theatreSCOTLAND

Regular links in green; product links underlined

SCOTTISH THEATRE IN THE NEWS

Black Watch by the National Theatre of Scotland: new tour of duty?

THE WASHINGTON POST: 11 December 2009 NTS in talks to bring Black Watch to Washingon

SUNDAY HERALD: 29 November 2009 Theatre Workshop loses its building

THE STAGE: 18 November 2009 Ramshorn Theatre under threat

THEATRE SCOTLAND: 29 October 2009 Arches to close Jan-Feb for train works

THE STAGE 13 October 2009 Scottish Opera buys land next door to expand theatre

THE SCOTSMAN 25 June 2009 Plan to revive Leith Theatre

THE STAGE 19 May 2009 Brian Cox rumoured to be working with NTS in 2010

SCOTTISH THEATRE REVIEWS AND ARTICLES

Ken Fox rides the Wall of Death Pic: Peter Dibdin

8 February 2010 The Guardian

Wall of Death: A Way of Life

By Stephen Skrynka and the Ken Fox Troupe. A National Theatre of Scotland review.

IN April, the National Theatre of ­Scotland is staging Peter Pan. If that production is half as ­weightless as the Ken Fox Troupe riding the Wall of Death, it will be breathtaking. ­Harnessing the properties of ­centrifugal force, this ­family of old-school ­entertainers ride their low-slung Indian motorcycles around a vertiginous drum with heart-stopping panache. You will believe a boy can fly.

5 February 2010 The Guardian

Birds and Other Things I Am Afraid Of

By Lynda Radley. A Poorboy/Arches Theatre review

A SITE-SPECIFIC show in a 19th-century church offers lots of tantalising possibilities: all those empty pews, echoing galleries and haunted corners. They are not, however, possibilities that concern Lynda Radley, whose one-woman show for Poorboy and the Arches takes place almost exclusively in a wooden shed constructed on the Lansdowne's altar.

26 January 2010 The Scotsman

Chekhov at 150

On Anton Chekhov. A Royal Lyceum/Traverse/A Play, a Pie and a Pint preview.

THIS week marks Anton Chekhov's 150th birthday. His four major plays – The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, The Seagull and Uncle Vanya – have cemented his status as one of the world's great dramatists. But in Britain, he is a playwright with a long history of being misunderstood. Over the coming months in Scotland, however, three productions will show how today's directors and translators are determined to present the Russian master in a different light.

24 January 2010 Scotland on Sunday

Douglas Maxwell interview

About Promises Promises and others. A Random Accomplice/National Theatre of Scotland preview.

DOUGLAS Maxwell has a refreshingly honest way of telling you how badly his plays nearly turned out. He spent years, for example, working on a commission from the National Theatre of Scotland only to end up with a 200-page script that was quite unstageable. They described it as more of a novel than a play and, today, he doesn't even think it would have made much of a novel.

19 January 2010 The Guardian

The Price

By Arthur Miller. A Royal Lyceum Theatre review.

FRED Goodwin, the poster boy for the banking crisis, has just landed a high-flying job with an Edinburgh architectural firm. Not everyone is as fortunate as the former RBS chief executive. Some, like the dead father whose memory hangs heavy over Arthur Miller's The Price, lost millions in the Wall Street crash and, in the face of the Great Depression, never recovered. The question Miller poses is how to respond to such a calamity: should we fight egotistically for our own success or should we retrench to the old values of love, trust and selflessness?

15 January 2010 The Scotsman

John Dove interview

On Arthur Miller's The Price. A Royal Lyceum Theatre preview.

THE Royal Lyceum Theatre's rehearsal room is a big, airy space, but this afternoon it is looking unusually cluttered. Standing in the middle of it is a wardrobe, with a model ship perched on top; beside it, on the floor, a harp next to a wind-up gramophone player. Among the other bits and pieces is a small rocking horse. Sitting on the sidelines, director John Dove looks dreamily on. "It's a masterpiece," he says. "You would never miss a chance to work on a thing like this in a million years."

12 December 2009 The Scotsman

Curtain Up: 40 years of Scottish Theatre

National Library of Scotland exhibition preview

WE'RE standing in a storage room a few floors down in a secret corner of Edinburgh's National Library of Scotland. It's full of musty box files, metal shelving and neatly catalogued CDs. But that's not the whole story. In the middle of the low-ceilinged room, hanging from an empty shelf, there are two dresses in vibrant 1950s colours, and a regal off-white gown that could have been worn by Elizabeth I. There's even a ruff lying in a nearby plastic bag. Just along the row, Sally Harrower, the library's manuscripts curator, is running her hand over a gold lamŽ kilt. "Alan Cumming," she says dreamily.

1 November 2009 Scotland on Sunday

Pan's people

Feature about JM Barrie and Peter Pan.

PETER Pan might be the boy who wouldn't grow up, but he has no trouble proliferating. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the birth of JM Barrie, our appetite for the Kirriemuir writer's most famous creation appears to be insatiable. The boy from Neverland is everywhere.

theatreSCOTLAND © Mark Fisher 2009-2010