The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but when an out of work actor is approached by a mysterious stranger to role play some dark past in Tim Foley’s play, the experience awakens subterranean forces that rise from the grave in a terrifying display of nocturnal psychic terrorism. No, this ingenious bite size production by the Wigan based ThickSkin company isn’t a reboot of The Woman in Black or any of the other hammy horrors doing the rounds over the last few years. Rather, Neil Bettles’ production of Foley’s late night yarn is an altogether more up to date take on supernaturally inclined pulp fiction. Our host Joe wears baggy jeans and works in a bar to make ends meet. His posh boy ex represents everything Joe hates in the cliquey theatre scene, so when even posher local David hires Joe to pretend to be a ghost to scare David’s nieces holed up in his country pile, it looks like a pretty lucrative gig. Once Joe gets on site, ...
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars A school reunion opens the National Theatre of Scotland’s suitably monumental looking twenty-first century reboot of Muriel Spark’s classic novel. Beside a semi circular coliseum style staircase that dominates the stage, a grown up Sandy Stranger and her less likely peers from the girl gang once known as the Brodie Set rewind on their between the wars adolescence that shaped them. This, as we know, was down largely to the mercurial figure of Jean Brodie, the self mythologizing libertine whose every inspirational utterance in David Harrower’s simmering new adaptation sounds like a victory speech. Gayle Rankin’s chic and sensual Brodie first appears striding down the steps of Chloe Lamford’s epic set looking part Hollywood diva, part demagogue. Her students follow, initially looking more St. Trinian’s than Edinburgh’s Marcia Blaine School for Girls. This is a fleeting pre-cursor in Vicky Featherstone’s production for when they...