Scotland
David Kettle
First, a bit of housekeeping. Maybe it was the three-and-a-half-hour duration, or maybe the unfamiliar Sri Lankan subject matter, or maybe even the very un-festival-like hot weather that put people off an evening inside Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. Or maybe (very possibly) continuing Covid concerns. Whatever the reason, it’s dispiriting to see so few people in the audience for what must surely be one of the most ambitious and most powerful theatrical offerings taking place in Edinburgh this year.Counting and Cracking is a multi-generational, multi-lingual, multi-locational, decades-spanning Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The last couple of series of Shetland (BBC One) brought the previously much-loved series alarmingly close to shark-jumping territory, converting the remote and thinly-populated Shetland archipelago into a war zone teeming with people-trafficking gangs, murderers and drug dealers. Can Series 7 restore some sanity?This opening episode slithered down the ramp for a promising start. Series 6 left the career of DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall, here making his last appearance in the role) hanging in the balance, in the aftermath of the death of Donna Killick and her attempt to implicate him in a Read more ...
David Kettle
Temping, Assembly George Square Studios ★★★★Sarah Jane is away in Hawaii. But don’t worry – she’s left plenty of instructions for your day temping in the actuaries’ office, checking voicemails, answering emails, updating spreadsheets. After all, it’s just numbers – it’s not like you’ll be dealing with people’s lives or anything.New York-based Dutch Kills Theater’s immersive, one-audience-member, performer-less show ushers you into a lovingly recreated workspace, all stress balls and cute family photos, and then sets you to work. To say more would spoil the surprise, but it’s a remarkably Read more ...
David Kettle
Every Word was Once an Animal, Zoo Southside ★★★★Ghent-based theatre company Ontroerend Goed have been prodding and provoking Fringe audiences for years, sometimes forcefully – as in 2001’s controversial, confrontational, crowd-baiting Audience – or more gently, as in 2019’s creation/destruction climate-change palindrome Are we not drawn onwards to new erA.The Covid pandemic is the unspoken issue hovering behind their 2022 show, on which they collaborate with fellow Fringe veteran Shôn Dale Jones. Their intended premiere of 5 April (presumably 2020, though it’s never spelt out) didn’t take Read more ...
David Kettle
In retrospect, all the clues were there. A star actor embarking on a new performance genre; a fresh reappraisal of one of Scotland’s cultural icons; a hi-tech production of sumptuous video and prop trickery; a dance score from a major name in new Scottish music. In short, a solo dance show from Alan Cumming about Robert Burns. What could possibly go wrong?It would be easy to say: everything. But although Burn has some serious issues, its constituent parts are (largely) pretty persuasive, and often very impressive. Cumming (who co-creates, alongside choreographer Steven Hoggett) is his usual Read more ...
David Kettle
Boy, Summerhall ★★★★ Nature or nurture? It’s the perennial question behind so much in human development – and the central issue, too, behind Carly Wijs’s very moving Boy for Flemish theatre company De Roovers at Summerhall.Twins Brian and Bruce had to endure intimate surgery as babies – an experimental procedure that, when it goes wrong, leaves Bruce as Brenda. At least that’s outcome advised by a Harvard-educated quack, who assures the aghast mother and father that, with sufficient hormones and parental guidance, he really will become a girl.Wijs tackles one of the most divisive issues of Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Sweetness never lasts too long at a Haim gig. No sooner had Alana Haim, the youngest of the Californian siblings, finished a speech about her delight about being back in Glasgow by announcing she was going to “smell the f****** roses” then bass-playing elder sister Este piped up with “I’m smelling my armpits. They are ripe.” It summed up a chat-heavy show that at times felt like part gig, part stand-up comedy try-out.For all the banter, which reached such an amount that Alana quipped at one stage she felt all they’d done was talk, the trio have an assurance about playing large venues. An Read more ...
David Nice
Last year’s relatively slimline East Neuk Festival felt like a feast in time of plague. This July everything was back to full strength in numerous venues, with the most remarkable line-up, and the greatest single day of concerts, I feel certain, ENF has ever seen. But that was in spite of the apocalyptic signs all around.Covid is, of course, rampant again, and casualties included guitarist Sean Shibe as well as the festival’s director Svend McEwan-Brown, who had to head home at the midway point with a stricken husband. Avian flu had hit the seabird community; more than half the gannet Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
A guessing game could be played prior to Harry Styles taking to the stage at this gig, the first night of his UK tour and, as he later noted, his first stadium show as a solo act. There were ripples of excitement whenever anyone was near the stage as devoted fans tried to work out if that was the man himself getting ready to appear, and given that some fans had been camping out overnight in Glasgow just to be near the front, you can understand such feverish anticipation. When Styles finally strolled out, clad in a sequinned yellow and blue outfit that suggested he was just off the ranch, a Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke noted at one point in this gig, his band have now been visiting Glasgow for nearly two decades. Yet few of the shows played in that 18 year span, which have touched upon nearly all of the city’s main music venues, have been as contrasting as this one. By the night’s end, when the band blasted out a rare outing of their very early single “Little Thoughts”, the audience were a jubilant and sweaty throng, but it was hard work getting there.Okereke noticed it as well. Clad in a bright multi coloured shirt that possessed more vibrancy than the early part of the Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
It is a testament to the enduring appeal of My Chemical Romance that this show was credited with having sold the most tickets in the OVO Hydro’s history, and yet still formed one of the group’s smaller dates on the UK leg of their reunion tour.Then again, it’s been over a decade since the group last toured here, and continual postponements had evidently only heightened anticipation. Every dimming of the lights or movement onstage prompting wild cheering from the Glasgow faithful, desperate to see their idols once again.When they did arrive, it was in unflashy fashion, a theme that ran Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
“This town makes me sweat”, declared Charlotte Aitchison at one point in this set, as she took a brief breather between songs. The 29-year-old should have tried being in the audience, for this was a sweat-drenched evening right from the opening seconds, with a wildly devoted crowd which congregated into a heaving mass rapidly and consistently.Aitchison might have too many quirks to ascend beyond a venue like the O2 Academy, but something about both her personality and performance suggested she is better suited to such a setting anyway.Which isn’t to say that the Essex native is Read more ...