Blue Remembered Hills

Interior (Natasha Tripney): A thicket of skeletal trees made from scaffolding poles painted a jarring shade of blue forms the backdrop to Anna Ledwich’s stage adaptation of Dennis Potter’s television play. The cast, playing seven year olds, clamber and scramble across these metal branches; they swing by their arms and drop … Continue Reading Blue Remembered Hills

The Dark Side of Love

Red balloons litter the floor like bloodied, deflated hearts; knives are thrust into stomachs again and again; a couple dance with need and disgust; and we watch like voyeurs. The party is over in this splintered vision of love, staged in the bowels of the Roundhouse as part of the … Continue Reading The Dark Side of Love

Orpheus in the Underworld

Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera’s co-production of Jacques Offenbach’s 1858 comic opera maintains the cheeky spirit of previous versions, updating the composer’s bawdy take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to mirror the world we live in now. Gone is the original’s mockery of Parisian life in Napoleon’s Second … Continue Reading Orpheus in the Underworld

Betrayal

For a play about adultery, Betrayal is pretty light on between-the-sheets action. There’s no cat-and-mouse seduction over dinner or heart-racing quickie among the office filing cabinets; not for Harold Pinter the titillation of playing away. He’s more interested in the vulnerability of infidelity, what’s at stake when you hinge your happiness on … Continue Reading Betrayal