Theatre
Touching the Void
I can recall many theatre performances. But I can only once recall seeing anything quite as accomplished, astonishing and as well crafted as Touching the Void.* Story. Dialogue. Characters. Lighting. Sound. Set. Props. Movement. Music. All fused together to provide a jaw dropping spectacle that was an immersive and complete work of art. I was…
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 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…
Read MoreTwelfth Night
Gender-bending, gloriously psychedelic, and deeply, madly groovy. This is a riot of music and colour carried off by a stellar cast, bringing this complex story to life with an energy and flair that is jaw-dropping, and includes the most show-stopping second half opener I have seen in years. The action opens in a debauched 60s /…
Read MorePassionate Machine
The evidence about the reality of time travel builds steadily in this engrossing, fabulous story: the book about Mayakovsky really was written by Doctor Rosy Carrick, she really does have a tattoo with a Bowie lyric on her wrist, and she really is wearing a CERN t-shirt. Could all of these seemingly impossibly surreal facts…
Read MoreMore Moira Monologues
Bisset, male, author. Plays Moira, female, cleaner. Completely straight. And she’s a foul mouthed, deeply funny, chain-smoking delight. It’s easy to see why this show won a Fringe First in 2017. This is deeply confessional, but still light as a meringue, and all at the same time, covers acres, hectares of difficult, sensitive and tricky…
Read MoreThe Moira Monologues
Falkirk. Or tae be mair exact, Fawkirk. This is a sheer classic, and is both theatre and comedy, making a welcome return 8 years after its first appearance at the Fringe in 2010. And it’s still fast, fresh and very funny. The language is explicit lowland Scots, Fawkirk variety, and Bisset plays Moira Bell, a…
Read MoreThe hour we knew nothing of each other
This was almost absurd in its ambition: nearly 100 members of the Edinburgh public play almost 500 parts, with dazzling costumes, and often bizarre props, and for 90 minutes, nobody speaks a word. It was a dadaesque town square with a succession of movements in and out and a variety of characters from the everyday…
Read MoreCreditors
I really wanted an interval. And I was not alone: one audience member, at the end of the first act, when the stage went dark, started to clap hesitantly before realising that they were all alone, and the lights went up again on stage. An hour and fifty minutes is not an eternity to sit…
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