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 Brendan Cole and Nicole Cutler Festival Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
It was strictly entertainment at the Festival Theatre on Sunday night when ballet badboy Brendan Cole brought his big bro, big band and a quartet of fellow Strictly Come Dancing professionals to Edinburgh.
That Cole is a passionate, gifted and generous ballroom and Latin dancer is in no doubt after eight series of Strictly, during which he has risen from being just another of the professional dancers who partner the celebs to being a celebrity in his own right.
A Festival Theatre packed with Strictly fans, dressed to impress and gagging for a sight of Brendan, certainly knew so.
When he put the question “what would you like to see now?” during the evening’s first pause it was purely rhetorical, given that this is a scripted and choreographed show. The answer from the front of the dress circle was not in the least rhetorical, however.
“You!” came the shout for all to hear. There can’t have been many in the audience who did not agree – and for those who didn’t, Nicole Cutler, Hanna Haarala and Izabela Hannah were more than adequate compensation. But the loudest screams of delight were reserved for Brendan, not least when he made his buttocks shimmy while demonstrating the Salsa a few dances later. … Continue reading Dance Review – Brendan Cole: Live and Unjudged
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 Matt Hall as Billy Elliot, Louise Hunter as Mrs Wilkinson and ensemble. Photo credit: company publicity Festival Theatre
Review by Thom Dibdin
Bright, exuberant and boasting a cast that mixes the singers from the Edinburgh Gang Show with the dancers of the Manor School of Ballet, the second Billy Youth Theatre version of Billy Elliot to hit Edinburgh is a thoroughly entertaining production.
This is a show which plays straight to its participants’ strengths. Having made a big name for himself by giving the Gang Show’s variety-style format a 21st century outlook, director Andy Johnston now brings those abilities to a full-blown musical on the vast expanses of the Festival Theatre stage.
It sets off with great deliberation and a big, strong telling of scene-setting number The Stars Look Down, which speaks of the unity in the miners in the face of adversity – now standing together against Thatcher in the great miners’ strike of 1984.
The whole company is in fine, clear voice. First hearing of Matt Hall as Billy Elliot with Ian Sutherland as his best pal Michael confirms that singing has been Johnston’s priority in casting the lead roles, while the direction and choreography of the ensemble set the story up perfectly. … Continue reading Musical Review – Billy Elliot
By Thom Dibdin
Morven Donald, aged 13, from Park Mains High School in Erskine has been announced as the winner of the Edinburgh Fringe’s annual schools competition to design the Fringe poster.
Morven’s design was judged the best from over two and half thousand entrants to the competition, which is now in its [...]
The Festival party season comes early for younger culture-vultures
By Thom Dibdin
 It's Bliss in the EIF IN crowd - Opera Australia's 'Bliss'. Photo credit: Branco Gaica The Edinburgh International Festival is staging a pair of free pre-Festival events this month, aimed at stimulating interest in its year-round education programme – and appealing further to the under-40 year-old Festival goer.
The first of the events takes place on Friday June 18 at the Hub when Sally Hobson, the EIF’s Head of Programme Development, will talk about the festival’s year-round outreach work. Titled New Worlds, New Horizons, the lecture will also be attended by EIF Director Jonathan Mills, who will be talking about his thinking behind this year’s EIF programme.
The second event is being held on June 23rd at the Roxy Art House, when the EIF launch IN, their new initiative for culture lovers in their 20s and 30s. The scheme will augment the existing 50% discount on all tickets for under-18s and those in full-time education, as well as the £8 on-the-day tickets for under 26 year-olds.
Although the club costs £20 to join, members of IN will be offered a whole raft of offers, from “hot tickets to exclusive VIP parties and behind the scenes events” to invitations to preview performances and discounts on selected performances. … Continue reading Be IN with the EIF’s Party People
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 Sandra O’Malley as Man With No Name Traverse Theatre
Review by Thom Dibdin
There were an inordinately complex number of bicycles tethered outside the Traverse theatre for the opening of Blue Raincoat Theatre Company’s short run of their touring version of The Third Policeman.
Which will come as little surprise to fans of Flann O’Brien’s wonderful, crazy, infuriating, hilarious and generally downright brilliant novel. It contains, after all, O’Brien’s expansions on the Atomic Theory of particle migration. A magnificent piece of bunkum theory by which it is explained, with a completely straight face, that cyclists will, over time, turn into their own vehicles.
The surprise is that the bicycles had not succeeded in securing seats in the auditorium, leaving their owners tethered outside. Although it must be pointed out that there were a number of smokers lingering around the outside ashtray, in close proximity to the bicycles. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Third Policeman
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 Kathryn Howden and Lewis Howden as Sadie and Bill. Photo credit: Richard Campbell Traverse Theatre
Review by Thom Dibdin
Thunderous in its dark, brooding intensity and emotionally sapping outcome, Linda McLean’s pair of conjoined plays for the Traverse is a twisted night of theatre which explores our fear of the unknown with a chilling eye for detail.
This is not fun-show, good-times entertainment. Indeed, in some ways, it is quite a hateful piece of theatre, one that becomes uncomfortable to watch at times.
Which is all to the good, as it is the power and emotional punch of the whole production which makes it so. McLean’s intricately structured script would be as nothing without impeccable performances from Kathryn Howden and Kate Dickie, lucid direction from Dominic Hill and a set, by Jonathan Fensom, which is meticulous in its detail. … Continue reading Theatre Review – Any Given Day
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
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