You can forget your Romeo and put your Juliet to one side – when it came to Such Tweet Sorrow, the RSC’s social media version of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, the people’s favourite was Mercutio. Annals of the Edinburgh Stage caught up with Ben Ashton, pin-up boy for the Mercutio Groupies, to talk about uploading those loads, being cute and what it is to die on Twitter.
By Thom Dibdin
 Ben Ashton as Mercutio Of all the characters an actor can perform in Romeo and Juliet, the role of Mercutio is surely the juiciest. He’s the one who has the Queen Mab speech, he’s the cock of the walk, the boy with dubious morals who enters late, grabs the limelight and is back in the Green Room in time for a refreshing draught before R&J have even got down to their nuptial activities.
The downside is that he’s not the one who everyone knows and remembers. In comedy terms, he’s the warm-up act. As much as you might appreciate his performance at the time, when it comes down to the nitty gritty, in Romeo and Juliet it is the title characters who everyone remembers. Mercutio might die, but he goes and gets himself killed, instead of committing that most dubious sin of suicide.
It was not quite thus in Such Tweet Sorrow, the RSC’s social-media based production of Romeo and Juliet, which ran in real time for five weeks until the 12th of May. It was set in a fictional but contemporary English market town where the Montague and Capulet families had been feuding for ten years. With a cast of only six, Mercutio – or @mercuteio as he was known on Twitter – was left to stand in for the whole Montague clan, for a start. … Continue reading Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries…
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 74 degrees north - Alexander Grove and Jeremy Huw Williams. Photo: Tommy Ga Ken Wan Traverse Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
It was a balmy summer evening in Edinburgh for the opening of Scottish Opera’s third instalment of their project to create short new Scottish operas, but the stage of Traverse One was ice-cold.
Tragedy and loss are the themes running through all five of the operas. None more eloquently expressed than in the big hit of the evening, 74° North involving a ghostly encounter at an icebound grave on Beechy Island.
Composer Paul Mealor, with an electro-acoustic score by Pete Stollery, creates a tense, thrilling setting for Peter Davidson’s libretto. In tones which bring to mind the ambient techno act Biosphere, Stollery’s electronic backdrop creates an image of the frozen wastes where John Franklin’s ill-fated exhibition of the 1840s foundered as he attempted to find the North West passage. … Continue reading Opera Review – Five:15 Operas made In Scotland
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 Masashi Fujimoto as Yomo. Photo credit: Callum Mackay Brunton Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
Wise, witty and whistle-able, Whisky Kisses the Musical arrived at the Brunton Theatre for a one-night stand last night, delighted its sold-out audience with its light tone and deep-running sense of cultural awareness before whisking back off to the Highlands from whence it came.
As the “new Highland musical”, Whisky Kisses from Right Lines Productions at first appears, horrifyingly, as if it were about to trade heavily in Brigadoonery and its ilk. Fortunately such misty-eyed tartanisations are quickly put in their place – on the other side of the Atlantic – and a rather more palatable approach sets in. … Continue reading Musical Review – Whisky Kisses
Siege Perilous return to GRV with Elvis act
 Elvis has entered the building - photo by Gary Daniell By Thom Dibdin
Siege Perilous returns to the GRV next week with Caroline Dunford’s new play Suspicious Minds, the first in a new programme of five small-scale theatre productions from the company.
The new programme has been made possible by a grant in-kind worth £3000 from Edinburgh-based photographer Gary Daniell. As a first-time sponsor of an arts organisation, this has leveraged a further £3000 grant from Arts & Business, according to Siege Perilous Artistic Director Andy Corelli. … Continue reading Return of the King
After an emotional five weeks Such Tweet Sorrow, the RSC’s social media production of Romeo and Juliet, is done. The Annals of Edinburgh Stage interviewed James Barrett, #suchtweet Romeo, about the experience.
 Romeo's initial profile picture on Such Tweet Sorrow By Thom Dibdin
It took its time getting off the ground, and sprang surprises on the audience, the performers and the production company alike, but as Such Tweet Sorrow drew to its tragic conclusion this week, it could not be considered anything but a success.
Not necessarily the unqualified success that the production’s detractors thought it ought to have been. But who really expects a production that brings theatre to an untried medium to produce perfection the first time round?
As experimental theatre it did everything you could have wanted. It brought tears, it brought laughter and it brought true emotional empathy to those who sat watching. That seems to be enough for the moment. The tweaks will follow.
For the performers, however, even the end of the show brought a completely new experience. Actors are used to inhabiting their characters for two hours every night – twice on a Saturday perhaps and with a day or two off out of every seven. In #suchtweet, … Continue reading Thus with a tweet I die…
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 Royal Lyceum Theatre
Review by Thom Dibdin
Gritty, earthy and full of the sort of language that ensures it is exclusive to those aged 14 and over, Des Dillon’s Blue Hen tumbles onto the Lyceum stage with a tin of Special Brew in hand and a couple of unopened Buckfast bottles stashed down its trousers.
Des Dillon’s wee Glasgow gadgies, John and Paddy, are brought to life with raw energy by Charles Lawson and Scott Kyle. Their banter is a brilliantly accurate as mourn the death of their pal, Peetsie Finnigan, from who’s wake they have just come, after his tragic suicide.
From before the off, Blue Hen sets itself up to be something special. The pre-curtain music is loud, raucous and sentimental in exactly the way a West Coast wake should be.
For a few fantastic scenes, Dillon sustains that energy. Lawson and Kyle are solid in their creation of two, clearly interdependent misfits. The language drives the production, crude and erudite by turns as the two wonder about what to do next and begin to obsess about turning the drying green of their tenement into a garden with tatties and a chicken coop. … Continue reading Theatre Review – Blue Hen
By Thom Dibdin
 Brian Ferguson and Nicola Jo Cully in the Traverse' multi-nominated The Dark Things Photo credit: Richard Campbell Edinburgh’s theatres and production companies have made a strong showing in the shortlist for this year’s Critics Awards for the Theatre in Scotland, picking up 15 of the 40 possible nominations, in 8 of the 10 categories.
Leading the field is the Traverse, with six nominations for last Autumn’s The Dark Things, three for the recent The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, and a single nomination for Orphans, the co-production with Birmingham Rep, in association with Paines Plough at last year’s Fringe.
The Royal Lyceum has to make do with only two nominations, for The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Beggar’s Opera. Huxley’s Lab, the co-production between Lung Ha’s and Grid Iron, Pobby and Dingan by Catherine Wheels and Testament of Cresseid from the Edinburgh International Festival all receive a nomination each. … Continue reading Cream of Edinburgh’s theatrical talent top CATS nominations
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 Ida (Kate Potter) and Sam (John McColl) in Leitheatre's The Cemetary Club Church Hill Theatre
Review by Thom Dibdin
There is gentle comedy up at the Church Hill Theatre this week, played with enough edge from Leitheatre to stop their production of Ivan Menchell’s hit comedy becoming mired in saccharine sentimentality.
Kate Potter plays Ida, a Jewish widow from Queens, New York, whose retiring exterior hides a woman who would quite like to get over all that grieving, thank you very much. Every month, she and her best friends Doris (Moira Macdonald) and Lucille (Irene Robb) visit the graves of their husbands in Forest Hills Cemetery.
If their weekly games of canasta continue a friendship forged by the three couples over their long, prematurely ended, marriages, the cemetery visits are more of a cause for antagonism.
Only Macdonald’s uptight Doris really wants to continue the monthly ritual. She sits by her husband’s headstone, bitching about the cemetery groundkeepers’ upkeep of the plot, and remembering the good times the two of them had when he was alive. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Cemetery Club
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 The Uglies get dressed... Scottish Storytelling Centre
By Thom Dibdin
With a wave of her magic feather duster and leaving a sprinkling of fairy dust in her wake, Shona Reppe enchants and enthrals children and grownups alike with her puppet version of Cinderella – which is at the Scottish Storytelling Centre all this week as part of the Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival of theatre for Children and Young People.
Reppe’s magic lies in her detail. She demands the attention by that well known theatrical trick of dusting the auditorium – and the delighted audience – before her discovery of a trail of notes leading across the darkening stage.
“Help!” each note cries out in her tiny, fragile voice, as she is led to her chintzy magician’s table, centre stage. “Help!” they cry as she sets the tabletop with the mop, duster and kitchen equipment Cinderella will need. “Help!” they cry as she opens a drawer to discover the dusty, bedraggled Cinders.
And suddenly, Shona Reppe’s magic trick is complete. She has transformed a raggle-taggle bag of groaning, mind-wandering, snot-picking six year-olds into the most attentive audience any performer could ever want. They still comment: “That’s really scary” whispers one as Cinders teeters up a table lamp to whisk dust off the very top. But there is no dissent. … Continue reading Theatre Review – Cinderella
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Mrs D and her new best pal!
Brunton Theatre By Thom Dibdin TOUCHING, hilarious and played with the utmost respect for its audience of youngsters aged four and over, Catherine Wheels’ wonderful Martha is a suitably stunning opening show for this year’s Bank of Scotland Imaginate festival [...]
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