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(and other topics © Mark Fisher)

2007-present Blogger

Scottish theatre blog

Reviews, thoughts and observations

2006-present The List

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Recent articles published in the events guide.

11 November 08 The Guardian

The Dogstone/Nasty Brutish and Short

If new plays are a measure of the times, the National Theatre of Scotland's series of Traverse Debuts tells us these are depressing days.

11 November 08 Variety

King Lear

King Lear is the most mythic of Shakespeare's tragedies. With none of the specificity of Elsinore or Glamis, it has the archetypal appeal of a fairytale.

Otter Pie

Local identity is a nebulous thing. We all know what we mean when we talk about the character of place, but try and pin it down and it slips away.

Traverse goes to Polmont

In a room in Polmont young offenders' institution, two men have dropped a tab of acid and are starting to hallucinate.

6 November 08 The Guardian

4.48 Psychosis

There are three players in Adrian Osmond's audacious staging of Sarah Kane's swan song. The first is you.

Suddenly Last Summer/Like the Rain

There is every reason to be impressed by the British Film Institute's 14-film Tennessee Williams retrospective coming up in London, but that shouldn't eclipse the achievement of the Tron.

2 November 08 Scotland on Sunday

Travis drummer Neil Primrose

International travellers, fear not. When you see the drummer from Travis ahead of you in the queue for airport security, do not worry.

31 October 08 The Guardian

Midsummer

It is not every day you see a raucous pop musical set on the streets of Edinburgh. But right now, there are two.

29 October 08 Northings, Hi-Arts Journal

Little Light

Sorry, too late. If you're able to read this, you're no longer in the market for Little Light. Quite considerably beyond it, in fact.

29 October 08 The Guardian

The Caretaker

A few months ago, the talk was all about white, working-class males feeling alienated in a multicultural society. Whatever the merits of that analysis, Harold Pinter was on the case first, nearly 50 years ago.

28 October 08 The Guardian

Cockroach

No one could accuse Sam Holcroft of lacking ambition. Her full-length debut is an attempt to marry Darwin's theory of evolution to the male propensity for war . . .

26 October 08 Scotland on Sunday

Grid Iron in Stavanger

Mary Miller used to be the Scotsman's music editor. After that she ran the Northlands Festival in Caithness, then the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut.

12 October 08 Scotland on Sunday

David Greig and Gordon McIntyre interview

David Greig is improvising his new play as if it had been written by Harold Pinter.

7 October 08 The Guardian

Six Acts of Love

Katherine is a woman in need of a story. For much of the time in Ioanna Anderson's gentle comedy, though, you don't notice her dilemma . . .

5 October 08 The Guardian

Something Wicked this Way Comes

As every reader of Pinocchio knows, there is not a boy who can resist the pull of a funfair. When the carnival comes to town it brings the promise of something magical, transgressive, illicit . . .

2 October 08 The Scotsman

Artist Andy Goldsworthy - Knowing his place

Andy Goldsworthy is sitting in his Dumfriesshire home framed by a painting made of sheep shit. It’s a piece I last saw at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in a major retrospective of the artist’s work last year.

30 September 08 The Guardian

Cherry Blossom

The disorientation we feel watching Catherine Grosvenor's Cherry Blossom is the disorientation of her characters. They are economic migrants, venturing from Poland to the UK with more drive than language skills.

25 September 08 The Herald

Ioanna Anderson interview

If you want a lesson on modern Scottish identity, look no further than Ioanna Anderson. The 38-year-old playwright is a walking embodiment of 21st-century multiculturalism.

23 September 08 Northings - Highlands & Islands Arts Journal

Macbeth

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But watching Alan Steele in the title role of Macbeth, you see power also does a few things in between.

23 September 08 The Guardian

Don Juan

It worked for John Simm in Life on Mars, so why not for Mark Springer in Don Juan? Like DCI Sam Tyler in the TV series, John D is a modern-day man who, thanks to some jiggery-pokery in the space-time continuum, finds himself in a bygone era.

19 September 08 The Guardian

One Giant Leap

Professor Michael Reiss should have bided his time. Instead of causing all that hullabaloo over creationism in science lessons, the Royal Society's now ex-director of education should simply have prescribed One Giant Leap for every school in the land.

15 September 08 The Guardian

Fleeto

There are three good reasons why Fleeto should not work. One, it is written in blank verse and inspired by the Iliad, surely a recipe for deadly modern theatre.

5 September 08 Northings - Hi-Arts Journal

Outlying Islands

Five years after Outlying Islands made its debut at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in 2002, playwright David Greig translated The Bacchae by Euripides for the National Theatre of Scotland.

31 August 08 Scotland on Sunday

The return of Rab C Nesbitt

It's a couple of years ago and Ian Pattison, Gregor Fisher and Colin Gilbert are tucking into a swanky meal at an upmarket Glasgow restaurant.

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