Lyceum
Shirley Valentine
★★★★☆ Tour de force
Sally Reid’s performance lights up the Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s production of Shirley Valentine, touring to the Lyceum for a three week summer season.
Sunset Song
★★★☆☆ Well performed
Stage versions of Sunset Song seem to come around every couple of years, perhaps because no-one has managed to come up with the definitive adaptation yet. Dundee Rep’s new version (a co-production with the Lyceum) has great strengths as well as weaknesses.
Macbeth (an undoing)
★★★★☆ Compelling
Zinnie Harris’s much-garlanded adaptation of Shakespeare, Macbeth (an undoing), returns to the Lyceum subtly tweaked and all the better for it.
The Girls of Slender Means
★★★☆☆ Poignant
Gabriel Quigley’s adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means for the Lyceum is an enjoyable and wonderfully acted piece of theatre, that does justice to its source’s substance if not its ambition.
Blue Beard
★★★★☆ Furiously funny
A riotous combination of anger and dizzying theatrical invention, Blue Beard at the Lyceum until the end of the month, is troubling and messy in exactly the right ways.
Two Sisters
★★★☆☆ Wistful
Two Sisters at the Lyceum until the beginning of March, is a touching and well-observed piece that is ultimately too diffuse.
Jekyll & Hyde
★★★★☆ Atmospheric
The Lyceum’s presentation of the Reading Rep Theatre production of Jekyll and Hyde features an ingenious adaptation by Gary McNair and a powerful performance by Forbes Masson.
The Snow Queen
★★★★☆ Epic
The Snow Queen at the Lyceum provides thrills, humour and imaginative theatricality. Morna Young’s adaptation (directed by Cora Bissett, with music by Finn Anderson) could not be staged in 2020 for obvious reasons.
Through The Mud
★★★★☆ Powerful
Review by Hugh Simpson
Through The Mud by Apphia Campbell at the Lyceum is a story of the struggle for civil rights in the USA in the face of racism. Its portrayal of the African American experience across the generations is both depressing and inspiring, told with craft and tunefulness.
Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape
★★★★☆ Philosophical weight
Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape at the Lyceum deals unapologetically with difficult emotional and political themes, eschewing any easy answers or resolutions in a way that could be difficult but is made palatable by performances of power and nuance.
