Scottish Storytelling Centre Archives

An American Love Letter to Edinburgh – Scottish Storytelling Centre

20Aug

By Tom ScottNo Comments

Scotland

An American Love Letter to Edinburgh – Scottish Storytelling Centre

This is a delightful, often hilarious, show beautifully performed by Rick Conte. It will appeal not just to lovers of Edinburgh and history buffs but to anyone who loves a good yarn. Written by Conte and Matt Rudkin, and directed by Andy Cannon, this is the fascinating story of two visits made to Edinburgh in 1759 and 1771 by Benjamin Franklin. ‘Renaissance Man’ Franklin wrote a book on electricity, but is of course most famous as one of the Founding Fathers of the USA. He edited and was one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Franklin had initially been sent over from Philadelphia to London to try to persuade the sons of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, to pay tax. While in London he met several fellow intellectuals including Sir John Pringl...

LIFE: Maria MacDonell – Scottish Storytelling Centre

9Aug

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

LIFE: Maria MacDonell – Scottish Storytelling Centre

I am afraid of drawing. I don’t know why. This play is set in a drawing class, and the audience is invited to sketch and doodle throughout. Now is the time to embrace my phobia. I am welcomed by The Artist (Leo MacNeill), a reassuring presence. “We are all artists”, he says. I am given paper and pencils, but no eraser. Every mark we make remains on the page. Estelle (Maria MacDonell, who also wrote the piece) cuts through The Artist’s whimsy with a shard of cynicism, at least to begin with. She thinks he’s pretentious. The Artist helps Estelle open up, and she tells us about her life, her hopes and regrets, her love of graveyards and her career as an artist’s model. Estelle tells her story through the medium of folk tales. Afterwards, MacDonnell tells me that Estelle is so damage...

Sing Along With the Fairy Song – Scottish Storytelling Centre

8Aug

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Sing Along With the Fairy Song – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Sing Along With the Fairy Song is Edinburgh Fringe for Early Years. An elegant wooden chair, a stool, two pedestals of white roses, a projection of frolicking fairies, bird song and the veteran storyteller for children, Janis Mackay, warmly welcome a select audience. Mackay is experienced with little ones and greets the fairy-winged and magic-wanded little people with charm and encouragement. This is an interactive piece and the young audience repeat the actions and songs with enthusiasm as they join Mackay in an imaginary hunt for fairies in the woods or hiding amid the flowers and maybe secretly living under miniature hillocks. It took a little time to teach the songs and draw out flower and tree names from the youngsters, but once over their shyness, three little girls did not...

Elliot Bibby – The Best of Bibby – Scottish Storytelling Centre

2Jan

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Elliot Bibby – The Best of Bibby – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Perhaps more than any other performer at Edinburgh’s Magicfest 2023, Elliot Bibby is unashamedly a comedian and entertainer first and a magician second. There is certainly no shortage of laugh-out-loud moments from this cheeky and charming magic man which make it quite different to all the others I’ve reviewed so far on the programme. Of course, comedy within magic is nothing new. Add a funny hat to the tall, dark Bibby and the Cooperesque comparison would be inescapable. No more so than when Bibby carries out the hilarious Bottle Glass, Glass bottle routine, which was one of Tommy’s absolute highlights. A lady behind me was in total hysterics during this sketch as bottle after bottle appeared on the ever diminishing table! Whilst comedy, can, of course, be a strength when combined ...

Richard Wiseman – The Worlds’s Greatest Card Trick – Scottish Storytelling Centre

2Jan

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Richard Wiseman – The Worlds’s Greatest Card Trick – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Prolific writer, Psychologist and magician Professor Richard Wiseman, who has attracted more than 800M views on YouTube and worked with the likes of David Copperfield, Penn & Teller and Darren Brown, comes across as a very unassuming and likeable chap who excels at interacting and entertaining the audience and also has some surprisingly good tricks up his sleeve. Combining erudite wit, a cardboard box full of self-made tricks and a deep knowledge of the subject matter is a compelling combination. The upper studio of The Scottish Storytelling Centre is an intimate space, with an audience of perhaps twenty, ranged in a semicircle around Wiseman. He happily gathers us into his tight spotlit table. Wiseman takes us on a brief tour of the life of some of the unseen and unknown inv...

Gie’s Peace – Scottish Storytelling Centre

10Aug

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Gie’s Peace – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Morna Burdon’s journey through the world of women who have stood against war and made a peaceful difference is not shouting for space in a busy Edinburgh festival. Yet, on this, her first day, she has a full house. The George Mackay Brown Library in the Scottish Storytelling Centre is an apt venue. Burdon has done her research. And she has chosen a tender and funny collection of songs to illustrate the power of peaceful protest. She began with Nancy Nicolson’s Last Carol which alternates between a melancholy chorus of mushroom clouds and heavy water and jaunty verses with the words, merrily, merrily. I instantly warmed to her and to the subject matter. At the end, the audience spontaneously joined her for We Will Overcome. It was very moving. Early on she included a teenager from...

Wee Seals and Selkies – Scottish Storytelling Centre

5Aug

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Wee Seals and Selkies – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Wee Seals and Selkies is a magical warm hug from children’s author, Janis Mackay. Her velvet voice and adept physicality captures young imaginations from the outset. As we enter, she sits on the edge of the simple set while her musician companion, Donald Scott, warms the atmosphere with this fiddle. In this delightful family show, storytelling and music combine to create an enchanting performance, evoking the Scottish northern seashores. The Wee Seal is the true tale of a seal born in the storyteller’s garden, while The Selkie Girl is a retelling for children of the much-loved magical selkie myth. Based on two of Janis Mackay’s much-loved books; The Wee Seal, and The Selkie Girl (Floris Books), the sea and the seals are evoked both on stage and by the audience. The lighting, c...

5Jun

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Pibroch – Scottish Storytelling Centre

Pibroch is a multimedia theatre production exploring parallels between the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and our current climate crisis. Bolland’s lyrical spoken word show deplores the sanitisation of traumatic events and the tragedy of disabled self-direction as, sheep-like, we follow the rules and meekly meet our death. The Piper Alpha tragedy caused 165 deaths because safety measures on paper did not translate to reality, just as in the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, and the Grenfell Tower in 2017: emergency services were tardy, safety standards were jeopardised and human flesh was sacrificed to balance the books and up the profit margin. Public Inquiries simply create a sanitised record and a statistical translation of guttural human anguish and suffering - wretchedness which impa...