Steve Cramer
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3rd Ring Out: the Emergency
23 Aug 2011
An intelligent audience-led thriller
If it’s not perfect in execution, this piece is both intriguing and thought-provoking. The audience is ushered into a container functioning as an emergency response room and required to make life-and-death decisions about an ecological catastrophe in…
The World According to Bertie
23 Aug 2011
A well performed, interestingly staged production
Alexander McCall Smith’s prose is brought pretty niftily to the stage as part twee New Town soap opera, part mild satire. An 11-strong cast bring to vivid life the various dramas amidst the chinking tea cups of Edinburgh’s bourgeoisie, centring on the…
Llwyth (Tribe)
22 Aug 2011
Overlong play with little to say about contemporary life
Dafydd James’s text deals with issues of home and relationships, of both blood and fraternity, as well as the responsibilities these bring. Thirty-something Welshman living in London returns home to Cardiff and hooks up with his old friends from the gay…
Federer Vs Murray
17 Aug 2011
Geopolitics, war and tennis
Any illusion that the tennis match of the title will be at the centre of Gerda Stevenson’s production of her own text is quickly dispelled in this transfer from Oran Mor’s admirable Play, Pie & Pint lunchtime theatre strand. Yet the game plays a…
Lol
16 Aug 2011
Touching humour in suburban comedy, but no new ground broken
A middle-aged housewife, lonely spinster and posh man-eater find they are romantically involved with the first woman’s husband via a dating site. Rosalind Adler gives a lively performance as all three from her own text, with some touching humour in this…
I, The Dictator
14 Aug 2011
Enjoyable one-man performance on encounter between Charlie Chaplin and Hitler
One can’t help but reflect that Romuald Wicza-Pokojski’s production which speaks of Charlie Chaplin’s (Krystian Wieczynski) encounter with Hitler’s henchmen while he struggled for money to complete The Great Dictator, loses a little in translation from…
Snails and Ketchup
11 Aug 2011
Dynamic one-man Calvino adaptation
This version of Italo Calvino’s story The Baron in the Trees dispenses with the verbal action and substitutes physical theatre, multimedia and acrobatics to tell its story. Ramesh Meyyappan gives a dynamic performance, transforming into several…
What Remains
8 Aug 2011
Plenty of creep, not enough deep
There is something in all of us that relishes a scary story, and Ben Harrison’s production for Grid Iron certainly doesn’t stint in this regard. Set at the medical school of Edinburgh University, this piece alludes ceaselessly through music and visuals…
A Slow Air
8 Aug 2011
Nationhood explored and deplored
In David Harrower’s new play a struggling middle-aged builder (Lewis Howden), haunted by an entirely inadvertent contribution to the Glasgow Airport bombing, is provoked into reflections about his estranged sister (the performer’s real-life sister…
Spent
8 Aug 2011
Razor-sharp agit prop satire
If you live in the UK, you’d never know it, but agit prop is alive, well, and indeed thriving in the world of theatre. An impressive exemplar exists in the shape of this sharp-as-a-tack satire, which incorporates clowning, physical theatre and…
A Celebration of Harold Pinter
8 Aug 2011
Pinter wonderland manages not to sink beneath the hype
The danger that accompanies any theatre event accompanied by movie star hype is that the piece itself becomes lost under the brouhaha surrounding its presenters. With John Malkovich directing Julian Sands for this piece, that was always the danger, but…
The Oh Fuck Moment
8 Aug 2011
Uneasily entertaining afternoon of reflection on human frailty
We’re ushered into a boardroom where two performers join us in discussing horrifying human errors, from the embarrassingly rude, through the sexually ill-fated, and on to the physically terminal. This is an uneasily entertaining afternoon of reflection…
Ten Plagues - Mark Ravenhill musical inspired by London Plague of 1665
27 Jul 2011
Marc Almond stars in anticipated 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show
There’s something about apocalypse that has run through the human psyche, and a great deal of art, for over a century. Be it HG Wells’ Martian invasions or Ballard’s Great Droughts, these scenarios are often about moments where everyday life and our…
Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)
2 Feb 2011
Stands alongside Suspiria as one of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films
(18) 121/100min (Arrow) Deep Red stands beside such work as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria as the most interesting of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films. Its captivating visuals, all clean lines, whites and chromes contrasting…
Ving Rhames gives compelling performance as Sonny Liston in Phantom Punch
2 Feb 2011
Poor supporting performances dog gangster movie by numbers
(15) 100min (Metrodome) Perhaps the most duplicitous aspect of Robert Townsend’s account of the life of heavyweight champ Sonny Liston is the title itself. Liston’s rematch with Mohammed Ali ended early with a punch that simply didn’t look like a…
National Theatre hit The Habit of Art set for Glasgow Theatre Royal
15 Nov 2010
Alan Bennett’s play explores artistic relationship between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten
From Picasso’s vaguely prurient late work, to Yeats’ references to tits and bums in his later poems, great artists have often taken great pleasure in alarming their audiences by entering into a second childhood with alarming sexual references. In Alan…
Lucy Prebble's play Enron deals with financial crisis
3 Nov 2010
Celebrated play on UK tour, including run at King's Theatre, Edinburgh
At last year’s Edinburgh Festival, only the National Theatre of Scotland’s Caledonia, an enjoyable if not completely successful production based around the Darien misadventure of the late 17th century, addressed the current financial crisis. The reason…
Nic Green’s Trilogy and David Leddy’s Sussurus among highlights of IETM
27 Oct 2010
Umbrella group assembles Glasgow theatre festival bill
At a time when the threat of cutbacks hangs over Scottish theatre, it might be wise to take a good look at this theatre arts conference, for much of the work being showcased will not – if the auguries are true – be seen again on this scale for some…
New Dundee Rep production of Ibsen's A Doll's House
29 Sep 2010
Jemima Levick directs new version of play by Samuel Adamson
In an era where the term ‘banker’ has become disparaging rhyming slang, certain great classics of the theatre can be viewed with a new slant. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the profession of husband and implacable patriarch Torvald implies the utmost…
I Was There: The Mahabharata
16 Sep 2010
The List's 25th Birthday Special
Peter Brook brings his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to the Tramway, 13 Apr 1988. By theatre critic Steve Cramer.
Punk Rock
10 Sep 2010
New writing preview
There’s a great tradition in British theatre of using schools, be they the privileged public school system or the local comp, as metaphors for the various ills that have beset the whole country. The latest foray into this territory comes from one of the…
A Play, a Pie and a Pint
10 Sep 2010
200th anniversary
Since its inception in 2004, Oran Mor has become rather like a mobile phone to the Scottish theatre: you managed to cope fine before you had one, but these days it’s hard to imagine how. Sustaining itself on box office takings, support from the venue…
Roadkill, The Author and 30 Days to Space worthy 2010 festival winners
7 Sep 2010
Steve Cramer's Festival blog
I know it’s not quite over, but with respect to the last couple of shows of the International Festival, now might be the time for the Festival’s final report card. This year’s Festival, if it has shown some good work, still creates the uneasy feeling of…
Myth of the far-left agenda in Alastair Beaton's Caledonia
1 Sep 2010
Steve Cramer's Festival blog
In my last blog, I accused many of the companies engaging in the Fringe of lacking courage, and I’m sticking by it. You can always tell when there’s a political elephant in the room at a fringe, since invariably the more pusillanimous companies visiting…
Tales From a Cabaret
25 Aug 2010
A series of increasingly sinister jokes and songs
In the underground vault of Fingers Piano Bar two actors in white face, bowler hats and shabby suits first give us a history of cabaret culture. They go on to a series of increasingly sinister jokes and songs, reminding us that the history of…
