Scotland Archives - Page 87 of 94

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

6Apr

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical – Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

‘But the music keeps playing And won’t let the world get me down.’ These lyrics from the title track of Carole King’s third album ‘Music’, released a mere 11 months after the legendary ‘Tapestry’ in 1971, could easily explain her life and career, neither of which were short of ups and downs. The question was, how on earth could anyone do it justice in just over two hours? The moment the lights went down from her seat at the centrally placed piano, Molly-Grace Cutler (Carole) banished any concerns. The opening lines of ‘So Far Away’ were a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck/lump-in-the-throat moment. Her voice (whether she’d worked on it or not) was uncannily ‘Carole’, the theatre pin-drop silent. There followed an entertaining, slightly rushed account of her early years; learning the p...

The Da Vinci Code – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

6Apr

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

The Da Vinci Code – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

After the curator of the Louvre is brutally murdered, a series of codes left by his body seem to implicate Professor Robert Langdon (Nigel Harman, from EastEnders, Downton Abbey and Blood Diamond) in the murder. Aided by the dead man's grand-daughter Sophie Neveu (Hannah Rose Caton, The Falling, Last Knights, Wizards vs Aliens) and colleague Sir Leigh Teabing (Danny John-Jules from Red Dwarf and Death in Paradise), they must race across time and North West Europe to solve the riddles hidden across time in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and beyond, and find the shocking historical secret before it falls into the hand of flagellating monk and his teacher. The success of the best-selling novel this is based on (it has already sold over 100 million copies and been adapted into a film starri...

Tandem Writing Collective – Traverse Theatre

4Apr

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

Tandem Writing Collective – Traverse Theatre

Established, run and directed by playwrights, Amy Hawes, Jennifer Adam and Mhairi Quinn, Tandem puts on new scripts by the three writers, performed script in hand here by Debbie Cannon, Vivien Reid, Lucy Goldie, and Calum Barbour, with musical accompaniment by Aaron McGregor (who composed all the music with the exception of one piece) and Lucia Capellaro. In “Divide and Conquer” a mother-in-law and furloughed son-in-law deal with forced cohabitation during a Covid lockdown. In “Tying The Knot” (which is based on some real events), a woman hires an online ancestry website called whoami.com to find out about the family she was adopted from with disturbing results. “Heartbrain” is a monologue about life and leasing with your heart. "Swing 'Till You're Winning” follows an understudy who loc...

Allan Stewart’s Big Big Variety Show – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

31Mar

By Melissa JonesNo Comments

Scotland

Allan Stewart’s Big Big Variety Show – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

Actor, singer, comedian and all-round impresario, Allan Stewart swore he would never bring his variety back to the King’s Theatre in 2020. But a lot has changed since then, in ways no one could image. We live in a world where panto runs can be cut short, which for the likes of Allan Stewart fans is a devastating world to live in, indeed. Bringing back one of Edinburgh’s best loved shows was the perfect tonic. As the curtain rises, we’re joined by the legend himself with the fantastic Andy Pickering and his orchestra. Andy Pickering’s orchestra hold the pace all evening, delivering hit after hit with prowess. Tonight’s show, is as you would expect it, filled with Easter egg surprises. After Stewart’s big opening number, we’re joined by panto legend Grant Stott, fresh from ongoing s...

Everybody’s Talking About Jaime – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

30Mar

By Beth EltringhamNo Comments

Scotland

Everybody’s Talking About Jaime – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

When you learn to except yourself for who you truly are and want to be, that is when the world will follow suit and accept you too, this is the message that this show communicates. Everyone’s Talking about Jamie is based around the true life and journey of drag star Jamie Campbell: one of the youngest drag queens of his time, taking up the art at just 16. Whilst drag is an important plot device do not get this show confused for a drag show; Jamie’s alter ego Mimi Me (or in real life Fifi La True) only actually surfaces once in the show and in its complete form this is via projection. The plot is actually about a young sixteen-year-old queer boy (Jamie played by Layton Williams) who dreams of being a drag queen yet fears the backlash he may get from his classmates, teacher (Lara Denning...

Mugabe, My Dad and Me – Traverse Theatre

24Mar

By Melissa JonesNo Comments

Scotland

Mugabe, My Dad and Me – Traverse Theatre

‘Stories breed stories’ actor Tonderai Munyevu tells the audience as he draws his one-man production towards its close. For the past 90 minutes Munyevu has taken us on a journey, from Soho to Harare, Zimbabwe, where he confronts the presence of the men who's shaped his life, one of whom who shaped a nation; his father and the Zimbabwean leader, Robert Mugabe. Munyevu takes to the stage, as though he were a stand-up comic, settling us all in for a night of one liners, merely scraping the surface of his internal motions when a punter in the local he was working at in London asked him where he was from, before spouting their opinions about Zimbabwe, the so-called ‘breadbasket of Africa’. This infuriating exchange forms the basis of Munyenvu’s meanderings through memory and history, it’s a ...

The Pirates of Penzance – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

23Mar

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

The Pirates of Penzance – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Gilbert and Sullivan Society are back with a production of The Pirates of Penzance, directed by Alan Borthwick and David Lyle and starring Keegan Siebken as Frederic, Lorna Murray as Mabel, Sebastion Davidson as the Pirate King and Colin Povey as Major-General Stanley, the latter being responsible for perhaps the show's most famous aspect, the Major General’s Song (“I am the very model of a modern Major-General”), basically the XIXth century Alphabet Aerobics in terms of tongue-twisting at speed. Fittingly for a comic opera, the show's very title is humorous on several levels. On the one hand, Penzance was a docile seaside resort at the time, and consequently not the place one would expect to encounter pirates in, and on the other, the title worked as a jab at the theatric...

Shrek The Musical – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

17Mar

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Shrek The Musical – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

The Bohemians Lyric Theatre Company are an amateur outfit based in Edinburgh, and to have even contemplated taking on such a show as Shrek deserves a medal, but then a little research reveals that this company’s been going since 1909. Evidence there’s a fair reservoir of experience to hand is illustrated by the fact they regularly grace The Fringe on top of the yearly output which is… pretty staggering, some years including no less than three different shows. As opening night’s go though, this couldn’t have started worse. Traces of nerves were discernible unaided by the fact the actors’ vocals were constantly at odds with the volume of the band, an issue which persisted but which one imagines will be resolved as the run proceeds. But 25 minutes (or so) in a crackling malfunction manifes...

16Mar

By Oliver GigginsNo Comments

Scotland

SIX: The Musical – Festival Theatre

The musical SIX, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss and directed by Moss and Jamie Armitage, is an 80-minute celebration of 21st-century girl power through the story of the six wives of Henry VIII. In it, Catherine of Aragon (Chloe Hart), Anne Boleyn (Jennifer Caldwell), Jane Seymour (Casey Al-Shaqsy), Anna of Cleves (Aiesha Naomi Pease), Katherine Howard (Jaina Brock-Patel), and Catherine Parr (Alana M Robinson) get to put across their point of view through a glitsy Chicago-esque Cell Block Tango set-up (replace “Pop – Six – Squish – Uh-Uh – Cicero - Lipchitz” with “divorced – beheaded – died – divorced – beheaded – survived). The show first premiered 5 years ago in a hotel conference room at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival performed by half a dozen student actors and has since then re...

15Mar

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Hairspray – Edinburgh Playhouse

‘Save your personal life…’ instructs Velma Von Tussle ‘… for the camera, Sweetie.’ She, back in ‘62 (OK, John Waters in the mid 80’s) had clearly seen something in a crystal ball about TV beyond the early 90’s. Despite how prescient this observation, it was soon overwhelmed by a production possessing strength, power and above all… rhythm. The dialogue - sharp and indestructible as a diamond – swung perfectly between the songs and vice versa, but where musicals can often find themselves staffed by good actors who can sing and dance a little, or good singers/dancers who can act a bit, this had a cast capable of handling it all. Of a Dick Van Dyke accent catastrophe there was barely a flicker. Not a cue nor a laugh was missed. It’s scarcely believable that this was the professional debu...