Theatre Review: What We Know, 19 February, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Grant Gillies reviews the Traverse theatre’s latest production.

4 out of 5 stars

The Traverse continue to push at the boundaries of cutting edge theatre with their latest fulfilling offering, What We Know, written and directed by Pamela Carter.

The play is split into three distinct parts: Life before death; the ensuing chaos that surrounds the removal of a loved one; and the return to integration as normality falls as fragile as snow.

On entering the theatre, the picture portrayed is one of blissful interaction, smells and dialogue blending together in a natural flow.  Normality and mundane tasks such as preparing a meal accentuate the love between the two characters of Lucy (Kate Dickie) and Jo (Paul Thomas Hickey).

The writing perfectly captured the strength of love between the two, right up until Jo was quickly removed from the scene, when everything changed. One minute he was there and the next he was gone. Normal to abnormal. Life to death.

In the midst of this grey storm of confusion, as Lucy struggles to come to terms with Jo simply disappearing from her life, the arrival of a young stranger, played by Lorn McDonald, was unexpected and slightly absurd. It worked, just.

Theatre Preview: Spymonkey’s Moby Dick, 10 – 13 February, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Update: Read my review of Spymonkey’s Moby Dick

In Spymonkey’s Moby Dick, a slightly off-kilter retelling of Herman Melville’s epic coming to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre (10 – 13 February), four actors find themselves trapped in the belly of a literary monster.

As they ponder the irony of their fate they recount a story of Moby Dick, sparkling with their own fantastical flourishes. The novel’s epic examination of good, evil, fate and obsession is lost on them. And then, mysteriously, found on them again.

Will Ahab’s thirst for revenge be unhinged by the well-meaning but staggeringly inept attentions of his crew? Now that he has found true love, is Ishmael still fated to be the sole survivor of the Pequod?

Can a mermaid figurehead get pregnant? And what does a cannibal harpoonist from Bavaria eat?

Here’s a look at the trailer for the show:

Theatre Review: Bright Black, 18 September, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

*****

The Traverse One is a dramatic, steeply raked theatre and on entering to watch Bright Black the journey to find a seat at the front vaguely echoes the main character’s potential descent into the underworld.

This, combined with the simple yet incredibly effective set and the mood forming music playing as you enter, meant that from the offset the world outside is left far behind.

The play itself explores grief through three characters: two friends, of whom one, Claire (Meline Danielewicz),  has recently lost her fiancé, and a menacing messenger, Cerberus (Martin McCormick), from the underworld.

The deepness of the love Claire felt for her recently deceased partner is tenderly conveyed through movement and the use of props that remind her of him.

It’s an intense process that sees her lock herself away in her flat and the audience are sucked into the sadness of her world.

Theatre Preview: Otter Pie, 26 – 29 November, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Described as “a darkly humorous exploration of the pursuit of Scottishness and happiness in the 21st century”,  Otter Pie is a re-interpretation of Scottish novel Sunset Song from Glasgow theatre company Fish & Pie running from Wednesday 26 – Saturday 29 November.

An original production devised by the company, the show is also described as “irreverent, moving and laugh-out-loud funny”.

Otter Pie comes to Traverse following two sell-out runs at Glasgow’s Tramway and full details can be found on the Traverse website.

Theatre Preview: Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us, 21 – 29 November, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Following the first plays in the Traverse Theatre’s Debut’s season – Cockroach, The Dogstone and Nasty, Brutish and Short – the final production, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us arrives on Friday 21 November, running until Saturday 29.

Patrick comes home unexpectedly from the seminary and older brother Johnny’s not slow to tap him for money. Mum is suspicious, Dad seems indifferent, and pissed, and little sister Cath is distracted and medicated. Living on their wits, stalked by violence and death, defending themselves with the blackest humour, Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us is the story of a family under siege.

Paul Higgins has previously worked with the National Theatre of Scotland playing the original role of the sergeant/writer in Black Watch and at the Traverse in the original role of Paul in Damascus.

The play also stars Gary Lewis (Gangs of New York, Billy Elliot and Orphans), Carmen Pieraccini, John Wark and Susan Vidler.

Visit the Traverse website for full details.

Read the itsonitsgone review of Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us.

Theatre Review: The Dogstar and Nasty, Brutish and Short, Traverse Theatre, 10 November, Edinburgh

Not afraid to strip its plays back to their bare-bones, emphasising characterisation over set, substance over style, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre is currently running two plays in its Debuts season, The Dogstone and Nasty, Brutish and Short, showing as a double bill in Traverse One.

First up is Kenny Lindsay’s The Dogstone, introducing the audience to Oban teenager Lorne (Scott Fletcher), a teenager who we first encounter tidying up what remains of his recently deceased father’s house.

In flashback we then meet dad, Danskin (Andy Gray), a larger than life character who tells tall tales to his eight-year-old son, mesmerising him with stories of Finn McCool and his adventures. As time passes Danskin increasingly turns to alcohol for solace, his son slowly realising that his dad isn’t quite worth the high esteem he holds him in.

It’s hard to choose between Fletcher and Gray in the acting stakes, the pair making a near-flawless double act who bounce off each other as if they’ve known each other for years. Fletcher is given many long passages of text and handles each impeccably, his inflections and movements always realistic.

Gray is also impressive as his character deteriorates from scene to scene, his shoulders slumping and speech slurring as the whisky and lager takes hold.

While the props are well used to convey multiple locations, it’s the two actors who mesmerise here, with a simple enough tale infused with real heart from the pair.

Nasty, Brutish and Short revolves around three unfortunate souls in a Glasgow tenement, brought together by even more unfortunate circumstances.

Theatre Review: Midsummer [a play with songs], until 15 November, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Prepare to have your senses assaulted as new production Midsummer [a play with songs] hits the Traverse stage running…quite literally at times. As it morphs from one style to the next, barely giving the actors, let alone the audience, time to breathe, this is akin to flicking through late night multichannel TV on any given evening: drama, comedy and even the odd movie trailer vying for a few seconds of your attention.

But does any of it stick in the memory?

After meeting in Edinburgh’s Whigham’s Wine Cellar, Helene (Cora Bissett) and Bob (Matthew Pidgeon) decide to head back to hers to get to know each other better, leading to recriminations, regrets, revenge, revelations and the aforementioned running. Lots of running.

Constant movement and some clever narrative tricks – the audience are guests in Bob’s mind one moment, seeing the same events from different points of view the next – help keep the simple central plot moving along at some pace, the performances from the two leads never less than engaging. Bissett’s multiple roles are particularly effective, inhabiting the body of the young and the old with ease, accents and mannerisms constantly altering.

The much vaunted music adds yet another element to the play, the lyrics nudging the plot along while allowing more glimpses into the minds of the characters. Edinburgh also becomes central to the play, helping and hindering the success of Helene and Bob as their lost weekend plays out on a beautiful-yet-rainy canvas.

Interestingly, while the story itself and the note perfect skills of Bissett and Pidgeon makes this a show not to be missed, it’s the quieter moments that remain most impressive. One scene in particular, set in the Balmoral Hotel, is as peaceful and calm as the play ever gets and is all the better for it with no words spoken, both faces hidden from view.

Perhaps a little less action and bit more conversation might have made this something even more special, but it still remains a much better alternative to most current TV, multichannel or not.

Review by Jonathan Melville

Visit the Traverse website for full details.

And vist www.flickr.com/bobmacartney to see Bob’s full photo album

Theatre Preview: Midsummer [a play with songs], 28 October – 15 November, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Midsummer [a play with songs] by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre is the latest production from Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, following the recent Cherry Blossom. Running from Tuesday 28 October until Saturday 15 November, this new drama promises to be a tale of “bridge burning, car chases, wedding bust ups, bondage miscalculations, midnight trysts and horrible hungover self loathing misery”.

It’s Midsummer’s weekend in Edinburgh. It’s raining. Two thirtysomethings are sitting in a New Town bar waiting for something to turn up. She’s out of his league and he’s not her type at all. They absolutely should not sleep together. Ever.  Which is why, of course, they do.

Midsummer [a play with songs], is co-written by leading playwright David Greig with music & lyrics by Gordon McIntyre from  Edinburgh based Indie band Ballboy and marks their first collaboration. The play stars Matthew Pidgeon as Bob and Cora Bisset as Helena, both of whom sing and play live music throughout the show, which features design by Georgia McGuinness.

Full details can be found over at the Traverse website.

Theatre Review: Cherry Blossom, 26 September, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

With news stories constantly warning of the problems caused by immigration while at the same time extolling the virtues of an immigrant population on the UK economy, the Traverse Theatre’s latest play, Cherry Blossom, looks to be arriving at just the right time.

Starting out in present day Poland and centring on a typical Polish family, we are soon introduced to their dilemma, one surely shared by many in their situation: should one of them move to Britain to start a new life with the aim of bringing the rest of the family with them when the money starts flowing?

Taking this as its starting point, playwrite Catherine Grosvenor starts to weave a complex tale of hope and suffering, complementing her fictional story with that of a real-life Polish immigrant who died in a Canadian airport.

The plays uses both impressive visual tricks – a large white panelled “stage” is maneuvered into various positions as information is beamed down from the ceiling – and an innovative way of allowing the characters to speak to each other using both their native tongue and English, to produce a visually stimulating experience that causes the viewer to think about a number of situations simultaneously.

Theatre Preview: Cherry Blossom, 24 September – 11 October, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The first Traverse Theatre production of the Autumn season, Cherry Blossom (Saturday 27 September – Saturday 11 October), is a multi-media theatre piece exploring the ideas, myths and realities of migration and identity in 21st century Europe.

With Scotland currently seeing a large number of Polish migrants entering the country, Cherry Blossom looks at the effect on Scotland’s identity and at the experiences of those now living and working here.

Cherry Blossom has been crafted through a process of collaboration in which the creative team has spent the last year engaged in research to create a piece of multimedia theatre rooted in the true experience of Poles living in Scotland. The play combines techniques of documentary and interview with state-of-the-art film and new-media technology, to create an original work of theatre.

Theatre Review: The New Electric Ballroom, 3 – 24 August, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The New Electric Ballroom is a place of dreams – shattered adolescent dreams of love and hope – a place that sent two young girls ‘on the edge of what it is to be a woman’ running back to the womb-like safety of home to live a claustrophobic existence in a stagnant village of fish and gossip.

Carla (Val Lilley) and Breda (Rosaleen Linehan), now in their sixties, live out their days in a grotesque rendition of their bitter memories, at the neurotic requests of their younger sister, Ada (now 40 years old).

Ada, played in a sufficiently pale and tightly wound fashion by Catherine Walsh, is a product of her sisters’ fear and embarrassment. Like Carla, she has never been kissed. She is not one of ‘the free, the living, the unmarked’. Instead she remains prisoner to her sisters’ stories, which are repeated over and over with sinister inevitability.

Donned with eyeshadow, lipstick, clownish 1950s outfits and pink shoes, Carla and Breda take their positions and act out their past in time to the haunting melody of The New Electric Ballroom; Carla, with a childlike innocence bordering on senility, and Breda with a sexy swagger.

Theatre Review: Terminus, 1 – 24 August, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Terminus tells the story of three ordinary Dubliners whose lives have spiralled out of control and into a darkly touching underworld of love, sex, violence, jealousy, betrayal and death, where angels and demons roam.

It is dark. Two women and a man sit inside a wooden picture frame on pieces of broken glass.  As the light illuminates each one in turn, they stand to reveal a fragment of their life’s story, a shard of broken glass. Spotlight gone, they sink back into the darkness from whence they came, words intermingling with one another, like their lives.

The play starts off a little shakily with actress, Andrea Irvine, struggling slightly to render natural the torrent of words she is responsible for, and the previously irritable audience adjusting to the sights and sounds onstage.

However, by the time we reach Eileen Walsh, the performance is captivating. Walsh handles the garrulous rhyme and verse with a grace and naturalness all her own, throwing her whole body into the performance and leaving the viewer ready for more.

Theatre Review: Free Outgoing, 1 – 24 August, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Part of Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre’s Manifesto season, Free Outgoing is set in a family home in the staunchly traditional Tamil region of southern India. The play, which premiered at the Royal Court in London in 2007 as part of the theatre’s International Playwright’s season, is the work of Chennai-based writer, Anupama Chanrasekhar.

Free Outgoing sees a moving and powerful performance from Lolita Chakrabarti as Malini, the actress better known as PC Jamila Blake in ITV1′s The Bill.

Malini is the fiercely independent and protective mother of Deepa, a well behaved, intelligent girl who was bound for a career in medicine before being ruined by a sexual encounter in a classroom of the local school.

Western culture encroaches on conservative Chennai values throughout the play, through the medium of mobile phones, magazines and TV, highlighting the conflict between traditional Chennai society (still reliant on deliveries of water for basic survival) and the sparkle of the modern western world.

Interestingly, Malini, a highly educated career woman, initially berates her angst-ridden son, Sharan (Amit Shah) for not texting her enough to let her know where he is. However, it is a simple text, spread throughout the community and later the entire country, which causes all the problems for this family.

Theatre Preview: Fall, 24 July – 24 August, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The launch production of The Traverse’s new Manifesto season, the first for the theatre’s new artistic director Dominic Hill, is Fall by Zinnie Harris (Thursday 24 July – Sunday 27 August), a co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Fall is described as an epic political thriller, set in a new country struggling after a horrific civil war. As the city burns and the new government struggles to look credible to the rest of the world, Kate gets tragically caught up in their conspiracy.

Full details are available over at The Traverse website.

Theatre Preview: Nova Scotia, 29 April – 24 May, Traverse Theatre

John Byrne returns to the Traverse this month, from Tuesday 29 April to Saturday 24 May (previews Friday 25 – Sunday 27), with the next instalment in the Slab Boys story, Nova Scotia.

The original Slab Boys trilogy – The Slab Boys, Cuttin’ a Rug and Still Life – started life at the Traverse in 1978 with Slab Boys itself, the story of a group of young Scots lads between the years of 1957 – 1972.

Nova Scotia brings the characters into the 21st Century, facing the New Millennium with fortitude and good humour, but things won’t remain good humoured for long…

Theatre Preview: Heelie-go-Leerie (Head over Heels), 11 – 13 April, Traverse Theatre

Three people from different places. Three people holding up the same roof and needing to find the answer to a question…that’s the premise for the brilliantly titled Heelie-go-Leerie (Head over Heels) at the Traverse from Friday 11 till Sunday 13 April.

We meet in the playground but where have we come from and where are we going? To the moon? To the stars even? And what will we find? Dragons in the dustbin? Fishes on the roof?

A new production by Musselburgh based theatre company Licketyspit, who create and tour original work for

Theatre Review: Oresteia, 27 – 29 March, Traverse Theatre

This astonishing conception of the Oresteia at at the Traverse is an innovative yet striking adaptation of Aeschylus’s tragic Greek trilogy: Agamemnon, The Choephorae and The Furies.

This interpretation presents Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, appearing before the audience, his judges, in a simplistically staged yet conspicuous courtroom to determine the answer to his trial concerning his crime of matricide – an act of revenge.

This intense solo portrayal presents Sandy Grierson (playing Orestes) suffering an ordeal of physical implementation whilst hurling the audience into its thematic concerns with revenge, violence, torture, guilt and justice, through the familial narrative of Orestes which coincides with the common pattern of the repetitive violence of revenge.

Theatre Review: The Unconquered, 12 – 14 March, Traverse Theatre

As discussions over Scottish independence remain topical, with plans for a referendum announced at the SNP spring conference, scrutiny increases over the mechanisms of Scottish society and how we could possibly survive adrift from the British Empire.

It’s no surprise then to see Stellar Quine’s CATS award-winning production of The Unconquered, Torben Betts’ surreal satire of independence and English unrest that bears relevance to Scotland’s own national debate.

Set in the home of a quintessentially English, middle-class family, we meet a teenage schoolgirl (Nicola Harrison), who has become so absorbed in her reading, ranting and a venomous vexation towards her parents and the system, that she has failed to notice a socialist uprising.

Theatre Review: Fugee, Traverse Theatre, 13 – 15 March

In a year that’s seen issues of asylum, national identity and the experience of immigrants discussed in pieces of theatre such as Testing the Echo and The Pearlfisher, it would seem that Abi Morgan’s new play, Fugee, sets itself a challenge from the offset in a bid to cover fresh ground on a subject that has quickly become the focus point for political theatre. A venture that both cast and play achieve with refreshing ability.

In it we meet Kojo (Danny Miller), an unaccompanied fourteen year old from the Cote d’Ivorie whose arrival into the UK sees him picked up and packed off by the authorities to a refuge centre for underage asylum seekers.

Although separated by language, the centre’s young cohabitants are united by their shared experience, one that soon brings about a blossoming relationship for Kojo and Iranian Ara (Natalie Mackinnon). But without official papers Kojo’s age is left up to the speculation of asylum officials as cracks in the system begin to appear and the glimmer of a more secure existence becomes tarnished by grim misfortune.

With a reputation for cultivating young talent, the Lyceum Youth Theatre cast is once again studded with promising turns. Miller confidently carries the narration of the piece whilst managing to tease out, for the most part, the psychological fragility of the understandably damaged Kojo.

It is Mackinnon however, whose deftly understated performance encapsulates the abhorrent isolation and desperation felt by the young people that makes the piece all the more emotive.

While there are a few lacklustre moments of stilted action and monotonous dialogue, Xana Maclean’s tightly constructed direction reigns over the large ensemble cast allowing for a fluid continuity between scenes. At the same time, Tom Zwitserlood and David Marwick’s carefully compiled sound design peppers scenes with apt tracks that bounce between the upbeat sounds of London youth culture to more minimal, atmospheric numbers.

Unlike similar pieces of theatre, Fugee successfully manages to take a universal issue and tell it through one individual’s experience in a way that is refined, compelling and at times disturbingly close to the bone.

It’s a shame then, that such an informative piece of youth work isn’t given a lengthier duration or a more prominent place on the Scottish stage.

With the capability to entertain and educate to such an extent, one would hope its message is not lost amongst the swathe of doting parents that predominantly make up the audience.

Review by Mhairi MacLeod

Theatre Preview: Can We Live With You?, 3 – 5 April, Traverse Theatre

The Traverse Theatre presents Edinburgh’s Lung Ha Theatre Company’s latest production, Can We Live With You?, from 3 to 5 April.

The brochure promises beautiful scenery, wonderful people, stress-free living and even barbeques. No wonder the MacScott family are prepared to swap Scotland for a one-way ticket to The Land of Delightful Things, especially when Mr Big Fish wants to shut them up – for good.