Royal Lyceum Theatre 5 stars It’s a glorious sleight of hand, putting Brechtian style cabaret performed by a genuine Fringe phenomonan into the Edinburgh International Festival theatre programme. In Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan’s vivid rendering of Shakespeare’s epic poem of one woman’s bloody violation and the self-destruction it inspires, EIF, along with the Royal Shakespeare Company, whose banner Elizabeth Freestone’s production falls under, have struck gold. The intensity of what ensues is difficult to gauge from O’Sullivan’s chattily casual entrance with pianist and co-composer Feargal Murray. Dressed in a floor-length death-black dress and wearing her hair tied up on a sumptuous-looking stage piled high with stacks of paper and descending wall-hangings that veer from stained to distressed, O’Sullivan segues her introduction into Shakespeare’s verse with a seamless charm her Irish accent lures you in with. This already is streets ahead of old-school readings of the poem, but when O’Sullivan moves into song, it becomes something else again, with Murray’s stark, down-tempo arrangements off-setting O’Sullivan’s mixture of torch-balladeering and laments with exquisitely nuanced richness. Together, all these elements conspire to construct something that is part contemporary spoken-word, part late-night songspiel, with the bluesy rasp that seeps out from around the edges of O’Sullivan’s voice lending a frightening and emotive weight to the story. This isn’t just a concert, however. When O’Sullivan removes her coat to reveal a plain white slip, she lunges out of narrator-mode to take on the role of Tarquin with a brutal venom that works her discarded garment into the fatal act that follows. The final song, delivered partly without accompaniment, may be laden with tragedy, but such a gorgeous piece of work can feed into O’Sullivan’s repertoire for decades. The Herald, August 23rd 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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