Critic Joyce Mcmillan’s theatre selections
With Nicola Benedetti in charge of the Edinburgh International Festival, it’s perhaps inevitable that theatre almost literally plays second fiddle to a massive music programme this year – and does not feature on the festival’s biggest stages.
The seven theatre shows which are programmed, though, offer a thrilling range of work, including two world premieres, three UK premieres and one European premiere.
There are two powerful new interpretations of classics at the Lyceum, with EIF newcomers Theatre La Plaza of Peru offering a ground-breaking Hamlet reinterpreted by actors with Down’s Syndrome, and festival favourites International Theater Amsterdam returning with new artistic director Eline Arbo’s version of Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea, the eroticallycharged story of an Amazon warrior who falls in love with her great adversary Achilles.
The festival also features the world premieres of two new Scottish plays, both of them about alcoholism, addiction and recovery. There’s little chance of any tired Scottish stereotypes, though, from the brilliant team of playwright Stef Smith and director Vicky Featherstone, who will create a Lyceum Theatre Company stage version – at Church Hill throughout the Festival – of Amy Liptrot’s award-winning memoir The Outrun, about a young Orkney woman seeking recovery through a return home. Or from acclaimed playwright David Ireland (Cyprus Avenue, Ulster American) and rising star director Finn den Hertog, who will work with actor Jack Lowden on new National Theatre of Scotland play The Fifth Step, at the Lyceum.
Then, finally, there’s a significant programme at The Studio in Potterrow, which will offer the Scottish premiere of new show Please Right Back, by festival favourites 1927; alongside the
UK premier of After The Silence, a vital show about the legacy of colonialism by Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy, whose superb production Dusk thrilled EIF audiences last year. And The Studio will also host Nigamon/tunai, a theatre piece that connects directly with this year’s Festival theme of Rituals That Unite Us, combining Canadian and Colombian traditions of song in an act of solidarity against environmental destruction. It’s a theatre programme on the slim side, in other words; but full of richness and urgency, and formidably alive to the pressures and possibilities of the world we live in, in 2024