4 stars The National Theatre of Scotland's third 5 Minute Theatre online extravaganza of bite-size plays performed largely live was focussed around the theme of youth. With some fifty-six separate performances beamed from hubs in Glenrothes, Glasgow and beyond in a myriad of classrooms, bars and living rooms, the event was run partly in parallel with this year's National Festival of Youth Theatre as well as the NTS' own young peoples' theatre programme, Exchange. The end result was a lively, non-stop five and a half-hour mix of rites of passage and a desire to be understood on the one hand, and a mourning for lost youth on the other. If technical gremlins hadn't prevented it, proceedings would have begun with Douglas Maxwell's 162 Bars Out, a lovelorn percussionist's interior monologue performed alongside Claire McKenzie's live orchestral score. Even on second, Maxwell's piece was a powerful dramatic lesson on the social and creative power of musical education. Elsewhere were vibrant meditations on knife crime, social media, a Julius Caesar on the streets of Belfast and a musical set in a dentist's reception. If many works leaned towards naturalism, all were keen to stress that young people had something to say. Kiana Kalantar-Hormozi and Elliot Cooper's the Curious Case of Tim, wonderfully performed by Cooper, especially captured the jumbled-up torrent of emotions growing pains bring with them. The final work performed was Uprising, a theatrical flash-mob orchestrated by members of Perth Youth Theatre. As participants seated in a refectory stood up one by one, it was akin to a scene from Spartacus. With the final words of the piece a defiant “Down with the government,” the future appears to be in safe hands. The Herald, July 16th 2012 ends
Peter Brook is no stranger to Scotland, ever since the guru
of European and world theatre first brought his nine-hour epic, The Mahabharata,
to Glasgow in 1988. That was at the city’s old transport museum, which by 1990
had become Tramway, the still-functioning permanent venue that opened up
Glasgow and Scotland as a major channel for international theatre in a way that
had previously only been on offer at Edinburgh International Festival.
Brook and his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord company’s relationship with Tramway saw him bring his productions of La Tragedie de Carmen, La Tempete, Pellease et Mellisande, The Man Who…, and Oh Les Beaux Jours – the French version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – to Glasgow.
Thirty years on from The Mahabharata, Brook comes to EIF with another piece of pan-global theatre as part of a residency by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, which Brook has led since he decamped to Paris from London in the early 1970s. The current Edinburgh residency has alr…
Brook and his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord company’s relationship with Tramway saw him bring his productions of La Tragedie de Carmen, La Tempete, Pellease et Mellisande, The Man Who…, and Oh Les Beaux Jours – the French version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days – to Glasgow.
Thirty years on from The Mahabharata, Brook comes to EIF with another piece of pan-global theatre as part of a residency by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, which Brook has led since he decamped to Paris from London in the early 1970s. The current Edinburgh residency has alr…
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