Scotland
David Kettle
It’s been 35 years since Tony Kushner’s two-play, multi-hour epic gay soap opera-cum-spiritual meditation was first unleashed on the world in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And it’s been 18 years since director Ivo van Hove unveiled his own raw, stripped-back production with what was then Toneelgroep Amsterdam, now Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. It’s tempting, therefore, to see the Edinburgh International Festival’s revival of van Hove’s production as a classic traversal of a classic text, with all the nicely safe distancing and detached appraisal that that double status might invite.That’ Read more ...
David Kettle
Andrew O’Hagan’s 2020 novel Mayflies had a memorable television treatment in 2022, and a brand new stage adaptation – to which the writer has given his blessing – is one of the Fringe’s 2026 hot tickets. It’s immediately clear why.Leith-based site-specific specialists Grid Iron theatre have requisitioned a grimy but wonderfully characterful warehouse as the cavernous setting for O’Hagan’s heartbreaking story of youthful, identity-forming joy and later-life tragedy. With its towering brick walls (put to excellent use with Lewis den Hertog’s colourful, clever video projections and Simon Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Just over 24 hours before Idlewild stepped out at the Kelvingrove Bandstand, the much ballyhooed solar eclipse had proved a damp squib for much of Scotland, with cloudy weather obscuring any views. With inevitable irony, the following day brought clear skies and sunshine, meaning the audience for this outdoor Glasgow show were basking in brightness and warmth for the arrival of Roddy Woomble and company, a band now holding indie veteran status.Sadly the good weather did not massively help support act Sorren Maclean, a well kent face in Scottish music. His low-key set, built around trad Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“How many cancer patients does it take to change a lightbulb? One and then 12 to say, ‘How inspiring.’” Bad taste jokes are all the rage among the kids at the summer camp for teenage cancer survivors in this quirky, uneven, coming-of-age rom-com directed and written by George Jacques, who is an ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust and whose mother had breast cancer for long stretches of his childhood. There’s something rather contrived about his project though the cast is impressive and the film is well meaning and sometimes uplifting.Seventeen-year-old Ivy (an expressive Bella Ramsey) has Read more ...
David Kettle
Cathy ★★★Iconic Scottish actor Elaine C Smith towers over writer/director Eilidh Loan’s snarling, acid-sour comedy at the Traverse Theatre. Judging by chat in the hectic pre-show queue, getting the chance to see her in the flesh was a big attraction for many punters. And Smith was central, too, to Loan’s creative process: the character of Cathy is inspired by the writer’s own grandmother, who insisted that Smith should play her.You clearly don’t mess with Loan’s granny. And once you experience her on-stage alter ego, you might tremble at the thought of what that real-life older woman is Read more ...
David Kettle
Water Colour ★★★★Milly Sweeney’s powerful two-hander comes to one of the Fringe’s highest-profile venues bearing prestigious awards for new writing, and it’s not hard to see why it’s won them. Water Colour is a taut, focused, elegantly constructed creation that rather miraculously manages to be both poetic and bracingly vernacular, bristling with the distinctive rhythms of Glaswegian speech but unafraid to mull over matters of life and death, and the apparently arbitrary nature of both, with compassion and insight.Haunted by school traumas, Esme is struggling to put paintbrush to canvas Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Sibelius: Symphonies 1-7 Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/Jukka-Pekka Saraste (Ondine)Violin Concerto, Lemminkäinen Suite Ava Bahari (violin), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Alpha Classics)
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Jukka-Pekka Saraste’s RCA Sibelius discs with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra were assembled in a no-frills box a few years ago. If you can find it, it’s worth buying for the shorter orchestral pieces alone, with exciting, brilliantly played accounts of the Sibelius’s two Scènes historiques suites and the delicious Read more ...
Gary Naylor
“Trump Arrangement Syndrome”, my propensity to see the world refracted through the lens of the omnipresent ogre’s cult, raised its head again. In watching a mad monarch, dementia tearing at their mind, insults raining down on those who fail to praise them, he loomed large in the consciousness yet again. How long will it be before we can look upon Lear and not see the orange man-child? Soon, I hope - but I doubt it.Finn den Hertog, listed as director and adapter, has a wonderful stage on which to work, a fine cast and, for only the eighth time in the 75-year history of Pitlochry Festival Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The World Cup is everywhere in Scotland these days, even among the country’s gigging venues. Rolled up Saltires were visible on the balconies of the O2 Academy, a reminder that the Glasgow venue is hosting watch parties for the national team’s matches, and when Lola Young came back onstage for the encore she was serenaded by fans belting out “no Scotland no party”, to which the Londoner cheerfully joined in.Roughly an hour earlier, the 25-year-old had walked out to the sort of wild reaction that greeted John McGinn hitting the back of the net against Haiti, with screams and hollers from the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Rambert is celebrating its first 100 years with a triple bill that emphasises the youthful vitality of the company. “We’re 100, and we’re just getting started,” they enthusiastically declare. “The next century starts here.” Like many of the best things in Britain, our first dance company was set up by an immigrant – a Polish woman dedicated both to dancing and promoting others. On leaving Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes where she’d danced with Nijinsky, Marie Rambert came to this country in 1914.As a child she was nicknamed “Quicksilver” because she never stopped moving, and on arrival she Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As Metallica have long known, Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold is a rousing choice of walk on music. Deadletter might not be playing the stadiums the metal giants ply their trade in, but strolling on to a near pitch black stage with music from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly booming out was a nicely theatrical opening.The group themselves might have wished for a Clint Eastwood style lawman at points this year. While 2026 has marked the arrival of second album “Existence Is Bliss”, it also saw the theft on tour of thousands of pounds worth of equipment and gear from the Yorkshire six-piece, a Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, star of The Gloaming supergroup, says of Ryan Young: “He is an up-and-coming musician who is gaining more and more well-deserved recognition. I feel that he has the potential to make a very significant contribution to the Scottish tradition.” And beyond his carefully measured words, Hayes has gone on to produce Young’s third album, as well as play on a couple of tune sets, which means you can strike out “up and coming” and replace it with “fully arrived”. And what an album it is – the playing, the discipline, invention and feel is exemplary. Young’s Read more ...