Hannah Jarrett-Scott Archives - North West End UK

11Aug

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Singer – Traverse Theatre

There is a lovely irony running through The Singer. This is a show fascinated by the importance of finding the flow in music, yet it is a production which repeatedly struggles to find its own. Perhaps that is entirely intentional. Life is messy. Creativity is messy. Relationships are certainly messy, and the relationship between Joe, a profoundly Deaf songwriter, and Andy, a musician whose own career has fallen apart, was never going to travel in a conveniently straight line. So perhaps the stops, starts and sudden changes of direction are part of Cora Bissett's design. But that raises another question. Is the mess what an audience actually wants, or do we still crave the simplicity of a story which knows where it is taking us? There is an enormous amount to admire here. J...

Same Team – A Street Soccer Story – Traverse Theatre

From the pens of Robbie Jack and Jack Nurse, comes the story of five disparate women all struggling in their own way, but brought together as a team to represent Scotland at the Homeless World Cup in Italy. Created alongside the women from the Dundee Change Centre, an initiative which uses football to inspire and empower the excluded, the marginalised and the homeless. The high-charged atmosphere of the five-aside pitch is brought brilliantly to life in a cleverly conceived gymnasium set by Alisa Kalyanova, complete with floodlighting and pitch lines. The Traverse 1 auditorium could hardly be better proportioned, with its steep terraced seating and wide rectangular stage, and successfully turns normally placid audience into screaming spectator by the end of the production. ‘The Bee’,...

Pride and Prejudice (sort of) – Criterion Theatre

I don’t know what I was expecting walking into an all-female Pride and Prejudice, but I left with ready for a complete re-write of literature and Isobel McArthur to lead the revolution. The energy, commitment, enjoyment they had to be there was streamed through this theatre, it felt like a gift to witness. Isobel McArthur, writer and performer was commissioned to write a stage production of Pride and Prejudice for Tron Theatre four years ago after having never read the book. Since then she has been developing this play to finally land at the Criterion Theatre in London where 5 actors enter the stage as we enter our seats only to assure us that it hasn’t started yet- they just need to grab their rubber glove from the chandelier. Everything is very much in their gloved hands, as they r...