Stage Archive

The Polar Bears Go Wild, MacRobert Stirling

When Scots touring theatre company Birds of Paradise announced their new artistic team in October, it came after a heady year for disability and mixed ability initiatives.

INTERVIEW Maureen Beattie?

THIS cunningly updated Nutcracker – choreographed by Ashley Page, designed by Antony McDonald and premiered in 2003 – was the beginning of an era that saw Scottish Ballet find its feet again.

Moments into the opening number, it's clear these final-year musical theatre students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland are going to deliver a suitably arch and knowing production of Ashman and Menken's horticultural horror-comedy.

All across the Pantosphere, there are little whiffs of change in the air: new voices are chipping in with fresh thoughts on the old, familiar panto plots and there's even a tendency to subvert the genre itself.

"Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a ..." Half a mo'.

Whatever else, this is not, as the publicity says, a new musical.

Before the irresistible rise of the juke-box musical, the rock and roll tribute show was king – and queen too, if this warts and all Tina Turner homage is anything to go by.

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FIRST NIGHT REVIEW

Sumptuous, dramatic, eerie and captivating: the list of approving adjectives could go on and on, because Matthew Bourne's new Sleeping Beauty is a many- splendoured thing, an inspired dansical that draws audiences into the dark heart of fairytales and the shining reassurance of happy-ever-after romance.