theatreSCOTLAND

Save £££s on the CATS

THE 2011 ceremony for the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland takes place at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on Sunday 12 June. Tickets are now on sale through the theatre's box office and can be picked up for a bargain £10 if you book before 1 February – that's a 33% discount. Everyone gets a free glass of fizz before and after the afternoon ceremony. Last year, the Herald's arts editor Keith Bruce wrote: "THE 2010 event was the best yet, slickly staged at Edinburgh's Festival Theatre and wittily hosted by Edinburgh International Festival director Jonathan Mills and comedienne Karen Dunbar . . . the big winner is Scottish theatre in having a credible awards ceremony in which it can take real pride." Pictured are Zoe King, Gillian Robertson, Cara Kelly and Dylan Kennedy at the 2010 party (pic: Lloyd Smith). More pictures from last year are here.

Anniversary in the hills

THIS year is the 60th anniversary of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, launched under canvas on 19 May, 1951 by John Stewart. The 2011 summer programme has popped up online and there is a strongly comic vein running through it. Building on the success of 2009's Whisky Galore, the company's first ever musical, and 2010's Kiss Me Kate (pictured), the company is launching in full-voiced style with Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. Joining the repertoire as the season progresses are Alan Ayckbourn's Henceforward . . ., Philip King's See How They Run!, Arthur Wing Pinero's Trelawny of the "Wells", Peter Nichols' Privates on Parade and James Bridie's Dr Angelus.

Promises to keep

SCOTTISH theatres are generally quiet after their Christmas-show excesses, but Scotland's theatre-makers are popping up all over the world. Pride of Meltham award-winner John Tiffany is to direct an adaptation of the Irish film Once on Broadway in the autumn. His collaborators include playwright Enda Walsh and Black Watch movement expert Steven Hoggett. In the same week that Rona Munro's Pandas opens at the Traverse, the playwright's Little Eagles, an RSC commission, launches at London's Hampstead Theatre. Next week in London, DC Jackson is one of the playwrights showcasing short plays in the Royal Court's Rough Cuts season. His is called Untitled. If you happen to be in Los Angeles on Monday, you'll be able to catch Lyn Ferguson in her excellent Biographies in a Bag at the Stella Adler Theatre. And if you missed Douglas Maxwell's Promises, Promises last year, you could head to New York at the end of March for Random Accomplice's revival – although, curiously, the play has been retitled The Promise.

OPENING SOON A View from the Bridge, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, Jan 14–Feb 12 The Ushers, Raindog/Tron, Tron, Glasgow, Jan 18–22 Manipulate, Traverse, Edinburgh, Jan 21–Feb 5

REVIEWS AT theatreSCOTLAND

15 December The Guardian

Jack and the Beanstalk

A King's Theatre, Edinburgh review.

30 September 2010 Northings

Interiors

Vanishing Point review.