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 Metropolitan Bar, Picardy Place
Review by Thom Dibdin
Dark and sinister, John Naples-Campbell’s updating of the Greek myths surrounding the end of the Trojan war is given a stark and immersive telling by his random ACT theatre company.
At its best, this is ferocious stuff, which takes its audience deep into the bowels of the destroyed Troy at the end of the nine year-long siege by the Greeks.
The women of the title are, as followers of Greek mythology will be unsurprised to discover, Hecuba Queen of Troy, Cassandra her daughter, Andromache her daughter-in-law and Helen, wife of the Greek Menelaus. It was Helen’s elopement with Hecuba’s son Paris which precipitated the war.
The women pace up and down the darkened basement bar of the Metropolitan into which the audience, divided up by gender, are delivered as if they were prisoners, too. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Women Of Troy
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 Daniel Williamson as Juan Perón and Monica Reeves as Eva Péron George Watson’s College
By Thom Dibdin
There is a genuine tune-hummer of a production of Evita up at George Watson’s College this week, one which is strong and forceful where it needs to be – but is also fully-rounded on the musical front.
Minimal and unfussy staging makes good use of side-projected slides and video to help give the whole a well-judged political edge. It shows, without pulling its punches and while exploring the cult of Evita, where Perónism lies on the totalitarian spectrum.
It is music which lies at the heart of the production’s strengths, however. Having a large orchestra is something of a luxury in musical theatre circles and the company makes full use of the depth and texture a 32-strong band can provide – despite the odd wayward note in the more complex parts of the arrangement. … Continue reading Musical Review – Evita
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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