Mark Fisher

4.48 Psychosis

13 Nov 2008

MODERN CLASSIC It doesn’t seem right to say you have enjoyed Sarah Kane’s final play. Written not long before her suicide in 1999 and staged posthumously, it is a poetic evocation of the mind of someone in the depths of clinical depression. There are…

Jean Muir

Absolutely fabulous

30 Oct 2008

Jean Muir didn't invent the little black dress, but she made it her own. The trailblazing designer, who established her own label Jane & Jane in 1962 before branching out under her own name in 1966, was loved not for her catwalk extravagance or her…

Cockroach

30 Oct 2008

It sneaks up on you unexpectedly, this full-length debut by Sam Holcroft. At first, she gives the impression of writing a lightweight comedy of high school life; all cat-fights, smashed windows and detentions. But something is afoot in the biology…

Marat/Sade

30 Oct 2008

Call it a testament to the human spirit or the will to triumph in the face of adversity, but for some reason, after the interval, the audience comes back. Perhaps, they are thinking, it is a mistake to imagine the acting is terrible. Maybe, they hope…

The Caretaker

16 Oct 2008

CLASSIC Directing a classic Harold Pinter play is, says Philip Breen, like staging an opera, so exactly is it written. ‘Every pause is written for a reason and he’s always right,’ says the director, returning to the Citz after his successes with…

Peter Pretsell

16 Oct 2008

PRINTS AND PAINTINGS There’s a light-hearted sense of joy and goodwill in these two parallel exhibitions celebrating the four-decade output of the late Peter Pretsell, who was both student and lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art and, appropriately…

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…

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…

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…

Don Juan

2 Oct 2008

CLASSIC John D is a 21st century mover and shaker. He sets up meetings with celebrities, has his photograph on billboards and indulges in high-profile charity work. He is all ego and, as played by Mark Springer, both charismatic and…