Steve Cramer

Pornography - Simon Stephens interview

Shock values - Traverse Theatre

17 Jul 2008

As the Traverse embarks on its first Edinburgh Festival Fringe season under the artistic directorship of Dominic Hill, Steve Cramer talks to acclaimed dramatist Simon Stephens, writer of Pornography, about 7/7 and a new definition of the pornographic

The Cellar Door

17 Jul 2008

THRILLER (18) 86min (Revolver DVD retail/rental) This is an interestingly shot, tense and to the point thriller, which belies its opening sequence in which a girl is sadistically tortured in the familiar tradition of Hostel or Saw to become a…

The Graveyard

17 Jul 2008

HORROR THE GRAVEYARD (18) 83min (Revolver DVD retail/rental) Michael Hurst’s horror film by numbers harks back very ineffectively to the three-decade-old genre conventions of Friday the 13th and Halloween. A prologue depicts a group of college…

The Graveyard

3 Jul 2008

HORROR (18) 83min (Revolver DVD rental/retail) Michael Hurst’s horror-by-numbers film harks back very ineffectively to the three decade old genre conventions of Friday The 13th and Halloween without evoking the slightest hint of the atmosphere. In…

The Sound of My Voice

5 Jun 2008

ADAPTATION Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 7 Jun Most people live a life torn between the conformities of consumerism and some more primal urge for happiness, yet we only really notice this schism when a person goes off the rails. One such…

Corona Classic Cuts

5 Jun 2008

NEW SEASON Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Sat 29 Jun King Lear in 50 minutes looks a pretty tall order, but it’s just one of four canonical classics reduced to lunchtime length in this new season from Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Producer David…

Swindle and Death

5 Jun 2008

NEW WORK Tron, Glasgow, Wed 11–Sat 14 Jun; Byre, St Andrews, Mon 16–Fri 20 Jun There’s a long history of plays by Scottish writers about the Scottish theatre, and too often these pieces become mired in self referential jokes. While Peter Arnott’s new…

Reality

22 May 2008

REVIVAL Tron, Glasgow, Thu 29–Sat 31 May A good three decades have passed since the talking heads of the media first declared masculinity to be in crisis. If at times this idea has been overplayed, there can be little doubt that the role of men in our…

The Drawer Boy

22 May 2008

SCOTTISH PREMIERE Tron, Glasgow, until Sat 24 May All of us live by personal myths; stories we tell ourselves about our own past actions that justify the present. It seems easy enough to uncover these in others, but much harder to identify our own…

Sleuth

22 May 2008

REVIVAL Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 26–Sat 31 May Since Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth first appeared in 1970, its countless revivals and two film versions attest to its capacity to intrigue audiences. But will the much-hyped, though ultimately slightly…

Nova Scotia

8 May 2008

NEW WORK Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 24 May Next time you’re trapped behind an oldie trying to use a cash point, quietly contemplating the benefits of euthanasia, you might want to reflect on Phil and Spanky, and buy yourself some patience.

The Wasp Factory

8 May 2008

REVIVAL Regal Theatre, Bathgate, Thu 15 May, then touring Our fractured, alienating and individualist society is bound to produce some disquieting anomalies among its youth. In a world where the first priority is self, our capacity to empathise with…

Jeremy Raison - The Sound of My Voice

8 May 2008

Perhaps it’s merely a coincidence, but it seems somehow appropriate that the Citizens’ Theatre production of The Sound of My Voice should premiere exactly 40 years after the Paris disturbances of May 1968. For this great outcry was not about a lack of…

Death Story

8 May 2008

NEW WORK Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May The thriller format that we’ve come to associate with Alma Cullen’s film and television work in such programmes as A Touch of Frost and Inspector Morse is abandoned in her latest play for a more reflective…

Streamers

8 May 2008

THEATRE ADAPTATION (15) 104min (Metrodome) The vexed issue of how to turn stage plays into cinema has haunted the movies for as long as the technology to make film has existed. This 1983 attempt by Robert Altman to film David Rabe’s noted mid-70s…

Out of the Blue

8 May 2008

TRUE CRIME (15) 99min (Metrodome) Robert Scarfies Sarkies’ drama based on a real life massacre that occurred in a small New Zealand seaside village, begins with a deceptively gentle and elegiac portrayal of small town life, before its explosion of…

The Drawer Boy - An interview with Andy Arnold

24 Apr 2008

The Tron seems to be undergoing its own version of a glorious 100 days at the moment as its newly appointed artistic director, Andy Arnold, hits the ground, not so much running as sprinting. The former artistic director of The Arches avows that a very…

Elephant

24 Apr 2008

VISUAL SPECTACULAR Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 3 May We’ve seen enough McTheatre in recent years to spot the big, spectacular, all singing, all dancing, massive special effect extravaganza a mile off. Inside the profession such shows are…

Trumpets and Raspberries

24 Apr 2008

FARCE Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 10 May Farce is a form that seems to thrive on dangerous times. From the great war disillusionment and depression that saw Travers and Coward at their peaks, on to the social revolution of the 60s that…

Les Vampires

24 Apr 2008

SILENT SERIES (PG) 339min (Artificial Eye DVD retail) Times of crisis are often also eras of escapism; yet the forms of art produced in such periods often unconsciously reflect the very crises we seek to escape. This is certainly the case in Louis…

Thirty Days of Night

24 Apr 2008

HORROR (18) 113 min (Icon Home Entertainment) While comparisons to Katherine Bigelow’s classic Near Dark might be a little exaggerated there are certainly some nicely built moments in David Slade’s vampire flick based on Ben Templesmith and Steve…

Dressed to thrill

10 Apr 2008

‘Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.’ Mark Twain’s wit might make a mockery of a favourite truism, but there’s much to be gleaned from the sentiment he satirises. From Macbeth’s alarmed cry to the witches, ‘Why do…

Trumpets and Raspberries

10 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Apr–Sat 10 May Even winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature have bad days at work. It might surprise you to know that Dario Fo felt he’d had one of these after the first preview of what, subsequently…

The Wasp Factory

10 Apr 2008

REVIVAL Tron, Glasgow, Thu 17–Sat 26 Apr The remarkable aspect of Iain Banks’ disturbing Grand Guignol first novel is its capacity to continue to fascinate 24 years after its first publication. The story revolves around alienated Frank, a teenager…

Educating Agnes

10 Apr 2008

CLASSIC Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 23 Apr–Sat 3 May Take a step back and it’s easy enough to see the vanity and self deception of those around you. A second step back might well reveal them in yourself. It’s this semi-conscious awareness that…