Sara Joyce’s production of The Last Return for Druid Theatre at the Traverse is carefully choreographed and absorbing. Sonya Kelly has re-imagined Ionesco for the post-colonial era, and leaves us feeling we’ve seen something we won’t forget in a hurry, even if its exact meaning is elusive.
Mark Shenton picks out his favourite regional theatres for the latest ShenTens podcast
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The post ShenTens: My Top 10 Favourite Regional Theatre Venues first appeared on Shenton Stage.
’It’s definitely essential viewing’: A COIN IN SOMEBODY ELSE’S POCKET – Theatre Uncut & Traverse Theatre
Originally commissioned as part of The Power Plays produced by Theatre Uncut in 2018, A Coin in Someone Else’s Pocket is a wonderfully thoughtful meditation on what it means to be a female Muslim writer.
‘An effortless watch’: SHIELDERS / THREE KINGS (Online review)
John Chapman ties up a few loose ends by catching up with short play/film Shielders as part of the Traverse Theatre Festival and the live stream of Stephen Beresford’s play Three Kings, starring Andrew Scott and streamed from The Old Vic.
‘A play whose time has come yet again’: EUROPE – Donmar Warehouse
Europe at the Donmar Warehouse is a magnificent revival of David Greig’s 1990s visionary classic which is timely, tough and tender, brutal and brilliant.
‘A compelling creation’: MOUTHPIECE – Soho Theatre
Written with deft humour, Mouthpiece is a sharp scalpel used to dissect the highly sensitive and nuanced issues of representation, consent, agency and the ongoing ignorance between the opposing ends of the class system.
‘Written with an intense energy & great pace’: MOUTHPIECE – Soho Theatre
Metatheatre rules okay in Kieran Hurley’s account of ethical tangles in his Edinburgh tale of two cities in Mouthpiece at the Soho Theatre.
‘Well-crafted, gently allusive & pulsing with warm humanity’: LOSING VENICE – Orange Tree Theatre
Losing Venice at the Orange Tree Theatre is a remarkable rediscovery by this ever-enterprising venue and is a well-crafted and elegantly written curiosity.
MISSED THE BOAT: What Girls Are Made Of
Whilst I do feel like I’ve ‘missed the boat’ slightly, as I’d have loved for a great female and Scottish story to round off my first Edinburgh Fringe, I’m sure there will be a future life for this one somewhere down the line.
‘What is the aim of staging this work in the UK?’: ON THE EXHALE – Edinburgh Fringe
This is an important play and a convincingly guttural response to Sandy Hook, but staging it outside of America makes me uneasy.
‘An irresistible play, in a triumphant production’: ULSTER AMERICAN – Edinburgh Fringe
David Ireland’s play Ulster American, about a Hollywood actor arriving in Britain to play the lead in a play by an Ulster Protestant writer, is a riot.
‘A genuinely exciting piece of theatre’: HOW TO DISAPPEAR – Edinburgh
Initially How to Disappear seems to be a new addition to the classic, British State-of- the-Nation plays in its searing critique of the government’s welfare policy. But Morna Pearson has great fun in turning the genre on its head.
OUR FATHERS – Edinburgh
Think about your parents, or a parental figure. How have they impacted who you are now? Whether positive or negative some mark will inevitably and irrevocably remain.
A Play, A Pie and A Pint: BREAKING THE ICE – Traverse Theatre
Funny: Fine comic performances and staging distinguish Breaking The Ice, the first in the latest season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.
DIARY OF A MADMAN – Gate Theatre
Scottish Gogol adaptation is a thrillingly contemporary account of damaged masculinity and national identity.
NEWS: Ten (still unwritten) plays premiere in Traverse’ EdFringe season
Ross Dunsmore’s Milk heads Traverse Edfringe programme:
Ten world premiers will feature in the fringe programme of the Traverse this year. Ten plays which, as I write this, don’t even exist yet.
THE LOCAL STIGMATIC – Old Red Lion Theatre
Rare anniversary revival of Heathcote Williams’s 1966 short is very powerful, if a bit too shouty in parts.
Text of the Day: Right Now
Random and topical thoughts and quotes gathered by My Theatre Mates contributor Aleks Sierz, first published on www.sierz.co.uk.
RIGHT NOW – Bush Theatre
Quebec drama about a young mother’s disintegrating sense of self is brilliantly strange and inspiring.
140 MILLION MILES – Edinburgh
It’s never easy to get a handle on Adam Peck’s slightly obscure new offering, 140 Million Miles, at the Traverse all week as part of the A Play A Pie and A Pint season of lunchtime theatre.
Rosie Mason and Darren Seed are near perfect as Dawn and Neil, a Bristolian couple in their early thirties, caught up in the hype and sent off to Mars on a “trip of a lifetime” to colonise the red planet. Yet the objective of that trip is never quite clear.
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