EWAN CAMERON witnesses a political farce that lacks a clear message
A profound experience of otherness
ANGUS REID is impressed by an actor-auteur’s powerful rendition of the universal experience of the marginalised, the other, the helpless
Ellen Renton in Within Sight
[Tyrone Lewis]
EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
Within Sight
Touring/Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling
ELLEN RENTON’S one-woman show tells the story of how she trained for the Paralympics, had her hopes dashed, and in the process found her voice as a writer of breathtaking verve and quality.
As someone with albinism and partial sight, she invites the audience to liken her to any number of movie freaks until the shock of “the first time I saw a face like mine / that wasn’t paired with a plunging key change.”
She glimpses a Paralympic athlete on the TV who also “held up a hand to fight off the light, like I did / she too hid a warzone behind her eyelids.”
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MARY CONWAY becomes impatient with the intellectual self-indulgence of Tom Stoppard in a production that is, nevertheless, total class
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
The book feels like a writer working within his limits and not breaking any new ground, believes KEN COCKBURN