Reviews
David Bowie & Me: Parallel Lives
★★★★☆ Hilarious reflections
Gilded Balloon’s presentation of Jack Docherty in David Bowie & Me: Parallel Lives takes a 1997 interview on Docherty’s TV chat show with his teenage hero, David Bowie as a starting point for some hilarious reflections on a childhood growing up in 1970s Edinburgh.
Blue Remembered Hills
★★★☆☆ Challenging
Leitheatre’s Blue Remembered Hills at the Church Hill is nasty and short. Which is exactly what is intended.
Macbeth (an undoing)
★★★★☆ Compelling
Zinnie Harris’s much-garlanded adaptation of Shakespeare, Macbeth (an undoing), returns to the Lyceum subtly tweaked and all the better for it.
The Gondoliers
★★★★☆ Sparkling
The Edinburgh Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of The Gondoliers has a vitality and melodicism that always catches the eye and ear.
Louder
Showcase: Most worthwhile
Framework Theatre’s Louder is a showcase for “semi-staged draft works of four brand new plays, all written & directed by early-career artists of marginalised genders.”
All Shook Up
★★★★☆ Hugely entertaining
Queen Margaret University Musical Theatre Society’s production of All Shook Up, at the Pleasance Theatre for four performances only, is a hugely entertaining jukebox musical from the book by Joe DiPietro.
The Drifters’ Girl
★★★☆☆ Stories still unsung
The Drifters Girl, at the Playhouse this week as part of a UK tour, provides plenty of Drifters hits, hung around the story of Faye Treadwell, who managed the group up until 2001.
When Mountains Meet
★★★★☆ Joyfully moving
When Mountains Meet is the best kind of touring theatre – approachable, intelligent, melodic and utterly entertaining.
Cyrano de Bergerac
★★★★☆ Unexpectedly touching
There is an almost wilfully uneven quality to Arkle’s Cyrano de Bergerac at the Hill Street Theatre, but – eschewing much of the heroic bombast that is usually associated with the play – it manages to be convincing and affecting.
The Girls of Slender Means
★★★☆☆ Poignant
Gabriel Quigley’s adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means for the Lyceum is an enjoyable and wonderfully acted piece of theatre, that does justice to its source’s substance if not its ambition.
