Steve Cramer

Once and for all, it's just a matter of opinion

Steve Cramer's festival blog

18 Aug 2008

I don’t know, perhaps it’s me. There’s always one show of every festival where a critic appears to be out of kilter with his peers. For me, this festival the show would appear to be Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are, So Shut Up and Listen…

Educating Rita

5 Feb 2009

REVIVAL If there’s a consistent thread that runs through the work of Willy Russell, it’s the need for escape, usually from a stagnant class system that oppresses his protagonists. Yet his work is more nuanced, less moralistic than you might expect.

The Sick House

18 Sep 2008

HORROR (18) 104min (Showbox DVD retail) Young archaeologist (Gina Philips) finds her research into London’s great plague of 1665 barred when public health officials reveal that the former orphanage she is excavating still contains plague.

Tony Blair: The Musical/Tony! The Blair Musical

1 Aug 2007

You knew it was coming! More colourful than Derry Irvine’s wallpaper, more expensive than a peerage, but a bit less fictional than the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Yes it’s the musical version of old Pinocchio’s political life. Or two versions, in fact…

A Slow Air

Nationhood explored and deplored

8 Aug 2011

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…

JM Barrie: Peter Pan Man - a play by Anne Stenhouse

23 Jul 2009

Few lives could have been as dogged by mortality as that of JM Barrie. From his childhood, much of which he spent imitating his brother (who died in a bizarre skating accident), through his youth, and on to his latter days, those close to Barrie were in…

The Body Politic - The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

22 Jul 2008

A story of prostitution, oppression and torture might not sound like fun, but throw in a bit of belly dancing and you have a Fringe hit. Steve Cramer talks to Craig Murray, formerly our man in Uzbekistan, about baring souls on stage.

Ten Plagues - Mark Ravenhill musical inspired by London Plague of 1665

Marc Almond stars in anticipated 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show

27 Jul 2011

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…

I Was There: The Mahabharata

The List's 25th Birthday Special

16 Sep 2010

Peter Brook brings his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata, to the Tramway, 13 Apr 1988. By theatre critic Steve Cramer.

Pedestrian

Fishy tale from an engaging performer

12 Aug 2010

Tom Wainwright’s monologue, which he performs with simple but effective animation creates a man haunted by the surreal vision of a giant goldfish. Said Piscean apparition appears in a recurrent dream, while its narrator walks through the shopping…

Inspector Sands - If That's All There Is

9 Mar 2010

If the maudlin humour and languid disenchantment of the Peggy Lee number ‘Is That All There Is?’ appeals to you, then this new piece which riffs an entire tepid kind of romance from Lieber and Stoller’s song should appeal. Inspector Sands’ debut…

Romeo and Juliet

16 Aug 2007

Having finally got over Baz Luhrmann’s version, it feels like we can move on to a new approach to this popular, if flawed, old Shakespearean standby. If Peter Meineck’s version for Aquila doesn’t quite make for a new ‘standard’, it certainly…

New directions

Philip Howard, the longest-serving artistic direct

16 Oct 2006

As Philip Howard walks towards my booth in the far corner of the Traverse bar, I am reminded, not for the first time, of an Englishman abroad, at least in that sense that we foreigners are taught to think of them. There’s something undemonstrative…

The Oh Fuck Moment

Uneasily entertaining afternoon of reflection on human frailty

8 Aug 2011

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…

Italia ’n’ Caledonia

Unpretentious tales of the family history behind Valvona and Crolla

23 Aug 2010

Two amiable old boys (Mike Maran and Philip Contini) sing and gag their way through the history of the families that formed Edinburgh culinary institution Valvona and Crolla. Along the way we hear of their struggling starts as entrepreneurial emigrants…

Threshold

Disturbing examination of ritual and primality

14 Aug 2010

This three-hour theatre experience begins with a gorgeously shot, if largely inaudible, film which alludes to sexual repression in a menacing manner. A coach trip ensues, during which a soundtrack is played which intercuts classic love songs with a…

We Will Rock You

Steve Cramer sets his reservations to one side to make a positive case for the Queen musical

15 Oct 2009

It’s a very queer place indeed on the other side of the looking glass. Within weeks of the Conservative Party staking a claim to be the defenders of the poor and downtrodden, along comes a classic catalogue McMusical, which sets out its stall as the…

The Yalta Game

Love story in duologue

1 Sep 2009

The giddiness of love, as well as the dark cynicism that can sometimes undermine it, is a thematic concern to which Brian Friel’s work frequently returns. In this loose theatrical adaptation of Chekov’s short story ‘Lady with Lapdog’, we see an…

The Last Witch - Rona Munro

12 Aug 2009

Outside of panto season, it’s difficult to find a dramatist these days who’s keen to write about witches. While the idea of witchcraft might bring a certain primal frisson to some, and a sociological fascination to others, the contemporary theatre has…

Sylvia Plath - Three Women, The First Revival

Rare production of the poet’s play, with fine performances

12 Aug 2009

There’s more than a touch of the poet and playwright herself in each of the three titular characters in Robert Shaw’s production of what was originally a radio play from 1962. The triumvirate of voices are those of a wife (Louisa Clein), a secretary…

A View From the Bridge

28 May 2009

One of the gifts that made Arthur Miller such a significant dramatic writer was his ability to capture the world of Greek tragedy – on the face of it an unfamiliar theatrical landscape with its dark blood feuds, incest and primal passions – and make it…

Glasgay! - Tennessee Williams

18 Sep 2008

Some years ago, I attended a conference where a debate about the work of Tennessee Williams came very nearly to blows. The bone of contention involved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which the character Brick confesses an attraction to a friend that surpasses…

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 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…

Lucy Prebble's play Enron deals with financial crisis

Celebrated play on UK tour, including run at King's Theatre, Edinburgh

3 Nov 2010

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…