Traverse Theatre Archives - Page 4 of 9

29Jan

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Protest – Traverse Theatre

“This is a girl”. Three primary seven girls seek to address injustice in their everyday lives. Inspired by previous generations of women, they begin to find their voices. As soon as I saw the set, I just wanted to play on it. Amy Jane Cook’s design invites spontaneous, joyful movement. There is a winding path for the girls to run around, curved frames to climb and swing on, and platforms to rest, spin and jump on. The actresses are adults, but their performances are so convincing that it is easy to forget this. Movement director Nadia Iftkar has done an amazing job, and the girls move playfully, running with arms outstretched one minute, sitting cross legged and fidgeting the next. They beautifully capture the delight in movement that characterises childhood. The costumes, a...

Same Team – A Street Soccer Story – Traverse Theatre

16Dec

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

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’,...

Mark Thomas In England & Son – Traverse Theatre

8Dec

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Mark Thomas In England & Son – Traverse Theatre

Raw, brutal, honest, comic. Of the latter Mark Thomas is a master but so equally effective is he at the first three elements that the grim message of violence and trauma begetting more of the same, generation to generation, is diluted not one jot. This is heavy, intense, choreographed by Movement Director Simon Jones, its rhythm well-punctuated by sound designer MJ McCarthy and Lighting Designer Richard Williamson. Proceedings commence with an introduction from Mark describing how he met writer Ed Edwards several moons ago at the festival. Ed, serendipitously, was behind Mark as they left his show ‘The Political History Of Smack And Crack’, perfectly positioned to overhear the pronouncement; ‘That’s the best thing I’ve seen in fuckin’ ages.’ Five years later, beyond creating some incred...

27Nov

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Play Pretend – Traverse Theatre

A brand new play from writer Katie Fraser, directed by Laura Walker for Framework Theatre, a Scotland-based charitable organisation which supports emerging and early-career theatre makers. This play certainly has the feel of a development piece, a bit rough in places, but also fresh with clever ideas, enough to keep you leaning in and invested to the end. Chemistry, synergy, comradeship, trust, improvisation; all elements of acting which are extremely important and which are played out as exercises in drama schools everywhere. But in today’s society have the methods of building on-stage and on-screen relationship with your fellow actors become outdated, dangerous even. And how close is too close today? This play-within-a-play sees seasoned actor Greg rehearsing his role as Bonnie Pri...

20Nov

By Kathleen MansfieldNo Comments

Scotland

Learning to Fly – Traverse Theatre

James Rowland’s one-man show, Learning to Fly, is engaging, heartwarming and very funny. He is a gifted storyteller with a tender heart and a grand sense of the absurd. After a tough week, he really lifted my spirits. His tale is personal. It’s about growing up and having an unusual bond with the old lady across the road. He lives it on stage and so do we. There’s something about his face and expression that transforms into a twelve-year-old with all its innocence that I found charming. He embodies the three characters he portrays with simplicity. It’s not a show of gymnastic characterisation, it’s a confessional, sharing a poignant and funny episode between people from different age groups, growing closer over classical music and cups of milky strong tea. Some people had seen...

The Grandmothers Grimm – Traverse Theatre

2Nov

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

The Grandmothers Grimm – Traverse Theatre

Having just finished a quick nine reviews at the too-short Edinburgh Horror Festival, it was somewhat ironic that my next outing, The Grandmothers Grimm, had its premiere in Edinburgh at the very same event some six years previously. The show, written and directed by Emily Ingram in association with, Some Kind Of Theatre, has been on my radar for the last few years, doing the rounds in Scotland and further afield. I have always, somehow missed it, so I was doubly delighted to finally track it down, and to corner it in one of my favourite viewing spaces, Traverse 2. Expecting great things from what must surely be a polished pebble of a show, six years old, a lifetime in theatre land, I settled back expectantly to view proceedings. The first scene, probably my favourite of the whole pl...

Dead Dad Dog/Sunny Boy – Traverse Theatre

2Nov

By Roger JacobsNo Comments

Scotland

Dead Dad Dog/Sunny Boy – Traverse Theatre

It’s a shame circumstances prevented us seeing ‘Sunny Boy’, the sequel to ‘Dead Dad Dog’, but, 35 years on from its debut in the late 80’s, with the luxury of hindsight, the original play delivered some unexpectedly poignant twists and turns. The historical context more clearly defined, the father/son relationship represented not just the uneasy shift between generations, but also the seismic changes affecting Scotland as ‘Thatcherism’ took the entire UK down and up a new capitalism rollercoaster designed to replace the coal, steel and shipbuilding industries finally forced to give in to global economic pressures. Traditional pubs faced the threat of imported concepts like ‘Brasseries’ and the ‘Smoked Sausage Supper’ was besieged by a thing called Broccoli. ‘Looks like unripe cauliflower’,...

30Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Moorcroft – Traverse Theatre

This tale of male friendship and football is based on writer / director Eilidh Loan’s own memories of growing up in a working-class community in Renfrewshire, and the stories that her dad told her. The play begins as Garry (Martin Docherty) turns 50. He’s grown weary over the years, and he starts to reminisce about his glory days, in the 1980’s, and the friends he played football with back when he had fire in his belly. As narrator, Garry establishes that the story is about working-class men, and will not feature “big bits of furniture falling from the sky”, or sparkly costumes, because “life is so boring and shite” where he comes from. Everyone needs an escape from life’s hardships, and these men find it in their grassroots football team, Moorcroft. The characters are well dra...

28Oct

By Wendy McEwanNo Comments

Scotland

Battery Park – Traverse Theatre

Andy McGregor’s show, about a short-lived Indie band in the early nineties, includes an album’s worth of original songs, so it’s a lot like seeing a play and a gig at the same time. In the present day, Older Tommy (Chris Alexander) is approached by student Lucy (Chloe-Ann Taylor), who multi-roles as Tommy’s girlfriend, Angie, back in the nineties. Lucy is writing a dissertation on indie music, and she wants to know why Battery Park crashed and burned just before they made it big. In the nineties, Tommy’s (Stuart Edgar) brother Ed (Tommy McGowan) has just been fired from his dead-end job, and his pal Biffy’s (Charlie West) band has split up because one of the members got grounded for failing higher maths. They happen to hear Tommy playing a song on his guitar, and agree to form a band...

22Oct

By Greg HolsteadNo Comments

Scotland

Woman Walking – Traverse Theatre

This two women play by Sylvia Dow ends its three week tour of twelve Scotland venues at the hot and stuffily subterranean Traverse 2. Ironic perhaps, given that the setting is (supposedly) a breezy mist covered mountain top. As solo hill walker Cath, played by Pauline Lockhart, in hiking boots and sporting an infeasible large rucksack stops for a chocolate break, she finds she is not alone. And yet there is no surprise, no shock as she chats with the tweed-clad and grey-streaked Nan Shepherd, played by Fletcher Mathers. At the heart of the problems with this production is the lack of drama, of shock, of revelation. The narrative is linear and pedestrian and with a minimal set you might just as well be overhearing two post menopausal woman moaning about life in a Tesco car park. &n...