Scotland
David Kettle
Evil walks among us. But it doesn’t arrive courtesy of mad scientists, bubbling potions and horrifying transformations. Instead, it comes from ordinary people surrendering themselves to their basest desires and resentments. Even worse, doing that feels… good.Anyone expecting jump scares and hideous, barely human creatures from Jekyll and Hyde at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre – boiled down from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella into an intense 70-minute solo show by Scottish writer and performer Gary McNair – might be disappointed, at least partially. Indeed, there’s quite a bit about McNair’s Read more ...
Kristin M Jones
“Nothing is stronger than true love,” a young laird says to a headstrong young woman in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), his voice heard above the sounds of wind and waves. She replies, “No, nothing.”Even as they are in danger of drowning in the same way, he is recounting a legend in which a prince is doomed to death in the whirlpool Corryvreckan. Mystical forces are woven through the film, and all conspire to help love conquer materialism.Powell and Pressburger began work on I Know Where I’m Going! after they postponed making A Matter of Life and Death Read more ...
David Kettle
You can keep your Cinderellas, your Aladdins, your wannabe Lord Mayors of London. The way forward with Christmas shows is clearly women’s football – more specifically, a Scottish five-a-side team that competes in the Homeless World Cup.You’ve got to hand it to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre for the sheer audacity of presenting such a shamelessly un-Christmassy show as its… er… Christmas show. In fact, there’s plenty about Same Team – its sometimes distressing details of abuse, neglect and deprivation, for example, but also its gloriously rich lexicon of profanities – that makes is decidedly Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was something misleading about the opening of this concert. As Andrew John Hozier-Byrne and his band stepped onstage, the stage was lit up by a single spotlight, focused around the microphone that the singer stepped up to. Yet the following two hours were anything but a one-man band, with the collective of musicians assembled behind him given ample room to shine, to mostly positive but occasionally negative effect.That arrival was greeted rapturously by the Glasgow crowd, who had already responded warmly to support act the Last Dinner Party and then entertained themselves by singing Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There was a moment towards the end of this exuberant evening when Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson compared the show to a pantomime. This was an extremely apt comparison, in a good way, for alongside the singing and dancing there was a helping of cheeky raised eyebrow wit, lashes of audience participation and even the usage of unexpected props.When a bra was launched towards the Dublin songstress she sashayed around with it and asked for “more where that came from”, which is why several moments later the Glasgow crowd found themselves enjoying the sight of Thompson clutching more underwear while Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
It is not every day that a new choral work by a living composer can confidently be labelled a masterpiece. Yet this is what we have here. James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio is still sufficiently freshly-minted to be receiving its Scottish premiere, and from Friday night’s spectacular performance by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus it deserves to sit alongside Messiah or Bach’s eponymous masterpiece as a staple of our future Christmas repertoire. From the first stuttering notes of the opening Sinfonia, with the celesta casting a fairy tale spell over chewy woodwind Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
If nothing else, you couldn’t accuse Greta Van Fleet of short-changing fans when it came to costumes or pyro. It felt like every few minutes the Michigan throwback rockers frontman Josh Kiszka was disappearing offstage, only to reappear in a variety of jumpsuits or robes, while roasting flames regularly shot up from behind the four piece.A shame that the outfit changes represented the most variety in a one-dimensional arena rock show. No matter what garb Kiszka donned, the songs remained the same, which was fantastic news from those wanting to enjoy a Led Zeppelin revival and substantially Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The question they’re all asking is, can Shetland survive the loss of Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez? After all, it was Henshall’s shrewd and quietly anguished performance which gave the show much of its allure. And now there’s no Mark Bonnar either, who could always be relied on to add a soupçon of angst.Instead, it’s Ashley Jensen (Agatha Raisin, After Life etc) who’s front and centre in the new, revamped Shetland. She plays DI Ruth Calder of the Metropolitan Police, investigating the murder of a London gangster, Philip Remis. She’s looking for a runaway witness to the crime, Ellen Read more ...
David Kettle
You can almost feel the energy blazing off the stage in this fast, furious and fiercely funny two-hander from writer Racheal Ofori and Newcastle-based Alphabetti Theatre. Don’t blink or you’ll miss a crucial plot twist, or a nifty swerve into new characters, or even a major technological development.But behind all the japes, attitude and theatrical playfulness, there are broader, more human issues being explored here. Carleen and Crystal are urban 20-somethings who’ve done well with their amusing musings for online consumption via a platform that feels very much like YouTube ("Questions I Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
When Maisie Peters first appeared onstage she loudly asked if the crowd were ready for “the best night of their lives”, and given the youthful nature of the audience the ensuing 80 minutes might have lived up to the hype. There were screams, hysteria and, in one case, an emotional lass getting on her phone to tell her significant other that hearing break-up songs brought home how much they appreciated them.There were a lot of those songs, in fairness. When Peters observed that she was seeking to provide music from different eras of her life it was easy to raise an eyebrow, given she’s still Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
In the current reappraisal of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, what to make of the depiction of women in their key films, that striking tribe of Isoldes with chestnut hair and passionate natures?Powell (1905-90), a man of Kent whose love for his actors was apparently without limits, could be a dictatorial director who, by his own admission, used shock tactics on set to get what he wanted. Whereas Pressburger (1902-88) was a conservative Hungarian who preferred women to be silent partners: “anti-feminist” was Powell’s term for him.Yet between them, and factoring in the upheavals of the Read more ...
David Kettle
An all-female production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – well, kind of – that transplants the novel’s more local action to the northeast of Scotland, and finds a bloody new calling for one of its less ostentatious characters? Elgin-born writer Morna Pearson is asking a lot from Stoker purists in her bold reimagining of the iconic, endlessly retold tale for the National Theatre of Scotland.For some, truth be told, Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning might push their patience and credulity a bit too far. But ultimately, this is an ambitious, highly effective and gleefully provocative rethink of the classic Read more ...