Tag Archives: Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh

YOU BURY ME – AHLAM – DIRECTED by KATIE POSNER

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ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE – EDINBURGH

Such an enjoyable dramatic experience. Loved the clever way the writer explored the gradual diminution of dreams as reality sets in after the revolution in Egypt (2011). Set in 2015 some wonderfully life-affirming characters are played by talented and engaging actors.

I recommend the short videos by the writer, cast and director which you will find by clicking through on Royal Lyceum Theatre, above. They go some way to explaining why the writer remains anonymous. They also explain the play’s gestation since she began work on it in 2015.

Cast:

Nezar Alderazi Rafik
Moe Bar-El Tamer
Tarrick Benham Osman
Hanna Khogali Alia
Eleanor Nawal Lina
Yasemin Özdemir Maya

Runs till 18th March

BUY TICKETS

Anne

CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE

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The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertold Brecht is running at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum theatre in a translation by Alastair Beaton.

My feelings about Brecht are always over-shadowed by the horrors of Mother Courage, but I was delightfully surprised by this production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Loud music and raised voices from the off settle into a very human tale of how the ordinary person copes in stressed times.

What would you do when a baby cries?

The central story of Grusha captivates us and Amy Manson, previously seen at the Lyceum in Six Characters in Search of an Author, is a most watchable actor. The large ensemble cast move seamlessly from word to instrument, from good character to bad. One of them even plays a horse and as such gets the biggest laugh of the night – I won’t spoil it for you.

The baby whose existence is central to the plot is entertainingly portrayed by puppeteer Adam Bennett.

The questions Brecht asks us to consider are as present now as they’ve ever been.

Run continues until 14th March. Get your tickets here.

The Bondagers

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The Bondagers by Sue Glover is the current production at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre.

I wonder if Mark Thomson has a master plan involving all female casts alternating with all male ones. Kill Johnny Glendenning did have one woman who played a pivotal role, so perhaps not.

There’s something attractive about single sex casts. Something about the non-verbalisms of single-sex living and the unspoken ways of behaving, thinking, reacting when the battle of the sexes stuff is removed is deeply interesting. At the same time all the women are acutely aware of their male counterparts and the pressures of the differences between the sexes.

The Bondagers begins slowly and for my getting a bit older hearing, a bit too quietly. Soon, however, we understand and separate the petty jealousies and the lowering storm clouds of communal living. We watch the playing out of biological imperatives with their inevitable spiral into tragedy. We listen to the characters tell of what is good (babies) while refusing to have sex with their husbands (no more babies, thank you). Characters who gradually allow reason into their blinkered thinking. characters whose reason was never strong and eventually deserts them.

The Bondagers is a warm and uplifting play about a way of life that must have been hard beyond anything a modern mind can encapsulate. Cleverly staged, beautifully written and thoroughly engaging. If you saw it before, go again. If you’ve never seen it go now.

Run continues  – 15 th November ’14

 

Pressure by David Haig

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Pressure by David Haig and directed by John Dove, is the final play of the Royal Lyceum’s 2013-14 season, and what a truly memorable finale it is.

For those who don’t know, Pressure is the story of Dr. James Stagg, a plumber’s son from Dalkeith who is selected to predict the weather needed for safe and successful D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches in 1944. He is counterpointed by the effervescent and ‘lucky’ American expert, Colonel Krick.

The central tensions of this spell-binding true story are many. There’s the ongoing World War. There’s the fact the top man is American so why would he, Eisenhower, listen to British reserve and cold science before the ‘luck’ and previous unblemished record of a fellow American. There’s the nearly unstoppable momentum of the arrangements already in place. There’s a woman in the background with a medical history who’s already in early labour.

The 11 strong cast didn’t put a foot wrong and the driving central performances from David Haig as Stagg, Laura Rogers as Kay Summersby and Malcolm Sinclair as General Eisenhower were five-star. No tricks, no flashing lights, nothing but the stripped back truth of how you get the job done when the job is monumental.

Haig’s script is full of delightful snippets and you wonder if he unearthed them in his research. I won’t spoil it by giving examples, but the audience shared several warm laughs when the foibles of their heroes came under scrutiny.

Pressure has a great set by Colin Richmond made in the Royal Lyceum’s workshops.

I really recommend.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT: EUGENE O’NEILL

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Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill and directed by Tony Cownie has started a three week run, 17th Jan – 8th Feb, at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre. I saw last night’s performance and it’s a cracker.

For those who don’t know the play it’s a day in the lives of the Tyrone family. Early on the writer allows us to glimpse the men’s expectation of disaster in the way they study the matriarch, Mary. It’s no time at all before we realise she’s addicted to something and has been on a cure. The family, and the audience with them, are on tenterhooks. Will she stay clean?

The American accents are muted. No brash New Yorkers here. Sometimes that makes the actors a little difficult to hear. Diana Kent has a specially difficult role to play in Mary as the script contains long self-reflective passages of not-quite-nonsense. Pay attention. The clues are buried there.

The three men, father and two sons, all have their faults, and O’Neill has them linked and inter-linked so that no-one escapes the claustrophobic day with its returning sea-fog. It’s difficult to fault anyone. Timothy N. Evers, I thought made an incredibly convincing youth in the grip of a serious illness. He played well to the vulnerability and capacity to forgive a glimpse of immortality sometimes grants.

The set by Janet Bird is faithful to the O’Neill family cottage in which he set the play. It’s dominated by a central wooden stair that takes Mary out of sight, but never out of mind. The sound effects toward the end are potent,

The audience seemed stunned at the final curtain. The quality of the script, the quality of the acting and the horror of man’s self-destructive capacities have a way of doing that. We did appreciate it, Mr. Cownie. Thank you.

We all make mistakes, but truly folks, the sound of a mobile is so unwelcome. In a play like this one, where the language is virtually another character and is delivered quietly, it’s entirely so. Check your phone’s settings – better still, leave it at home.

 

A TASTE OF HONEY Shelagh Delaney

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A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney’s ground breaking 1950s play about changing and unchanging social order in the working class Britain of her times, is the opening 2013 production at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay St.

Written when Delaney was 18 and taken up by Joan Littlewood, the play is breath-takingly good. Tony Cownie, who directed this revival, names his favourite line in the programme (when did they become £2.50, even for subscribers?), but we’ll all have our own. A Taste of Honey is that kind of work.

Delaney tackles the unchanging cycle of single parent creating single parent, homophobia, drink and racism, with such precision and insight, it’s hard to remember the writer was as young as she was. Did she simply record what she saw and heard? At eighteen, she’d not travelled or even studied that much. And yet she gives us a play of warmth and humour contrasted with bleakness and dystopian dark that challenges many other writers who were older, had studied, had travelled.

Performed without overt violence or sexual scenes, the play involves and delights its audience in equal measure. As the second act moves through, you do begin to wonder how it will finish and the programme hints at Littlewood having influenced the ending. My companion was unhappy with the ending. He’d grown to care so much for Jo, he wanted to know more. Can there be a finer tribute to an author?

Excellent performances from the whole cast. Terrific set, used to great effect. Get along there. Run ends 9th February ’13