Yasmin Sulaiman

Cirque du Soleil: Quidam

16 Apr 2009

Cirque du Soleil might be celebrating its 25th birthday this year, but the French-Canadian company, which has made a name for itself across the world with its foundation-shifting take on traditional circus acrobatics, shows no signs of lagging behind in…

Lorraine Mariner - Furniture

2 Apr 2009

(Picador) POETRY COLLECTION It’s a far cry from Bridget Jones, but there’s still something about Furniture that is likely to appeal to the chick-lit generation. British poet Lorraine Mariner’s first full-length poetry collection is suffused with…

Be Near Me

19 Mar 2009

The story of a priest who stirs up a riot of anti-Catholic feeling in a Protestant Ayrshire town after a drunken fumble with a teenage boy might not instantly sound like it would travel well outside the west of Scotland or Ireland. But, since its…

Mari Strachan

5 Mar 2009

From The Catcher in the Rye to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, literature in English is littered with novelists attempting to capture the bold yet naive voice of adolescence. In her debut novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat, Welsh writer…

An Inspector Calls

19 Feb 2009

REVIVAL Before Oscar glory reached British director Stephen Daldry, he won plaudits at the English National Theatre in 1992 with a powerful re-imagining of JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. The production won four Tony and three Olivier awards, and…

Defender of the Faith

5 Feb 2009

TROUBLES DRAMA The power sharing deal struck by the DUP and Sinn Fein in 2007 may have suggested to the world that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were finally over but the impact of decades of violence has permanently left its mark on the public…

Kitty Sewell - Bloodprint

22 Jan 2009

PSYCHODRAMA Kitty Sewell’s second novel is decked out in the same suspense-fuelled livery as Ice Trap, her internationally successful debut. The often melodramatic storyline crams in tropical hurricanes, Eastern European gangsters, brutal sexual…

The Witches of Eastwick

27 Nov 2008

MUSICAL The compelling formula of Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City can be traced to US writer John Updike’s 1984 novel, The Witches of Eastwick, in which three frustrated women invoke cosmic powers to summon their ideal man. They are…

Four Men and a Poker Game

13 Nov 2008

ADAPTATION Today, news on the financial crisis is ever-present: it’s on our TV screens, our radios, and now it’s even on our stages. Later this month, the Tron will host a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s little-known short story, ‘Four Men and a…

West Side Story

30 Oct 2008

From Charles-Francois Gounod’s 19th century opera to Baz Lurhmann’s gun-toting 1996 film, there’s been no shortage of momentous adaptations of Shakespeare’s love epic. But of all the play’s modern reworkings, West Side Story continues to be one of the…

Mary Rose

30 Oct 2008

Fans of Lost will be familiar with the supernatural powers a (seemingly) deserted island can possess. However, it seems the US TV show’s creator JJ Abrams had an unlikely forerunner – Scottish playwright JM Barrie. While Barrie is more commonly…

Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

30 Oct 2008

The only three-time winner of the Norwegian Literary Critics Award, Dag Solstad follows up 2006's much praised Shyness and Dignity with this sophisticated, sometimes claustrophobic, representation of a mid-life crisis coming to an extreme end. The plot…

A Slow Dissolve

16 Oct 2008

NEW WORK Last year, Barry Henderson’s first play, the Edward Hopper-inspired A Pleasant Kind of Loneliness, impressed critics when it premiered at the Arches. A Slow Dissolve, his new commission from Glasgay!, could well be the sleeper star of…

Cherry Blossom

2 Oct 2008

MULTI-MEDIA PLAY Catherine Grosvenor’s Cherry Blossom is an impassioned attempt to represent the experience of Poles migrating to the West, while Lorne Campbell’s direction ensures that the play – performed in English and Polish – is understandable…

Humble Boy

18 Sep 2008

REVIVAL Following its 32-week sell-out nationwide tour of Abigail’s Party, London Classic Theatre returns to Musselburgh with Charlotte Jones’ award-winning Humble Boy. Artistic director Michael Cabot has mixed memories of his last visit to Scotland…

Macbeth

18 Sep 2008

CLASSIC On the surface, Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s Macbeth is set up brilliantly. Set in medieval Scotland – as opposed to modern gun-slinging versions – we see a wild, desolate land; large wooden beams rising into the air, creating a fortress around…

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

4 Sep 2008

It's been 54 years since Seven Brides for Seven Brothers set a new bar for Hollywood big screen productions, but, as a new national tour of the musical suggests, it's still undergoing numerous theatrical reincarnations. What exactly is it about this…

Jim Rose Circus

Flat return for Fringe legend

21 Aug 2008

The return of the Jim Rose Circus to the Fringe has been heralded with all the fanfare of a second coming - a strange deification, considering the show is set in Hell. Sadly, the carnivalesque sideshow atmosphere of yore has been obliterated in…

Joan Rivers - Work in progress by a life in progress

New York's comedy diva explores the ageing process - again

21 Aug 2008

It has fallen to Joan Rivers, the world's best-known female comic, to provide some much needed glamour at this year's Fringe. Clad in a black pantsuit and hot pink shawl, the crude magnetism of her celebrity status keeps the packed house fixed on her…

The House of the Grape

21 Aug 2008

'People just look at the star rating,' says Patrick when his French café gets a one-star review. 'They don't read in between the lines.' Like the restaurant, which he tries in vain to save from ruin, this play is unsalvageable. Lifeless and irritating…

Another Side of the Mirror

21 Aug 2008

Lynn Ruth Miller returns to the Fringe to perform another chapter in her fascinating life. Now nearly 75 years old, she presents her memories to us with joy and candour. From anecdotes about her Romanian grandmother to her long battles with illness…

Candide

21 Aug 2008

Despite a lively performance from Prentis Hancock as Voltaire, this one-man production fails to catch fire. The biting satire that makes the story so riveting simply doesn't emerge from behind the dialogue-heavy script, and the colourful characters…

Titus Andronicus

14 Aug 2008

The blood and guts-strewn storyline of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is executed here with real flair. Condensing its weighty narrative to a tightly-wound 75 minutes, the play’s themes of rape, murder and race are laid bare in all their savage glory.

Wheels of Life

From Russia – via Glasgow – with love

7 Aug 2008

It’s hard to call Wheels of Life, the new production by Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, a ‘play’ as such. Huddled in the intimate Theatre Workshop venue, the audience is confronted with a macabre toy box of intricate artistic contraptions; a captivating maze…

The Third Condiment

7 Aug 2008

The Third Condiment is a charming, often amusing tale of a group of twentysomethings trying to get on in an increasingly corporate world after one of them invents and tries to market an alternative to salt and pepper. Despite the frequently witty…