Theatre review: Sister Radio – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Thursday September 1 2022

FOUR STARS

Pitlochry Festival Theatre has opened the doors on its smart 172-seater studio, not with fanfare and pageantry, but with a play of remarkable stillness and restraint. Sara Shaarawi’s two-hander about a pair of Iranian-born sisters sharing a flat in Edinburgh over a period of some 40 years, is unafraid to dwell on the silences, comfortable and uncomfortable, that open up between these two women at various points in their life.

Theatre review: Private Lives – Pitlochry Festival Theatre

First published in The Times, Tuesday June 28 2022

THREE STARS

The cocktails are waiting on the terrace, the Duke of Westminster’s yacht is moored in the harbour at Deauville, and in the near distance a band is playing Someday I’ll Find You. We are unmistakably in Noël Coward’s sophisticated, world-weary milieu, and though all appears calm on the polished surface of Ken Harrison’s elegantly simple set, fireworks are about to go off.