Wendy McEwan, Author at North West End UK

Simple Machines – Fruitmarket, Edinburgh

6Feb

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Simple Machines – Fruitmarket, Edinburgh

I am a little bit afraid of robots. I was concerned that the automatons in this production would be sinister denizens of the Uncanny Valley. However, my expectations were turned on their head. Here, choreographer Ugo Dehaes has created a cynical alter ego. At least, I hope this is an alter ego: Dehaes’s performance is very convincing. Apparently, this soft-spoken character got into the arts with the intention of getting rich. When unlimited wealth and power fail to materialise, he looks to mega-corporations for inspiration, and decides to replace his workforce – the dancers – with robots. However, plan B doesn’t work out as he expected either. The philosopher Rene Descartes regarded non-human animals as “mere machines”, a view with profound ethical consequences. But perhaps we ...

29Jan

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Protest – Traverse Theatre

“This is a girl”. Three primary seven girls seek to address injustice in their everyday lives. Inspired by previous generations of women, they begin to find their voices. As soon as I saw the set, I just wanted to play on it. Amy Jane Cook’s design invites spontaneous, joyful movement. There is a winding path for the girls to run around, curved frames to climb and swing on, and platforms to rest, spin and jump on. The actresses are adults, but their performances are so convincing that it is easy to forget this. Movement director Nadia Iftkar has done an amazing job, and the girls move playfully, running with arms outstretched one minute, sitting cross legged and fidgeting the next. They beautifully capture the delight in movement that characterises childhood. The costumes, a...

23Dec

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Cinderella – Edinburgh People’s Theatre

It’s that time of the year again and Edinburgh People’s Theatre’s panto this season is Cinderella. It’s the classic story, but with a few extra characters so that as many company members as possible can get their moment in the spotlight. The show opens with a reminder that we can boo, cheer, and shout out because this is a pantomime. This helps the audience to overcome any initial shyness and participate right from the start. Little reminders of theatre etiquette, done humorously, are a great way of getting the audience on side. Cinderella’s stepsisters, Mattie and Hattie, played by Mandy Black and Gemma Dutton, are a lot of fun in their garish costumes and wigs. The shameless man-chasers enter through the auditorium, all the better to trade insults across, and with...

Sycamore Grove – The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh

31Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Sycamore Grove – The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh

Dark magic, addiction and competitive home decorating underly the apparently genteel lives of two suburban couples. Charlotte (Rebecca Wilkie) and Colin (Nicholas Alban) are the proverbial Joneses that everyone tries to keep up with. They have almost everything that their tiny minds have ever dreamed of – but they are struggling to conceive a baby. Hannah (Cara Watson) and Ben (Conor O’Durger) are not doing so well. Ben is struggling at work and desperately trying to keep up appearances. When Charlotte and Colin explain their secret, he is intrigued. Our Stepford couple reveal that they have decorated their home with mysterious symbols that have been used to alter reality since ancient times. They draw Ben into their cult, and he attributes his increasing success to the s...

The Shadow in the Dark – The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh

31Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

The Shadow in the Dark – The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh

Edith Nesbit is best known as a writer of children’s fiction, but alongside her classic novels such as The Railway Children, she explored a variety of genres, including horror. The Shadow in the Dark is comprised of spoken word adaptations of several such stories, told by a trio of actors. Edith (Rebecca Hale) sits at a wax cylinder machine, surrounded by candles. She speaks into the recording device, telling us of her memories of childhood, and of how she became afraid of the dark. Hale’s Edith speaks in the way I always imagined she would. In her crisp accent, she is soothing and deliberate. She gives the impression that she is telling a bedtime story, but the atmosphere is sinister. In The Mummies at Bordeaux, she tells of a creepy childhood encounter in a charnel house, tha...

30Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Moorcroft – Traverse Theatre

This tale of male friendship and football is based on writer / director Eilidh Loan’s own memories of growing up in a working-class community in Renfrewshire, and the stories that her dad told her. The play begins as Garry (Martin Docherty) turns 50. He’s grown weary over the years, and he starts to reminisce about his glory days, in the 1980’s, and the friends he played football with back when he had fire in his belly. As narrator, Garry establishes that the story is about working-class men, and will not feature “big bits of furniture falling from the sky”, or sparkly costumes, because “life is so boring and shite” where he comes from. Everyone needs an escape from life’s hardships, and these men find it in their grassroots football team, Moorcroft. The characters are well dra...

28Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Battery Park – Traverse Theatre

Andy McGregor’s show, about a short-lived Indie band in the early nineties, includes an album’s worth of original songs, so it’s a lot like seeing a play and a gig at the same time. In the present day, Older Tommy (Chris Alexander) is approached by student Lucy (Chloe-Ann Taylor), who multi-roles as Tommy’s girlfriend, Angie, back in the nineties. Lucy is writing a dissertation on indie music, and she wants to know why Battery Park crashed and burned just before they made it big. In the nineties, Tommy’s (Stuart Edgar) brother Ed (Tommy McGowan) has just been fired from his dead-end job, and his pal Biffy’s (Charlie West) band has split up because one of the members got grounded for failing higher maths. They happen to hear Tommy playing a song on his guitar, and agree to form a band...

3Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

One of Two – Traverse Theatre

Jack Hunter tells the story of his Scottish childhood, with pre-recorded content from his tenacious twin sister, Bec. Jack and Bec both have cerebral palsy, and Bec, in particular, has really had to fight to make her way in life. Jack is a multi-talented performer: an actor, a writer, and a poet. His humour is playful and acerbic, but there is also a deep anger and a determination to change things. Cerebral palsy affects every person differently. Jack walks with a limp and can’t tie his shoelaces; Bec is a full-time wheelchair user. At high school, they were forced to seek refuge from the other kids in the Base, a dingy “bunker” full of dilapidated furniture decorated with “ancient phallic hieroglyphs”. The playground was not a safe place for them. A teacher rages at Bec for...

Grown Up Orphan Annie – Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose

27Aug

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Grown Up Orphan Annie – Gilded Balloon, Patter Hoose

Little Orphan Annie (Katherine Bourne-Taylor) has grown up into a lovable, but insecure, girl-woman with a serious Ovaltine habit. Her happy ending with Daddy Warbucks was a sham: he took all her money, he controls the rights to all her hit songs, and he even stole her dog. Life has been cruel to Annie, but she bustles on with her characteristic optimism infused with desperation. We like her, but she is hard work. This is a one-woman show, but Annie longs for connection and Bourne-Taylor interacts with the audience, and the tech guy, throughout. She asks us if she can go to our “hang” after the show, enlists an audience member to help her onstage, and calls us all her “Fannies”. (I am now the proud owner of a sticker that says “#1 Fannie”.) We catch up with Annie after the ...

Beats on Pointe: Masters of Choreography – Assembly George Square

23Aug

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Beats on Pointe: Masters of Choreography – Assembly George Square

In this extravaganza of fabulousness, the outrageously skilled members of the Australian dance company, Masters of Choreography, seamlessly combine a boundless range of dance and performance disciplines including hip hop, ballet, commercial, breakdancing, and more. Sometimes they synchronise with each other’s moves in different styles, with the ballerinas adapting newer dance styles to perform en pointe. A particularly exciting moment involves a break dancer spinning on his head while, behind him, three ballerinas pirouette in unison. The athleticism of the performers is astounding, with gymnastic backflips, leaps, and lifts galore. The ballet team enters a dance showdown with the hip-hop team, and the hip-hop group seems to win, though I’m not sure why. Even seemingly casual movements ...