Thursday, June 23, 2011
Pitlochry Festival TheatreIntroducing the Pitlochry festival theatre's 60th anniversary gala night, Joss Ackland began by telling the audience about his time as an actor in the first company…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:04PMSunday, June 19, 2011
Dundee RepWe're in the kind of room where Jack Bauer tortures enemy agents. Concrete walls. Featureless surfaces. No windows. Stark shadows. Bleak directional light. Fearsome rumbling soundt…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:43AMWednesday, June 8, 2011
Traverse, EdinburghThere was I thinking Knives in Hens was one of those plays that didn't change much from production to production. David Harrower's astonishing 1995 debut is set in an unsp…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:44PMTuesday, May 31, 2011
Tron, GlasgowThere used to be an argument that a play couldn't be called feminist – even one with an all-female cast – if its characters' lives were defined by men. Gary Owen's three-han…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:34AMSunday, May 29, 2011
Dundee RepWhen Anna Karenina takes up with her lover Vronsky, someone says she has "gained a shadow". She is not the only one. The characters in Jemima Levick's production are forever being …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:45PMTuesday, May 24, 2011
Citizens, GlasgowAfter his recent arrest, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was described as a man who had "a difficulty in controlling his impulses". Whatever the outcome of this particular court case…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:11PMAn independent study has confirmed the economic benefits of Edinburgh's festivals but, most importantly, it quanitifies the value of the experienceOn the surface, it looks like another of th…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:55AMMonday, May 23, 2011
Tron, GlasgowTommy McMillan is "as thick as shite, an ugly wee bastard and as common as muck". He is also 28 years unemployed, which makes him an ideal candidate for a job with the departmen…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:19PMThursday, May 19, 2011
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghThe battle appears to be won. Some kind of peace is taking hold. But the war has thrown up unforeseen problems. The word goes out: "Tell the men we'll be in Scotland a…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:00PMTuesday, May 17, 2011
Tron, GlasgowIn his hits Knives in Hens and Blackbird, David Harrower stripped away the extraneous details to leave characters who could be from anywhere. His latest play isn't like that. Al…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMWednesday, May 11, 2011
Various venues, EdinburghYou can't fault the Imaginate children's theatre festival for variety. On Monday alone, you could see tutus for two-year-olds, postmodern Irish storytelling for the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:31PMFriday, May 6, 2011
Venues in Glasgow and Edinburgh played politics with pieces on the AV referendum and the country's parliamentary electionsFor anyone interested in theatre and politics – and the relationsh…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:41PMTuesday, April 26, 2011
Traverse, EdinburghJulie tells her husband why her willow-pattern teacup meant so much to her. He sees only broken crockery. Online, Lin Han pours out her heart to a business contact. He thi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:44PMThursday, April 21, 2011
Brunton, MusselburghWhen Des Dillon's comedy premiered at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum, it had such brash popular appeal that I predicted it would be fewer than five years before we saw it again…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:01PMTuesday, April 12, 2011
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghOn its debut three years ago, Liz Lochhead's reworking of Molière's L'Ecole des Femmes came across as cheeky, witty and linguistically playful. Theatre Babel's stagin…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:29PMMonday, April 11, 2011
How director Pol Heyvaert was forced to rethink his ideas about disability. By Mark FisherIt's early 2008, and the National Theatre of Scotland has asked Belgian theatre director Pol Heyvaer…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:59PMMonday, April 4, 2011
King's, EdinburghWhen Tom McGrath died two years ago, he was commemorated for many things: editor of International Times, counter-culture poet, founder of two Glasgow theatres and musical di…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:29PMWednesday, March 23, 2011
This year's far eastern programme harks back to cultural events from the past, encouraging audiences to question the very idea of exoticism and othernessSince he took over in 2007, artistic …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 10:49AMTuesday, March 22, 2011
Traverse, EdinburghWhat do you have left when you strip away your home, your personal possessions and your loved ones? For some, it might be a sense of selfhood, spirituality or oneness with…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:55PMMonday, March 21, 2011
Should it be run by writers? Take over the King's? With director Dominic Hill heading for Glasgow, now is the time for the Traverse to get experimental once againThe rumours were right. Domi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:09PMTuesday, March 15, 2011
Brunton, MusselburghOne man produces semen that smells like a dead seagull's armpit. On the other side of the valley, the boils on his brother's chest seep fluid that tastes like nectar. As …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:23PMWednesday, March 9, 2011
Cumbernauld, N LanarkshireWe're in the territory of Dennis Kelly's Orphans, a chic middle-class home, kitted out with hi-fi and Wi-Fi, with a sense that behind the venetian blinds is a lawle…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:15PMSunday, March 6, 2011
Traverse, EdinburghRobert Softley is telling the true story of a girl whose parents put her through surgery rather than let her face the onset of an adulthood which, they felt, would only ma…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:07PMTheatre Royal, GlasgowIt started this time last year with 170 Glasgow boys and young men getting involved in dance workshops. It ended last week with a mixed cast of two dozen amateur and pr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 12:04PMWednesday, March 2, 2011
Tron, GlasgowLook on Amazon and you'll find a poster for sale for the film version of Staircase. It features Rex Harrison and Richard Burton dancing hand in hand, cocking their legs behind, …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:30PMTuesday, March 1, 2011
Citizens, Glasgow"Peroxide – that's all it is," says a long-suffering hairdresser working for Marilyn Monroe as she takes up residence in the Beverly Hills Hotel while shooting Let's Make …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:14PMFriday, February 25, 2011
Royal Lyceum, EdinburghCanadian playwright Linda Griffiths doesn't so much adapt George Gissing's The Odd Women as explode it. She takes the genteel 1890s setting of this novel about a phila…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:48PMWednesday, February 23, 2011
Carnegie Hall, DunfermlineAs the mighty Black Watch nears the end of its latest tour of duty, it is good to be able to revisit the play that made Gregory Burke's name 10 years ago. This…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 02:30PMMonday, February 21, 2011
Tron, GlasgowIt will be remembered as the show with the masturbating fox sitting at the head of a bed with a masturbating stag. Yet this scene isn't some troubling piece of psychodrama from …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:30PMTuesday, February 15, 2011
Perth TheatreArthur Miller's great mid-20th century dramas rarely let you down – but there are times when they seem more pertinent. When Miller directed Death of a Salesman in China, for e…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:50PMSaturday, February 12, 2011
Tron, GlasgowA small academic industry is building around the work of David Greig. Books are appearing with titles such as The Sense of Place and Identity in David Greig's Plays and the…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:51AM 
