4-star
An Edinburgh Christmas Carol
Scrooge in Edinburgh is at the heart of this delightful Christmas story, with Greyfriars Bobby meeting Tiny Tim in a perfectly pitched seasonal romp. This production is of course designed to be enjoyed by children, and judging from the hearty chuckles and giggles issuing from the stalls throughout, it certainly hit its mark. At one…
Read MoreBarber Shop Chronicles
This is a production full of energy, passion and joy set to a riotously enjoyable soundtrack. I strongly advise getting to the show early, as you’ll find cast members roaming around the auditorium greeting and shaking hands with everyone. You get to hang out with the cast while the DJ spins up a series of…
Read MoreThe Panopticon
A stunning central performance, superb casting and a striking, minimalist set combine to make this seminal 2012 novel come alive on stage. This is powerful, visceral, and shocking. Anais Hendricks (Anna Russel-Martin) is a 15-year-old girl who has been locked in to the ‘care system’ since birth, and has now been transferred to the Panopticon,…
Read MoreSolaris
This is the first time that Solaris has been brought to the stage, and David Greig’s treatment based on the novel by Stanisław Lem is stunning, fresh and resonant. Science fiction allows for rules to be broken and conventions to be usurped, and this production certainly defies the norm, and any expectations you may bring…
Read MoreThe Duchess [of Malfi]
This finely-staged drama is a visceral exploration of male violence and oppression, at once gripping, terrifying and mesmerising. A purposely nervous but soulful song starts the action in a stark, stripped back setting, and Kirsty Stuart quietly asserts both her power and her fragility from the start. Based on John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy, The…
Read MoreKátya Kabanová
Scottish Opera seems to have caught the zeitgeist with this production, which is one of three Kátya Kabanovás running in the UK at the beginning of this year, with Opera North and Covent Garden also joining in the Katyamania. But, even without seeing the others, I can be confident in saying that this looks very…
Read MoreWendy and Peter Pan
The Lyceum’s Christmas production of ‘Wendy and Peter Pan’ is heart warming, funny, with elements of pantomime (but not too overdramatized). The first half of the show follows the traditional storyline of Peter Pan with Peter, John and Michael wanting to do nothing but play games and fight after arriving in Neverland. But there is…
Read MoreThe Journey
This is an excoriating, disturbing and intense hour of theatre in the round, and it highlights the desperate plight of refugees in a hard-hitting and unforgettable way. Three actors play the role of a family who are ‘found by war’ and graphically portray their plight as war comes to their unnamed home and gradually but…
Read MoreRigoletto
Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda is an innocent who is first deceptively seduced, then kidnapped, and raped – behind this are powerful men acting with complete impunity and treating a woman as nothing more than a disposable object for their pleasure. Written in 1850, Rigoletto was perhaps the first opera to deal openly with the issue of…
Read MoreCyrano de Bergerac
Yon Cyrano has a muckle great neb, and this yin’s a pure dead brilliant show. You’re immersed from the start in glorious rhyming Scots with Edwin Morgan’s seminal translation, and it combines with the semi-industrial but inventive set design pulls you into this cracking piece of theatre completely. Brian Ferguson as Cyrano dominates almost effortlessly…
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