Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Three stars / Four stars Family feuds are at the heart of these two productions performed by the RCS' final year BA Acting students. While the relationship between a domineering mother and her five daughters desperate to break her grip is the backbone of Federico Garcia Lorca's final play, The House of Bernarda Alba, a sister's love for her slain brother is what drives The Burial at Thebes, Seamus Heaney's take on Antigone. While Heaney's version lends a clarity to the original story's poetry made even clearer in Gareth Nicholls' expansive contemporary dress production, James Graham-Lujan and Richard L O'Connell's 1940 translation of Lorca enables director Ros Philips to take the play beyond words. Philips begins playfully by having her cast of eight women line up onstage in nightgowns and introducing themselves accompanied by a Balearic beat before confiding something they've managed to avoid tell
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.