Scotland Archives - Page 2 of 127

Who’s the Fairest of Them All – Augustine United Church

10Nov

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Who’s the Fairest of Them All – Augustine United Church

Seeing us into panto season, Who’s The Fairest of Them All is writer and director Holly Wagner’s adaptation of Snow White, in which the magic mirror is featured as the real villain. Exploring the lengths one goes to for the sake of vanity and validation, we see not only the classic story of Snow White versus her wicked stepmother, but also the relationship Snow White has with her own daughter and the ways in which the title of Fairest of Them All has shaped her character. Held in Augustine United Church, the scene is set in the black-box-style theatre using minimal set and tech design, allowing the writing and acting to take centre stage. The space, although small, was well-utilised, with the actors parading up the staircase through the audience and out secondary exits as...

8Nov

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Arlington – Traverse Theatre

The most visually remarkable production to grace the Traverse Stage in years, Arlington. This new Shotput production of Enda Walsh’s dystopian fable is a feast for the eyes, ears, and the darker corners of your brain. It is strange, unsettling, sometimes hilarious, and very occasionally infuriating, but it is never dull. The set earns its own applause. Designer Anna Yates places Isla, our imprisoned heroine, on a raised metal platform, roughly level with the third or fourth row of Traverse 1, surrounded by the cold glow of surveillance screens. Behind her, a full wall of projection blooms with shifting images, ghostly fragments, data streams, and hints of an outside world, or what might once have been. The stage picture is technically dazzling, a precise marriage of lighting, sound...

The Gateway Writing Festival: Day 2 – The Studio, Edinburgh

6Nov

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Gateway Writing Festival: Day 2 – The Studio, Edinburgh

Fresh voices, bright ideas, and the occasional spark of brilliance Now in its third year and newly housed at The Studio, the Gateway Writing Festival continues to prove itself as a lively testing ground for emerging Scottish talent. Curated by Artistic Director James Wood and produced in collaboration with Capital Theatres’ Creative Engagement team, with special thanks offered by James to Claire Swanson and Izzy Sivewright for their significant support, each night offers three short plays from young writers paired with equally fresh directors and actors. The second evening’s trio explored power, guilt and the future with youthful boldness and a few rough edges, exactly what you want from a new-writing festival. Utter RadianceWritten by Mayah Reid, directed by Briony Conaghan, with In...

Dinna Trust Anyone: Witches of Peebles – Eastgate Theatre

4Nov

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Dinna Trust Anyone: Witches of Peebles – Eastgate Theatre

It’s 1629 in the market town of Peebles. There’s a war on, the harvest has failed, and rumours of witchcraft abound. The ghosts like to gather on Christmas Eve. A modern-day couple (Jennifer Bunyan, David Bon) settle into their hotel room. They gradually become aware that they are not alone. In the first act, the ghosts recount their grim stories. Some were convicted of witchcraft because they were childless, or gay, or foreign. Some seek to justify their role in the executions. But in this Peebles, the Devil wears a cassock. Reverend Syd (Will Tillotson) summons a storm from the pulpit. Examine your souls, my flock. Make a note of who’s absent from the congregation. The devil’s handmaiden has a barren womb. First-time playwright Kath Mansfield knows how to write words that come a...

Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey – Traverse Theatre

4Nov

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey – Traverse Theatre

Opening in the post-war Western Isles, guitarist and vocalist Willie Campbell of The Metagama Ensemble, along with his fellow musicians, set the scene of Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey with its first musical number. We learn of the large groups of islanders, who due to a lack of opportunity, money, and depopulation from the war, decided to make the journey all the way to Canada on the ocean-liners SS Metagama, Canada, or Marloch. With traditional Scottish music being the focal point, it is accompanied with archival footage, illustrations (constructed by Doug Robertson), and narration by Dolina Maclennan and writer Donald S. Murray. Featuring not only original music by pianist and vocalist Liza Mulholland, Murray, and Campbell, traditional Gaelic songs are interspersed t...

Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening – Traverse Theatre

29Oct

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening – Traverse Theatre

Kathryn Tickell is one of Folk’s superstars, though it’s a title she’d probably toss over her shoulder in embarrassment. Prolific and eclectic from an early age she’s delivered albums of her own too numerous to mention since 1985 while collaborating with artists ranging from The Penguin Café Orchestra to Sting to Andy Sheppard. And most points in between, staying resolutely modest and self-effacing. Tonight, she performs with a slightly altered line-up of The Darkening, a creation inspired by twilight, or, as the French put it, ‘Entre Chien et Loup’, that time of day when a certain magic – both exhilarating and malevolent - is in the air. Together they perform what’s been dubbed ‘Ancient Northumbrian Futurism’ and while it’s an accurate description it’s also worth learning from one of Kath...

27Oct

By Dylan MooneyNo Comments

Scotland

So Young – Traverse Theatre

Off the back of its Edinburgh Fringe run, Douglas Maxwell’s So Young returns to the Traverse Theatre, directed by Artistic Director, Gareth Nicholls. Milo (Robert Jack) is in his forties and has recently lost his wife, Helen. Struck down with grief, he invites his friends, married couple Liane (Lucianne McEvoy) and Davie (Andy Clark) for an evening of food, drinks and reminiscing. However, he also invited his new partner, Greta (Yana Harris), who is 20 years younger than him. It isn’t long before tensions rise, and feelings are made known between these life-long friends. So, Young explores the different ways in which grief affects people as well as the struggles of getting older. Maxwell approaches his themes with his notorious wit, providing the audience with many laughs throughout ...

24Oct

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Batshit – Traverse Theatre

There’s a certain audacity to a one-person show. One performer, one story, one mind in charge of the entire evening. Batshit, created and performed by Leah Shelton, turns that control into both its subject and its triumph. In a world quick to label women “mad”, Shelton calmly, stylishly, and with extraordinary precision, takes charge of her own narrative, and everyone else’s for that matter, for sixty taut minutes.When you enter the tight Traverse 2, the first thing that hits you is the bank of LED strips looming above the stage like a silent judge. It’s no decorative flourish: throughout the show, that strip becomes an emotional metronome, pulsing and flickering in unnervingly close rhythm with the sound design. The coordination of light and sound, operated, I assume, from a pre-programme...

To Kill a Mockingbird – Festival Theatre

23Oct

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

To Kill a Mockingbird – Festival Theatre

All rise. Atticus Finch is back in court, and on this particular evening in Edinburgh it isn’t Richard Coyle behind the spectacles but John J. O’Hagan, stepping up from first cover to take on one of American literature’s most beloved men of principle. He does so with quiet assurance. Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, reborn for the stage by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Bartlett Sher, has been touring the UK with glowing tributes. The Edinburgh stop at the Festival Theatre proves both admirable and exhausting, a beautifully acted, morally charged evening that never-the-less feels every minute of its bloated three-and-a-quarter-hour runtime. Sorkin’s adaptation has long been praised for shifting the novel’s moral centre from saintly nostalgia to uneasy realism. His Atticus isn’t carved...

15Oct

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

The Seagull – Royal Lyceum

The Seagull is the complete package thanks to James Brining's direction. The casting is perfect; the set sumptuous; the costumes tip-top and the adapted script a true delight. Mike Poulton, the witty script adaptor, praises The Lyceum as “a theatre and a company Chekhov would have loved.” The cast of eleven certainly warm your heart, being consistently strong across the board. There is humour, tenderness, spite and selfishness aplenty. The Seagull offers a study in human folly, with each of us striving for originality and acknowledgement in a world where our relationships and the perspective of “the other” tarnishes and corrupts our pure intentions. The human experience is presented with simplicity. The tragedy of despised love and our willingness to accept crumbs, or nothing at a...