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.

Steel Magnolias

Play made famous by big-screen adaptation is slight and horribly sentimental

27 Feb 2012

You should maybe seek a second opinion on this one. Judging by the full house and the warm reception, the Rep’s decision to stage Robert Harling’s play – best known for the big-screen adaptation with Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton – demonstrates a…

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…

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…

Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms to reopen in time for Fringe 2012

18-month refit and staff changes at George Street venue

25 Apr 2012

Say what you like about modern-day dress sense, but when Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms returns to life, today’s fashionistas will have some stiff competition. Yes, they’ll be excited about the opening ceilidh in July and the high-profile Fringe line-up…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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

Part of the furniture

1 Aug 2007

It’s the kind of thing any band could have dreamt up on a boozy night after a gig. ‘Instead of playing our guitars and drums,’ one musician would say, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we all played one big instrument?’ Everyone would agree and, of course, they…

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…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

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

13 Sep 2011

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

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…

(g)Host City

Edinburgh audio tours from spoken word performers

18 Aug 2011

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

17 Aug 2011

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

17 Aug 2011

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

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…

Allotment

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

11 Aug 2011

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

8 Aug 2011

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

8 Aug 2011

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

8 Aug 2011

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

5 Aug 2011

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

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…

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

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

7 Jul 2011

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…

Ivan and the Dogs explores notion of feral children

Theatre piece based on true story of Ivan Mishukov

18 Mar 2011

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…

Sir Derek Jacobi ready to tackle role of King Lear

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

24 Feb 2011

‘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

24 Feb 2011

‘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…

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice set for Dundee Rep

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

11 Feb 2011

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

14 Jan 2011

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

23 Nov 2010

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…