Reviews
Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil
★★★☆☆ Human
The latest Sound Stage production from the Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil, is a funny and affecting tale of love and obsession set in the decaying heartlands of Scottish industry and football.
The Macbeths
★★★★☆ Bloody good
The Macbeths, the Citizens’ concentrated revision of Macbeth, supplies a charge that is so often missing in versions of the play.
The Mother Load
★★★★☆ Nuanced
The Mother Load by Lynda Radley, the latest in the Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Sound Stage series of audio presentations, is a warmly human and cleverly constructed piece.
Generation Z: The Future is Unwritten
★★★☆☆ Hybrid drive
Life changes – and the more it changes the more it stays the same. This conundrum – truism – lies at the heart of Generation Z: The Future is Unwritten the Strange Town youth theatres’ imaginative and compelling lockdown project which has a hybrid live performance at Out Of The Blue this weekend.
Adventures with the Painted People
★★★★★ Perfect timing and setting
David Greig’s Adventures with the Painted People is a clever and evocative piece of theatre which is only enhanced both by being the first full theatre production in Scotland since lockdown and by its performance in Pitlochry’s new Covid-secure amphitheatre.
Hindu Times
★★★☆☆ Fierce Originality:
Hindu Times – the latest audio offering from the Lyceum and Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Sound Stage – is a wildly original piece. Although cumbersome at times, it has a raucous energy that is frequently arresting.
Tennis Elbow
★★★★☆ Linguistic luxury
Thoroughly enjoyable on its own terms, Tennis Elbow – the latest offering from Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Lyceum’s Soundstage – is a flawed but very funny piece.
A Space To Bless
★★★★☆ Invaluable
A Space to Bless, a series of meditations from Queen Jesus Productions filmed in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, provides much-needed balm for the soul.
Smile
★★★☆☆ Sympathetic
Smile, Dundee Rep’s football-themed online offering, transfers to the screen to provide a satisfactory record of 2020’s successful play about the legendary Jim McLean.
Distance Remaining
★★★☆☆ Assured
There are some wonderful, and wonderfully human, performances in Distance Remaining. The three separate sections of the production ultimately fail to gel, but there is more than enough to sustain the interest.
