Botanic Gardens, Glasgow “It’s like Wimbledon,” shouts one wag mid-way through the second half of Jennifer Dick’s production of Shakespeare’s island-set elegy, as a ground-sheet is dragged across the set after the show is halted two thirds of the way in once the rain starts. If ever there was a more appropriate play for the annual Bard in the Botanics season of open-air theatre, The Tempest is it. It’s a shame that the unseasonal elements have been against it to the extent that completing the play before the heavens open has been rare. Because there is much to praise about Dick’s approach, which, by concentrating on the play’s magical aspects, looks and feels like some long lost off-cut from spectral film-maker Kenneth Anger’s archive. This effect is accentuated by a cast whose faces are made up in white, and who, when not onstage, observe proceedings as if peering into some celestial looking-glass. As he conjures up an imaginary storm on Giggy Argo’s wooden shipwreck of a set, Stephen Clyde’s Prospero pulls the strings even more than usual, even if much of it plods shapelessly along. By all accounts, the last half hour of Dick’s production is where Dick's concept really comes into its own, as pretty much all of what’s gone before is revealed to be the isolated imaginings of a Prospero adrift from the real world. This sounds like a fascinatingly poignant construction that makes total sense of the previous longeurs. Sadly, since last Saturday when the ground-sheets were pulled over the set, real life storms have prevented Prospero’s magic from even beginning their flights of fancy. If the fates allow, this weekend’s final two scheduled shows may survive yet. The Herald, July 6th 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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