Europe

A new production of one of David Greig’s first major plays was at Dundee Rep earlier this month, and is making a trip down to the Barbican before coming back again.
This play is set in a railway station at a former border in Europe.   The trains used to stop, but no longer need to do [...]

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Black Watch

This was the National Theatre of Scotland’s hit from the Edinburgh Festival last year now touring Scotland, then London, and hopefully USA.    Black Watch is a site specific ‘event theatre’ – a bit like “The Ship” or “The Big Picnic”, and finding venues to suit has not been easy.    This performance, one of the first of a [...]

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Top 20 Theatre

The Scotsman is running a Top 20 theatrical performances in Scotland this week.      It is actually really hard to come up with this, but great to see Blackbird on the official list.
Street of Crocodiles, The Ship or The Big Picnic would be contenders.   I’ll reserve judgement on Black Watch until I have seen it later [...]

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Notes from a Scandal

Notes from a Scandal is a much nominated and award winning film of Zoe Heller’s book about Sheba, a young teacher who has an affair with a 15 year old pupil, and who is caught at it by a lonely older colleague Barbara.    It is an absorbing study of abuse of power:   Sheba’s over the boy, [...]

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The Unconquered

A new play by Torben Betts performed by Stellar Quines.
I liked the last Torben Betts play, A Listening Heaven,  I saw at the Lyceum in Edinburgh which won Best New Play at the TMA awards, but I really struggled to get to grips with this play, seen at The Byre before going on a national tour.
There [...]

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Scottish Ensemble plays Elgar, Ravel and Takemitsu

Superb concert in Perth by the Scottish Ensemble.    They are truly a world class outfit.
Favourite of the night was Elgar – Serenade played stunningly well.   And Introduction and Allegro tackled head on.    Just when you thought that you knew a piece inside out, this group come along and add completely fresh ideas.   Normally played by [...]

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Strangers, babies

Interesting new play from Linda Mclean at the Traverse called Strangers, babies.    It is a series of double handers between a woman, May, and 5 men in her life.  
Liam Brennan draws a short straw by having to assemble a flat-pack chair on stage every night, but is excellent as May’s husband.    May visits her father in [...]

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Pruning Climbing Roses

We have a few climbing roses here, and very wonderful they look in the summer.    We have heavy soil, which roses like.   But it means that they grow big and strong – so big and strong that the shoots can get up underneath the slates unless drastic action is taken.
This is a good time of year [...]

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Bus Journey

I took the Megabus the other day to Edinburgh.     It was really windy, so no double deckers were allowed on the Forth Bridge.    Happily, we were a single decker.   
But what was this?    A crabbit battle-axe woman in a dirty yellow fluorescent jacket with megabus.com on the back (like that exactly) marched down the bus and told us [...]

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