theatreSCOTLAND

17 May 2010 Northings

Pondlife McGurk

By Rob Evans. A Catherine Wheels review.

THE way this show by Edinburgh's Catherine Wheels is set out, you get a good chance to look at the audience. The younger members (it’s aimed at the 9–13 range) sit on four carpets divided by two corridors patrolled by actor Andy Manley. The less supple among us sit on benches on the perimeter of the playing area. And should your attention slip from Manley at any point, you will see that everyone, young and old alike, has the look of a wide-eyed two-year-old. It is as if Manley is a shaman, enchanting his acolytes with magical words, beguiling them into a dream-like state. They stare at him with abandonment and absorption, trusting him, needing him to complete his tale. They are under his spell.

Ashley Smith as Kellyanne in Pobby and Dingan Pic: Douglas McBride

3 March 2010 Northings

Pobby and Dingan

Adapted by Rob Evans. A Catherine Wheels review.

IT takes a while to warm to this adaptation of Ben Rice's novel. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be much at stake: just an everyday family hoping to get lucky in Lighting Ridge, an opal mining town in the Australian outback. For another, the production by Catherine Wheels takes a straight-forward approach that rules out the kind of imaginative leaps that children's theatre does best. The initial impression of Gill Robertson's staging is of a routine domestic drama.

24 March 2009 Northings

The Book of Beasts

By E Nesbit. Catherine Wheels review.

ONE LOOK at Gill Robertson's face and you know you're in for a feelgood time. Before the show has even begun, the actor and mainstay of Catherine Wheels theatre company seems to have caught everyone in the eye and made all of us her friend. In this adaptation of a children's story by E Nesbit (of Railway Children fame), she steps in and out of character, one minute drawing us into the tale as a wide-eyed narrator, the next playing a genial nurse in charge of a boy who would be king.

5 October 2008 The Guardian

Something Wicked this Way Comes

By Ray Bradbury. Catherine Wheels review.

AS every reader of Pinocchio knows, there is not a boy who can resist the pull of a funfair. When the carnival comes to town it brings the promise of something magical, transgressive, illicit; the possibility of escaping everyday life for easy rewards and sensual pleasures. That is the allure of Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show when, heralded by the smell of candyfloss and a midnight lightning storm, it arrives in an Illinois backwater in Ray Bradbury's classic 1962 novel.

27 May 2007 Scotland on Sunday

Hansel and Gretel

By the company. Catherine Wheels review.

IT'S not often you get to see two versions of Hansel and Gretel in one day. Still rarer to see two promenade productions in which you go with the neglected children into the woods. But it's that time of year when the Bank of Scotland Children's International Theatre Festival takes over and normal rules cease to apply. With performances as good as Catherine Wheels' Hansel And Gretel and Grid Iron's Once Upon A Dragon, long may the anarchy continue.

Cinderella's Sisters by Catherine Wheels Pic: Douglas McBride

25 May 2005 The Scotsman

Cinderella's Sisters

By Mike Kenny. Catherine Wheels review.

ACCORDING to a recent study, women who have been abused by their partners are disproportionately likely to identify with Cinderella. The theory is that if your role model is a submissive fairytale character, you'll believe that love alone will be enough to end your frog-prince's violent behaviour. It depends, of course, whether you've been influenced by an insipid telling of the tale or a more plucky version in which the girl wins through because of skill and ingenuity. Either way, if you think Cinderella is a dubious role model, what hope her ugly sisters? However the story is told, the pair are the very archetype of selfishness, cruelty and bad behaviour. If you're concerned about body fascism just think of the damage caused by the idea that an ugly outside equals an ugly inside.

May 2004 Northings

Cyrano

Jo Roets. Catherine Wheels review.

ONE London critic recently described Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac as “indestructible”. I think that’s right. There’s something about this story of a swashbuckling poet cursed with an enormously ugly nose that tugs at the heart strings every time. As if to prove the point, Catherine Wheels theatre company has come up with a version that condenses a three-hour play into 70 minutes and cuts the cast list down from 30-odd to just three. Does it work? Well, I can’t vouch for the audience of ten year olds (although their attention was undoubtedly held throughout), but I certainly left with a tear in my eye.

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