Author: The Reviews Hub - Scotland

Writer: Caroline Bird Director: Wils Wilson Red Ellen, Labour MP who staunchly opposed the party’s luke-warm indifference to the Führer’s rise in Germany at the dawn of WWII, is traditionally associated with her March for Jobs for Jarrow, Bird channels a specific side of Wilkinson for the production; the woman who makes her mark as an outsider, compromising for the opportunities of power, burning at both ends to face every injustice she can. Chartering the endless campaigns of a woman at the heart of it all; saving Jewish refugees, Challenging Westminster’s grip, campaigning for British intervention to fight Spanish Fascists, engaging…

Writer: Agatha Christie Adaptation: Leslie Darbon Director:  Michael Lunney Not quite reaching the monumental feat of Christie’s juggernaut of the Westend, The Mousetrap, A Murder is Announced continues its tour originating from 2015 by Middle Ground Theatre – still an impressive feat for the production, and an evident cry at the nation’s continued passion for their favourite topic, Murder. In the local Gazette, a murder is quite literally announced as the personal advertisements reveal the intentions of a killer – to take the life of an inhabitant of the village, on a specific date at 6.30pm, at the home of Letitia Paddocks. Most…

Based on the screenplay by: Betty Comden and Adolph Green Music & Lyrics: Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed Director: Jonathan Church The studio era, a Golden time for Hollywood’s finest performers and a haven of films which continue to stand the test of time, an era long soaked in nostalgia, for better or worse, and revered those in the biz. To imagine that even in the fifties, with the release of the now genre-defining Singin’ in The Rain, tribute was already setting the time in stone, with Gene Kelly’s now-iconic number under all those tonnes and tonnes of watery…

Adaptation: Chris Bush Lyrics: Chris Bush and Miranda Cooper Music: Miranda Cooper and Jennifer DeCilveo Director: Amy Hodge Anne Frank, Joan of Arc, Malala Yousafzai, Emeline Pankhurst, Rosa Parks, and Miss Piggy: Women you have heard of who have changed the world. Martha Gellhorn, Alexandra David-Néel, Bobby Gibb, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, and Rosalind Franklin: Women who you may not have heard of who have changed the world. Time to change that. Left behind by her school on a museum field trip, Jade (Kudzai Mangombe) feels a sense of loss – magnified by her parent’s divorce, nothing seems to be going…

Choreography & Direction: David Nixon OBE Music: Sir Richard Rodney Bennett OBE The glint of green light across the waterfront – a spectre of hope, curiosity, and the nightmare of A-Level English students up and down the country. F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of concealment and life-balancing ironies is the perfect ballet in waiting, with its opulent decor the idealistic. And even the most fleetingly familiar with the work of David Nixon’s time at Northern Ballet will know that narrative-based productions are the lifeblood of the company’s repertoire, so there’s a complete understanding of what tempted Nixon towards The Great Gatsby – framing…

Book: Jessie Nelson Music & Lyrics: Sara Bareilles Director: Diane Paulus The kitchen. The hub of the home where secrets are spilt, wine is poured, and all the best parties happen. A chore for some, the escape of cooking is a (literal) lifesaver for others, a place to have autonomy and control over the aspects in front of them, where otherwise they have none. For diner waitress Jenna it’s a safe place – but one steeped in more trauma and reassurance than we initially see. For her, the creation and naming of the various Pies for sale in Joe’s Pie…

Writer: Giles Terera Director(s): Tom Morris & Giles Terera Two hundred years ago, Olaudah Equiano recounts the reports of a massacre aboard the slave ship Zong, where one-hundred and thirty-two Africans were thrown overboard to preserve the lives of the crew. Seen as no more than property, insurance to claim, Equiano joins with anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp to condemn these actions, to re-open the blinded eyes of justice, and help set in motion to ripples that led to the abolition movement in the UK. But the narrative transcends deeper than many at first envisage; the mission extends from the courtroom…

Music and Lyrics: Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly Director: Cora Bissett  Adaptation: Douglas Maxwell A city without another of similar ilk, Glasgow sees layers of history, strife and raucous wonderment collide in a myriad of uninhibited pitches – almost a living, breathing paradox of a city. Nowhere more evident than in Peter Mullan’s 1998 meticulously grim and pitch-dark cinematic comedy Orphans, which finds the four siblings of an archetypal Glasgow matriarch struggling in their various ways the night before her funeral. The halberd of success for any production is not its transition from Broadway to the West End, or even from…