Theatre
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.
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.
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.
Dead Girls Rising
★★★★☆ Emotional roller-coaster
Silent Uproar’s new touring production of Dead Girls Rising, at the Traverse for three performances, is an emotional roller-coaster of punk gig theatre focusing on two young women as they navigate a pathway through lives faced with misogyny and a violent patriarchy.
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.
When Mountains Meet
★★★★☆ Joyfully moving
When Mountains Meet is the best kind of touring theatre – approachable, intelligent, melodic and utterly entertaining.
Cyrano de Bergerac
★★★★☆ Unexpectedly touching
There is an almost wilfully uneven quality to Arkle’s Cyrano de Bergerac at the Hill Street Theatre, but – eschewing much of the heroic bombast that is usually associated with the play – it manages to be convincing and affecting.
Strange Town actor for West End Macbeth
David Tennant’s hit Macbeth transfers to Harold Pinter theatre
Edinburgh’s Strange Town theatre company and young acting agency has another West End star in its books as Raffi Phillips joins his fellow cast members in the transfer of the Donmar Warehouse’s Macbeth to the Harold Pinter theatre.
The Misanthrope
★★★★☆ Well judged
Edinburgh Theatre Arts’ production of The Misanthrope at St Ninian’s Church Hall is a clever and thoroughly enjoyable piece of theatre.
