Reviews & features: Theatre, Henry Northmore
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As Ye Sow
17 Aug 2012
Strong performances and mounting tension in well-conceived ghost story
Without the use of special effects horror can be quite tricky to bring to the stage with the result that ghost stories are usually the sub-genre of choice for the theatre. The audience can fill in the gaps that clever editing or CGI would usually…
Wojtek the Bear
10 Aug 2012
Fascinating real-life bear drama is worth a look
Fascinating real-life bear drama is worth a look There’s no denying that the true story of Wojtek ‘the soldier bear’ is fascinating. Sold to the Polish army stationed in Iran in 1942, he was officially drafted into the 22nd Artillery Supply Company…
Ecstasy
7 Aug 2008
MDMA-fuelled love story
Based on ‘The Undefeated’, one of three stories from Irvine Welsh’s 1996 novel Ecstasy, this piece centres around Lloyd (Jack McGowan), an ageing clubber who wants more out of life than living for the weekend. In the meantime, though, he’s content to…
Interview: Kieran Hurley's Beats performed at the 2012 Edinburgh Festival
10 Aug 2012
Explores collective and individual identity during decade of rave culture
Kieran Hurley’s play, Beats, resurrects the 90s via one boy’s journey though the club landscape of 1994. Written, directed and performed by Hurley alongside DJ Johnny Whoop and VJ Jamie Wardrop, it’s a story of ‘chemical excess’, love, longing and…
Club Noir and Scottish Opera collaborate on A Night At The Opera
5 Aug 2010
Burlesque night prepare for unlikely pairing
Henry Northmore talks to the burlesque night as they prepare for one of this festival’s most unlikely collaborations
An Appointment with the Wicker Man
19 Aug 2012
A populist comedy success from Greg Hemphill, Donald McLeary and Vicky Featherstone
Of course the idea of a musical version of acclaimed horror movie The Wicker Man is absurd. That’s pretty much the point of the National Theatre of Scotland’s play-within-a-play from writers Greg Hemphill and Donald Mcleary and director Vicky…
Miss Havisham’s Expectations
4 Aug 2012
Linda Marlowe deconstructs Dickens’ jilted bride
Without doubt one of Charles Dickens’ most infamous creations, Miss Havisham casts an eerie shadow over Great Expectations, the black heart of the story, a woman ruled by spite but also suffering deeply from her own heartache at being jilted. Linda…
Slavery to Star Trek
8 Aug 2011
Autobiographical show taking in Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
Andreea Kindryd has lived a fascinating life. She knew Martin Luther King, was friends with Malcolm X and worked on the original Star Trek series. She’s an engaging storyteller whose tale starts in the days of her great grandparents and slavery…
Bare
15 Aug 2010
Hard hitting drama
Gritty, violent theatre set in the world of bare-knuckle boxing from BareBack Theatre. The sharp writing and fantastically choreographed fight scenes wouldn’t have half the impact without the strong central performances, from writer/director Renny…
The Call of Cthulhu
14 Aug 2010
Perfectly captures this descent into insanity
HP Lovecraft’s most famous work is brought to the stage in this one-man show from Michael Sabbaton. Lovecraft’s tales of horror were always about unknown evils lurking in the shadows, tendrils of madness creeping into the consciousness of his…
Touching the Blue
9 Aug 2010
A wonderfully constructed character story leaves you hanging
Clive Russell is instantly engaging, capturing the highs and lows of one-time snooker champion Derek Hodges as he stands on the brink of a comeback in a blackly comic monologue that gets progressively darker as the story unfolds until a shock ending…
Forever Young
25 Aug 2009
WWI through letters, diaries, poems and song
Remembering WWI through letters, diaries, poems and song there are some wonderful performances here from the Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre’s young cast. While the ‘war is hell’ message may be clichéd, in these troubled times it’s truer than ever, while…
The Rap Guide to Evolution
21 Aug 2009
Combining Chuck D and Charles Darwin
Part gig, part stand up, part lecture, Baba Brinkman, the man who brought you The Rap Canterbury Tales, tackles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Instantly accessible, destroying creationism through the music of The Notorious BIG, Dead Prez, Mobb Deep and…
No Parole: Family is a Life Sentence
21 Aug 2009
A true story of rocky relationships and career criminal mums
One man show from Carlo D’Amore concerning his life and rocky relationship with his career criminal mother and her one woman crime wave from Peru to America. This true story is touching, funny, poignant, outrageous and very personal but is ultimately…
Faust
20 Aug 2009
Dark, thrilling and unsettling adaptation of Goethe’s classic
Surely one of the Edinburgh International Festival’s most ambitious projects, Silviu Purcarete’s grand adaptation of Faust takes over, and fills, the huge warehouse space at Ingleston’s Royal Highland Centre. Based on Goethe’s treatment of the German…
Facebook Fables
12 Aug 2009
A play with a status to 'like'? It may even make it in your 'interests'.
Comedy about the dangers of internet revenge and social networking in which a woman scorned sets up a fake Facebook page for her ex-boyfriend hoping to trap his (imagined) new girlfriend. The personable performances from Andreya Lynham, Amber Nobel and…
One Man Lord of the Rings
10 Aug 2009
Baffling speeded-up Middle Earth affair
The trend for cutting down and speeding up plays/films/text kicked off with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and Charlie Ross is a veteran of the subgenre, having brought his One Man Star Wars to the Fringe in previous years. Dressed in a sturdy boiler…
Which to Burn?
21 Aug 2008
A one-woman show about loneliness, death and the Forth Rail Bridge might not sound like a winning combination, but Rachel Ogilvy brings the character to life through a series of remembered vignettes. The downbeat and often sad story of a woman trapped…
