theatreSCOTLAND

20 February 2009 Northings

Baby Baby

By Vivian French. Perissology/Shetland Arts/ Stellar Quines review.

WELCOME to the post-Juno era. Gone are the days when we had to treat teenage pregnancy as a sign of society's moral decay. Now we can admit that, yes, it’s unfortunate but, hey, these things happen. Especially to teenagers.That's the underlying principle of Vivian French's teen friendly play , produced in a three-way deal between the young Perissology theatre company, Shetland Arts and Stellar Quines.

21 February 2007 The Guardian

The Unconquered

By Torben Betts

TORBEN Betts makes his audience work. Happily, he makes work seem like fun. So when his characters spew out their dense and intense dialogue, he makes us sit forward and pay attention. There is something arresting and exhilarating about his language, which ranges from the profane to the choral, juxtaposing the bombastic with the banal in a way that is funny and provocative.

23 February 2007 Variety

The Unconquered

By Torben Betts

MURIEL Romanes' production of Torben Betts' new play, "The Unconquered," seemingly offers everything you would hope to find in a progressive piece of theater: The style rejects realism in favor of cartoon-like expressionism; the language is rich and demanding; the performances are intense; the design is artistic; and the subject matter suggests political urgency. Sadly, however, the whole somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

23 February 2007 Northings

The Unconquered

By Torben Betts

THE first thing to say about Torben Betts' new play in this Stellar Quines production is it's well worth seeing. The second is that, although you'll be impressed by the writing, mesmerised by the performances and delighted by the 2-D strip-cartoon style, you might come away feeling less than satisfied.

25 March 2006 The Guardian

Perfect Pie

By Judith Thompson

THERE'S a certain type of play - usually written by Sharman MacDonald or Marie Jones - that strikes a chord with older female audiences. It tends to be wistful, witty and soft-centred, to reflect on the coy sexual awakenings of teenage girls and the shift in priorities of their mothers as the menopause looms.

24 March 2006 Northings

Perfect Pie

By Judith Thompson

YOU can't help feeling that Judith Thompson has written her play the wrong way round. It's not just that she saves the best till last, it's that the closing revelations carry such weight that they upturn everything that's gone before. The result is a play that makes more impression on you after the event, when you start piecing all the pieces together, than it does at the time.

2 September 2005

Three Thousand Troubled Threads

By Chiew Siah Tei

CHIEW Siah Tei doesn't want for poetic ambition in her debut play. She sets it beneath the lonely lunar glow of Chang-O, the Chinese moon goddess banished from the earth to be forever homeless. Its cast of characters are equally rootless - perhaps reflecting the experience of Tei herself, a Chinese Malaysian living in Glasgow.

7 June 2004 Northings

The Memory of Water

WHEN the subject of death has been tackled in the theatre it’s usually been in the form of high tragedy – everyone from the Greeks down – or low farce – the work of Joe Orton, for example. Shelagh Stephenson, however, takes the less trodden route of light comedy for this study of three sisters returning to the family home for the funeral of their mother.

theatreSCOTLAND © Mark Fisher 2009