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Dead Man's Cell Phone

The Arches, Glasgow Neil Cooper 3 stars There are few things more pervasive in this gadget-obsessed society than the ringing of a mobile telephone. The mere possibility of some life-changing call is so great, it seems, that staying in touch at all times is crucial. Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Sarah Ruhl makes this abundantly clear in her increasingly absurd study of just how desperate making a connection can be. It starts inconsequentially enough, with a man and a woman sat at separate tables in a quiet little diner. If the possibility of flirtation is there then no-one's saying much about it. Only when the man's phone rings in earnest is the woman, Jean, prompted into an action that steers her on a picaresque adventure involving grieving mothers, wronged mistresses and loving brothers, not to mention the proposed sale of a kidney in a South African airport. Ruhl's play may only have been written in 2006, but so far has technology come in terms

Knives in Hens

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars Two kilt-clad women tear around a bottle-strewn stage flashing their knickers to the strains of Lulu's 1969 Eurovision winner Boom Bang-A-Bang, repeatedly whipped off their feet by a similarly apparelled man who looks like he's fallen off a Scots Porridge Oats ad. A vaulting horse sits next to a brightly-coloured mini carousel on which assorted bodies collapse. Three microphone stands are lined up in front, enabling actors Duncan Anderson, Susan Vidler and Owen Whitelaw plus dancer Vicki Manderson to be heard above the din, be it a Tammy Wynette classic or an Edith Piaf showstopper as the action erupts into a hell-for-leather maelstrom that looks part Olympic gymnastic display, part demented mardi gras. These aren't the most obvious trappings to accompany David Harrower's 1996 play, a flint-hard rural affair about a woman who finds liberation from her faithless marriage to a ploughman through the power of words taugh

Touched

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars A plane crash and a stray bullet changes everything in the lives of the group of twenty-somethings in Chris Thorpe's 2009 play, originally seen at the National Student drama Festival and revived here by director Jane Hensey and an eight-strong ensemble of final year acting students from RSAMD. Yet it takes a ghost to become the social glue that holds this complex web of friends and lovers dealing with matters of everyday life and near-death experiences as together as they'll ever be. At first glance, Daniel Sawka's Dan appears to be just another prodigal back-packer heading back to the town he fled with a set of anti-war stories acquired while protesting against globalisation in exotic climes. But as he strikes an almost too free-and-easy liaison with his old friend Mel's flatmate Laura, it slowly becomes clear that the mess he left behind will go on to define them, no matter how much Helen Macfarlane's Tash pretends it

Dominic Hill - From The Traverse to the Citz

Anyone visiting Edinburgh's Traverse Bar Cafe recently will have noticed a brand new set of posters adorning the far wall. These posters aren't for shows currently holding court in Scotland's new writing theatre, however. Nor are they advertising the Traverse's 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme, announced on June 9th. These posters actually illustrate every in-house show produced at the Traverse since the arrival in January 2008 of Dominic Hill as artistic director. These range from Zinnie Harris' wartime drama, Fall, through to co-productions with the National Theatre of Scotland, Oran Mor and, with Edinburgh International Festival, Rona Munro's The Last Witch. Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Ursula Rani Sarma's The Dark Things, Linda McLean's Any Given Day, and, most recently, Chris Hannan's swashbuckling take on The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain are all up there. It's an impressive body of w

Bronte

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars An all-pervading slate-grey gloom hangs over Polly Teale's impressionistic biography of the three most famous female siblings in English literature. It's not just the spartan austerity of Ruth Sutcliffe's bare floorboarded set, on which sits little more than a wooden table and chairs for comfort. Nor is it the way Chahine Yavroyen's lighting blurs between starkness and shadows. It's something instead about how Nancy Meckler's bare-bones revival of her 2005 production for Shared Experience taps into the way Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte each seem to inhabit a space beyond the daily grind that no-one else can touch, and which liberates them even as it roots them to the spot. So when Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Cathy from Wuthering Heights burst onto the stage, it's as if all the women's desires have exploded into a vivid technicolour daydream that can't contain their inner lives anymor

Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell

Theatre Royal, Glasgow 3 stars What, one wonders, would the late Jeffrey Bernard have made of the internet age? The image of Fleet Street's original legend in his own somewhat extended lunchtime and old soak in residence of Soho hostelries blogging from the corner of his sainted Coach and Horses while necking several large vodkas is an appealing one. Whether this would mean Bernard would meet his deadlines at last instead of having his byline perennially appended with the immortal 'is unwell' is another thing entirely. In lieu of such a scenario, Keith Waterhouse's affectionate 1989 homage to this spectacular gambler, drunk, ladies man and scoundrel is probably the nearest we'll get to such dispatches. Traditionally a vehicle for well-preserved leading men of a certain age, Waterhouse's play here finds a twinkly-eyed Robert Powell stepping into our hero's crumpled suit and coming to in the now locked bar he calls home at 5am. Fuelled by enoug

The Wars of the Roses

Scottish Youth Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars By opting to tackle the holy trinity of Shakespeare's history plays, RSAMD's final year acting students, under the guidance of the annual Bard in the Botanics summer festival, have set themselves a huge task. Yet with three directors at the helm, the cast of twenty-one survived Saturday's seven hour marathon with aplomb, even if their characters didn't. Major parts are split throughout, with some canny cross-gender casting making Amy J Ludwigsen's Buckingham look part Brief Encounter, part Bond villainess. So where in the Marc Silberschatz directed first part Kevin Leask's Henry V1 is a precocious bible-clutching cherub, by Jennifer Dick's take on the second play Adam Donaldson's version is savvier if just as useless. Similarly, Rachel Handshaw's coquettish Queen Margaret matures into the voluminous orange wig sported by Amandine Vincent and, in Gordon Barr's final part, the even steelier P