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
Adam Smith Theatre,
Kirkcaldy Four Stars
It’s a case of whoops, there goes the neighbourhood twice over in Rapture Theatre’s revival of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opens in 1959 in the same Chicago suburb where Lorraine Hansberry’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun, which appeared that year, is set. Here, Robin Kingsland’s Russ and his wife Bev, played by Jackie Morrison, are preparing to move out of their now almost empty des-res following a family tragedy.
Unknown to them, the bargain basement price tag has enabled a black family to move in, with Jack Lord’s uptight Karl a self-appointed spokesperson for the entire ‘hood. Russ and Bev’s black maid Francine (Adelaide Obeng) and her husband Albert (Vinta Morgan), meanwhile, bear witness to a barrage of everyday racism. Fast forward half a century, and a white family are trying to buy the same house, albeit with a heap of proposed changes which the black couple representing the block’s now much more diverse community aren’t…
It’s a case of whoops, there goes the neighbourhood twice over in Rapture Theatre’s revival of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opens in 1959 in the same Chicago suburb where Lorraine Hansberry’s drama, A Raisin in the Sun, which appeared that year, is set. Here, Robin Kingsland’s Russ and his wife Bev, played by Jackie Morrison, are preparing to move out of their now almost empty des-res following a family tragedy.
Unknown to them, the bargain basement price tag has enabled a black family to move in, with Jack Lord’s uptight Karl a self-appointed spokesperson for the entire ‘hood. Russ and Bev’s black maid Francine (Adelaide Obeng) and her husband Albert (Vinta Morgan), meanwhile, bear witness to a barrage of everyday racism. Fast forward half a century, and a white family are trying to buy the same house, albeit with a heap of proposed changes which the black couple representing the block’s now much more diverse community aren’t…
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