The Month in Scottish Theatre: March 2019

It’s really not an understatement to say that March is an incredibly busy month in theatre, and in Scotland, the stages are groaning with the sheer volume of shows due to perform around the country this month. It was hard to choose a few, but here are a handful of the month's highlights.

Approaching Empty, the new razor-sharp new drama by award-winning playwright Ishy Din opens at the Tron Theatre on 5 March and tours to Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh on 8 & 9 March. Presented by Tamasha and directed by Pooja Ghai, the play is set in Northern England in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s death, and lays bare the everyday struggles of a post-industrial generation of British men.

Dundee Rep’s production of Arthur Miller’s classic 20th century drama All My Sons opened last month and continues until 9 March. Directed by Jemima Levick, it’s a gripping story of a family in crisis in post-WWII America, where the past threatens to destroy the future. Lost in Music, Scottish director Nicholas Bone’s collaboration with composer Kim Moore (WOLF) premiered at North Edinburgh Arts to kick off March, and plays at Platform, Glasgow from 6-7 March. A mix of gig-theatre and verbatim performance, Lost in Music features new songs inspired by the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice – the story of a talented musical couple’s journey to hell and back – and the voices of young musicians talking about what music means to them and how it informs their lives, friendships and sense of self.

English Touring Theatre and Papatango’s production of The Funeral Director will arrive at Traverse Theatre from 7-9 March. Written by Iman Qureshi, The Funeral Director is an incisive and heartfelt story of sexuality, gender and religion in 21st century Britain, and won the tenth annual Papatango Prize.

First performed at the 2017 Hidden Door Festival, the new full-length version of Tragic Carpet’s Rendition runs from 5 to 9 March at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh. The play uses detailed research findings from The Rendition Project, which researches the involvement of the US and its allies in human rights abuses in the aftermath of 9/11. The play tells the story of one man’s nightmare experience as the first suspect to be taken into the CIA’s detention programme using an innovative mix of puppetry, soundscapes and visual theatre.

Scottish Opera are set to open “one of the greatest 20th century operas”, Leos Janáček’s intense drama Kátya Kabanová, in a version directed by Stephen Lawless and conducted by Stuart Stratford. This new co-production with Theater Magdeburg opens at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow on 12 March, and then tours to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, opening on 21 March.

Showing as part of the Citz’s Citizens Women programme, Stef Smith’s Nora: A Doll’s House opens at Tramway on 15 March and runs until 6 April. A radical new version of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House, this bold new production reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women’s suffrage, the swinging sixties and modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past 100 years? 

Also opening on 15 March is Fat Blokes, by Scottee, which runs at the Traverse Theatre for two nights. It uncovers why fat men are never sexy but are always funny, always the ‘before’ but never the ‘after’ shot. Made in collaboration with Lea Anderson and "four fat blokes who’ve never done this sort of thing before".

The world premiere of Jo Clifford’s new version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew opens at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow on 20 March. This riotous new play invites us to imagine a world in which women hold all the power. Exploring gender and identity, this is perhaps the Shakespeare adaptation for our times.

If you like your musicals big, loud and colourful, Sir Tim Rice and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best-loved family musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat comes to  Edinburgh Playhouse from 19-23 March as part of its UK tour. This newly-revived production of 'the classic musical' retells the Biblical story of Joseph, his eleven brothers and the coat of many colours and stars Union J’s Jaymi Hensley.

Leviathan, multi-award-winning choreographer James Wilton’s reimagining of Herman Melville’s seminal novel Moby Dick, comes to the Dundee Rep for one night only on 30 March. Featuring a cast of seven, as well as Wilton’s trademark blend of athletic dance, martial arts, capoeira and partner-work, all accompanied by a powerful electro-rock soundtrack by Lunatic Soul, it tells a tale of deadly obsession, and of mankind versus nature.