In The Dark Carnival Vanishing Point and The Citizens (in association with Dundee Rep Ensemble) have crafted a strangely fascinating but oddly frustrating entertainment – theatre-cum-gig-cum-cabaret that impresses in fits and starts.
TABULA RASA – Touring
Tabula Rasa at the Traverse is a collaboration between Scottish Ensemble and Vanishing Point that contains moments of heartfelt beauty but never coheres.
CHARLIE SONATA – Edinburgh
Three friends from university in the 1990s occasionally stage reunions that show how two of them – Gary and Jackson – have moved on to careers and respectability (or something approximating to them), while Chick remains a drifting figure, wedded to alcohol.
THE DESTROYED ROOM – Edinburgh
★★★★☆ A lens, darkly:
It is impossible to tell where the theatre starts and ends in Matthew Lenton’s brilliant, dense and lethally of-the-moment The Destroyed Room, at the Traverse to Saturday before touring to London “and beyond”.
SPECTRETOWN – Edinburgh Fringe
✭✭✭✭✩ Diffuse and troubling:
SpectreTown, Stoirm Òg’s co-production with Cumbernauld Theatre, lacks focus and seems to be flying off in different directions at the same time. This leads to a production that is almost wilfully confusing, but has an undeniable power.