Scotland
The Cry, BBC One review - every parent's nightmareMonday, 01 October 2018
Following the runaway success of Bodyguard, Jed Mercurio is no doubt popping more champagne and saying “follow that”. Stepping up to BBC One’s Sunday 9pm slot is The Cry, which transports us from suicide bombs and political intrigue and instead... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - a touch too sweetThursday, 27 September 2018
“Well, that was really sweet,” one young audience member in front of me remarked on his way out of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. And yes, there’s no denying that director Wils Wilson’s colourful, psychedelic, summer-of-love-set Twelfth Night, the... Read more... |
Lammermuir Festival 2018 review - a bigger buzzMonday, 24 September 2018
There’s always been something of a buzz in the air at East Lothian’s Lammermuir Festival. It’s the feeling that it’s somehow a special privilege to discover its performances – whether they’re from international names or emerging artists, challenging... Read more... |
CD: Malcolm Middleton - BananasMonday, 17 September 2018
Bananas is Malcolm Middleton’s first solo album to be built around guitar, bass, drums and all that stuff since 2009’s gorgeous Waxing Gibbous. Like any great artist, he soon became bored with pursuing the classic formulation that made his name (... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Home / The PrisonerMonday, 27 August 2018
Home ★★★★ Philadelphia-based theatre artist Geoff Sobelle has scored highly with two previous Edinburgh Fringe shows. Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl, way back in 2010, imagined the natural world wreaking ruthless... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Benedetti, Baltimore SO, Alsop - puzzlingly tameMonday, 27 August 2018
The Edinburgh International Festival scored quite a coup in securing the services of Bernstein protégée Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on the very day of the great composer/conductor’s centenary – and for the festival’s penultimate... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 review: Aimard, SCO, Pintscher - psychedelic visionsSaturday, 25 August 2018
There were two immediate casualties at Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s high-energy account of Messiaen’s monumental Des canyons aux étoiles… with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival.First was one of the strings in the... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: La maladie de la mort / The End of EddyWednesday, 22 August 2018
La maladie de la mort ★★★ Toxic masculinity in all its appalling variety is a hot topic across Edinburgh’s festivals this year – just check out Daughter at CanadaHub and even Ulster American at the Traverse for two particularly... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Teenage FanclubSunday, 19 August 2018
The cover images of the four albums Teenage Fanclub issued on Creation Records suggest ambivalence. While Bandwagonesque’s title acknowledges the hopping onto trends endemic in pop, the graphic of a bag with a dollar sign recognises the related... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Orpheus / Bottom / BackupFriday, 17 August 2018
Orpheus ★★★★ This unashamedly sentimental storytelling show got its premiere a couple of years back in the back garden of a cheese shop in Cromarty, before touring the Scottish Highlands, we’re told. With its lo-fi, minimalist... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Nigel Slater's Toast / StatusTuesday, 14 August 2018
Nigel Slater's Toast ★★★★ “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you,” says Sam Newton’s eager, nine-year-old Nigel, in Henry Filloux-Bennett’s fluent stage adaptation of Nigel Slater’s 2003 memoir. And in... Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2018 reviews: Daughter / Huff / First Snow/Première NeigeMonday, 13 August 2018
Launched just last year to celebrate the country’s 150th anniversary, CanadaHub has quickly become one of the Edinburgh Fringe’s most exciting and intriguing venues, presenting a small but richly provocative programme of work from across that vast... Read more... |
