An affectionate and side-splittingly funny telling of the Laurel and Hardy story. How do you tell the story of such iconic comedians? You learn from them and slow the slapstick of their peers down. From their genesis in vaudeville, through their heyday and their survival with the arrival of the talkies, to their demise from the limelight. The story is mainly told as the comedians look back from the end of their careers. The current run seems Barnaby Power and Steven McNicoll reprise their roles from 2005. After almost twenty years, the actors are nearer the ages of the iconic characters they portray. This adds an extra layer of depth to the process of looking back at their lives, loves, and friendship. Their ability to inhabit the characters is uncanny. Plenty of visual and verbal gags keep the audience constantly chortling. And fans of slapstick can tick them off from the films. The wallpaper hanging sketch is lovingly recreated with perfect timing and beautiful dance between th...

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December Issue

  Christmas Dinner review "It was very tasty!" 5 Stars The main focus of this play was not actually Christmas dinners. It was what it feels like to lose someone you love. But it wasn’t all sad, there were also some very funny bits. I got the giggles.  It was also about spirits of the theatre, which was quite funny, in that one of them could only tweet like a bird and couldn’t talk at all. There was also one that was a theatre critic and she gave everything five stars. Then there was Scrooge, wearing a purple dressing gown, and one called Billy. The costumes were extremely funny. There was a big one that looks a bit like a poo, and there is a very funny line about a poo, because of that costume. Another good costume is worn by a character who is basically the main character. She was very grumpy and she hadn’t put on a show in the theatre for a very long time because of Covid. At one point, she changes into a very cool costume, which takes up the whole stage. I liked that bit t...

Moment of Grace 5 Stars Online till 9th Aug Moment of Grace is a play about a old pandemic , it was due to run during July at Tristan Bates theatre ,that of course ,due to the modern pandemic couldn't happen, so the writer Bren Gosling and director Nicky Allpress got together to produce something more than just a film of a stage play. Setting 1987 this is the reaction to Princess Diana's visit to an AIDS ward in London and to her holding the hand of a patient there. This play is a three hander , Jude played by Lucy Walker-Evans a young nurse who is thinking of changing of career, Donnie (Andrew Paul) a fireman from Essex who is old school but is embracing thatcherism and all that means for the Basildon Man in the 80s and Andrew (Luke Dayhill) a positive patient on the ward, a young man who is still in the closet and scared that Princess Diana's visit may out him to family and friends. This easily could be just another AIDS melodrama and just tug at the heartstrings an...

Elaine C Smith and Steven McNicoll are comedy duo gold  Mrs Puntila and her man Matti By Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Denise Mina Directed by Murat Daltaban Starring Elaine C. Smith 28 February – 21 March 2020, The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh 25 March – 11 April 2020, Citizens Theatre at Tramway Updating Brecht's play with a gender swap gives us the best comedy performances I've seen on stage in a long time, mainly due to the verbal duelling of Smith and Nichols. When sober, Mrs Puntila is a ruthless capitalist mill and landowner, but once she has a drink the Jekyll and Hyde characteristics kick in and she becomes a loving kind generous benefactor with a hint of loneliness . Her  chauffeur Matti’s main job is to save her from herself when she's drunk, which he does most of the time.  But, when she is sober, he has to suffer the downtrodden treatment of being her servant, and a servant who knows his place. The set by Tom Piper is just a big frame ...

Scottish Opera – Nixon in China Theatre Royal, Glasgow – 20 February 2020 Kelvin Holdsworth *** * Do we make history or does it make us? Scottish Opera’s co-production of Nixon in China is a timely and intelligent piece that asks questions about things that many in the audience will remember yet provides no easy answers. This is not a simple morality tale, nor a love story, nor a tragedy. It is an opportunity for every audience member to reflect on the swirling currents of modern political life. It is a piece that is at once about how strange the past seems to b e and how even stranger , the present. The dominant theme in John Fulljames’s production is looking back. The whole story is told as a retrospective study of documents within an archive storage facility. Everything is either memory or historical record. This is an innovative staging making clever use of video throughout. Some of this is simply projected pictures. More interestingly though, much...