The Scotsman 8 January 2024

Call it chance, call it versatility, but so far in her short career Catriona Faint has played more men than women. As a student at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, the Greenock-born actor played Lord Henry Carey, a 16th-century nobleman, in Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia. In Andy Arnold’s all-female production of The Tempest at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in 2021, she played the scheming Sebastian, her first professional role. And in the National Theatre of Scotland’s recent Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning, a feminist take on the Bram Stoker classic, she played Jonathan Harker, gamely venturing into Transylvania. [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).