Preview for the week 23-30 November

It’s another busy week at Edinburgh’s theatres, where the amateur companies are taking centre stage with three productions, at St Columba’s, Adam House and Saughtonhall, while Scottish Opera continue to hold the stage at the Festival Theatre. Panto time is well and truly upon us, with the Brunton up and running, the Lyceum opening and the King’s going into preview. And there’s even a wee Fringe-type event up at North Edinburgh Arts.

Opera Review - The Italian Girl in Algiers

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Festival Theatre
Review by Thom Dibidn
Busy to the point of bursting, Scottish Opera’s vigorous co-production with the NBR New Zealand Opera of Rossini’s shining comic opera at the Festival Theatre is a captivating yet strangely disconcerting affair.

Which is not to fault director Colin McColl. It is just to say that Rossini’s plot is so full of unlikely events that even this modernisation can’t stop the brain boggling. And while the set of a cheap daytime soap opera provides an exciting, logical and appropriately entertaining setting, so much is happening on stage that it threatens to detract from the music.

Indeed, McColl acknowledges as much... Link to full review in the Edinburgh Evening News...
                                                                 Photo credit: Drew Farrell

Review: In Transit

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The GRV
Review by Thom Dibdin

Strong writing and interesting characters make the first outing from the Actors Kitchen something of an unexpected treat, to be found until Saturday in the small theatre of the GRV on Guthrie Street.

Unified by the theme of waiting for a delayed flight in an airport lounge, the fifteen scenes of In Transit share five  writers and nine performers. Chance encounters, hostile departures and wistful, end-of-holiday longings add up to a thought-provoking hour and a half.

Review - Edinburgh Gang Show

King’s Theatre
* * * *
Review by Thom Dibdin

Feisty, glittering and making great use of every one of its almost 200 participants, the Edinburgh Gang Show celebrates their fiftieth annual production with no little style.

When it hits the high notes, this is a strong, entertaining Variety-style production that combines some of the better elements of Gang Show originator Ralph Reader’s original sketches with Director Andy Johnston and MD John Duncan’s excellent new scripts and orchestrations.

Review - Grassic Gibbon

Festival Theatre
* * *
Review by Thom Dibdin

SUNSET Song, and indeed the whole trilogy of novels which Lewis Grassic Gibbon called A Scots Quair flavour this new, semi-staged production about the novelist who many claim to be Scotland's greatest.

It's a fair enough flavouring by the show's author, Jack Webster, given that Grassic Gibbon was only born as a pseudonym to distinguish James Leslie Mitchell's work about his Scottish home from his other, increasingly successful English novels.

Not to mention, for this production, the appearance of Vivien Heilbron as the narrator...Link to full review in the Edinburgh Evening News...

Run ended

Preview for the week 16-22 November

It is something of a music week in Edinburgh’s theatres this week. There’s Variety from the Gang Show, concert performances and dance in the Traverse’s Autumn Festival, the continuing presence of Queen’s musical at the Playhouse and the arrival of Scottish Opera at the Festival Theatre. Oh, and one piece of (relatively) straightforward theatre from the Edinburgh-based acting collective, Actors Kitchen up at the GRV.

Review - Wit

St Brides Centre
* * *
Review by Thom Dibdin

Tough and uncompromising but not quite achieving its full potential, the Grads' production of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer prize-winner finds great emotional depth but is ultimately undone by purely technical details.

Never a company to make things easy on themselves, the Grads have taken on a horrifyingly difficult production. It’s not so much the subject material - the final two hours in the life of Vivian Bearing PhD who has stage IV ovarian cancer. Although that itself is a pretty big ask to make entertaining.

Review - Whose Life is it Anyway?

Church Hill Theatre
* *
By Thom Dibdin

SURPRISINGLY hilarious in its opening scenes, Leitheatre’s take on Brain Clark’s right-to-die drama succeeds in finding an emotional core, but is still swamped by dialogue which spends too long rehearsing the arguments.

At the centre of the debate is Ken Harrison, six months on from an accident which paralysed him from the neck down - and stuck in hospital with no hope of an independent life.

Michael Ferguson makes Harrison an all-too human character - exchanging banter with the ward sister, making inappropriate advances to the young nurses and...  Link to full review in the Edinburgh Evening News..

Review - We’re Going On A Bear Hunt

King's Theatre                                                       Photo credit: Bob Workman

* * *
By Thom Dibdin

SWISHY swashy grass, splashy sploshy water and squelchy, squerchy mud are all present and very much correct in this touring adaptation of the children’s picture book, We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, which is at the King’s Theatre until Saturday 14th.

The book, beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury with Michael Rosen’s version of the children’s game repetitive in all the right ways, is treasured by millions of kids and their parents. Trifle with it at your peril, then, if you are going to bring it to the stage.

Which makes it hold-your-breath time when you realise that a very full King’s Theatre is about to be treated to a version with a whole character missing...

Review - Rain Man

King's Theatre

* * * *
Review by Thom Dibdin

DELIBERATELY poignant, without tipping the scales into mawkishness, this touring production of Rain Man gives the original 1988 Oscar-winning Hollywood blockbuster a comfortable home on the live stage.

This is down to a pair of purposeful, well-stated and thoroughly believable performances from Neil Morrissey and Oliver Chris, with an equally well-judged supporting performance from Ruth Everett.

The central character of Raymond Babbitt, an autistic savant who has been institutionalised since his childhood, is a peach of a part as Dustin Hoffman showed in the original. But it is all too easy to forget that...

Full review in the Edinburgh Evening News (link)

Review - We Will Rock You

Edinburgh Playhouse
* * * *
Review By Thom Dibdin

Star-spotting was the trend up at the We Will Rock You aftershow party in Harvey Nicks last night, but the real stars had already made their public appearances. Brian May and Roger Taylor performed live on the Playhouse stage for what must have been the first time since Queen played there in 1976.

Their return was, it must be said, a phenomenally uplifting moment. May's initial appearance brought a packed Playhouse to its feet, while the ushers were trying - and failing - to stem the tide of phone cameras being held aloft. But when the crowd realised that Taylor on his drum kit was being wheeled out through the ensemble in the Bohemian Rhapsody finale, their roar of appreciation rivalled even the throb of bass from the stage.

Preview for the week - 9-15 November

It's a mega-busy week coming up in Edinburgh's theatres. There's big issue theatre from local amateurs Leitheatre and the Grads as well as with Rainman at the King's - where kids also get to go hunting bears. The Playhouse opens its big festive season offering, the Traverse has some nifty new work, and dance fans get to thrill to the rather wonderful Richad Alston Dance Company.