Theatre
Capture the Flag!
★★★☆☆ Good fun
Capture the Flag! follows a group of fast-food workers on a mandatory company retreat where tensions build and relationships are tested. The Napier Drama Society’s Winter Show at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, is a light-hearted satire filled with workplace drama and absurdity.
A Noble Clown
★★★★★ Essential
Michael Daviot’s A Noble Clown – Scenes From The Life Of Duncan Macrae, is on a short run at the Storytelling Centre as part of the weekend celebrating Scottish theatre linked to Edinburgh 900. If there is any justice in the world, it will be seen again very soon.
Treasure Island
★★★★☆ Creative
Treasure Island, the Lyceum’s family Christmas show, is an enchanting production whose energy and visual invention compensate for the occasional mis-step.
Dancing at Lughnasa
★★★☆☆ Affecting
Even as other companies gear up for Christmas, Leitheatre look back to September with Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa at the Church Hill. This entirely unseasonal downbeat piece is discharged with great care and some impressive acting.
The Tailor of Inverness
★★★★☆ Enduring
Now in its sixteenth year of production, Dogstar Theatre Company’s The Tailor of Inverness remains a compelling —and troublingly timely— depiction of the multigenerational scars of war.
McScrooge
★★★★☆ Beautiful adaptation
McScrooge by Alan Mountford and Leith’s Citadel Arts Group for the Scottish Dementia Arts Festival is a beautiful adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, designed to meet the particular needs of its audience, while retaining the key elements of the original novella.
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.
New Theatre podcast launched
A history of Scottish Drama in six plays
Fergus Morgan, the Stage’s Scotland correspondent and theatre critic, is launching new podcast, A history of Scottish Drama in six plays, with a recording of the seventh and final episode tonight, Monday 28 October 2024, at the Traverse.
The Boys in the Band
★★★★☆ Engaging
The EUTC’s engaging production of Mart Crowley’s 1968, New York-set gay drama, The Boys in the Band, is a well-observed affair which is at its best when it goes past the play’s innate waspishness to find its inner anger.
PPP: Detained
★★★★☆ Heartfelt
Detained, the final instalment in the Traverse’s autumn season of offerings from from Òran Mór’s Play, Pie and a Pint, is a thoughtful and incisive piece of theatre.
