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...
Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The world has been turned upside down a million times over since Ayub Khan Din’s tragicomic portrait of multi racial back street Britain caught some kind of zeitgeist three decades ago. The play was successful enough to be turned into a hit film three years later. Both showed off what at the time was a milieu rarely seen on stage. Set in 1971 Salford, Khan Din’s study of chip shop owning Pakistani Muslim, George, his English Catholic wife Ella, and their noisy brood of British born mixed race children tapped into a volatile melting pot of cross cultural, pan generational family life. Half a century on from the play’s post 1960s setting, this new production comes with several lifetimes of cultural baggage in tow. Kash Arshad’s revival - a co-production between the Citizens, Bolton Octagon and Wiltshire Creative in association with Derby Theatre - stays true to the play’s roots in a bright, funny an...