Tron Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars If Adam and Eve had scromphed down home-grown avocadoes instead of apples, things might have turned out a whole lot rosier in the garden. Or at least that’s the impression you get from the domestic Eden built by the biblically named Ade, Kane and Evelyn in Sylvia Dow’s new play, lovingly directed by Selma Dimitrijevic for the London-based Greyscale company in association with Stellar Quines. A couple, giddy on the possibilities of each other, fall together, set up home and play happy families, knee-deep in a forest of plants and acquired memories that gradually fill up their room. The latter is depicted via an extended wordless sequence that would put some furniture removal firms to shame, as the pair embark on a great adventure of magic moments and endless games of Scrabble. Things only darken with a seemingly estranged prodigal’s return and a death in the family that comes gift-wrapped. All this is implied rather than told in a very particular aesthetic employed by Dow and Dimitrijevic on Oliver Townsend’s pin-board set, from the way the actors loll about eyeing up the audience as they enter while one of them strums a guitar, to the final, multi-lingual, life-affirming chorus. It’s an aesthetic that falls just the right side of quirky in what is essentially an extended meditation on life, death and the love that clutters up the place in-between the two. If Dow’s ideas are big, there’s an essential warmth to the performances of Jon Foster, Andrew Gourley and Emilie Patry. This is accentuated by Scott Twynholm’s lovely score in a play that recognises that, whatever happens, life goes on regardless. The Herald, September 7th 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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