• ThumbnailBrae Hall, Shetland, 21 March 2013
    IT’S SAFE TO say the parents of Stuart Henderson, who died in a road accident in 2007, can have had no idea what they would set in motion when they suggested to director John […]

  • ThumbnailBeacon Arts Centre, Greenock, 1 February 2013, and touring
    SOMETHING extraordinary happened to the late Tommy McHugh.

    HE WAS an ordinary Birkenhead bloke with a bit of a shady past. He’d had scrapes with the […]

  • ThumbnailPlatform, Glasgow, 28 September 2012, and touring
    THE set looks like a tidal wave of chairs. It’s as if these everyday objects have been thrust violently into the air, tumbling over each other as they bisect the […]

  • ThumbnailHis Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 15 September 2012, and touring
    ANYONE attempting to bring Robin Jenkins’s 1955 novel to the stage can’t proceed without solving one problem: how to present a story whose central […]

  • ThumbnailTron Theatre, Glasgow, 12 September 2012, and touring
    “THIS is the real world,” says Alison Peebles to the audience at the start of the show.

    SHE wants us to know she is not playing a character, as she so […]

  • Francis McLachlan wrote a new post, Rope, on the site Northings 11 years, 10 months ago

    ThumbnailPitlochry Festival Theatre, 6 June 2012, and in rep. until September
    SAY what you like about Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 thriller, but there can’t be many West End hits that pivot on a working knowledge of Friedrich […]

  • ThumbnailPitlochry Festival Theatre, 6 June 2012, in rep. until September
    THERE’S something about John Buchan’s 1915 adventure yarn that inspires adapters to play fast and loose.

    WHEN Alfred Hitchcock put The 39 Steps […]

  • ThumbnailEastgate Theatre, Peebles, 18 April 2012, and touring
    ON ONE level, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped is a rip-roaring thriller, full of movement and adventure.

    SCARCELY has the newly orphaned David Balfour […]

  • Francis McLachlan wrote a new post, Ana, on the site Northings 12 years, 1 month ago

    ThumbnailTraverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2 March 2012, and touring WE’RE three-quarters of the way into this Scottish-Canadian co-production when Selina Boyack takes to the stage in laidback hippy mode. SHE’S playing a zonked-out performance poet at a Vancouver rock concert, circa 1970, delivering her pseudo-meaningful verse in a perfectly observed…[Read more]

  • ThumbnailHis Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, 22 February 2012, and touring YOU may not know the name, but you’ll recognise the Loch Parry Players. They’re the kind of amdram company you’ll find in towns and villages throughout the country. YOU’LL be familiar with the founder member who runs the society as if he were in charge of a multinational […]

  • ThumbnailRoyal Lyceum, Edinburgh, 24 January 2012, and touring ONE of the characteristics of Jamie Harrison’s shows for Glasgow’s Vox Motus is his illusionist’s eye for stagecraft. AWAY from the company, he has worked as a magician, and you can see in his shows, which he co-directs with Candice Edmunds, a love of stage trickery. Only now, however, […]

  • Francis McLachlan became a registered member 12 years, 3 months ago