For its production of The Merchant of Venice, directed by Rae Glasman, the Edinburgh University Shakespeare Company swaps Shakespeare’s 16th century Italian setting for 1930s London – 1939, to be specific. The temporal decision – and the weighty politics, glamorous fashion (brought to life by Rosamund McCormack’s sumptuous costume design), and haughty mannerisms that accompany […]
Norwegian artist and musician Magne Furuholmen’s exhibition Peeling a Glass Onion – on display at Dovecot Gallery and centred on a tapestry Furuholmen created in collaboration with weavers from Dovecot’s tapestry studio – is a dichotomous alphabet soup of spirited oil paintings, intricate in their layered construction, ceramic objects that resemble rumpled cigarette butts, and […]
French choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet as presented by Leeds-based touring company Northern Ballet, transplants Shakespeare’s oft-told tale of star-crossed lovers in a minimalistic, dystopian dreamspace saturated by a binary of black and white. Even for those without much knowledge of ballet or Shakespeare’s tragedy, the production’s visual elements, along with Sergei […]
Backed by derelict stained-glass windows and occupied by black scaffolding, Church Hill Theatre’s stage is transformed into a bohemian New York City locale for Edinburgh University Footlights’ production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent. A small circle of musicians comprising the show’s orchestra sits centre stage, as if the instrumentalists’ keyboards and guitars are an organic element […]
Scotland’s premiere gallery dedicated to contemporary photography, Stills, is currently exhibiting LEAP IN TIME, a sprawling exhibition of 97 black and white images taken decades apart by German photojournalists. The works are currently on loan from Germany’s Institute for Cultural Relations in cooperation with Glasgow’s Goethe Institut. Erich Salomon (1886-1944), the so-called ‘king of the […]
Iranian-Dutch author Kader Abdolah’s latest novel The King, is at once ensconced in the heaviness of intrigue-laden historical fiction – think of the large oeuvre dedicated to the Tudors – and the deceptive light-footedness of a bedtime story. Translated from the Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier and set in 19th-century Persia in the lavish court of […]