Hugh Simpson
PPP: Meetings With The Monk
★★★★☆ Imaginative possibilities
Meetings With The Monk, the latest Play, Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór and the Traverse, is a beautifully considered and tremendously well-staged play.
Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning
★★★★☆ Angry
You can’t keep a good vampire down for long, and the story of Dracula keeps coming back to the stage, with its depictions of transgressive behaviour making it a constant candidate for reinvention.
PPP: Stay
★★★☆☆ Engaging
Stay, the latest Play, Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór at the Traverse, is a tuneful and emotional piece.
Disciples
★★★★☆ Powerful
Disciples from Stellar Quines and the Traverse is an arresting piece of drama and movement, playing at the Traverse until Saturday and transferring to Newcastle ‘s Northern Stage in November.
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.
PPP: The Sheriff of Kalamaki
★★★★☆ Impressive
This week’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint from Òran Mór at the Traverse, The Sheriff of Kalamaki by Douglas Maxwell is another tale of mismatched siblings, this time played by the real-life McCole brothers.
2:22 A Ghost Story
★★★☆☆ Spooky
On tour after an award-winning (and still-current) London run, Danny Robins’s 2:22 A Ghost Story at the Festival Theatre is an entertaining horror story. It largely justifies the confidence displayed in putting the word ‘ghost’ right up there in the title.
PPP: Coast
★★★★☆ Touching
Coast, the latest offering at the Traverse from A Play, A Pie and A Pint (co-presented with Òran Mór), is a wonderfully judged and absorbing drama.
PPP: Ship Rats
★★★☆☆ Energetic
Ship Rats by Alice Clark, the first in the latest series of A Play, A Pie and A Pint at the Traverse (co-presented with Òran Mór) is a pacy and intriguing work. There are undoubtedly problems with the play, but the vigour and acuity of the production go a long way towards compensating for them.
People Huv Tae Know
★★★☆☆ Homely
Twenty years on from its first television outing, Still Game has enough followers to pack out theatres, as could be seen from the record-breaking runs of the stage adaptations at the Hydro. Indeed, there was a play before there was ever a television version. So a theatre event featuring the cast would seem to be a no-brainer.
