Owen Whitelaw
Playing With Books – Sea State
Theatre returns to the Book Festival
Playing With Books, the collaboration between the Book Festival and the Lyceum, has returned in the Book Festival’s new ‘hybrid’ format. This means a staging with both a limited, distanced, in-person audience at the College of Art, with online viewers, and which is later available on demand (albeit, in this case, for a very limited time).
Shows preceding the end of the fest
Hugh’s final BookFest Round-up for 2018
Autumn always seems to time its arrival to coincide with that of the Book Festival, with the rain limiting opportunities for the simple pleasures of sitting in Charlotte Square Gardens with a book and some refreshment. However, there were plenty of opportunities for those interested in theatre to sit inside instead.
How to Disappear
★★★☆☆ Troubling comedy:
Morna Pearson’s new play How to Disappear, which is this year’s ‘alternative’ Traverse Christmas entertainment, definitely has its heart in the right place.
Paul Bright’s Confessions Of A Justified Sinner
✭✭✭✭✩ Justified and modern:
The International Festival’s production of Paul Bright’s Confessions Of A Justified Sinner is a hugely enjoyable meditation on truth, reality, literature, loss and the transitory yet enduring nature of artistic creation.
In Time o’ Strife
✭✭✭✭✩ Raw power
Visceral and uncomfortable truths are laid bare in the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of In Time O’ Strife. Despite the odd false step in the staging, this is an emotionally charged and thoroughly involving production.
Unfaithful
✭✭✭✭✩ Astute and funny
Can relationships survive infidelity? Owen McCafferty’s play, Unfaithful, at the Traverse is both astute and funny in tackling this thorny subject.
