The Guardian 3 November 2021

Segismundo has just woken up in a palace, having spent his life holed up in a tower. In Pedro Calderón’s extraordinary Spanish golden age drama, he is astonished at the luxury he is suddenly immersed in. “Me, surrounded by all these elegant-looking servants,” he says.

Except in Wils Wilson’s production, the servants are nothing of the kind. Their look could be called punk Pierrot: all back-combed hair, eccentric makeup and bare feet. In accordance with designer Georgia McGuinness’s dressing-up-box aesthetic, their outfits are a thrown-together combination of long johns and glitz. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).