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Richard III

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars There is a moment in Jennifer Dick's four-actor adaptation of one of Shakespeare's second longest play when the audience for her Bard in the Botanics production in the Kibble Palace are goaded into joining in a chant of 'witches.' The rabble-rousing chorale is aimed at Vanessa Coffey's Queen Elizabeth, at the time the most powerful woman in the room. Cheerleader in chief is a would-be spin doctor who duly films the response, presumably with the aim of streaming it online. The moment is the perfect illustration of how political discourse can descend into ugly name-calling when populist ideologues dog-whistle their front-line cannon fodder into action. Neither is it hard to see parallels with those who today would chase female politicians down the street in packs, haranguing them as they go. This is the world whipped up with malevolent relish in Dick’s own production by Robert Elkin's Richard, a camouflage-clad bu

Hamlet

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four Stars On a calm night, the dusk that falls over Glasgow as Bard in the Botanics' outdoor production of Shakespeare's angstiest tragedy can't help but add atmosphere as the play moves to its grim conclusion. Opening with a coffin lying in state as a funeral procession gathers to honour the death of the king, the wedding that follows is just as bleak for a still black-clad Hamlet, who takes a tantrum as widowed Queen Gertrude gets hitched to her dead husband's brother. The twist here us that, rather than being a sulky Prince, Hamlet here is a woman, played with fire and steel by Nicole Cooper as a foot- stamping, pistol-packing daddy's girl in mourning. This makes for a fascinating set of relationships, from the emotional ties between fathers and daughters onwards. In Hamlet's case, her loss causes her to lash out at all about her, with the tensions with her mother ramped up even more by her brattish unwillingness to accept

Act of Repair

CCA, Glasgow Four stars Are you seeking Sanctuary? This may be a line from 1970s dystopian sci-fi flick Logan's Run, but it applies with an equal sense of foreboding to this up to the minute piece devised, written and performed by the young people who make up this year's Scottish Youth Theatre National Ensemble. Under the direction of Brian Ferguson, the twenty-strong ensemble lay bare a scarily familiar futurescape, where an online idol offers dream tickets for a new luxury housing development where all mod cons and a whole lot more besides are at your fingertips. Providing, that is, you stay in line with what the Siri-like voice says is good for you and don't stray too far from the cameras watching your every move. In a scenario that fuses both Orwell and Endemol's ideas of Big Brother with 1960s TV show, The Prisoner, rebellion is inevitable, as the young people kept in line by digital means rise up. Sanctuary here is a place which doubles up as lo-fi