Review
Here You Come Again
★★★☆☆ Unexpected
If you think you know what the Leeds Playhouse’s touring production of Here You Come Again will be like, think again. This is no standard jukebox musical and – while it does not all come off – it is a heartening and surprisingly emotional affair.
Life of Pi
★★★★☆ Visually spectacular
Considerable theatrical magic can be found in the touring production of Life of Pi at the Festival Theatre. If the staging sometimes overwhelms the storytelling, it is still a production of real impact.
Grease
★★★★☆ Still hopelessly devoted
Grease is the word once more at Edinburgh Playhouse this week and there’s no better way to fill those summer nights.
Shirley Valentine
★★★★☆ Tour de force
Sally Reid’s performance lights up the Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s production of Shirley Valentine, touring to the Lyceum for a three week summer season.
Maggie & Me
★★★☆☆ Resonant but unwieldy
The National Theatre of Scotland’s Maggie & Me, touring to the Traverse, is an odd beast indeed. It has a great deal to say about both the personal and the political, but some of it is lost in an over-ambitious, wildly inconsistent production.
Tales from the Towpath
★★★★☆ Water-born histories
It’s not often that productions begin with a safety warning – and the reassurance that you are unlikely to drown if the venue sinks – but not many productions are staged on a barge on the Union Canal.
Sunset Song
★★★☆☆ Well performed
Stage versions of Sunset Song seem to come around every couple of years, perhaps because no-one has managed to come up with the definitive adaptation yet. Dundee Rep’s new version (a co-production with the Lyceum) has great strengths as well as weaknesses.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
★★★★☆ High-flying
The classic children’s story of the flying car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, swoops down to the Playhouse this week to delight audiences anew.
An(other) Inspector Calls
★★★☆☆ Relevant
An(other) Inspector Calls from Edinburgh People’s Theatre at the Church Hill is a knowing tribute to one of the classics of 20th century drama. It does not always forge its own identity convincingly, but has much to recommend it.
The Fastest Clock in the Universe
★★★★☆ Febrile
EGTG drill down deep into the vicious heart of Philip Ridley’s The Fastest Clock in the Universe, in a production at the Assembly Roxy which never goes quite where you expect it to.
