Freeway Pro 5.4.2 News and reviews about Scottish theatre http://www.theatrescotland.com/ en Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:02:55 +0100 AFTER last year's all-Scottish season at Pitlochry, the theatre has lined up a set of plays that look at the idea of going away. You probably wouldn't have spotted that if you hadn't read it in the programme, but it is hard to miss the coincidental theme that is running in parallel. Just as Kiss Me Kate is about a theatre company staging a version of The Taming of the Shrew, so Noises Off is about a theatre company staging a fictitious old-school farce called Nothing On. Elsewhere in the summer repertoire, Rough Crossing is about two playwrights sailing towards a Broadway premiere, and Bus Stop features a nightclub singer and a Shakespeare scholar. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 797157715510 Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:37:17 +0100 THE lights come up on the second half, and the Pitlochry summer ensemble shows its colours. It is time for Too Darn Hot, Cole Porter's slinky, sticky jazz number, and the large cast is out in force. As with the company's first musical, Whisky Galore, nominated in Sunday's Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, the actors not only prove themselves fine singers, but also spirited musicians, bringing clarinets and saxophones with them on stage. This time, they also dance. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 801944191360 Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:38:23 +0100 LET us agree: theatre does not have to be about big ideas. Let us accept it can be a brilliantly executed artifice, as with Michael Frayn's Noises Off, also playing this season at Pitlochry. Let us acknowledge it can be lightweight, frivolous and throwaway Ð fun for fun's sake. But having allowed ourselves that, can we also make a case for Rough Crossing? What is the purpose, whether it be ambitious or modest, of Tom Stoppard's free reworking of Ferenc Moln‡r's The Play at the Castle? Is there any reason it should exist? http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 971617723040 Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:38:52 +0100 GUILERMO Calderon was 17 and in his first year of university when Augusto Pinochet stepped down as president of Chile and returned the country to democracy. It should have been a moment of liberation, but for Calderon, whose whole life had been shaped by the dictatorship, it was a big disappointment. 'My generation grew up during the dictatorship and then we were welcomed into this new democracy, which we didn't like. We wanted to challenge it.' http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 814706549757 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:13:56 +0100 IF you read contemporary accounts of mid-20th century American theatre, you routinely see the names of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and William Inge listed together. The first two are no surprise, but you wonder at the third. In the 1950s, Inge was celebrated for a run of Broadway hits including Come Back Little Sheba and Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and he attracted stars as big as Marilyn Monroe to his film adaptations. Today, he is largely forgotten in the UK. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 468989893730 Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:18:43 +0100 WHEN Lorraine McIntosh takes to the stage for the premiere of the National Theatre of Scotland's Beautiful Burnout, she knows who her fiercest critic will be. In the first-night audience will be Ricky Ross, her husband and fellow Deacon Blue bandmate, who is a voracious theatregoer - a three-times-a-week man, she says - and no mean director himself. A couple of years ago, he staged a mystery play at their local church and, according to McIntosh, made a tremendous job of it. So when it comes to her high-profile performance with the NTS, she knows he'll tell it like it is - just as she has always been frank with him about his music. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 112124278808 Tue, 03 Aug 2010 08:55:56 +0100 LIKE Slick before it, the latest show by Vox Motus is one audiences love. A couple of weeks into its run on the Edinburgh Fringe, I spoke to a woman just out of the show who said she'd had to force herself not to laugh because she didn't want to miss any of the words. She'd loved every minute. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 508487286609 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:48:13 +0100 IT WOULD be less of a problem if Billy Boyd wasn't such a big fan of the Proclaimers. The Lord Of The Rings star has landed a lead role in a revival of Dundee Rep's Sunshine On Leith, the superb musical based on the songs of Craig and Charlie Reid. It's a dream job - one that's lured him back to the theatre for the first time in six years - but getting his mind around arrangements that are not quite the same as the records he has loved for so long is proving tough work. http://www.theatrescotland.com/ 393173257100 Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:55:29 +0100