Theatre review: The Tempest – Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Monday July 25 2022

FOUR STARS

Nicole Cooper, the much-admired actor and a linchpin of the Bard in the Botanics company, is surely one of the few thespians to have played both Prospero (as part of an all-female adaptation at the Tron) and Miranda (for Bard) in The Tempest.

Her next step has been a deeper dive into Shakespeare’s swansong, radically reworking the play as well as directing this moving, pared-back production.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night – Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Tuesday July 13 2021

THREE STARS

Spontaneous applause breaks out at the announcement welcoming everyone to the new season of Bard in the Botanics. It has been nearly two years since audiences last gathered on the grassy rise behind the glasshouses in the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, for the venerated Shakespeare festival.

As a specialist in outdoor performance, this company, led by Gordon Barr, the artistic director, may have an advantage over its contemporaries as theatre in Scotland slowly emerges from its Covid-era hibernation.

Review: Hamlet – Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Saturday July 27 2019

Four Stars

It was only a matter of time before Nicole Cooper, a linchpin of the Bard in the Botanics ensemble, was invited to play the Dane. Having spend a decade with Gordon Barr’s company, showing her mettle in a range of roles, from Rosalind in As You Like It to last year’s Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, her progression in the past couple of seasons to the title roles in Coriolanus (for which she won the Best Female Performance at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland) and Timon of Athens has seemed entirely inevitable.

Review: Travesties – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Tuesday July 10 2018

Four Stars

At first glance, there appears to be a bulky, Oscar Wilde-shaped hole in Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season programme. Lively, intelligent productions of the great aesthete’s masterpieces, from An Ideal Husband to The Importance of Being Earnest, all directed by Richard Baron, have been among the rural theatre’s more memorable outings in recent years.

Review: Europe – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Saturday September 9 2017

Three Stars

What could be timelier, in this era of Brexit, mass migration and right-wing populism, than a revival of David Greig’s play about borders, identity and the perceived threat from immigrants? Europe, one of the playwright’s earliest successes, was first performed at the Traverse a quarter of a century ago, yet its portrayal of a rundown railway station in a small European town, haunted by refugees and dejected locals, might have been dreamed-up yesterday.

Review: The Ruling Class – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Monday July 31 2017

Three Stars

Peter Barnes’s anarchic satire on privilege and entitlement must have seemed incredibly close to the knuckle when it was first staged at the Nottingham Playhouse in November 1968. The play’s premiere arrived at the end of a year marked by popular uprisings against elites across the globe, from the student protests that brought France to a shuddering halt for a few days in May to the escalation of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Prague Spring and the first rumblings of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Review: Mary Rose – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Tuesday June 20 2017

Three Stars

JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, was afflicted in later life by writer’s cramp and could only write for any length of time with his left hand. He noted that the work he produced at this point took on an eerier quality, as though his left hand was channelling darker aspects of his personality. Mary Rose, written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, with its portrayal of a young life frozen in time, is strikingly similar in theme to the Kirriemuir-born author’s most enduring and iconic work, though laced through with subtle chills.

Reviews: Beauty and the Beast – Perth Theatre; Cinderella – Byre Theatre, St Andrews

First published in The Times, Tuesday December 16 2015

Beauty and the Beast: Four Stars

Cinderella: Three Stars

 

Perth’s Victorian theatre may be in the midst of an extensive restoration but, for the second festive season in a row, the proscenium archway has been lovingly recreated on the stage of the city’s concert hall. This year’s pantomime, scripted by the ever-reliable Alan McHugh, is Beauty and the Beast, with a refreshing emphasis on the former rather than the latter.

The story unfolds against an array of gorgeous painted backdrops, created by the designer Ken Harrison, with stunning costumes to match, from Belle’s (AmyBeth Littlejohn) sumptuous gold ball gown to the increasingly over-the-top frocks and topknots modelled by Barrie Hunter’s Dame Betty Blumenthal.

Review: Love’s Labour’s Lost – Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Tuesday June 30 2015

Three Stars

Love’s Labour’s Lost is one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies and its dizzying verbosity and baggy middle section does suggest a playwright still finding his fleet feet. That said, in the play’s depiction of a group of young lovers overcoming social hurdles, misunderstandings and mistaken identity to achieve a happy ending, one does find an early template, not only for the Bard’s great comedies, but for the enduring Hollywood screwball farce.