So, where was I? Ah yes, autumn in Edinburgh – although these past few days it’s been almost like summer. There are cricket whites on the Meadows, and hippies blowing giant bubbles – but there’s also a rustling in the trees, and the odd leaf or two falling just as a warning. On the edge […]

‘It’s a bit like swimming in a loch, it’s fine after a few minutes,’ says one of the stalwart crew for Allotment, to help the rain-soaked audience along. We are also told cheerfully that ‘it’s a British show with British weather’. In some ways they overcompensate: every effort is made to keep us comfortable, with ‘speed […]

Folk legend has it that the ‘devil’s ceilidh’ opens up a chink of time at midnight on midwinter’s eve. Into this falls a 28 year-old postgraduate student called Prudencia Hart. Despite her supposed expertise in the topography of hell in Scottish balladry, she is caught unawares and spends four millennia looking out from a bed […]

What remains after death? Rags, bones, memories, melodies… Ah yes, melodies! Long after the piano lid has been slammed shut for the last time, the notes live on, echoing forever around the great soundbox that is this earthly world. Grid Iron, the kings and queens of Scottish site-responsive theatre, have created a brand-new promenade piece […]

‘If Stockton can’t come to Las Vegas, Las Vegas can come to Stockton!’ So says Johnny, star of Johnny’s Stuntshow, who’s revving up the Friday night crowd here in Market Square – the epicentre of the Stockton International Riverside Festival. Well, more than that: the epicentre of Stockton – apparently there’s been a market on this […]