Friday, December 7, 2012
Arches, GlasgowIt's not so much the spirit of Christmas birth as of Easter resurrection that possesses this Hans Christian Andersen adaptation by Catherine Wheels. It begins, delightfully, i…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:56PMMonday, December 3, 2012
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghIt's impressive enough that Johnny McKnight is writing, directing and starring in Aganeza Scrooge at Glasgow's Tron this season, but somehow he has also managed to fie…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:45AMWednesday, November 21, 2012
Oran Mor, GlasgowThey discovered Elvis, they discovered sex, they discovered material wealth. Now the baby boomers are discovering death. The results can be maudlin and introspective – but…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMThursday, November 8, 2012
Traverse, EdinburghThe wag who described Morna Pearson as the Dr Dre of Scottish theatre was probably exaggerating. The Elgin-born playwright is no gangsta rapper, though you can't deny the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:26PMTuesday, October 23, 2012
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghTowards the start of Shakespeare's comedy, the fairy queen Titania tells her lover Oberon how their quarrel has turned nature upside down. "The seasons alter…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:21PMMonday, October 22, 2012
Traverse, Edinburgh"I'm at home and I feel homesick," says the character of Kate Bane, explaining her unresolved anguish to the boyfriend who has come to meet her parents. Or rather, in Ella…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:59PMTuesday, October 16, 2012
Platform, GlasgowImagine a string quartet, but with actors instead of musicians. In place of a score, a set of overlapping monologues. As they riff on similar themes, they could be from a fa…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMWednesday, October 10, 2012
Govanhill Baths, GlasgowEven a trip to the swimming baths is full of ritual. First comes the initiation ceremony of changing room, wire basket and wristband – just as it is here in Adrian …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:31PMWednesday, October 3, 2012
Citizens, GlasgowShe enters in socks, tracksuit bottoms and faded grey T-shirt. Her blood-red hair is a shade away from the glossy surfaces of her fitted kitchen. Her son has just been dropp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:44AMWednesday, September 26, 2012
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghCanadian playwright Michel Tremblay's Les Belles Sœurs, translated here as The Guid Sisters, is one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, remarkable on many leve…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:50PMTuesday, September 18, 2012
His Majesty's, AberdeenYou can imagine a stage adaptation of Robin Jenkins's sublime 1955 novel turning out like Of Mice and Men. Set during the second world war on a remote Highland estate,…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:00PMMonday, September 10, 2012
Tron, GlasgowYou couldn't accuse Sylvia Dow of being over-hasty. After a lifetime in arts administration, she has waited until her 70s to make her playwriting debut. There is nothing antiqua…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:38PMThursday, August 30, 2012
Royal LyceumThe play by Arthur Miller that became Death of a Salesman was originally called The Inside of His Head, but the title could apply equally to Vanishing Point's nightmarish contrib…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:14PMWednesday, August 15, 2012
Fringe veterans have various strategies for surviving Edinburgh – from stirring up debate to remembering your motivation – but all agree on the benefits of limiting beer intakeOf all the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:04AMFriday, August 3, 2012
Pitlochry festival theatreSince director Richard Baron staged The 39 Steps at Perth Theatre in 1998, the adaptation has been on a journey as long and involved as that of Richard Hannay when …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:26PMThursday, July 12, 2012
Tron, GlasgowAs titles for riotous comedies go, this one had to be the grimmest. The stones in Sean Harkin's pockets are there to weigh him down as he drowns. His suicide, as playwright Mari…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:53PMFriday, June 29, 2012
Arches, GlasgowThe earliest hours of the morning are also the most solitary: a drunk staggering home; a security guard watching CCTV; a forlorn Facebook user hoping someone will message back…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 11:15AMMonday, June 18, 2012
Pitlochry festival theatreThe murder-mystery always lets you down. It's a genre that compels you to piece together the clues, then leaves you with a sense of emptiness the moment the detecti…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:56AMSunday, June 17, 2012
Tramway, GlasgowAlan Cumming plays every part in Shakespeare's tragedy set inside a mental asylum, writes Mark FisherIn his one-man Elsinore, Robert Lepage had to have a sword fight with him…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:53AMTuesday, June 12, 2012
Dundee RepAt the hands of director Jemima Levick, Shakespeare's isle is not only full of noise but women, too. As seagulls scream over a very 21st-century set of washed-up bin bags, computer…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:28PMThursday, June 7, 2012
Pitlochry festival theatreSeymour the florist has a lot in common with Macbeth. Like Shakespeare's antihero, the misfit at the centre of Little Shop of Horrors gets his first break through h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMTuesday, June 5, 2012
Citizens, GlasgowSince the rise of the black-box studio in the 1960s and 70s, the place for Beckett's shorter plays has generally been in small rooms before select audiences. It's fascinatin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:35PMMonday, May 28, 2012
Theatremakers don't become game-changers overnight. And a rare revival of John McGrath's 1966 play Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun is a reminder of a playwright who would go on to shape…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:18AMMonday, May 14, 2012
Various venues, EdinburghThere is an extraordinary moment towards the start of Kindur, one of the highlights of this year's Imaginate children's theatre festival. We have been enjoying some …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:35PMFriday, April 27, 2012
Citizens, GlasgowThere's a sense of impermanence about Dominic Hill's austere King Lear. The tables and chairs are forever being overturned and whisked away, as if in response to Lear's unst…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:34AMWednesday, March 14, 2012
This year's EIF offers plenty to look forward to, from a glow-in-the-dark race up Arthur's Seat to a Polish Macbeth and the Mariinsky Ballet. What will you be booking for?You've got to admir…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:59AMMonday, March 12, 2012
Citizens, GlasgowThe greatest challenge in staging Betrayal – written by Harold Pinter in response to his seven-year affair with Joan Bakewell – is to make it seem more than a study of n…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:12PMSunday, March 11, 2012
Traverse, EdinburghBinary thinking is at the heart of this fascinating, if ultimately frustrating new play. It is the result of a two-way collaboration between Scotland's Stellar Quines and …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMMonday, March 5, 2012
Tron, GlasgowThe birds and the bees in JC Marshall's timely play signify not sex but death. In a poetic flourish, she pictures the victims of a mid-air terrorist atrocity being accompanied b…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:26PMThursday, February 23, 2012
His Majesty's, AberdeenMention The Wicker Man and people tend to snigger. Something in the movie's anachronistic juxtaposition of Scottish island setting, English folklore and early 70s peri…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:15PMSunday, February 19, 2012
Tron, GlasgowThe scene is a house in Harare where preparations are nearing completion for a wedding. The excitement is all the more intense because of the return of Mwana, the groom's brothe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:02PM 
