Emma Jones
Cinderella: A Fairytale
★★★★☆ Magical
Cinderella: A Fairytale, this year’s Lyceum Christmas play, is a sparkling, visually wonderful and consistently entertaining piece of family entertainment.
Arlington
★★★★☆ Powerful
There is a rare intensity to Arlington, at the Traverse until Saturday, a new production by Glasgow-based dance/theatre company Shotput of Enda Walsh’s 2016 play, which features a young woman trapped in a room in a state-controlled tower block.
These Mechanisms
★★★★☆ Joyous and inspiring
Choreographer Robbie Synge directs Edinburgh-based performer Christine Thynne in These Mechanisms at Dance Base, her first solo dance show at the age of 80. The pair, who have collaborated previously, present a poetic and energetic movement piece that defies gravity and preconceptions.
The Great Gatsby
★★★★★ Sensational
The Great Gatsby is an extraordinarily difficult story to adapt, but Elizabeth Newman has done it, in a dazzling, hopeful, forlorn and febrile production, helmed by Sarah Brigham and co-produced by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre.
Through the Mud
★★★★☆ Emotionally resonant
A musical story of Black liberation, explored through the journeys of two generations of female activists in the United States, Apphia Campbell’s Through the Mud at Summerhall for the whole fringe, co-produced by Stellar Quines and Royal Lyceum Theatre, boldly and beautifully examines revolution.
A History of Paper
★★★★★ Heartbreaking
A History of Paper at the Traverse is a production of rare emotional weight, whose overall impact is out of all proportion to its comparatively small scale.
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.
Lightning Ridge
★★★★☆ Evocative
Lightning Ridge, Catherine Wheels’ adaptation of Pobby and Dingan, Ben Rice’s novella for young people, is a remarkably involved piece of storytelling about imagination, loss and the nature of community.
Stornoway, Quebec
★★★★☆ Wild Gaelic Western
Theatre Gu Leòr’s, Stornoway, Quebec, is a wild Gaelic Western, based loosely around the real figure of Donald Morrison, the Mégantic Outlaw, and set in a failing hotel in Quebec.
Ferguson and Barton
★★★☆☆ Clever and playful
Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1950s film noir classic, Vertigo, Ferguson and Barton at the Studio as part of Manipulate, is a clever and playful attempt to reimagine the original through dance and multimedia projection.
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