Dundee Rep 3 stars If Dundee was Scotland’s first female-led republic, it is all but reborn in Sharman Macdonald’s epic tale of life in the city’s jute mills during the 1930s depression. Wages are being cut every week, and a strike led by would-be writer Isa looks imminent. Elsewhere, legendary singer and Spanish Civil War veteran Paul Robeson is booked to play the Caird Hall, and auditions are underway for a local choir to back him up. In some respects, the latter element reflects the sheer scale of Jemima Levick’s production, which puts some forty women onstage to deal with Macdonald’s multi-layered narrative. This begins with a sick child, a loaded gun and some mass constructivist choreography before opening up Alex Lowde’s huge skewed tenement set where smaller lives epitomised by Isa and her feisty sisters dwell. If Isa’s aspirations lead towards Spain, other women make different choices. For some, sexual allure will keep them in glad rags, while mill owner’s wife Moira Blair short-changed herself years ago. Even Isa, luminously played Joanne Cummins, must face up to the brutal life and death realities beyond the romance of revolution and the liberating power of song. The choir’s auditions rub up against the tenement scenes with a busyness that at times feels overloaded. That’s not to say this isn’t a play full of heart and soul, led as it is by a principle cast of nine featuring such mighty talents as Barbara Rafferty, Carol Ann Crawford and Morag Stark, and supported by the Rep’s Young Company and Community Company. When the onstage chorus drawn from the theatre’s Women’s Singing Group accompany Robeson’s recorded voice at the play’s most poignant moment, its power is immense. The Herald, September 17th 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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