Lesley Hart

BookFest – The Final Whistle
Edinburgh International Book Festival 2019 Final Round-up:
The Edinburgh International Book Festival 2019 closed with its customary eclectic selection of events a remarkably prescient glitch and a Playing with Books presentation that showed exactly what such an adaptation can do.

The Twenty Five
Full cast of Knives in Hens announced:
The full cast of 25 actresses taking on the role of Young Woman in the concert reading of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens at the Lyceum on Tuesday 11 June 2019 has been revealed.

Muriel Spark: Creme de la Creme
★★★★☆ Literary:
On the eve of the centenary of Muriel Spark’s birth, the Usher hall was packed for Muriel Spark: Creme de la Creme, an evening of readings, reminiscences and a performed reading of the Edinburgh-born author’s only play.

International Waters
★★★☆☆ Choppy seas:
There are enough ideas in David Leddy’s International Waters for several plays. However, this particular one, while intelligent and energetic, does not always convince.

A fistful of lunchtime theatre
Play Pie and a Pint back at Traverse:
Oran Mor’s popular A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre is back at the Traverse on Tuesday for a five week season opening with Lesley Hart’s Flame Proof.

Dear Scotland – Review
✭✭✭✭✩ Portrait of a mindset
Dear Scotland, You are a country of many fine actors, both young and old, a country with many ideas that have to be said and with many people who have the wit to say them. Now the NTS has found a stage on which this to happen.

Review – 3 Seconds
Oran Mor’s lunchtime theatre returns to the Traverse this week with a bruising debut from actress-turned-playwrite Lesley Hart.

Review – Sex and God
* * * *
Complex and enthralling, Linda McLean’s new play for Magnetic North reveals the lives of four 20th century women as interweaving – yet never quite interlocking – narratives.

Theatre Review – The Cherry Orchard
Uprooted from its original time and place, John Byrne’s new version of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard transplants the action to Scotland in 1979, on the eve of Thatcher’s first term in office.
Knives in Hens
A Concert Reading from Pearlfisher
At the beginning of this one-off concert reading of Knives in Hens in memory of Pauline Knowles, playwright David Harrower related a telling anecdote about Pauline and the play in which she originated the central character.