Writer: Liam Patrick Harrison Director: Samuel Bossman This is a tale of everyday fisherfolk getting caught up in international drug smuggling and a possible miscarriage of justice. Isle of Wight based company Deadman have brought a lot of energy and passion to a production that explores the local story and brings it to wider prominence. They use physical theatre techniques effectively, not least to convey the tough conditions on board the Galwad-y-Mor, skippered by Jamie Green (Leigh Kelly). Among the crew is Zoran Dresic, known as ‘Vic’ (Gintaras Lazickas), a migrant from Montenegro, his presence highlighting the reliance of the…
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“I didn’t know there’d be steps”. Above a pub on a sunny Saturday afternoon, Isabelle Glinn presents a hilarious, gentle, and oddly moving hour about figure skating, childhood expectations, and the importance of finding your own path, freezing or otherwise. The ice can be unforgiving, particularly when you’re 3 years old, as this character is when we see them compete and fail for the first time. Glinn is hilariously believable in her portrayal of a very tiny person trying to do what is expected of them, despite not quite understanding why they should be doing it. This is a handy…
Writer: Jez Butterworth Director: Jonathan Reed Jerusalem is a monstrous, Hydra-headed, wonder of a play. It requires a towering central performance and an ensemble that acts like a Greek chorus, that ebbs and flows like the River Severn, that allows the play to simultaneously portray a sad static Traveller who gives a mob of kids drugs and booze, and a mythic archetype, a Lord of Misrule, Jack o’the Green, Puck. If either of these stories fails to connect, it becomes a sort of morality tale without any moral. Both strands have to be credible. It is enormously to the credit…
Writer: Rona Munro Director: Rachel Watt The story of Bold Girls follows three ladies living through the troubles in Belfast as they go about their daily chores, and then progress to a night out. As often happens when alcohol is consumed, a lot of truths come out about their intermingled lives. The main characters are Marie (Gwen Watson) who’s house much of the action takes part in, her neighbour Nora (Primmie MacGillivray) and Nora’s daughter Cassie (Joann Watt). There is also the mysterious figure of Deirdre (Lailey Sinclair). The contrast between domestic life, and the roadblocks and fires going…
Writer: Alys Williams Director: Andrea Heaton ‘What use will you be if you go under?’ asks the woman who, trying to save a partner struggling with despair, feels herself in danger of drowning too. She must keep going, finding moments of silliness amid the sadness, holding the hope for someone who doesn’t feel strong enough to hold it themselves. In this intensely emotional performance, Alys Williams takes us with her on a very personal voyage – quite literally, as she musters a fair number of audience members to provide sound effects and play the roles of her best friend, mother,…
Writer: Kazuya Konomoto Director: Baku Kinoshita, Nana Harada, Shintaro Matsui The Last Blossom is an oddly charmless piece of animation. The plot time-switches between protagonist, Minoru, as an old man, after thirty years in prison, and a period when he was young. We learn – because he decides to confide his life story to a talking balsam flower, the eponymous Last Blossom – that he once took in a young pregnant woman, Nana, and they set up home together as friends. Minoru is a supposedly a decent character, but with his sullen silences and his unchanging slab of a face,…
Festival Director: Alison Strauss HippFest, Falkirk Council’s world-class annual silent film festival based at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness, is back. Running from 18 to 22 March, the programme features a strong international line-up of movies. Every screening features live accompaniment by some of the most accomplished cinema musicians on the planet. The result is an exquisite combination of fascinating historic films and brilliantly tailored music. The Wednesday’s opening film, The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) is an emotionally gripping melodrama set in Iceland but shot in Sweden and directed by and starring Victor Sjöström as a one-time thief dogged…
Director: Jan Komasa This movie has a Polish director but is set in America and there are no subtitles. Released last year, it’s part of London’s Polish film festival, Kinoteka. Anniversary opens with what has become a dreadful cliché – the establishment of a well-to-do, grown-up American family at a celebration at their lovely home, in this case the parents’ silver wedding anniversary. It’s also a cliché that the smug family is about to be ripped apart, usually by the appearance and interference of a malign character. And so we have Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), girlfriend of Josh (Dylan O’Brien), the…