 Peter Egan as Sherlock Holmes with Philip Franks as Dr Watson * * *
King’s Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
It is not so much elementary as elemental at the King’s this week, as Jeremy Paul’s tribute to the great late-Victorian detective and his faithful friend and companion takes the stage under Robin Herford’s atmospheric direction.
While Philip Franks as Dr Watson and Peter Egan as Sherlock Holmes go about bringing their characters to creditable life, it is the back room creatives who give the play what bite it has.
Simon Higlett’s circular design, which suggests that a rooftop has been lifted up to look deep into the sitting room of 221B Baker Street, is an intriguing glimpse of a gentleman scientist’s layer. You can practically smell the wood and leather while the human skull, red-capped, and peering out from one wall seems hardly out of place.
But it is Matthew Eagland’s crepuscular lighting design with Matthew Bugg’s eerie sound and music, which impart most of the atmosphere. Shadows linger and build large across the back wall, while creaks and moans off indicate that another presence than the ones seen on stage is at large.
The elements of the Holmes/Watson relationship are faithfully created, too. Which is were Herford’s real directorial skill comes in, rather than the over-tricksy effects, as the play flits between dialogue and revelations or observations delivered directly to the audience. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Secret of Sherlock Holmes
 Anne Lacey in The Garden. Photo © Lesley Black * * *
A Play, A Pie and A Pint at The Traverse
By Thom Dibdin
Short, bleak and lingering, Zinnie Harris’ The Garden feels like a very fitting end to this Spring’s season of A Play, A Pie and a Pint at the Traverse.
Here, in a world which is hot and bothered, Jane (Anne Lacey) waits at home for her husband Mac (Sean Scanlan). She spends her days worrying about bumps in the lino and trying not to fall into depression. He spends his arguing with his boss over his status in some important scientific committee.
Harris creates her world with a rare concision. From Lacey and Scanlon’s easy mundanities, their moaning about the buses and the neighbours, an external reality becomes clear. And through their discovery of a green shoot underneath the lino, a whole unsaid history between them becomes revealed. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Garden
 Wall of Death: Way of Life. Pic: Peter Dibdin First published in The Stage, March 18 2010
Now entering its fifth year, the National Theatre of Scotland has suffered considerable criticism in recent times through the press, with accusations that it is failing to fulfil its duty as a promote of Scottish theatrical tradition. Such vilification is misguided, argues Thom Dibdin, and in fact the NTS is abiding by the very principles it was founded upon.
There is a delicious irony about a theatre company founded on the principle of “theatre without walls”, marking its fourth anniversary with a piece called Wall of Death: Way of Life. It should have been the perfect peg around which to celebrate the National Theatre of Scotland’s many successes, and ponder on where it might be going next.
Yet, just as the National Theatre of Scotland has done that thing, a pernicious and niggling little attack on it and its management team has reared its ugly head in the Scottish press under the pretence of a debate over very nature of the company. It is an attack which has turned that irony sour.
Had the NTS under its dynamic artistic director and Chief Executive Vicky Featherstone become lost – heaven forfend – in some moribund mess, then such a question might well need to be addressed. It quite clearly has not. … Continue reading The Vicious Circle
Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group win 2009/10 Scottish Community Drama Association Full Length Play competition for their production of Wit
 Hilary Davies as Dr. Vivian Bearing © E.G.T.G. By Thom Dibdin
The Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group, known as the Grads, has been awarded the Fraser Neal Trophy for their “absolutely gripping” production of Wit, which was staged in the round at the St Bride’s centre last November.
The trophy is open to all members of the Eastern Division of the Scottish Community Drama Association (SCDA) producing full-length productions over the year. It celebrates the best production of the year, on the basis of acting, directing, stage presentation and general achievement. There were eleven entries in what was described as a tough competition.
Ron Nicol, the competition’s adjudicator, said the Grads production of Wit was “altogether a well planned, well executed, smoothly flowing production with sensitively handled scenes and expressive performances.”
Margaret Edson won the 1999 Pulitzer prize for Wit, which chronicles the emotional and spiritual redemption of Donne scholar, Dr. Vivian Bearing. This is juxtaposed with her prolonged death from ovarian cancer and revealed during the final two hours of her life. Bearing, who is on stage throughout, was played by Hilary Davies with Lorraine McCann as nurse, Susie. The production was directed by David Grimes.
Speaking at the final of the SCDA Eastern Division’s short play competition on Saturday at the Bowhouse Community Centre in Grangemouth, Nicol added that Wit was “absolutely gripping throughout, an outstanding production of a most challenging play.”
… Continue reading Grads’ Wit Wins SCDA Award
* * * *
 Alan Bissett, Andy Gray and Denise Hoey - Photo © Lesley Black Traverse: A Play Pie and A Pint
By Thom Dibdin
Food and death are right back on the menu at the Traverse for the fourth in the Play Pie and A Pint season. Add a hint of sex from the very wonderful Andy Gray and you have just about all the required obsessions for a fully formed modern lifestyle.
Gregory Burke’s science fiction play, set in a high stocking contentment facility for the post-productive – what some near-future civilisation might call an old people’s home – hits all the right elements for the lunchtime theatre slot. It is not perfect by any means, but in its brief quirkiness it is both hilarious and poignant, while packing a sly little punch.
Much of the comedy comes from the euphemism frenzy employed by Burke in the creation of the Ouroboros Industries workstation where regular employee James (played by the author and playwright Alan Bissett) is showing Denise Hoey’s first day trainee, Kate, the ropes.
… Continue reading Theatre Review – Battery Farm
Publicity image for Mr Write
By Thom Dibdin
A pair of late additions to this week’s theatre – at the Royal Lyceum tonight (Tuesday) and the Traverse on Friday.
The Lyceum offering is Leave to Remain, at 6pm, which is the Curtain Raiser event for Jo Clifford’s beautifully performed and staged Every [...]
By Thom Dibdin
Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre is to mark the centenary of the death of the illusionist The Great Lafayette, who died in a fire at the old Empire Theatre, on which the current building is built, on 9 May 1911.
Lafayette’s death is surrounded by myth, rumour and wild speculation and the theatre is keen to hear from people who have information on the tragedy.
Born in Munich in 1872 as Sigmund Neuberger, Lafayette was one of the highest earning stars of his time, with a reported income of £40,000 a year. He lived your bona-fide eccentric celebrity lifestyle, keeping his dog Beauty – a gift from Houdini – in total luxury. It had its own rooms and was fed five course meals.
What is certain of Lafayette’s death is that he was playing to … Continue reading Looking for Lafayette
* * * *
Kyle McPhail, Jonathan Hackett, Kathryn Howden, Jenny Hulse & Tina Gray. Photo Tim Morozzo
Royal Lyceum
By Thom Dibdin
Tough and emotional, Jo Clifford’s new play for the Royal Lyceum takes an unblinking look into the tragedy of a death in the family, in a production which [...]
 Elevator Repair Service's The Sun Also Rises Photo: Mark Barton By Thom Dibdin
This year’s Edinburgh International Festival brings the New World to Edinburgh’s old stages, with a programme that Festival Director Jonathan Mills described as a festival about sensuality, texture and flamboyance.
“There are very important and serious messages imbedded in it, to be sure,” he said in his announcement of the programme at the Hub yesterday. “But it is a riot of colour, it is an enormous amount of fun.”
“This year the Festival takes us on a journey around the contemporary cultures of the Americas and Australasia,” according to the Australian-born Mills. “We have shifted our centre of gravity from Europe towards these intriguing and complex continents. As these diverse cultures, separated by vast oceans, converge in Edinburgh, I hope you will join us to celebrate the synergies and revelations they offer.” … Continue reading EIF Launches New World onto Edinburgh’s stages
 Finn Den Hertog and John McColl talk things over Photo © Lesley Black * * *
A Play, A Pie and A Pint at The Traverse
By Thom Dibdin
Soup is an extra on the menu as the Play, Pie and A Pint season of lunchtime theatre at the Traverse reaches the halfway stage. A tough and snappy little three hander, Soup shows – as did last week’s excellent Shattered Head – that the form can both tackle big issues but also do them with humour.
It doesn’t quite develop those themes as it might – and fudges an ending that demands rigorously precise timing and lighting, but in Natalie Ibu’s assured directorial hands, Ella Hickson’s flowing and pithy script gets a wonderfully naturalistic showing.
Finn Den Hertog is fantastic as Dan, a fourth year student who returns unexpectedly from university to his parents’ house on Easter Saturday. Hertog has great self-possession and ensures that the awkwardness of family life is ever present – without ever letting the production itself feel awkward. … Continue reading Theatre review: Soup
|
Latest posts about Edinburgh’s amateur companies |
