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Showing posts with the label Theatre - Review

A Giant on the Bridge

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   The Pains of confinement come in many forms in this contemporary chamber pop song cycle – gig theatre if you prefer - devised by director Liam Hurley and singer songwriter Jo Mango. Working with a group of songwriters, they draw from material developed during Distant Voices: Coming Home, a four year research project set up by criminal justice based arts organisation Vox Liminis and three university partners. The fourteen songs co-written with a host of unnamed participants channel the real life experiences of those within the system preparing to return home.    Cosiness abounds on designer Claire Halleran’s array of rugs, lamps and armchairs spread out on a stage filled with musical instruments.  Here, Mango and fellow singer-songwriters Louis Abbot of Admiral Fallow, Kim Grant, aka Raveloe, Jill O’Sullivan of Sparrow and the Workshop, Bdy_Prts and more, Dave Hook, aka Solareye, plus bassist Joseph Rattray, bring empathy and warmth to a moving c

Hamilton

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   “Immigrants,” West Indies born Alexander Hamilton and French émigré the Marquiss de Lafayette freestyle in unison in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s globe trotting hip-hop history musical. “We get things done.” American history has gone wild in the nine years since Miranda’s show came rhyming onto the stage like an old-skool block party on a grand scale. As Thomas Kail’s production arrives in Edinburgh for a two-month stint as part of its UK tour, Hamilton still possesses some of the unbridled optimism the Barack Obama era brought with it.   Here, after all, is the American dream writ large, as ‘bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman’ Hamilton hustles his way to power after arriving in eighteenth Century New York. Ushered into society by Sam Oladeinde’s Aaron Burr, who acts as MC, rival and eventually killer, Shaq Taylor’s Hamilton wants to be number one. As he networks all the big hitters,  words are his weapons, as he winds up in a double act of

Escaped Alone

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars Home and garden are sanctuary and safe house for the four women of certain ages who line up in Caryl Churchill’s quietly devastating play. As it digs deep into what lies beneath the small talk and shared experiences of friends on a sunny afternoon, a series of everyday revelations give way to something more globally seismic. It begins with Blythe Duff’s Mrs Jarrett stumbling on Lena, Vi and Sally catching some rays as they indulge in chit chat, gossip and tittle tattle as any group of long standing friends and neighbours might do. As everyday mundanities hint at more complex lives, each scene is punctuated with a monologue that reveal worlds of personal and global devastation. Churchill’s play may date from 2016, but Joanna Bowman’s post Covid pandemic revival now looks in part a prophecy of things to come. Ushered in by sound designer Susan Bear’s foreboding drones, Anne Kidd as Lena, Joanna Tope as Sally, Irene Macdougall as Vi and Duff as cuckoo in t

Two Sisters

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   They don’t make summers like they used to in David Greig’s new play, which plops its title characters in the Fife caravan park where they holidayed as teenagers. Amy is on the run from a volatile home life that sees her channelling all her lost dreams of becoming a rock singer into serial adultery. Emma is a lawyer in retreat, with notions of writing a novel. Not one where anything happens, mind. Just a story where people feel. A bit like Two Sisters, in fact.   As Amy and Emma take a cheap holiday to explore their own misery in designer Lisbeth Burian’s rusting hulk of a caravan, this prodigals’ return sees the siblings attempt to recapture how it feels to be sixteen again beyond their black and white grown up lives. When a blast from the past shows up in the shape of maintenance man and DJ Lance, the desire to unleash the terminal adolescent within causes both women to behave as if at some kind of end of term school disco snog-fest.   As d

Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success & Sex and the City

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   “How many of you have seen Sex and the City?” Judging from the response that bounces back at her opening gambit, Candace Bushnell knows her audience. This was the case too with Bushnell’s New York Times column and book that inspired Darren Star’s era defining TV adaptation that over the last quarter of a century set the template for every wannabe girl about town to try and step into her shoes.   Shoes are everywhere in Bushnell’s one-woman show. The stage is lined with a row of them, each pair in a spotlight to call their own and lined up like pretty maids in a row as if awaiting their mistress to give them a twirl.Prior to Bushnell’s entrance, a big screen mash up of Bushnell’s chat show introductions is somewhat surprisingly soundtracked by Leeds anarchist combo Chumbawamba’s 90s crossover smash hit, Tubthumping. This sets the scene for Bushnell’s entrance, a vision in scarlet who sashays her way through a living room set pinker than Barbie’s

Jesus Christ Superstar

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars   Like messiahs, some shows simply refuse to lie down. Take Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s half century old rock opera charting the last days of the ultimate people’s pin-up. The show’s most recent resurrection came in 2017 care of Timothy Sheader’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production. Sheader’s reimagining breathed new life into a show that had started to coast on its musical numbers alone, but which was now infused with renewed dynamism and depth.   Eight years on, with a fistful of awards and international tours under its belt, Sheader’s production remains a thrilling second coming, as Rice and Lloyd Webber’s glorious treatise on celebrity, rebellion and how the establishment can create martyrs out of radical chic steps into the post X Factor age.   A network of giant crucifixes become catwalk, dinner table and gallows in Tom Scutt’s set, which Ian McIntosh’s Jesus walks among as a baseball capped and hoodied up hipster with an acoustic

Plinth

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars War, memorial and the mythology of both explode out of Al Seed’s new solo show, which stopped off for a brief tour of duty at the Manipulate festival of visual theatre this weekend following its premiere in 2023. Ostensibly a reimagining of Theseus and the Minotaur story, in which the dashing prince Theseus seeks to slay the half-man, half-bull minotaur and end its killing spree, over an intense fifty minutes, Seed takes this ancient Greek yarn hostage to make it his own.   It begins with Seed standing on top of the platform that makes up the bulk of Kai Fischer’s battle scarred set, with Seed looking like a war game figurine on guard in an Action Man lookout tower. Coming to life twitching like an automaton on a loop programmed to kill, as all men of war are, Seed climbs down from his pedestal to take on all comers and rid the world of the enemy at the door.  Without a word spoken, the electronic clatter of Guy Veale’s score gives Seed’s trip int

Protest

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh  Four stars Once upon a time, there were three little girls who never dreamt for a minute they could change the world. By applying their passions to everyday endeavours, however, they end up making a difference, finding their voices en route. So it goes for Alice, Jade and Chloe in Hannah Lavery’s play for young people, in which assorted rites of passage and resistance puts the trio at the centre of grassroots activism.   All lined up against the brightly coloured wonders of designer Amy Jane Cook’s Paolozzi style adventure playground set, the trio take it in turns to tell their stories. As their criss-crossing narratives connect, they find common ground and strength in numbers enough to stand up for themselves and their assorted causes.   For Alice it’s being able to run races as an equal. Jade has to square up to racist bullying in the classroom. And Chloe has a small thing of an environmental crisis to deal with. Together, it seems, they can make everythi

Macbeth

Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh Four stars   The battle looks far from won as audiences enter this epic staging of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Walking through a battle-scarred landscape of burnt out cars and the debris of war, the sounds of jet planes and helicopters swoop overhead. Set designer Frankie Bradshaw’s evocative installation is quite a curtain raiser for what follows in the more formal interior where the show takes place.   There are the Witches for starters. T he three young women who  greet Ralph Fiennes’ camouflage clad Macbeth as he and Banquo are finishing their tour of duty appear like some New Age ragamuffin girl gang. As they promise Macbeth the world, the die is cast on the catastrophic power grab to come. Played by Lucy Mangan, Danielle Fiamanya and Lola Shalam, it is they who pull the strings here. In many ways in Simon Godwin’s production of Emily Burns’ adaptation, it is their play.   The royal clique the trio manipulate into self destruction are a back stabb

Jekyll & Hyde

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars Whatever literary purists might say, the poor things, classic fiction has always been up for grabs in terms of reinvention. This is certainly the case with Robert Louis Stevenson’s nineteenth century gothic novella, a short, sharp shocker that over more than a century now has been reimagined in many ways. Gary McNair’s new rendering sees the current master of the solo show shake Stevenson’s yarn to troubling new life in a slow burning monologue that cuts through to the dark heart of the secrets that lurk within us all.   Michael Fentiman’s production begins quietly enough, as Forbes Masson returns to the Lyceum stage for the first time in two decades to offer up a disclaimer that ends up framing the show, much as the sudden snaps of light and shade do between scenes. It is as if a series of Victorian peep show portraits were being immortalised on Max Jones’ picture frame set. Whether for posterity or evidence, Masson’s confessional as Utterson

Cassie Workman – Aberdeen

Summerhall, Edinburgh Four stars   Cassie Workman comes not to praise Kurt Cobain in her hour-long meditation on the life and premature death of the driving force behind Nirvana who became the doomed messiah of 1990s disaffected youth. Nor does the Australian comedian and writer come to bury her idol, even as he rises up to haunt her again and again.    As she draws her audience in close to confess all about her pilgrimage to the industrial Washington city where Cobain grew up  - or maybe didn’t – Workman digs beyond the acquired mythology that still surrounds Cobain, as well as her own hero worship. For Workman, then, like every other outsider fan who lost their guru and found their own sense of self, this is personal.   As she paces around the small rug that becomes her stage, Workman looks assorted audience members in the eye. Surrounded by them on four sides, she lays bare her epic tale in rhyming couplets. The effect of the eventual catharsis that follows sits somewhere between Gr

Same Team - A Street Soccer Story

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars It was Liverpool’s late, great Ayrshire born manager Bill Shankly who once famously declared football to be more serious than life and death. Let’s hope Shankly is looking down on this brand new play by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse, developed and created with the women of Dundee Change Centre. Here, after all, is a tale of teamwork and togetherness for five women who triumph in the face of adversity both on and off the pitch in a way that is very serious indeed.   The game these women play is not some money driven sausage fest, but the Homeless World Cup, the international competition founded in 1999 for teams of homeless people, with a women’s event begun in 2008, and running annually since 2010.  Bryony Shanahan’s Traverse company production kicks off as the audience enter to a fanfare of happy hardcore bangers. With the women already warming up, they invite those in their seats to limber up alongside them on designer Alisa Kalyanova’s five-a-si

England & Son

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars  Waking up in a bin at the back of Wetherspoon’s is something of an occupational hazard for the kid with the unfortunate surname played by Mark Thomas in Ed Edwards’ play. What happens to his mate who joined him on the mother of all benders, however, is even less pleasant.   Thomas’ boy, on the other hand, lives to tell the tale, as he is left with one more set of war wounds in a life already scarred by an upbringing marked by violence, loss and a messy descent into drug use. The shadow that hangs over all this is his dad, himself a casualty of war as cannon fodder caught in the crossfire of colonial genocide in Malaya.    Drawing from real life experience, Edwards’ monologue is brought to full brutal life in Cressida Brown’s production. Thomas’ confessionals are pulsed along by MJ McCarthy’s low-key but insistent sound design, and wrapped in occasional swathes of Richard Williamson’s blood red lighting.    Seen earlier this year on the Edinburgh

A Very Crypto Christmas

Summerhall, Edinburgh Four stars Love, apparently, is not only the true meaning of Christmas. According to less than sharp suited corporate wonks Warren and Stew, love is the driving force behind crypto currency, that curiously intangible online exchange that has apparently made some who buy into it exceedingly rich. Once the emperor’s new currency becomes worthless, alas, they become very poor indeed.    Warren and Stew’s hapless evangelical spiel comes with a bargain basement alternative to the bells and whistles power point presentations beloved of the regular corporate lecture circuit where many of their ilk tout their wares. To whit, a more interactive exchange - read that as audience participation - involves life size block chain choreography and anti banking escapology. There is a lo-fi re-enactment of a couple of Christmas crackers - sorry, classics - and a chocolate coin chucking competition that has shades of 1970s kids TV riot, Runaround. The retro feel is heightened even mo

A Christmas Carol

Dundee Rep Five stars One could be forgiven for thinking the mountain of flight cases piled in the centre of an otherwise empty stage is for an impending rock concert. Especially as Dundee Rep’s  troupe of actors are milling about the auditorium in standard issue front of house apparel before this new musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ festive classic by Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, aka Noisemaker.   Don’t be fooled, however, because while the cast eventually get to the story of Scrooge’s wake up call from miserdom after they channel a dressing up box of story books past, best keep an eye on those flight cases. As designer Emily James’ ingenious construction morphs into everything from a flying bed to a grave to something a lot more seasonal, the tower becomes integral to the show’s action.   The monumentally arranged pile is pretty much the only thing that stands still in Andrew Panton’s non-stop burl of a production, first seen in 2022. As Ewan Donald’s Scrooge faces up to

Sunshine on Leith

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars  The lights of Leith are very much on in the cityscape diorama that sits at the top of Adrian Rees’ set for this revival of Stephen Greenhorn’s long lauded Proclaimers jukebox musical. Sixteen years since Greenhorn’s concoction was first seen, and eighteen months after Elizabeth Newman’s production took the Pitlochry stage by storm, the show is as joyous and as heartbreaking as it ever was.   Much of this, of course, is down to Craig and Charlie Reid’s songs, which give Greenhorn’s yarn about ex squaddies Davy and Ally’s prodigal’s return to Leith and their respective romances with Yvonne and Liz its emotional heart. As sung and played live by Newman’s brilliant cast of twelve, musical director Richard Reeday’s renderings of David Shrubsole’s arrangements lay bare the heart on sleeve narratives of each song. Just hearing the show’s main quartet divvy up stripped back interpretations of Letter from America, 500 Miles and many more is enough to have

The Snow Queen

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four Stars Winter is coming in Morna Young’s brand new take on Hans Christian Anderson’s evergreen folk tale, brought home here to a frosty Victorian Edinburgh in Cora Bissett’s musical production, with Young’s script steeped in Scotland’s fantastical mythology.  Things open quietly, with Wendy Seager’s Seer setting out the show’s store by way of oral storytelling and projected shadowplay. Meanwhile, in the city, young Gerda and her best pal Kei tend to their roof garden as they wait for a solitary rose to bloom. As they bond over the loss of their respective parents, they can barely imagine the adventure they’re about to embark on after Claire Dargo’s Snow Queen kidnaps Kei.  Befriended by Samuel Pashby’s keytar wielding crow Corbie, Gerda is whisked off on a grand tour that takes in a talking fairy garden in Perth, a gang of Highland robbers whose market for overpriced tartan tat has gone bust, a pantomime unicorn, and a wise old king at sea. Even the

Dead Dad Dog

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars If you can remember the 1980s, you probably weren’t there. If those who were there need a refresher course, they could do worse than check out this long overdue revival of John McKay’s play, which first graced the Traverse’s old Grassmarket home in 1987. This saw McKay take his work from street theatre combo The Merry Mac Fun Co onto the main stage before embarking on a career as a film and TV writer, director and producer.     McKay’s trajectory might just mirror the future life of young Eck, whose preparations for a job interview with BBC Scotland in 1985 are rudely interrupted by his dad Willie, who makes his unreconstructed presence felt in everything Eck does. This is the case from the interview itself to the local barbers before he joins Eck on his date in a fancy style bar.   This would be mortifying enough for any young shaver with ideas above his station attempting to shake off his roots and make his way in the world. Given that Willie ha

Nae Expectations

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The Scots negative in the title of Gary McNair’s audacious new version of Charles Dickens’ rites of passage epic Great Expectations says it all in Andy Arnold’s slow burning production. Here, after all, is a story about how a smart working class boy with ideas above his station is groomed for the success that sees him corrupted before he eventually finds his way home.   By rewriting Dickens’ boy hero Pip as a gallus Glasgow patter merchant, McNair, Arnold and co gives him even more of a common touch. As embodied by a brilliantly rambunctious Gavin Jon Wright, Pip tells his own story in what begins as a motor mouthed stand-up routine full of scurrilous asides and one-line gags. These are brought to life by everyone else on stage who haunt Pip’s imposter syndrome nightmares. Only when he learns to talk proper and acquire the airs and graces of a gentleman does he lose sight of himself.   Karen Dunbar’s increasingly creepy Miss Havisham leads a roll call o

I, Daniel Blake

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Scroungers are everywhere in Dave Johns’ heartfelt adaptation of director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty’s 2016 film, in which Johns played the title role of Geordie everyman Dan. Mercifully, none of these appear in the flesh in Johns’ tragic tale of how a humble man with a big heart is broken by the Kafkaesque iniquities of the UK benefits system.   Rather, their state sanctioned platitudes punctuate each scene with a litany of fake news that lays bare their lack of empathy with those caught in the poverty trap. At least three of those voices belong to former Westminster prime ministers. Matthew Brown’s audio-visual design is one of the tricks used by Johns and director Mark Calvert to bring home the fact that I, Daniel Blake has lost none of its currency since the film version first appeared. Things, indeed, have probably got worse instead of better since then. This despite one of the voices pointing out that Loach and Laverty’s film is ficti