wed 09/04/2025

Scotland

The Three Kings review – saluting Busby, Shankly and Stein

If Shakespeare had lived in post-war Britain, he surely would have dramatised the careers of the three towering contemporaneous Scottish football managers whose visions of how football should be played and its importance to ordinary people left a...

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Album: Barbara Dickson - Time is Going Faster

It’s 45 years since the West End success of John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert put a young Scottish folkie named Barbara Dickson on the map, launching a career that brought richly-deserved success on stage and screen, as well as in music. She’s...

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Get Duked! review - briefly endearing, then a chore

An endearing cast does what it can to keep Get Duked! aloft until writer-director Ninian Doff's movie sinks under the weight of too many wearisome shifts in tone. A coming-of-age film that is alternately silly and sentimental while wanting at times...

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Declan, Traverse Theatre online review - compressed and compelling

In normal times, Edinburgh Festival audiences would now be packing into the city’s invaluable Traverse Theatre, home to some of the most vibrant new writing in the country. Instead, the Traverse has created a new online venue, Traverse 3, that...

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Album: Biffy Clyro - A Celebration of Endings

Together for over 20 years and with a string of incredibly successful albums, the Scottish trio return with a ninth release that offers more of the relatively sophisticated bombast they've consistently delivered, not least in perfectly-paced...

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First Person: Antonia Bain on directing a short kitchen opera for film

The Narcissistic Fish is a brand new opera specifically created to be filmed. Set in Leith and written in Scots, it tells the story of restaurant owner and chef, Angus, and his brother Kai who are arguing over the death of their father, while the...

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New Music Unlocked 1: Reef, Supersonic Festival, Elton John and more

The lockdown which began in March is now noticeably easing, although in the realm of gigs and festivals things are still nowhere near operative. Nonetheless, theartsdesk is responding to the changes by ceasing our many weeks of New Music Lockdown...

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‘We are still standing and planning for the brightest future we can’: Svend McEwan-Brown on the survival of a festival

They say that you discover who your true friends are when you find yourself in direst need. East Neuk Festival, our success story on the Fife coast, which should have been happening this week, faced the deepest crisis in its 16-year history this...

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The Choir: Singing for Britain, BBC Two review - the pandemic versus the power of song

Singing in a choir can be terrific therapy for anxiety, depression or loneliness, but one of the cruellest effects of the coronavirus is the way it has restricted normal human interaction. The notion of social distancing might have been designed to...

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New Music Lockdown 8: Take That, Moby, Kaiser Chiefs, Róisín Murphy and more

From the biggest man band of all time to a rising Doncaster DJ, from the lofts of New York to the garage studios rooms of Scotland, the best of current musical lockdown life is here. Dive in!Take That/Robbie Williams: Meerkat Music ConcertThe big...

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Tectonics Rewind, BBCSSO review - new music festival revisits past gems

As Covid-19 puts a halt to live events around the world, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has delivered its annual festival of new music, Tectonics, online, with a selection of recordings from past performances. Since everything from the past...

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The Whalebone Box review - documentary through unreliable surrealism

The UK-wide lockdown has thrown the cinematic release schedule into chaos. Some films are postponed indefinitely, while others have opted for direct digital releases. It’s not ideal for anyone, but in a strange way it may play to The Whalebone Box’s...

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