Articles by Peter Scott-Presland

Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris

Any list of famous Belgians must include the trio Georges Simenon, Audrey Hepburn and Jacques Brel.

Eye of a Needle

For traditionalists, this is a heartening time for new writing in the theatre.

Return of the Soldier

Rebecca West was one of the supreme journalists and travel writers of the 20th century, caustic and sharp-eyed.

Working Men's Club

The title of Luke Benson and David Hardcastle’s show can easily give rise to the fear that it will be a rather patronising pastiche of working class culture for the benefit of a …

The Trial of the Jew Shylock

‘The Merchant of Venice’ has always been a problematic play, with its Elizabethan anti-Semitism rubbing shoulders with almost fairy-tale elements (the three caskets) and Shakes…

In The Heights

The Heights of the title are Washington Heights, a Dominican-American neighbourhood of New York at the top end of New York.

How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ is the third of Frank Loesser’s trio of Broadway masterpieces, following ‘Guys and Dolls’ and ‘The Most Happy Fella…

Safe Sex / On Tidy Endings

Harvey Fierstein, before he branched out into writing books for straight musicals, was a kind of theatrical barometer of gay life.

Blues In The Night

“Blues in the Night” is a compilation revue, a tribute to the black performers and music of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s.

Doctor Miracle

Review
★★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
UK Regional & Tours
St John’s Church, Worksop / The Minack Theatre / Trethurgy
3rd Apr, 2014

Bizet’s one-act opera ‘Le Docteur Miracle’ is a fine and fizzy confection cooked up at the age of only eighteen as an entry to a competition for a comic opera organised by …

Joe Orton: The Musical

‘Above the Stag’ (ATS) is one of the most distinctive and necessary production houses in London.

Archimedes' Principle

Archimedes’ Principle is a recent (2012) play from the young(ish) Catalan playwright and director Joseph Maria Miro i Coromina.

Thérèse Raquin

I was worrying about the cat.

Damn Yankees

There are no three words more calculated to make a critic’s heart sink than Amateur Operatic Society.

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Superman!

Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’ ‘It’s a Bird etc’ is something of an oddity.

Rachel's Café

“Everyone is Welcome – No Exceptions” is the motto of Rachel’s Café in Bloomington, Indiana, a university town with a liberal and artistic ambience and pretensions.

Theatre Uncut

Theatre Uncut is a shoe-string operation aiming to provide immediate dramatic response to current crises.

Scott Agnew: Tales of the Sauna

Tales from the Sauna opens with a voiceover from a 1960s psychiatrist about how all gays are socially and sexually inadequate borderline pyschopaths.

Avenue Q

It takes some chutzpah to present the Fringe premiere of a West End musical that played 2000 performances over five years and across three theatres, and only closed less than three…

The Late Jake Thackray

The French have a word for it, and that word is ‘chanson’.

Oedipus

Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus’ is probably the oldest text in the world which still retains the power to shock, excite and move us in a thoroughly modern way.

Winston on the Run

Churchill is about the only politician in British history who can be referred to only by his first name.

A Scent of Flowers

James Saunders is one of the forgotten playwrights of the 60s, sandwiched between, and elbowed aside by Osborne, Pinter, Stoppard etc.

The Happy Prince

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
29th Nov, 2012

Sue Casson’s musical adaptation if Oscar Wilde’s short story, “The Happy Prince” is billed as a family show, but it’s difficult to see children appreciating it.

A Brief History of Scotland - We Done Loads!

An aspect of the Fringe that is sometimes passed over is the indigenous shows for the local population, which, heaven knows, puts up with enough to deserve something good of its ow…

Phantom

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
24th May, 2013

Pity the composer who gets there first: Auber’s opera ‘Manon Lescaut’ eclipsed by both Puccini and Mascagni; Nicolai’s ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ by Verdi’s ‘Falstaff…

A Tapestry of Many Threads

A Tapestry of Many Threads is a 19-song cycle commissioned by the Dovecote Studios for its centenary from Alexander McCall Smith (words) and Tom Cunningham (music).

Drunk

Drew McOnie, the inventive deviser and choreographer of ‘Drunk’, straddles worlds.

One Touch of Venus

‘One Touch of Venus’ is Kurt Weill’s most ‘commercial’ American score, attached to a kind of variation on the Pygmalion theme, in which an ancient statue of Venus, brough…

And Now for a Nice Evening With Wallan

There was a fashionable word in the 1950s for a certain type of female performer, which was ‘kooky’.

Fleabag

Reviews of ‘Fleabag’, which won a Fringe First Award at Edinburgh this summer, tended to treat it as a kind of scabrous stand-up routine on the subject of Sex and the Single Gi…

Endgame

Just sometimes, the best of amateur companies come up with a production which puts in the shade all those numerous Fringe productions with pretentions to ‘professionalism’ put …

The Francis Bacon Opera

The 1985 South Bank Show interview with Francis Bacon is a television classic.

Michelangelo Drawing Blood

Michaelangelo Drawing Blood is a 75-minute dance piece with an arresting score by Charlie Barber.

Treasure in Clay Jars

Review
★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
21st Aug, 2012

Treasure in Clay Jars is listed in the Theatre Section of the Fringe Programme.

Punishment Without Revenge

There is a film of the life of Lope de Vega, in English The Outlaw¸ but no film could do justice to his extraordinary life.

Dear World

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
18th Feb, 2013

‘Dear World’ is one of those problem musicals, beloved by its creator Jerry Herman but, like his other sickly child ‘Mack and Mabel’, never quite taking off.

You Are Being Lied To 2012

David Mulholland is a former Wall Street Journal hack and this is a show driven by the passion of a good journalist for getting the story right and a hatred of bad journalism and t…

Little Me

‘Little Me’ is the musicalisation of a cod autobiography by Patrick Dennis.

Shelf-Life

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
31st Oct, 2012

‘Shelf Life’ is an interactive, site-specific piece which makes use of the labyrinths of the old BBC Radio London studios in Marylebone.

Puppet. Book of Splendor

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
20th Aug, 2012

neTTheatre are an experimental Polish physical theatre company, who here produce what they describe as ‘the Clinic of Dreams’.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
25th Apr, 2013

The ‘last days’ of the title is used in a Milennarian sense – we are at Judas’s Judgement Day, at a trial which ostensibly will determine whether Judas should be released f…

A Romance of Asian and Western Classical Voice

Review
★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
4th Aug, 2012

Florence Foster Jenkins is alive and well and living in Edinburgh.

Flight

The set is made up of suitcases.

Gay's The Word

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
14th Feb, 2013

Ivor Novello was the Andrew Lloyd-Webber of his day.

The Complete History of the BBC in 60 Minutes

The BBC is the Church of England of the media.

Titanic

On paper, any musicalisation of the story of the Titanic looks like sailing to disaster.

Andrew Ryan: Ryanopoly

You shouldn’t always believe the flyers.

L'Elisir d'Amore

PopUp Opera – not Pop Opera, they insist – has a mission to take ‘real’ opera into new places and reach new audiences.

Annie's Room

Annie’s Room purports to be a biographical show about jazz singer Annie Ross, but there is very little biography in this apart from a bald statement of a few facts which could ha…

Fuerzabruta

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
20th Jan, 2014

Fuerzabruta (Brute Force) has been touring its acrobatic, surreal spectacular for nearly ten years now, which is proof of its enormous popularity.

A Respectable Wedding

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
13th Feb, 2013

Berthold Brecht was never averse to biting the hand that fed him, as long as it didn’t harm his career prospects.

Grant's True Tales Presents The Liar Show

Fans of Would I Lie To You? will need no prompting to visit this ingenious variation on the theme of Spot the Porker, in which four storytellers by turns deliver 10-15 minute solo …

Skin Tight

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
23rd Jul, 2013

There is a moment in Sheridan’s ‘The Critic’ when Mr Puff and Mr Dangle are watching a play-within-a-play about the Spanish Armada.

Always Be Comedy

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
20th Aug, 2012

The Jekyll and Hyde is a lousy venue to play: poor acoustics, bar noise and seating split so the audience is in two sections which can’t see or hear each other.

The Showstoppers' Family Matinees

Showstoppers have been improvising musicals for several years now and an edited version has had a series on BBC Radio 4.

The Revenge of Sherlock Holmes

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
18th Apr, 2013

Leslie Bricusse is a distinguished name in the songwriting pantheon, with a string of Oscars and Tony Awards to his name.

Unlucky for Some

Tina Macfarlane has a first in Actuarial Maths from Glasgow University - ‘A real university, not a polytechnic like Strathclyde’ - but there’s a recession on, so it’s not m…

Kiss Me Kate

Ovation has a distinguished track record for musicals at the Gatehouse.

London Wall

Gay playwright John van Druten is now almost completely forgotten except for ‘I am a Camera’, his adaptation of Isherwood’s ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, which was also the basis …

Sir Gawain, the Yellow Knight

Port Dover, a Canadian High School, brings a simple and charming cod Arthurian fable to Church Hill.

The Comedy of Oedipus

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
24th Jun, 2013

In these times of galloping Islamophobia, the Shubbak (Window) Festival, celebrating Arabic arts, is most welcome.

21A - Free

Fans of Garrison Keillor will know the territory covered by this show, the semi-folksy world of Lutheran Minnesota.

You Have Nothing to Fear...

Ed O’Meara has some of the scariest flyers on the Fringe, with a teasing tag, ‘Follow Your Nightmares’.

Gibraltar

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
15th Apr, 2013

On 6th March 1988 a group of SAS men ambushed three IRA members (Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage, Daniel McCann) on a petrol station forecourt in Gibraltar and killed them.

Dorothy Squires: Mrs Roger Moore

First, a declaration of interest.

The Pride

I’ve never bought into the distinction between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, at least on the London Fringe.

The Act

To some, history is a search for reinforcement, basically about people like ourselves: theatre as a lifestyle accessory.

Pop-up Opera

Pop-Up Opera are a (very) small-scale touring company taking opera with piano accompaniment to unusual venues in the hope of creating new audiences.

This Time It's Personal

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
18th Aug, 2012

Dave Baucett is a puppyish like-me-pleeease comedian in his early twenties.

Marcel Pursued By the Hounds by Michel Tremblay

Michel Tremblay is a French Canadian playwright who was an Angry Young Man in the 60s and shook the stuffy Anglophone artistic establishment by introducing Quebequois working class…

Quasimodo

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
2nd Apr, 2013

There was a time when I was a lad when Lionel Bart was everywhere.

Back to School

We file in crocodile formation from the Pleasance, clutching a collective length of rope to keep together.

The Shape of Things

It occurred to me watching Neil LaBute’s 90-minute four-hander, that he is the nearest thing America has to George Bernard Shaw.

Hancock's Half Hour

The BBC has a lot to answer for, not least the wiping out of great swathes of our cultural heritage from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Candide

American High School Theatre Festival is a regular in Edinburgh, and there are several reasons to check them out.

Four Farces

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
21st Jun, 2013

Probably our best knowledge of Victorian farce comes from WS Gilbert’s topsy-turvy world of the Savoy operas, where an absurd premise leads with impeccable logic to an even more …

Our Soldier

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
16th Aug, 2012

Fools Play is a young physical theatre collective reworking the Macbeth plot with a mixture of movement and script.

An Audience With the Duke of Windsor - Bob Kingdom

Bob Kingdom is an Edinburgh institution.

Darling of the Day

On paper, it looks like a dream team.

Morceaux de Choix

As we walk into a rather austere hall at the French Institute, two girls are giggling and practicing a song.

Halbwelt Kultur

Review
★★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
10th Dec, 2013

This cabaret of 1920s and 1930s Berlin songs is billed as an homage, a reclamation, of the female cabaret performers of the Weimar Republic.

Crazy for You

It is a brave company which puts on the first Fringe production of the Gershwins’ ‘Crazy for You’ so soon after the Regents Park Open Air production, which transferred succes…

Yorkshire Comedy Cabaret IV: Jokers, Born and Interbred - Free

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
Edinburgh Fringe
22nd Aug, 2012

The gimmick for this showcase show is that it’s meant to be ‘Yorkshire’ comedy, whatever that may be.

The Bear

Review
★★
Peter Scott-Presland
London Fringe
7th Jun, 2013

Bears, in dream interpretation theory, are a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

The Exonerated

St Paul’s School Theatre take a series of testimonies from former Death Row prisoners in the States and, through interweaving monologues, create a powerful story of police brutal…

No Turn Unstoned

No Turn Unstoned gives you no idea what to expect from Beth Vyse’s show.

Mydidae

‘Mydidae’, according to Wikipedia, are a group of large flies with a short lifespan and a large sting.

The Property Known As Garland

When Judy Garland gave her last concerts in Copenhagen in March 1969 she was 48 and a wreck.

Passing By

Martin Sherman’s ‘Passing By’ has an assured niche in gay history, being one of the first plays mounted by the pioneering Gay Sweatshop, and the first that seemed to have no …

Guys And Dolls

Frank Loesser’s 1950 musical, ‘Guys and Dolls’, dates not a day in this charming production by SEDOS, the thespian arm of the Stock Exchange (I kid you not).