Scotland Archives - Page 34 of 130

ImprompTwo & Nice Things & Hog – Scottish Storytelling Centre

23Mar

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

ImprompTwo & Nice Things & Hog – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Three for the price of one. A busy hour flashed by, we’ll try to remember... First up were ImprompTwo (Kathy and Joe Rinaldi from across the pond) illustrating several comic aspects of a New York apartment block; the Deli on the ground floor where debates on sandwich fillings leads to a customer’s ejection, a couple’s upstairs apartment where debates concerning the title of a podcast (is it Love or Romance?) lead to some testy exchanges, and a further debate about what to do when an unwanted guest threatens a visit. Funny, entertaining, slick, with snappy dialogue, but was it improvised? Next up were Nice Things (Charles Dundas and Steven Millar) who took the audience input and ran with it, kicking off with bus drivers Terry and Terence and the surreal suggestion that a sma...

The Imposters and Funfdollar – Edinburgh International Improv Festival

23Mar

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

The Imposters and Funfdollar – Edinburgh International Improv Festival

Hosted by the Scottish Storytelling centre, the Edinburgh International Improv Festival hit us with three full nights of improv by actors from all across the globe. In this double bill we saw The Imposters from Shetland tell a tale fit for a soap opera, followed by Funfdollar all the way from Berlin who left us in stitches with their dry, quick-witted humour. Kicking things off with The Imposters, this group took the word ‘dragon’ from the audience. How this improvisation transpired from the word dragon I am unsure as the only reference to the source word was a clever remark from one of the players, with him saying “this is dragging on.” Get it? To begin with it did seem that the team was struggling a little for inspiration but once they found the basis of their im...

Portable Infinity – Edinburgh Traverse Bar

23Mar

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Portable Infinity – Edinburgh Traverse Bar

Crikey, this was good. Tight. Hot. Funky. At times it even rocked. Four master musicians with CV’s so long you’d need a telescope to finish reading. Accompanying central legend Benjamin Koppel on Alto Sax were Jacob Karlzon on piano, Scott Colley on double bass and Magnus Ostrom on drums and percussion (have a google). Making it work because they love, but more importantly, live, what they do. The setting of the bar at The Traverse lends itself well to these events, allowing just the right ratio of reverence to informality. As Benjamin announces, this will be one long set, no interval, but one is welcome to frequent the bar. The quartet recorded an eponymously titled album in 2023, (available from Cowbell Music, Bandcamp and most of the usual platforms) and this is pretty much what ...

Quartermaine’s Terms – Churchill Theatre, Edinburgh

22Mar

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Quartermaine’s Terms – Churchill Theatre, Edinburgh

Presented by Edinburgh People’s Theatre, Quatermaine’s Terms gives a fly-on-the-wall view of a 1960s staffroom within an international school in Cambridge. Spanning over two years, we see the personal lives and relationships of the characters change and adapt, communicated to us by way of staff room gossip. We get a picture of love, death, and loneliness and the characters incessant need to keep it all to themselves - an all too real representation of the stiff upper lip British attitude which eventually leads to the breakdown of each character. The exception to this cycle of change is the Quartermaine himself. Having been with the school since it first opened, the Quartermaine, who seems almost glued to his staff room armchair, has begun to mentally deteriorate lea...

22Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Death of a Salesman – Festival Theatre

Arthur Miller’s iconic treatise on the American Dream, often studied, but rarely performed, is brought to glorious life tonight on the Scotland’s biggest stage in front of a packed and almost reverential audience. It is a simple enough tale of an ordinary man, Willie Loman, who has worked all his life to live up to his, and America’s, idea of what a man should be; strong, dependable, financially stable and unexceptional – an automaton – A Salesman. We enter Willie’s world just as he seriously begins to question his life and whether it has been a success. He has begun to have lapses of concentration which might point towards the onset of dementia, which are now even affecting his ability to drive safely and ultimately be able to continue working. A life insurance policy of $20,000 feels ...

Eliza Carthy and Jennifer Reid – Traverse Theatre

18Mar

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Eliza Carthy and Jennifer Reid – Traverse Theatre

Jennifer Reid performs nineteenth-century Lancashire dialect and Victorian broadside ballads. She comes from Rochdale, “but I admit it”. Reid sings unaccompanied throughout the evening but provides percussion for one of Carthy’s songs in the form of clog dancing. Eliza Carthy describes herself as a “modern English musician”. She sings centuries-old traditional songs, and more modern pieces including her own compositions. She mostly sings unaccompanied and occasionally brings out her fiddle. Carthy hails from Yorkshire, and a few good-natured cross-Pennine insults are exchanged over the course of the evening. Reid is a fantastic storyteller, bringing life to some memorable characters such as “Frolicksome Kay”, a good Lancashire lass who is disappointed by her new boyfriend from Yo...

Seven Drunken Nights: The Story of the Dubliners – Usher Hall

18Mar

By Dylan MooneyNo Comments

Scotland

Seven Drunken Nights: The Story of the Dubliners – Usher Hall

Perfectly timed for St Patrick’s Day, ‘Seven Drunken Nights: The Story of the Dubliners’ stopped off at the Usher Hall on their 2025 UK Tour. As the name suggests, this concert-style show tells the story of Ireland’s famous folk group, the Dubliners, with songs such as ‘The Irish Rover’, ‘Tell Me Ma’ and ‘Dirty Old Town’. The show was created with O’Donoghue’s pub where the original group used to perform. The performance is made up of a talented group of musicians who bring the Dubliners’ greatest hits to life while also serving as narrators, teaching the lively audience how the group started out 50 years ago. The stage makes use of three different locations - a traditional Irish pub, a recording studio set and a section at the front left clear for the performers to come closer to the a...

17Mar

By H.S. BakerNo Comments

Scotland

Wild Rose – Royal Lyceum Theatre

Rose-Lynn Harlan loves country music and is pretty good at singing it too. Her burning ambition is to sing at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. The trouble is, she’s just been released from prison and has a tag on her ankle. Whilst Rose-Lynn was incarcerated, her mother has been looking after her two children and now thinks her family deserve her presence and attention. Set in Glasgow, it turns out that Glasgow has its own Grand Ole Opry, (who knew?) and Rose-Lynn gets a job as a cleaner. The rest is fairly standard and predictable. Mother give Rose-Lynn the money to go to Nashville, Rose-Lynn realises what’s really important and the final song, “Glasgow (no place like home)” says it all. But this show isn’t about the narrative, it’s about the music, and if you like country m...

17Mar

By Jessie MartinNo Comments

Scotland

Chef – Traverse Theatre

Once again, The Traverse champions fresh, accessible writing; this time with Sabrina Mahfouz’s one-woman play Chef. Set in a prison kitchen, the head chef walks us through her dream menu with a story to accompany each dish. We see glimpses of the chef’s life and significant events which led up to her arrest; her troubled relationship with her father, the first kitchen she ran, illegal dealings with her seedy ex-boyfriend, living on a boat. While the chef recounts her memories, her second-in-command in the kitchen acts as a BSL interpreter. This immersive style of interpretation was refreshing to see, giving a character to the interpreter - including her rather than seeing her as a distraction. Without the interpreter this play would somehow not be as poignant ...

The Land That Never Was – The Studio, Edinburgh

17Mar

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Land That Never Was – The Studio, Edinburgh

Starting life as an idea broached on a Scratch night for budding theatre makers a year ago, Liam Rees brings a fascinating true story of financial fraud to fruition to a packed house tonight. Imagine a country so bountiful in flora and fauna, set in the warm rejuvenating waters of Central America, a tropical paradise, where you would be lord of all you surveyed. This is the dream that Stirling man (Sir) Gregor McGregor sold to over 300 Scots in 1820. The country was Poyais, it had its own currency, parliament, honours system and coat of arms, all described in loving detail in an illustrated 350-page guidebook. But the book, like the story was fake, as was the currency which padded the wallets of the hopeful on their long and perilous journey. The actual destination for the unfortunate S...