Greg Holstead, Author at North West End UK

James V: Katherine – The Studio, Edinburgh

15Apr

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

James V: Katherine – The Studio, Edinburgh

How do you make a play about the Scottish reformation, set in 1527-28; playful, thought-provoking and above all very funny. Writer Rona Munro provides a master class in character writing, and humour in a fascinating historical setting in this superbly watchable addition to her James Plays. Many will already be aware of Munro’s epic historical series comprising of seven works in total, six staged to date, which span two centuries of the house of Stuart between 1406 and 1603. This is part 5 of the series, but unlike all the others which have been grand in scale and staging, Katherine is a much more intimate four-hander chamber piece, which seeks to delve into the very minutiae of life, love and death. The play is set in a time when the Catholic Church’s grip on Scotland is loosening, p...

13Apr

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

90 Days – Traverse Theatre

There are few things that raise an actor’s energy and commitment (and fear!) more than playing a character who is sitting barely a few feet away from them. Tonight, in Traverse 1, all five actors on stage faced this particular challenge and all rose as a powerful team, bonded by music, to face their namesakes in the audience and to tell the unlikely story of what happened in dressing room and rugby pitch exactly thirty years ago. In an emotion-packed evening there are tears, laughter, singing and a real buzz of camaraderie. On stage Dani Heron, Caitlin Forbes, Yang Harris and Ava MacKinnon play some of the key players of the 1994 Scotland rugby team, Sue (Subo) Brodie, Sandra (gnomie) Colamartino, Kim (headgirl) Littlejohn and Annie (Fannie) Freitas, with John Kielty as their (dol...

Introverts The Musical – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

3Apr

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Introverts The Musical – Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Writer Amy Hawes, one third of Tandem Writing Collective, teams up with keyboard player Aaron McGregor to present a brand-new musical about Introverts. Still at workshop stage we are treated to a sneaky peek by a trio of fine actors: Kim Allen, Natalie Arle-Toyne and Betty Valencia, with scripts in hand. Toyne stands out as the neurotic, protective mother, trying to protect her anxiety filled, introvert daughter, Angela, played by Valencia, with Allen never far away as the side-kick imaginary friend. When Angela is given the chance of a free a course at the Introvert Conversion Centre (ICC) which has recently opened in Livingston, and her mum the commission to write about it, they both jump at the chance. It’s not long before Angela is transformed into an online celebrity with a host...

17Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Escaped Alone – Traverse Theatre

A play by Caryl Churchill (written in 2016), at age 86 arguably Britain’s greatest living poet and playwright. Known for her dramatisations of the abuse of power, for her support of Palestine, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. Also central to most Churchill plays is a fascination with surreal deconstruction and non-naturalistic techniques which puts her firmly in the uncompromising postmodernist camp. Anyone coming to see a Churchill play will leave this one with a knowing smile, for those of us just coming to see a play, less so. The structure of the short 50-minute piece is simple enough; two storylines run side by side, in the first four post-menopausal women sit in comfortable chairs chatting in broken sentences and half-words in a sunny garden, in t...

La Nina Barro (The Clay Girl) – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

10Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

La Nina Barro (The Clay Girl) – Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh

Writer Marta Masse joined the audience at the Roxy tonight, to see her life-affirming poetry brought to life for the first time in almost ten years. It must have been an emotional reconnection with her prose and with the original all female cast on what was International Woman’s Day. Ten years on from its first performance during the Edinburgh Free Fringe in 2014, Elizabeth Sogord, returns as La Nina (the clay girl) and Alexandra Rodes as Woman / mbira player. Relying on very minimal set and costume, or in Sogord’s case no costume at all. From a winding sheet of clay-spattered plastic we see the clay girl squirming and wrestling and moaning, and eventually releasing herself into existence to the weirdly haunting (think ancient music box) sound of the mbira, a mini piano from Zimb...

2Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Peak Stuff – Traverse Theatre

Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre’s reputation as the Capital’s go-to venue for cutting edge, experimental and thought-provoking new work can only be enhanced by this belter of a play from award-winning theatre company Thickskin. Touring England for the last month, the Scottish premiere tonight of Peak Stuff, by young writer Billie Collins fairly fizzes along with new ideas and brilliant acting not to mention superb lighting and set and spectacular video design. Stage centre, on a raised LED-edged plate Meg Lewis takes us on an often-overwhelming journey, through the eyes of three characters, Alice, Ben and Charlie. All consumers, and all consumed to varying degrees by the world we live in today. Teenager, Alice wants to poke a stick into the wheel of fast fashion, Ben is hiding from reality...

17Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Two Sisters – Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Writer David Greig, returns to the stage for the first time since taking the reins as Artistic Director of The Royal Lyceum in 2016, with a whimsical exploration of time, memory, love and self-fulfilment. The title might be a nod to Chekhov, but the setting is closer to home ,a rusting and decrepit caravan park, on the shoreline of the Firth of Forth in the kingdom of Fife. Two thirtysomething sisters, Amy and Emma meet up in Holiday Heaven, the favourite holiday location of their youth. Emma is now a successful lawyer and company director who is just looking for peace and quiet and a space to write, on her own, a last chance of self expression before her first child arrives. Amy, leather clad and tottering about in high heals, is a failed rock star, who has jumped from one idea to the ...

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Ruins – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Ruinsis a multi-media dance performance involving three humans, locked within a video cube, who represent the last of the human race, kept alive by machines. Created by Megahertz, a visual theatre company and relying on wordless, highly expressive, beautiful movement from Philip Alexander McDonald, Rita Hu and Suzi Cunningham, the performance is set against an extraordinary soundscape by Cucina Povera and Jamie Grier. The fourth star of this show is the video cube itself, which is extraordinary. Projections from three different directions onto a gauzelike material on a thin metal frame creates the impression of semi-solid walls surrounding the figures and hologram-like images seem to float unhindered within the cube. The effect is mesmeri...

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Ragnarok – Traverse Theatre

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Ragnarokis a hugely entertaining, massively ambitious and highly technical show, an international co-production between Edinburgh based, Tortoise In A Nutshell, and Nordland Visual Theatre of Norway. The show which has over 1100 cue lines, to give an idea of its scale, combines hundreds of mini stick-like figures living within a mini set and captured in real time with the use of the latest technology in micro cinema, combined with live music and live video projection to create an alternative universe in front of our eyes. Here the great wolf rattles its chains, and the world snake sleeps lightly, wrapping its tail covetously around the globe. If the great wolf escapes, it will eat the sun and the moon and infect the world with pestilence and di...

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

13Feb

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Shorts 3: Beyond Words – Summerhall, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Shorts 3: Beyond Words is a great opportunity to see a wide and varied collection of animated short films from around the world, and to have your mind and imagination sparked by them. The third and final part of the animated film programme for this year. In the poignant and thought-provoking Sisters, by Andrea Szelesova, a young girl sullenly pulls a heavy load across a barren wasteland to the slumped body of a red skinned giant. She climbs up and grudgingly feeds bread and water to the giant, which rumbles and grows. Around the giant new flowers begin to sprout, their heavy heads tinkling in the breeze, the sound of tiny bells. The young girl resentfully continues to feed the giant, with the same results every day. One day she wakes up and ...