Coffee-Table Notes

It’s been quite a journey for the Edinburgh based Vision Mechanics company to bring their new show, Little Light, to life. For what will be the first ever known theatrical co-production between Scotland and Jordan, it has taken three years and a lot of two-way traffic between continents to make something happen. The end result of such an international cultural alliance is an immersive puppet show for children which sees the two companies involved take a similarly expansive trek around some of this country’s more remote areas with a magical tale of falling stars, friendship and family that takes place inside a Bedouin tent.   “It’s a very simple story,” says Vision Mechanics artistic director Symon Macintyre. “It’s about a father who works as an electrician in a village where his son is left alone all day with his dog. And because the father is out at work all day, he never gets to spend any time with his son. It’s a story that’s told without words, and there are no screens or anyt

Anatomy Rooms, Aberdeen Four stars With the fishing industry very much in the news just now, the young Aberdeen-based 10ft Tall theatre company couldn’t have timed their revival of Graeme Maley’s vivid Scots adaptation of Icelandic writer Jon Atli Jonasson’s bleakly poetic one-man play better. This is no polemic, however, but a haunting internal monologue that lays bare the brutal fragility of everyday life when thrown to the mercy of the elements. Cameron Mowat’s beautifully poised production starts off looking like a folk pub story-telling session, with actor Andy Clark and fellow performer Kevin Lennon, here in his sound designer guise, wielding banjo and guitar as the audience enter. It’s a deceptively comforting opening, with Clark’s young fisher-man sucker-punching us even more as he begins what appears to be a campfire shaggy dog yarn about his working day. From his opening yawn, the fisher-man’s descriptions of his vividly hum-drum world are comically ribald thu

Andrew Panton’s new production of Tony award winning musical, Spring Awakening, was a triumph when it opened at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow last week. It was probably co-incidence, but the first night of this ambitious co-production between the RCS and Dundee Rep also coincided with the twenty-second anniversary of the Dunblane massacre, when a lone gunman went on a shooting spree, killing sixteen pupils and their teacher. As the show’s young cast of musical theatre students prepare for this week’s run at the Rep itself, it may be worth considering the fact that writer Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s study of troubled youth has its roots in similar tragedies. Following the recent shootings at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Sater and Sheik’s play also has a renewed resonance. “When I began the show in 1999, it was in the wake of the terrible shootings at Columbine High School,” S

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Things seem initially jolly at the start of Lung Ha Theatre Company’s new look at Anton Chekhov’s piece of end of the century ennui, presented in co-production with the Helsinki-based folk music department of the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts. This is despite the aching void that hangs over the increasingly empty house that provides the nearest thing to a social whirl of the army occupied town. It’s young Irina’s birthday, and her big sister Olga is going to make it as fun as can be, even if their other sibling Masha would rather sprawl herself on the sofa with studiedly bored intent. Adrian Osmond’s new version of the play manages to pare down the sprawl of Chekhov’s original to a ninety-minute meditation on the meaning of life and the seeming lack of it in Maria Oller’s wide-open production performed by a cast of twenty on Karen Tennent’s wood-lined set.   Emma McCaffrey sets the tone as a perennially buoyant Olg

Joseph Arkley was never meant to be a man who would be king. If things had gone to plan, the former politics student would have embarked on a respectable career which could have led him to a ringside seat in the offices of power. Now here he is, about to take the stage at Perth Theatre in the title role in a new production of Richard III, Shakespeare’s slyest and most complex of charismatic villains. According to Arkley, Richard is also “one of the great stand-up comics. He’s somewhere between Malcolm Tucker and Limmy. That’s what’s coming out at the moment. He’s a sociopath, but you love him.” The influences on Arkley’s interpretation of Richard are telling. Both Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi in political sit-com The Thick of It, and real-life comedian Limmy combine a driven ferocity with unfettered hilarity. They are key as well to an approach which aims to remain faithful to the play, but with extra added drive. “It goes at quite a pace,” Arkley says of Perth

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Four stars The facts of life come fast and hard in Andrew Panton’s expansive rendering of writer Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik’s 2006 musical reimagining of Frank Wedekind’s nineteenth century template for angst-ridden teen TV. As classroom radical Melchoir Gabor, his first love Wendla and the rest of the gang come of age with all the pains that go with it, a frighteningly familiar set of psychological scars are exposed. Sexual abuse, suicide and under-age pregnancy are all in the mix, brought to flesh and blood life by a mighty cast of 18 musical theatre students, with Ann Louise Ross and Barrie Hunter from Dundee Rep’s ensemble company playing assorted grown-ups with grotesque relish. Played out on designer Kenneth MacLeod’s testosterone-charged gym hall set, when actors aren’t in a scene, they either sit on benches in single-sex rows like they’re at a school disco or else drape themselves across vaulting horses and desks

Maria Oller was in the midst of rehearsals for her new production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters when the news came through that Lung Ha, the learning disabled based theatre company she has been artistic director of since 2009 had lost its main funding from Creative Scotland. Up until then, Lung Ha had been a Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO), which gave the company three-year’s worth of security to plan ahead. For a company as unique as Lung Ha, such security was vital, as it was with any of the theatre companies and arts organisations who had also had the rug pulled from under them. “The hardest part for me was telling the actors,” says Oller. “We were in the middle of Three Sisters, and they were working so hard, so to let them know that our work isn’t considered to be worth regular funding was difficult.” The response of Lung Ha’s large ensemble, who had been working on the show for months, was telling. “They were active straight away,” says Oller. “They pulled together