Author: Sam W

REVIEW: The Great Wave

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

The Great Wave rides the crest of technical achievement but fails to sustain the momentum and stick the landing

You have seen it before. Your friends and family have seen it. Everyone and their dogs have seen it. Whether in a museum, on someone’s tote bag, or on the walls of a sushi bar, The Great Wave off Kanagawa is instantly recognisable, an iconic work of art that is reproduced and plastered everywhere imaginable. And in 2026, everywhere imaginable includes on stage at a world premiere as the centrepiece of an ambitious, large-scale show.

Named after the artwork, The Great Wave is an opera about its creator, Katsushika Hokusai. A triumph of collaboration, it is composed and written by Dai Fujikura and Harry Ross respectively, and co-produced by Scottish Opera and KAJIMOTO. The Great Wave does not so much as follow his life as it gives us glimpses into it – and also to the beyond. Told in a nonlinear fashion, The Great Wave washes over you as an almost holistic experience, and it is with regret that you find yourself dry at the end of it.

With the heavyweights behind this production, it is almost guaranteed that you will be impressed by the technical expertise on display, and on display it is. Scenographer Junpei Kiz especially, tasked with reproducing Hokusai’s Wave, does a marvellous job. Faced with the double-edged sword of Wave being so etched into the audience’s mind, he nevertheless creates a masterful set-piece that both showcases the luscious Prussian blues and gives full force to the unstoppable waves, and also allows it to be easily adaptable, later doubling as a bamboo mat for one of Hokusai’s public art performances in a scene in Act II. Alongside this is the strong lighting design by Yuka Hisamatsu, with spotlights and shadows effectively deployed to create and manipulate distance, both physical and spiritual.

Hokusai in The Great Wave can sometimes appear to be detached from the happenings of his world as he lives in his art. This unfortunately translates to a disconnect with the audience too. You do not feel like you can truly understand the man as the character is less a man than an ideal, as if, in this retelling, his life has not just been mythologised but he has himself become part of the mythos – he is the Great Wave. While this is, in large parts, what is intended, it leaves you feeling a little cheated when you spend a significant portion of the running time with Hokusai and are not emotionally satisfied as a result.

Played by Daisuke Ohyama with great relish in his Scottish Opera debut, Hokusai stands for what he embraces around him, from nature to public adulation to constant change. Keeping him grounded throughout is his daughter, Ōi, sensitively played by Julieth Lozano Rolong,and it is this relationship that is the thread on which loosely connected, out-of-time scenes from Hokusai’s life is tethered to. Ōi is, in her own right, also an artist, and this is the bedrock of their relationship, as they exist in the same sphere of sensitivities. However, she is also more than just an artistic companion; she is his purpose and is, in a way, his – and The Great Wave’s – saving grace. Theirs is a tender relationship wherein they are artist and artist, father and daughter.

The Great Wave played at Theatre Royal, Glasgow on 12 February with a further performance scheduled for 14 February, and will also play at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on 19 and 21 February.

REVIEW: The Red Shoes

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

One might call this production the poetry of motion, but it is a great deal more – it is one’s religion practiced in rarefied atmosphere

How does one go about adapting a critically acclaimed piece of art, giving it the sheen of something fresh, extracting new meaning, while also retaining its core spirit that made it so well-loved in the first place?

Well, when life gives one lemons, one is inclined to make lemonade.

In 1948, famed duo Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes hit the big screen, following ballerina Victoria Page as she makes her way through the cutthroat dance company of Boris Lermontov. The film itself is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale of the same name which was first published almost an entire century before the film’s release. In adapting it from the page, Powell and Pressburger did not merely stick to the mould but instead crafted an entirely new metafictional story about obsession, art, love, and ambition.

Almost seventy years on from that, Matthew Bourne and his company New Adventures once again transformed The Red Shoes, this time from one of the most significant entries in the history of film into the medium of ballet – and what delicious lemonade he makes!

In the latest UK tour of this double Olivier Award-winning production, Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes continues to sparkle and entrance, living up to its history and reputation with its imaginative choreography, gorgeous sets and costumes, and beautiful and sensitive acting.

In truth, this ballet does not change much of the film’s story. It follows most of the plot beats familiar to those who have had the pleasure of seeing the film beforehand, but it is a straightforward enough story that you are not disadvantaged by going into this production without prior viewing. To further ease any doubts, the dancing, while dynamic, is expressed in an accessible manner that allows you to understand what is going on while also exciting you at the same time. Even the infamously fantastical centrepiece of the film is nowhere near as surrealistic or conceptual on stage, with simple shades of black and white used to make the red of the shoes stand out.

Though this production of The Red Shoes does not have surprises lying in wait, this is to its advantage as it effectively evokes the atmosphere of the film, allowing it to play in the same spaces of emotions. One way in which this is done is through its plentiful sets. While nothing can ever quite touch what Technicolour magic can do for the French Riviera, Lez Brotherston’s set and costume designs brings the beauties of Paris and Monte Carlo to you, an almost cinematic panacea to a cold and dreary Glasgow January.

Dancing in the fictional Europe of the 1940s is Hannah Kremer who plays the protagonist Victoria, and she does the famous character justice, letting Vicky’s strength, vulnerabilities, and indecisions shine through not just her ballet but her acting too, and you cannot help but sympathise with her. Opposite her is Reece Causton as the indomitable Lermontov who, in costume and makeup, more than resembles his film counterpart in looks. More importantly though, he also carries himself with the same presence, and you cannot help but be aware of him no matter where he is on stage at all times, his steps always demanding your attention. Together, they form an exceptional couple – just like a pair of matching shiny red shoes.

REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A tale as old as time in a show for the wintertime

What is there to say about Beauty and the Beast that has not been said before? A classic fairy tale that everyone from Disney-film-watching-age up knows the story beats to, it takes a brave artistic team with drive and a vision to retell it in a refreshing way to justify the new direction, and to also retell it in a way that’s close enough to the original to stay faithful to the themes of transformation, love, and redemption.

Under the artistic direction of Dominic Hill and co-directed by Joanna Bowman, the Citizens Theatre – perhaps fittingly considering its own seven-year refurbishment – attempts this by presenting Beauty and the Beast as its family Christmas show of the year. Written by Lewis Hetherington, this latest adaptation does a fine but sometimes inconsistent job by drawing on traditions of pantomime, music hall, and Gothic romances to breathe new life into an old tale.

That is only to be expected when such a wide variety of influences are at play, though. Exemplifying this is the antagonist – who shall remain unnamed! – who is equally creepy, in a haunting way, and who is equally funny, in a panto-villainy way. The actor plays the role with such a relish that it brings out the hisses and boos from children and adults alike, and it is in this sense, among others, that the show triumphs.

However, this is also where the show falters slightly. With so much going on, the characters have to conversely remain archetypal to allow everything else to fit in. The nuances of the Beast, for example, are lost as he simply does not get enough stage-time for you to understand why he changes – his ultimate transformation more cosmetic than open-heart surgery. While diving into the dark crevices of the human psyche is not what this family Christmas show is trying to achieve, it does a little disservice to the audience, young or otherwise, that it denies them the chance to connect with the story on a deeper level.

The Beast’s counterpart, Beauty, on the other hand, does get plenty of time in the limelight and she is played wonderfully by Israela Efomi who lets Beauty’s curiosity, kindness and braveness shine through. Beauty’s relationship with her sister, a newly-written character named Bright, is also a highlight, as they learn to open themselves to each other, a dynamic that is sure to give the families a warm, fuzzy feeling.

While your heart is touched by the sisters, your eyes will be dazzled by the remarkable stagecraft on display. The sets are beautifully designed, with a particularly impressive set-piece moment at the end of Act I which might make some of the more musical-theatre-inclined patrons look around for a chandelier. There is also plenty of flying involved which awed many of the children if their pointing it out to their parents is anything to go by. Not to mention the snowy backdrop that is often the background as well, both utilitarian in purpose and also a canvas for silhouette work and more, fittingly evoking the atmosphere and memories of your parents telling you bedtime stories.

In many ways, Beauty and the Beast infuses each sprinkling of snow with real joy, delighting the young audience members with each joke and each technical feat. ‘You’ve changed,’ our villain of the evening proclaims, ‘You can’t unpluck a flower.’ By the look on the faces around you as the lights go up, you can’t help but be moved yourself by the magic that is known as theatre.

REVIEW: Arlington

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

The characters are trapped and you are too – as you are made to feel every minute of the runtime

*Spoilers below*

Light. A single figure appears on the corner of the stage. The stage is bare, almost. On the other side is a set of three blue chairs, a red ticket dispenser attached to the arm of the one on the end. This is the only piece of scenery that will remain for the entirety of the play. The music throbs and the figure in the corner moves – small movements, at first, in his little patch of space before he gradually takes over the entire stage with full-body gyrations. He’s jumping one moment and face-down on the ground the next. It’s frenetic. Repetitive. The music quickens and the lighting is cut off square by square like it’s trying to catch up with and box in this dancer that never stops. It’s an almost furious expression of dance in the face of literal darkness.

This is the heart of Arlington. First performed in Galway in 2016, Enda Walsh’s three-act play is a mishmash that collides traditional theatre with dance theatre to tell the story of Isla. Set in a dystopian world, Isla is trapped by herself in a tower that is constantly being surveilled by cameras and an anonymous voice that tells her what to do, until one day, the voice changes and a tenuous human connection is formed between her and the man the new voice belongs to. Arlington, in essence, celebrates the power of love, connections, expression, art, and storytelling in a world where these things are controlled, repressed and outright banished.

In the Scottish premiere of Arlington, dance-theatre company Shotput makes a valiant attempt to bring this out-of-the-box play to vivid life on the Tron Theatre’s intimate stage. It is a valiant attempt because the material is not straightforwardly pleasing – in fact, it is at times difficult. While the show is only ninety minutes long, the lack of an interval to break up the tension makes it feel interminable. In a way, it is the perfect artistic choice – you are made to endure the confinements, and empathise with the characters’ own unending restrictions – but while your body is captive, your mind starts to wander and as a result, the questions posed by the show do not land as effectively as intended.

This is a shame as what Arlington tries to explore is worthwhile. In an increasingly totalitarian global landscape where world governments are in an arms race to spy on its own citizens, the ability of two people to connect under and, in some ways, ultimately resist the watchfulness of an overreaching authority is more relevant than ever. It would also be amiss to neglect to mention a delightful little detail of the set where the surveillance desk has a supermarket meal deal scattered over it, a reminder that those who participate in the machinery that oppresses are not cartoonish villains but very real human beings who eat and sleep just like any others, who go to work and clock in and clock out just like any others – the banality of evil captured in a can of Red Bull.

But just as the can of Red Bull is swept in the rubbish bin, Arlington is optimistic that we have it in ourselves to fight back. The one who surveils Isla is also the one who frees her, his transformation captured in how he has his back towards you in the first act but you see him in full view in the last act – his face bloodied but defiant, convinced that he has changed the world for the better, even if for just the one person.

This show runs at Tron Theatre until 25th October. It then embarks on a tour of Scotland at Traverse Theatre – 6 to 8th November.

REVIEW: La Bohème

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

An opera about artists – and a production that fails to take artistic risks

First performed in 1896, La bohème is one of the most enduring operas ever – it is one of the most performed titles, and has spawned multiple adaptations, most famously the musicals Moulin Rouge! and Rent.

Thus, Scottish Opera’s latest offering is another in a long line of many. It is, unfortunately, just that and nothing more; a perfectly adequate production that does what you expect and never truly wows you or disappoints you in any way.

Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème centres on the lives and romances of a group of poor, artistic friends, namely people who live a Bohemian lifestyle. This production makes one of its few interesting choices by opening in modern-day Paris, filled with tourists running about and taking selfies, before transitioning to the original setting of the same locale but in the 19th century, directly drawing on the timeless nature of the story.

In fact, the ability of the production to recreate the atmosphere of Paris over a century ago is one of its few clear-cut strengths. The set design again parallels the current day with the past with its backdrop a postcard of the scenery, while the lighting is a constant moody blue that makes you feel the cold and the dark that the characters live in.

It is a tough world for the characters as they struggle with both material needs and emotional turmoil. Romantic jealousy and the lack of firewood exist side-by-side. The way this is painted on the characters brings up an interesting dynamic as they are not necessarily sympathetic characters but reside in sympathetic circumstances, but they still lack a certain complexity; they lack an adequate level of internality, and it means all the drama stemming from their relationships feel hollow. The emotional core of the piece suffers from this very same issue, and so when you are expected to react to it, you feel the manipulation of the creator’s heavy hand. This unpleasantness more than the unpleasant nature of the characters is what fails to endear them to you.

This is the fault of the source material and not the production itself. However, the production does not do itself any favours in its attempts, or lack of, to elevate this source material. Despite the intriguing opening, it does not do anything further with it, a microcosm of the inability to transcend beyond Puccini’s original vision. This goes for the performances too. Much like the rest of the production, they are competent and sometimes verging on something extra, but they never quite reach that next level.

That is not to say you will go away disappointed – but you also do not go away with a whole new appreciation for the artform. With the amount of showings of La bohème throughout history and still produced nowadays too, it feels like a missed opportunity to put on something that does not dive in with both feet and give it a real go.

credit to Mihaela Bodlovic

REVIEW: Man’s Best Friend

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Man’s Best Friend is Glasgow’s Best in Show

Twenty-five years ago, the Tron Theatre staged Our Bad Magnet, Douglas Maxwell’s first ever production at the venue. Since then, a lot has happened. Enough, apparently, for a sequel to Billy Joel’s ’80s hit We Didn’t Start the Fire to be warranted. Despite Fall Out Boy’s efforts, the critics savaged it, with many listing out significant events missed, with one in particular standing out: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Man’s Best Friend does not shy away from the pandemic. It is, in fact, a show borne out of, and framed by, the pandemic. It deals with it and the consequent lockdown head-on, unlike a large section of the mainstream culture which has seemingly moved on from it as if it was just an especially egregious episode of The Twilight Zone and not something that still affects the world every day in a million ways. In that sense, Man’s Best Friend is a brave show and a powerful one, exploring life and love, loneliness and alienation, and catharsis and community in its 80-minute runtime.

Written by Maxwell and helmed by the Tron’s new Artistic Director Jemima Levick, Man’s Best Friend has a very simple premise: a dogwalker who walks his neighbour’s dogs when, one day, the dogs make a run for it. In fact, this entire production is uncluttered: there is one actor playing one character dressed in one costume and he sometimes sits in the one chair in the centre of a neat but spare set, the only flourish coming when the dogs make their ephemeral, ethereal entrance.

The show is all the better for it, though. It is an intimate show in an intimate venue, and while, for example, it might be a delight for some if puppets or even actual dogs were used, it would undoubtedly distract and detract from what the show is trying to achieve.

With the focus so concentrated on the story, it is essential that the writing is strong, and it is strong, though a little obvious in both form and content. It is even more essential that the (only) actor on stage telling that story is up to it, and Jordan Young, playing Ronnie, delivers a remarkable performance full of humour and wit, and heart and pathos.

Ronnie is your everyman, Scottish to his core, and Young embodies that from the way he regales his tale as if you were a friend he was having a pint with to the way his grief constantly peeks out until he finally has to confront it in a raw moment of truth and vulnerability. Young is wholly convincing because he throws all his weight into the moment whether it is comedic or tragic, or both at the same time. When he contorts and strains his body to wrestle with thin air, you buy the image of him holding back an armada of rowdy dogs despite there being no props to help him sell it. In a quiet moment later on, you again cannot glance away from Young despite the fact he is just sitting there talking because of the haunted look in his eyes and the way his voice trembles as he keeps from breaking down entirely.

Man’s Best Friend is not a sad story. It is sad – but it is also funny, introspective, and moving. It is a story about something significant we went through together, and it is important we do not forget that something. But it is also a story about how we came out the other side, and it is equally important we do not forget that we are, as Ronnie says, ‘here now.’

REVIEW: Mozart Sinfonia Concertante

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Not a single word is spoken all night, and yet you  leave with the feeling that a lot was said

You’re invited to a concert. Classical music. While not your typical fare, you look forward to  it. You’re excited, even. So you arrive early at Glasgow’s City Halls, a venue steeped in history and tonight playing host to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a performing arts company that formed over a century after the grand hall was originally built. Three pieces will be played, one a world premiere and the others well-loved classics. The lights dim and a group of  musicians, all dressed in the standard black, appear on stage and take their seats. They get ready. A shroud of silence settles over the audience. Are they getting ready too? There’s always an air of anticipation right before the first notes are played, an electric feeling that is seeking a channel to spark the night alive. The musicians raise their instruments to their lips. And into that silence – noise. 

Noise. It hasn’t come from the stage. No, it has come from the audience. Someone’s phone.  Someone has forgotten to switch off their phone and you are sat there smugly because you  always put your phone on silent before any event. But instead of the killing their phone immediately, the noise has kept blaring on, and you have now twisted around to locate the  commotion. It was then you realised it wasn’t just some phone ringing – it was an audience  member seemingly watching TikToks on full volume. 

It is a regrettable way to begin a review. I must apologise as this disruption is in no way a  reflection on the performance; in fact, the performance was equal parts virtuosic and  moving. But it is also a regrettable way to begin an otherwise excellent evening. So, a plea from your humble reviewer: turn off your damn phones. And if you must blast TikToks out loud, the comfort of your own home is a much better locale than you can imagine. 

Away from modern distractions, the evening is kickstarted by the premiere of Jay  Capperauld’s Carmina Gadelica. Inspired by Alexander Carmichael’s collection of ancient  Scottish folk poetry, this piece is performed in five movements by a wind dectet that evokes the natural world that Scotland boasts, from the fluidity of the waters to the song of the  birds. The highlight, however, is the third movement, a musical recreation of songs sung by women who worked on cloth, where a steady beat drives forward a sense of anticipation. 

You are then taken back in time to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K364.  Written in a deeply unhappy time of his life, it begins with a vigorous first movement that  has an almost mischievous edge. Here, the winds take on a supporting role as the strings  come out to play, but it’s the second movement that grabs you and holds on to you. Led by the wonderful Stephanie Gonley on violin and Max Mandel on viola, it is wistful, and demands you introspect. When it ends with a sense of finality, you come away having  touched on emotional truths within.

The final piece of the night is Franz Schubert’s Symphony No 4 in C minor, D 417. Titled  ‘Tragic’, it’s a dramatic piece. Again, the second movement conveys the melancholy, and the  orchestra plays it with a touch of the Romantic, every note like a stroke of a painting. Such strong emotion is mirrored in a happier mood in the final movement, and the orchestra once more matches it with gusto, playing it with a force that literally shakes your boots. It is a triumphant end to the symphony, and a fitting one for the evening.

REVIEW: Jilted

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 2 out of 5.

A show about taking risks – that takes no risks

Playing on the final night of the Student Theatre at Glasgow’s New Works Festival 2025, Jilted is a twenty-minute comedy taking place in the immediate aftermath of a bride, Stacey, leaving her groom at the altar. Thrown into this are her friends and bridesmaids, Carrie and Margaret.

Written by Sofia Macchi Watts, Jilted grapples with what it means to turn thirty as a woman. What are the pressures? The expectations? What do you hope to have achieved by then? What can you hope to achieve afterwards? How old is it to be thirty, anyway?

It’s an endeavour that doesn’t quite succeed. With the typically sparse set of student plays – there’s a sofa and a telephone, just about – the characters have no place to hide. Under the unwavering lights, they play very defined roles: Carrie is fun, Margaret is sensible, and Stacey is strung-up. The outlines around their roles are, like in a crime scene, clearly drawn – and like in a crime scene, they don’t move outside of those lines.

This restrictiveness doesn’t aid the actors, who try gamely to make the most of it. In particular, Angeline Cochrane-Brown, playing Carrie, has good comic timing and her expressions of unreserved delight are a delight in themselves. She even earns the loudest laughs with a bobblehead impression. With not much else to do though, she repeats the trick a few times to diminishing returns.

The best section of the play also involves Brown. Halfway through, Stacey decides to give her groom another chance, leaving Carrie and Margaret alone. They bicker, like only the closest friends can do, calling each other names and demanding apologies, giving apologies and demanding more apologies. The interaction has dynamism, and the words flow in natural cascades. It’s well-written, and you get the feeling it’s because it speaks the truest to the creative team.

You also get the feeling the creative team could’ve been bolder by focusing on just the bridesmaids and removing Stacey entirely. The writing for Stacey is Jilted at its weakest. Burdened with being the emotional core, she is the one turning thirty and getting married and having her dreams realised – until she realises her dreams are nightmares. It’s unfortunate, then, that her dialogue is clichéd, trotting out well-worn fears of ageing, the weight of planning out her forever, and regrets of wasted youth. Presented without real examination, the character doesn’t add much except words without meaning – they haven’t been earned because they don’t feel lived.

While Jilted is supposed to be light-hearted, there exists a cynical edge that the creative team seemingly weren’t willing to acknowledge or explore. There’s a fantastic piece of acting by Sophie Gattis, playing Stacey, as she tries to get Margaret to go along with her impromptu plan to toss everything up into the air and live out their adolescent dreams of skinny-dipping in the Trevi Fountain. Having prevaricated throughout the play on whether she should marry her fiancé, she seems finally resolute in her choice to ditch everything. But even as her voice begs Margaret to say yes, her face, red and strained, belies the hard reality of this fantasy.

The moment passes, though, and they instead elatedly dance off the stage. Jilted prefers the comfort of the fantasy. It wants to be a triumph of sisterhood embracing the adventure of ageing by going on an adventure together. But you cannot help but wonder when their faces, like Benjamin Braddock’s and Elaine Robinson’s before them, will have their smiles washed off – on the train to the Fountain? on the plane to Rome? or on the bus to the airport?

REVIEW:Summer Fling 

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

It’s all right like, innit

Summer Fling has the honour of being the final play of the Student Theatre at Glasgow’s New Works Festival 2025. Written and directed by last year’s winner, Grace Donaldson, Summer Fling is a fifty-minute play centring on four contestants on a dating show, Maisie, Donna, Ollie and Aaron. A parody of the likes of Love Island, it aims to highlight issues such as exploitation on television and societal gender norms.

The first thing to note about Summer Fling is just how funny it is. Every other line generates laughter, and it’s impressive how consistent it is at being funny. The energy never falters, and you feel the actors feeding off the audience to deliver each line with increasing relish, safe in the knowledge that they have connected.

This is especially true of George Rogers who plays Aaron, a landlord and influencer. He’s also an all-round piece-of-work. With Aaron fancying himself a lothario, Rogers adopts an expression that’s never far away from a smirk, and dispenses co-opted feminist language to talk about himself and only himself in a magnificently manicured manner. He’s a joy to watch, with Donaldson and Rogers understanding that the key to Aaron is he can never come out on top.

It’s also in Aaron that you first detect the cracks in this play. He’s hilarious, yes, but his character never expands beyond your first impressions of him. No further insight can be gleaned from Aaron because none is ever offered. This wouldn’t be an issue if it isn’t true of most of the characters. Ollie’s earnest and simple in every sense of the word, while Donna’s sexually liberated and confident, but again, you understand that quickly and as time goes on, you’re disappointed that’s all there is to them. At times, there’s almost too much of an insistence on getting laughs at the expense of the characters.

The way the underlying issues are dealt with follows a similar path. Topics such as the unacceptability of anything outside the heteronormative binary is touched on with a few witty comments but falls shy of making a real point. There’s also an unfortunate heavy-handedness. In a scene where the boys and girls bond in their rooms, they’re bathed in blue and pink light, respectively. It’s almost too obvious, and when the Voice from the producers lays down the law as to unacceptable behaviour, the spotlight goes red, crossing the line to much too obvious.

The only character with complexity is Maisie, who goes from sincere girl who’s been hurt to manufactured ingenue to backstabbing narcissist. Wonderfully played by Lola Gibbons, a frequent collaborator ofDonaldson’s, she makes you believe in Maisie even as Maisie descends to murder. Gibbons uses her entire body in her acting, always fluid and sure in her movements, whether that’s in modestly crossing her legs during a confessional, in conveying the genuine connection Maisie and Ollie have through embraces, or in the full-bodied rant Maisie throws when she’s refused victory.

Through Maisie, you are shown the effects that dating shows can have on otherwise good people. She’s led by the Voice, booming from above, that tells her exactly what the viewing audience want of her if she wants to win. She’s fabricated into something artificial, pushed to break the hearts of friends, only to be denied at the very end because it’s still not good enough for the ratings. The closing scene evokes Carrie, a girl in the spotlight in a light-coloured dress drenched in blood, having committed the sin of growing up. Is it any wonder she snaps, like so many in real life have?

REVIEW: The Makropulos Affair

Published on by Sam WLeave a comment

Rating: 4 out of 5.

The Makropulos Affair finds its elixir of life to remain immortally relevant

‘How ugly to be old!’

Composed in the 1920s by Czech composer Leoš Janáček, The Makropulos Affair is an opera based on a play by the same name. Consisting of three acts, it’s about a great opera star, Emilia Marty, who’s three centuries old. Over the years, she has lived as, among other names, Elian MacGregor and Elina Makropulos, but it’s in her current guise as Marty that she interrupts a long-running legal case as she hunts for the formula that would give her three centuries more.

In its centenary, The Makropulos Affair finds new life. Having first been produced in Scotland more than forty years ago by the same companies of this production, Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera, it proves its timelessness with an enduring message about meaning in life.

Set in the 1920s, it opens in a contemporary solicitor’s office. You are taken on a journey, though, through Marty’s increasingly-revealing psychological state by way of a deluge of discarded roses dead centre of Marty’s dressing room to the hospital-white of Marty’s hotel room. Adorning the sets are clocks. One for each act, you progress from a standard clock to an enormous clock, surreal rather than practical, and finally to an ornate clock on the headboard of the bed, a headstone for the climactic conclusion. The story takes place across a short space of time but the set design transports you across eras.

It’s across eras that Marty ends up as she is. She’s rude and selfish, and unapologetic about it; she belittles the men declaring their love for her, and dismisses a suicide she’s blamed for by brushing her hair. Indeed, she incites the passions of everyone around her, a femme fatale through mere presence. She bends their wills to hers, using sex to get what she desires. After all, as Marty proclaims, ‘it’s only fucking.’

Orla Boylan, playing Marty, doesn’t hold back. She pronounces it loudly, shocking the audience into a collective gasp. It can be a difficult role; Marty is a complex character but she’s not necessarily a likeable one for much of the opera. But Boylan injects such a world-weariness into Marty’s every action that you cannot help but be moved that Marty can no longer be moved. Marty has lived a hundred lives, loved a thousand men, and can love no longer. When she sleeps with Baron Prus in Act III, she derives no pleasure from it: it’s only fucking.

The entire cast deliver great performances but Boylan’s Marty demands you pay full attention to her. Often staged in the centre of the action, it sometimes feels you are so focused on Marty that the other characters do not exist outside of how they relate to her.

In a way, they don’t. The men need no encouragement to become infatuated with her, and then blame her for their own actions when she doesn’t return their affection. They brand her a harlot and cold as ice. She believes herself a victim. In Act III, she’s put on an impromptu ‘trial,’ forced to answer questions from these men. But as she does, she confronts them with an answer to her own question: what is the point of living an everlasting life when an everlasting life erodes all meaning?

When Marty finally greets death, she reveals herself to be everything she’s accused of – and so much more than that. She’s an emotional woman full of passion and love and lust – or at least she once was. And when Marty finally greets death, you mourn with her, not because she died, but because she lived so long.