Mark Fisher

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…

Sea Wall

Pray silence for an exquisite performance

8 Aug 2009

Alex does not voice the cruellest words he ever spoke. We don’t actually hear the dreadful phrase he utters to his father-in-law. But we can imagine it. Playwright Simon Stephens is too subtle a craftsman to allow his central character to blurt it out…

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.

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…

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…

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

3 Sep 2009

Right, pay attention at the back. You boy, straighten your tie. Now, you all know why you’ve been called back for detention with Professor Dawkins and, frankly, you’ve only got yourselves to blame. He explained it all very carefully in The Selfish Gene…

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…

Travel - Stavanger

17 Jan 2008

If Disney had designed the streets outside Duncan Robertson’s studio, you’d say it was too Mickey Mouse to be true. Like the view of the sunlit mountains that skirt the edge of the city, the wooden houses of Stavanger’s old town are chocolate box cute.

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…

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Tension-filled hour of Edgar Allan Poe’s psychological chiller. Barrie Kosky made his mark last year with the vulgar extravagance of Poppea, a show that blended Monteverdi opera with the songs of Cole Porter. Now he’s back with an altogether more…

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…

Naked ambition - Nic Green's 'Trilogy'

Mark Fisher meets the theatre-maker who’s still proud to call herself a feminist

23 Jul 2009

Nic Green was leading a discussion recently when a young man questioned her use of the word ‘feminism’. ‘No one wants to hear that word, can’t you call it womanism?’ he asked.

Mercy Madonna of Malawi

Adopting a view of the Material Girl

21 Jul 2009

It’s reasonable to assume Robert Magasa never expected to land his latest stage role. He is tall, male and black and speaks with a distinct Malawian accent, characteristics that should disqualify him from playing Madonna, a pop star famous for being…

Heer Ranjha (Retold)

27 Nov 2008

NEW PLAY Two kids from opposite sides of the tracks. She’s a glamorous socialite, daughter of the owner of a successful chain of Scottish restaurants and a Sikh of Punjabi origin. He’s a suicidal job-seeker who’s never left the country and, although…

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…

Mother Courage And Her Children

18 Sep 2008

CLASSIC It’s an austere landscape through which Ann Louise Ross drags her cart, scratching a living in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s epic. Naomi Wilkinson’s set is a wall of grim metal panels, the stage a carpet of grey. Even the iconic cart is…

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…

One Thousand and One Nights

Flagship EIF production feels like a rediscovery of a lost classic

22 Aug 2011

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…

The Golden Dragon

Global stories to take away

12 Aug 2011

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…

Uncompromising take on One Thousand and One Nights at 2011 EIF

Centrepiece theatre production of Edinburgh International Festival 2011

7 Jul 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…

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…

Pantomimes

27 Nov 2008

Earlier this year, I took a trip to Scarborough to check out the headquarters of the Qdos Entertainment empire. This is the organisation responsible for 21 pantomimes in the UK alone, not to mention a handful of theatres, a couple of talent agencies…

Louise Bourgeois: Nature Study

5 Jun 2008

PAINTING, SCULPTURE Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Jul It’s a weekday lunchtime in spring and the Royal Botanic Garden is teeming with new life. Mothers push buggies, primary school children dig into the earth and the plants are a riot of…

Glasgow Comedy Festival - Chris Addison

MISSION CONTROL

27 Feb 2007

When you look back across the shows Chris Addison has brought to the Edinburgh Fringe over the past decade it’s hard to imagine there might be a unifying idea. What link could there possibly be between Atomicity, a show about the fabric of the universe…