Philip Howard
Book Festival 2025 – the final round-up
McDermid play and other performances
The final few days of the Book Festival featured several more theatre-adjacent events, with one of the most eagerly anticipated being And Midnight Never Come, Val McDermid’s play about Christopher Marlowe, which was given a script-in-hand performance in conjunction with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, directed by Philip Howard.
Blinded by the Light
★★★★☆ Heartfelt
Blinded by the Light, which stopped off at the Traverse for one night only as part of a tour, is a deeply felt and very well performed piece with clear links to the community that inspired it.
PPP Made in China
★★★☆☆ Heartfelt
Made in China by Alice Clark, the latest Play, Pie and a Pint from Oran Mor at the Traverse, is a carefully written and excellently acted piece. Unfortunately it does not always satisfy as a drama.
My Light Shines On: Ghost Light
★★★★☆ Magical:
Ghost Light provides a poignant reminder of what we are all missing in this fallow year of live performance in Edinburgh during August.
Lights Shine On for EIF
Festival announces online offering:
The Edinburgh International Festival has announced My Light Shines On, a series of online shows for August, with filmed and audio works by Scotland’
Pauline Knowles remembered
Scholarship fund launch at unique Knives in Hens performance:
A unique concert reading of Knives In Hens is to be staged at the Lyceum as a memorial to Pauline Knowles and an opening fundraiser for a new scholarship fund in her memory.
Book Festival Round-up (Part Two)
More words from Charlotte Square
The script’s the thing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival
As well as being the most congenial place in the whole Festival simply to hang out, the Book Festival continues to provide a great deal of interest associated with the theatre.
Theatre in Scotland – A Field of Dreams
★★★★☆ Invaluable and illuminating:
Remarkably consistent in quality and generosity of spirit, Joyce McMillan’s Theatre in Scotland – A Field of Dreams, edited by Philip Howard, is vital to anyone seeking to understand Scotland’s cultural life in the last 30 years.
VPT announce #EdFringe shows
Big names join Leith collective
Over 70 plays in a dozen themed nights from over 20 playwirghts have been announced by the Village Pub Theatre for its Edinburgh Fringe debut, with big guest names directing and writing.
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.