Scotland Reviews

Choreography: Kim Brandstrup Music: Witold Lutoslawksi Review: Dominic Corr Control, particularly to any auteur is their entire being. Where our vision cannot, will not and most likely should not collide with our realities. Rambert conveys Life is a Dreamas a narrative work, though in truth it is more akin to pure movement than theatre. An adaption of the 1635 play ...

Book: Berry Gordy Director: Charles Randolph-Wright Reviewer: Dominic Corr More than music, Motown was an opportunity. It was family, dedication and an outlet for some of history’s greatest African American performers. The Jackson 5, Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross all had a part to play in the construction of the record label. Playing such a prominent role in racial integration ...

Writer: Robert Tressell Director: Neil Gore Reviewer: Edie Ranvier Robert Noonan, Irish sign writer, painter and decorator, was only 40 when he died in penury of tuberculosis, and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Liverpool. But his literary legacy as Robert Tressell, author of an impassioned 1,600 page manuscript about the injustices of capitalism which he called The Ragged ...

Adapter: Lee Hall (based on the screenplay by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard) Director: Phillip Breen Reviewer: Dominic Corr We all know the life and loves of William Shakespeare, don’t we? One tale you may not know however is the impassioned romance of Shakespeare and Viola De Lesseps. The two star-crossed lovers embark on a burning, yet undeniably troubled affair. ...

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi  Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave Director: Matthew Richardson Conductor: Rumon Gamba Reviewer: Dominic Corr Seduction, tangled with an overbearing father all play a part in the turmoil of Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester. The 1851 libretto opera has been revived by the Scottish Opera following Matthew Richardson’s 2011 production. Now, fully escaping its historical censorship, Rigoletto can serve to ...

Writer: Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop Director: Sally Lyall Reviewer: Gareth Davies In the centenary month of the end of the First World War, Edinburgh’s Captivate Theatre present a welcome revival of this classic satire on the horrors of that conflict. First devised in the early 1960s by Joan Littlewood’s innovative Theatre Workshop, the play was a ground-breaking combination of comedy ...

Writer: Rona Munro Director: Richard Baron Reviewer: Dominic Corr Janet Horne, the last woman to be legally executed in the British Isles, arrested in Dornoch Scotland is the subject of Rona Munro’s The Last Witch. Alone with her claw-handed daughter, Janet fends for the pair in the Highlands. Her charms, herbal remedies and manipulation tricks those into offering scraps of ...

Writer and Director: Debbie Isitt Music: Nicky Ager and Debbie Isitt Reviewer: Lauren Humphreys The clocks have gone back, Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night are over, so, of course, Christmas is here. Seven weeks early, but who’s complaining when it’s the stage version of Bafta Award-winning Debbie Isitt’s hugely loveable 2009 movie, Nativity? For those familiar with the big-screen trilogy, the stage ...