Inveresk Lodge Gardens, Musselburgh 4 stars The joy of gardening, by all accounts, comes with the sense of purposeful distraction it brings alongside the appeal of growing things in a way that remains both practical and creative. Much the same can be said for Dora and Maddy, the two sisters in Jules Horne’s deliciously brutal play, performed outdoors in Nutshell’s touring revival of the company’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit. As the audience are welcomed into one of East Lothian’s most charming nooks with tea and scones, there’s an initial village fete feel to Kate Nelson’s production. This is accentuated by actors Nicola Jo Cully and Gowan Calder’s chatty pre-show introduction that segues into the show itself. At first the siblings are, in Maddy’s words, “young and immortal,” burying their teddy-bears and launching dismembered Sindy dolls from aloft the shed roof as the garden becomes den, playground and safe haven from the grown-up world. The falls which go on to define each sister at opposite ends of the play, however, become Eden-like metaphors as much as life-threateningly physical. Horne’s richly-textured and really rather lovely script is full of little symbolic touches like this that are brought to life in a vivid piece of dramatised story-telling shot through with a dark, whip-smart wit that digs beyond the play’s emotional top-soil. As Maddy and Dora blossom into increasingly troubled womanhood, Cully and Calder occupy their characters with a sense of wide-eyed grotesquerie that still manages to retain a sense of broken humanity. The effect is of a green-fingered Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, but with warmth tempering the day to day venom beneath in a loving study of sibling rivalry in extremis. The Herald, September 10th 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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