Pippa Murphy
Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil
★★★☆☆ Subtly resonant
Black Diamonds and the Blue Brazil at the Lyceum is a sensitive exploration of community, family and football that has much to commend it, but stretches itself a little thin.
Karine Polwart: Windblown
★★★★★ Beautiful
Karine Polwart: Windblown, presented by Raw Material at the Queen’s Hall for five days only, is a magnificent combination of music, storytelling, poetry and theatre.
The Mountaintop
★★★★☆ Vital
The Lyceum’s production of The Mountaintop is an enthralling, beautifully performed examination of history and humanity.
Nessie
★★★★☆ Myth-buster
Nessie is visiting the Studio Theatre this week in the world premiere of a new musical co-production from Festival Theatres and Pitlochry Festival Theatre, which challenges the myths and legends around Scotland’s best known mysterious creature.
A Streetcar Named Desire
★★★★☆ Taut
Originally staged at Pitlochry Festival Theatre in their 2023 summer season, this multi-layered production of A Streetcar Names Desire sets alight this classic tale of love, lust and betrayal set in a sultry New Orleans.
June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me
★★★★☆ Exuberant
Intense emotion is combined with real intelligence in The National Theatre of Scotland and Grid Iron’s June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me by Charlene Boyd, at Summerhall Dissection Room.
Macbeth (an undoing)
★★★★☆ Compelling
Zinnie Harris’s much-garlanded adaptation of Shakespeare, Macbeth (an undoing), returns to the Lyceum subtly tweaked and all the better for it.
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.
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.
Tim Crouch: Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel
★★★★★ Exit, mind blown
Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel is a worryingly prescient piece. It is an exquisite creation that apparently denies the very point of creativity, a hymn to humanity that insists that humanity has had it. To call it ‘thought-provoking’ would be a criminal understatement.
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