Lizzie Powell
Same Team – A Street Soccer Story
★★★★☆ Exhilarating
Same Team – A Street Soccer Story, the Traverse’s December production, may be short on tinsel – but in its thought-provoking and frequently exuberant nature, it is peculiarly apposite for the season.
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.
Football play closes Trav 60
Same Team – Street Soccer Story to play Traverse in December
The final play of the Traverse’s 60th anniversary season is to be Same Team – Street Soccer Story, by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse, created with the women of Street Soccer’s Dundee Change Centre and inspired by the Homeless World Cup.
What Girls Are Made Of
★★★★★ Exhilarating
Cora Bissett is nothing short of incredible in her gig-theatre show What Girls Are Made Of. It is full-throttle, high energy and, at points, it really does feel like you are front row at a gig.
Thrown (EIF)
★★★★☆ Substantial
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Thrown, at the Traverse as part of the International Festival, is an intelligent and powerful piece of theatre.
Macbeth (an undoing)
★★★☆☆ Intriguing
Macbeth (an undoing), by Zinnie Harris after William Shakespeare at the Lyceum, is the latest in a long line of rewritings of Macbeth. While it is undoubtedly thought-provoking, it ends up more perplexing than engrossing.
Orphans
★★★☆☆ Raucous
Full of comic bravado, the National Theatre of Scotland’s long-delayed musical adaptation of Orphans at the King’s is an attractive but unwieldy beast.
The Da Vinci Code
★★★☆☆ Visually arresting
The big budget obviously afforded to the adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is put to good use in a stunningly designed and consistently well acted production that bowls along merrily without ever quite coming together as a dramatic narrative.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
★★★★☆ Starry night
There is nothing rushed about Dominic Hill’s compelling new production of Benjamin Britten’s opera of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Scottish Opera at the Festival Theatre until Saturday.