Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars Alison Peebles is on her feet for the entire eighty-five minutes of her new show, devised with Belgian director Lies Pauwels and an ensemble of three dance artists and a little girl for the National Theatre of Scotland. For this most charismatic of actors, it must be agony. Not for having to carry this defiantly impressionistic meditation on her life as a performer who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis twelve years ago, although that must be hard enough. Rather, for a woman who confesses her love for shoes but who can’t wear high heels anymore, having to watch lithe young bodies stretch, pirouette and cavort with choreographed perfection from the front corner of the stage must add insult to an injury that’s not of her making. This, though, is the point of the exercise, which puts the body politic centre-stage in a series of routines underscored by a jukebox full of early 1960s pop hits, and played out in a mint-coloured room with a glass-fronted pink boudoir at the back. The little girl sports a sparkly scarlet dress as she announces a potted history of Peebles’ wild years. One of the performers dressed as a ballerina spins out of control, showing off injuries of her own. Another howls into a microphone, while the sole male onstage dances in the same scarlet frock. If this is all post-modern showbiz, only the bobbed figure of Peebles in a dressing-gown is for real. Led carefully out in heels once more, as she turns physical debilitation into a fiercely defiant work of art, the pleasure on Peebles’ face as she gets to walk tall once more is an image to treasure. The Herald, September 14th 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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