Latest articles from Neil Cooper
This mighty telling of Grassic Gibbon story puts fearless Chris Guthrie at its heart
The landscape is everywhere in Morna Young's new version of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic novel. Conceived for Dundee Rep with director Finn Den Hertog, the production sets out its expansive and impressionistic store by way of rows of soil that fill designer Emma Bailey’s stage. This is accompanied by the pulsating drone of composer Finn Anderson’s score.
REVIEW Fascinating play gives Muriel Spark's story a fresh sense of invention
Take five girls. Put them in the same house together with only one borrowed designer dress to share between them in a world where dreams of poetry, dancing and clothes are on ration, and everyday desires look set to explode. So it goes in Gabriel Quigley’s appealingly breezy new adaptation of Muriel Spark’s 1973 novella, brought to life with a busy flourish in Roxana Silbert’s expansive production.
REVIEW This is Memorial Device's blissed out eulogy for all the small town heroes
Second comings are all the rage these days, as pension plan heritage rock tours cash in on a band’s influential legacy to claim their place in history.
REVIEW It is still lookin’ at you kid for Casablanca fans with this loving tribute
Michael Curtiz’s classic 1942 movie vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman was adapted for the stage as a loving tribute to Casablanca.
REVIEW A Giant on the Bridge, Traverse Theatre - a slow burning and heartfelt construction
Review: A Giant on the Bridge, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
REVIEW Roots, rap and revolution: Hamilton is here at last so was it worth the wait?
“Immigrants,” West Indies born Alexander Hamilton and French émigré the Marquiss de Lafayette freestyle in unison in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s globe trotting hip-hop history musical. “We get things done.” American history has gone wild in the nine years since Miranda’s show first came rhyming onto the stage like an old-skool block party on a grand scale. As Thomas Kail’s production arrives in Edinburgh for a two-month stint as part of its UK tour, Hamilton still possesses some of the unbridled optimism the Barack Obama era brought with it.
REVIEW 'This play is a magnificent showcase for four brilliant actresses'
It begins with Blythe Duff’s Mrs Jarrett stumbling on Lena, Vi and Sally catching some rays as they indulge in chit chat, gossip and tittle tattle as any group of long standing friends and neighbours might do.
Theatre: How it feels to be bittersweet sixteen again
They don’t make summers like they used to in David Greig’s new play, which plops its title characters in the Fife caravan park where they holidayed as teenagers.