Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Teenage Flo has been brought before her social worker and a policeman to find out why she hit her teacher. Flo is in care, her best friend has died, and she writes stories to help her survive. When a mysterious figure wielding a guitar appears and encourages Flo to take charge of her life and live it on her own terms, the sanctuary she finds when she runs away isn’t always what it seems. As opening gambits go, one might be forgiven for presuming Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse’s new play for their Wonder Fools company to be an exercise in everyday social realism. Instead, while Flo’s traumas are explored, Nurse’s production takes a more fantastical turn, as Flo ends up at a kind of fantasy dinner party with historical figures after stumbling on a Shangri-la of sorts in the hills of Dumfries and Galloway. The fair on Kelton Hill is occupied by serial killer William Hare, vainglorious national bard Robert Burns, and feminist f...
Theatre Royal, Glasgow Five stars Almost two decades have passed since the National Theatre of Great Britain’s monumental staging of Michael Morpurgo’s anti war novel first galloped into life in a heroic co-production with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company. Since then, the horrors of battle Morpurgo depicts have become ever more pronounced, even without the horses forced to lead the charge as they were in the First World War that ripped the world asunder several times over. At the heart of this, of course, is Joey, the horse bought at market in rural Devon, and who becomes young Albert’s best friend before being sold off to the army and ending up on the frontline with a million others. Essentially what follows is a story of the bond between a boy and his horse. Beyond this, its epic rendering says something about holding on to some kind of belief system even as the bombs fall. The interplay between Joey and Tom Sturgess as Albert is genuinely moving to witness...