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
Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
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