords were up to the task. This is a character whose pathological…

Manipulate festival - Puppetry and animation festival avoids the P word

Traverse season features cult animation and visually arresting films

Simon Hart is trying not to use the P word. When he describes his annual Manipulate festival, he prefers to call it a celebration of visual theatre (with the teasing strap line: ‘innovative theatre arts for consenting adults’) than to say anything about…

The Story Of How We Came To Be Here ...

Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan make move from visual art to theatre

The Story Of How We Came To Be Here, What We Did Before We Got Here, How You Have Forgotten Why You Asked Us Here And Why We Cannot Remember Why We Came, Or: Is This What Brings Things Into Focus? Every time Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan submit a…

Sea and Land and Sky historically unconvincing despite wartime diary source

Pretty speeches have little narrative momentum

‘The only thing that scares us is a dying child,’ says Carmen Pieraccini as Lily, a Scottish nurse facing a burning village on the World War II frontline. It is an image of wartime heroism we are not used to seeing. In Abigail Docherty’s play, winner of…

Jeremy Raison's production of A Clockwork Orange

Swansong show from Citizens Theatre director

Jeremy Raison says one of his favourite films is Brazil. Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece is part of a sub-genre known as ‘retro-futurism’, as if someone in the 1940s had predicted what the 1980s would be like. For Raison, who is directing A Clockwork…