Friday, September 22

Scotland

Adventures with the Painted People – Pitlochry Festival Theatre/BBC Radio 3
10Jun By Paul DownhamNo Comments
Scotland

Adventures with the Painted People – Pitlochry Festival Theatre/BBC Radio 3

Leading Scottish playwright David Greig’s first play since 2013 was going to be the centrepiece of the new season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until Covid-19 forced them to close their doors. But the virus has forced theatres to become much more agile so Adventures with the Painted People has been rejigged to be part of their online Shades of the Tay offer, and not surprisingly given Greig’s reputation BBC Radio 3 snapped it up for their Arts in Quarantine series It’s the same story set in 86AD as disgraced Roman officer and wannabe poet Lucius is captured by the fierce Picts lead by Caledonian witch with a heart Eithne, who is keen to use her captive to negotiate a peace with the disciplined legionnaires who are massacring their wild menfolk. By a quirk of theatrical luck E...
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Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) – Royal Lyceum Theatre
4Jan By Paul DownhamNo Comments
Scotland

Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) – Royal Lyceum Theatre

For anyone who battled through Jane Austen’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ at school - or university - this play is for YOU. If you spent those hours-you’ll-never-get-back watching one of the film or TV adaptations, hurling abuse and shouting increasingly colourful language into the mouths of the characters, this script is for YOU. To witness this irritating novel set about with such irreverent relish was a filthy pleasure. Never mind what legions of readers and viewers have wanted to tell Lady Catherine De Bourgh to do, this play - via The Best Ever Mr Darcy - finally does it. How? First off, we’re introduced, not to Mr and Mrs Bennet, but to six of Longbourn’s servants clad in white utility smocks and DM’s (Dear Young Team, that’s a brand of footwear, not a form of soshal meeja); the st...
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