Holyrood Amateur Theatre Society stage rare production of Gray’s McGrotty and Ludmilla
 Alasdair Gray's poster for the production By Thom Dibdin
An amateur production of Alasdair Gray’s early play McGrotty and Ludmilla, to be staged this week at the Roxy Arthouse, has benefited from personal input from the playwright.
HATS, the Holyrood Amateur Theatre Society, are staging the production from tonight (Thursday) to Saturday. Loosely based on the Aladdin story, the play follows the adventures of the uncouth and unpolished young Scot Mungo McGrotty amongst the Machiavellian civil service mandarins of 1980s Whitehall. … Continue reading Æ News – HATS doffed to Alasdair Gray
* * *
 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
* * *
 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
* * * *
 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
* *
 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
* * *
 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
* * * * *
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 [...]
* *
 Rhiannon King as Anna and Jonathan McGarrity as Larry in the Grads' production of Closer Church Hill Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
The Grads have brought a long-range focus to their brave and challenging new production of Patrick Marber’s Closer, which is up at the Church Hill Theatre until Saturday.
Frank, brutal and packed with a rarely-seen honesty about the intimate relationship between love and sex, the play provides a satisfying reflection of social morality in late 20th century London as it follows the affairs between four individuals over a period of years.
Under David Grimes’ direction the production succeeds in finding the overarching truth of Marber’s writing.
From the first meeting between backpacking young American Alice and older failing English journalist Dan, to their dramatic final encounter four years later, Grimes reveals movement and decay. Similarly, there is a resolution about photographer Anna and dermatologist Larry’s first and last encounters. … Continue reading Theatre Review – Closer
* * *
St Bride’s Community Centre
By Thom Dibdin
Powerful and compelling, random ACT’s production of Columbinus at the St Bride’s Centre is a chilling reminder of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, just 11 years ago.
There is no doubting the strength of the material that director John [...]
***
 - Matthew Pidgeon & Maureen Beattie in The Cherry Orchard, Royal Lyceum Theatre. Photo Alan McCredie
Royal Lyceum Theatre
By Thom Dibdin
Uprooted from its original time and place, John Byrne’s new version of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard transplants the action to Scotland in 1979, on the eve of Thatcher’s first term in office.
It’s a move which leaves Chekhov’s orchard still growing, but transformed.
The trees cross the landscape in lines that are true – but it feels as if the political contours of the Seventies have been altered to fit the regimentation of the orchard, rather than the trees planted so as to fit the landscape.
There’s a lot more that is right about the play and production than there is wrong, however. Byrne succeeds in finding the comic power of Chekhov and although it is sometimes overplayed under Tony Cownie’s direction, it is the laugh-out-loud comedy in the play which makes the tragedy of it seem all the more heartfelt. … Continue reading Theatre Review – The Cherry Orchard
|
Latest posts about Edinburgh’s amateur companies |
