Month: June 2025

Lear

05/06/25

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It seems at first an act of incredible hubris: to take one of Shakespeare’s most accomplished works, chuck out all those pesky words and attempt to tell the story entirely through movement. But only a few minutes into Raw Material’s adaptation and I am beginning to appreciate what a clever idea this actually is – one that opens out the play’s central story to encompass a whole range of different interpretations. Anybody who has watched helplessly as an aging relative slips inexorably into the fog of dementia, for instance, will find plenty to identify with here.

Anna Orton’s simple set comprises mostly heaps of sandbags, which we will soon discover are stuffed with what look like ashes and which, when scattered around the stage, seem to accentuate the central character’s failing grasp on reality. When Lear (Ramesh Meyyappan) first strides confidently into view, he is fearless, energetic, reenacting his past conflicts for the entertainment of his three daughters.

But we cannot fail to notice that he is already jumping at shadows, reacting to every bump and thud of David Paul Jones’s vibrant score, every flash and flicker of Derek Anderson’s vivid lighting design. Director Orla O’Loughlin keeps him centre stage while his daughters move around its periphery, cooly observing as he begins a slow but steady decline. As his grasp on the war-torn kingdom grows ever more precarious, so he goes to his daughters seeking refuge. Regan (Amy Kennedy) and Goneril (Nicole Cooper) are not the grasping, cruel sisters of the source play, but rather two concerned siblings that strive their hardest to accommodate their Father’s eccentricities. Cordelia (Draya Maria) keeps to the sidelines, always giving way to her more manipulative sisters – but her affection for her father is evident, making it clear that she will love him unconditionally.

And then the fog really begins to take hold as Lear don’s his Fool’s old hat and adopts the gurning, slapstick attitude of his former jester, Meyyappan pantomiming exquisitely as he slips effortlessly between the two characters, bicker and competing with each other for the sister’s affections. His bewildered daughters try their best to cope with their father’s mounting instability but once taken hold, these changes cannot be denied. In Lear’s latter stages, stripped to his underwear and no longer able even to wash himself, the character’s ultimate tragedy really begins to hit home.

Lear’s story is also true of so many people as they begin to slip helplessly into their twilight years – as they succumb to drug addiction – as they are weighed down by advancing depression – the transformation witnessed by their partners and their children. This daring adaptation nails such experiences with considerable skill.

Despite my initial reservations, I have to raise my hat to a fearless and thought-provoking piece of theatre.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney

The Mountaintop

04/06/25

The Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Katori Hall’s 2009 play bristles with prescience in this stirring revival, directed by Rikki Henry. We’re in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, where a tired, sick Dr Martin Luther King Jr (Caleb Roberts) is planning on writing through the night. But, as the night in question is April 3 1968, we know this work will never make it to completion. Instead, assassination awaits.

The great man’s famous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” metaphor is gloriously realised in Hyemi Shin’s set design, the room balanced precariously on a slab of jutting rock protruding from the dark earth, offering little protection from the Biblical storm raging outside. There are climbing ropes too, tethering King to earthly reality even as they call for his ascension.

As ever, MLK is up against it. He’s in Memphis to promote his Poor People’s Campaign, and to support the striking Black sanitation workers. He’s a divisive figure: a hero to those he’s championing; a thorn in the side of the establishment. White supremacists hate him. How can he allow himself to rest when there is so much injustice to address? He calls the motel’s reception to ask for coffee, and salvation arrives in the form of housekeeping. It’s Camae (Shannon Hayes)’s first day on the job, and she’s beyond excited to meet her idol. Of course he can have one of her cigarettes.

In this fictional encounter between the real-life martyr and the made-up maid, Hall illuminates the flawed reality of King, who was, after all, a mere mortal, as prone to weakness as the rest of us. What set him apart wasn’t saintliness, it was conviction, purpose, determination – and the belief that he could be the change. As he laments the failures of his beloved America, the message comes across loud and clear, and is particularly important today: you don’t have to be special to make a difference. You just have to show up and fight.

Roberts and Hayes make an electric duo in this fierce two-hander, which lurches from realism to expressionism with thrilling momentum. Roberts imbues his warts-and-all depiction of MLK with so much warmth and charisma that we forgive him his trespasses. After all, if God (with whom he argues via the motel’s landline) can summon him to Heaven, who are we to argue with Her? Hayes makes for a perfect antagonist, her spirited Camae proving more than a match for the mighty King, challenging him both politically and personally. Issues of race and equity are illuminated rather than undermined by the humour that punctuates the couple’s verbal sparring, and Camae’s final monologue, accompanied by Lewis den Hertog’s black and white video design, is a stark reminder both of MLK’s legacy and of the battles yet to come.

4.5 stars

Susan Singfield

The Ballad of Wallis Island

02/06/25

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) is a musician, once a member of an influential folk duo, now reduced to forging a living in the independent music sector. He needs funds to finance the new ‘poppier’ album he’s been working on, so he’s delighted (and somewhat bewildered) when he’s approached to perform a concert on a remote island somewhere off the coast of Pembrokeshire.

The fee? A cool half a million quid.

At his manager’s urging, Herb is soon on the island and being greeted by his benefactor, Charles Heath (Tim Key), a hapless but likeable oddball who seems incapable of talking without throwing in a string of terrible puns and vaguely insulting observations. When Herb asks him some perfectly reasonable questions: “Where’s the stage? How many people will be attending the performance? Why is the fee being paid in cash?” Charles offers little in the way of explanation, other than to mention that McGwyer and Mortimer – the aforementioned folk duo – were his wife’s all-time-favourite musicians. The audience, he announces, will be “less than a hundred.”

And then another boat arrives, bringing Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) to Wallis Island. Charles, it turns out, has also hired her to perform. To say that the reunion is awkward would be something of an understatement. Back in the day, Herb and Nell were partners in more than just the musical sense and Herb still nurtures strong feelings for her. The fact that she has brought her new squeeze, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), along for the trip seems a recipe for disaster…

Written by Basden and Key (and developed from a short film they made back in 2007), The Ballad of Wallis Island is a warm, gentle hug of a film, one that takes a long look at the subject of relationships and the many ways in which memories can still affect people long after an initial attraction has gone – and perhaps more significantly, it centres on the importance of moving forward.

Basden does a great job of conveying the insecurity of an aging performer struggling to hang on to his career in a musical climate that has changed out of all proportion. The beautifully-judged exchanges between Herb and Charles are delightfully and consistently funny, while the songs (also written by Basden) are strong enough to convince me that McGwyer and Mortimer really could have secured an ardent following, particularly when Mulligan supplies some sweet harmonies to Basden’s plaintive lead vocals. James Griffiths handles the direction with assurance.

It will be a stern soul indeed that doesn’t warm to this sweet, charming and gently affecting film. If it drops anchor at a cinema near you, I’d urge you to see it.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

drops anchor

The Salt Path

08/07/25

Update

In the aftermath of the bombshell dropped by Chloe Hadjimatheou in this weekend’s Observer, where she exposes the lies this story is based on, it feels right to reassess our original response to the movie. Our opening sentence included the words “raised eyebrows”. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so gullible.

But we’re in good company, including Penguin Random House, Number 9 Films and more than two million readers worldwide. Chivalrous Jason Isaacs, sitting next to Raynor Winn on The One Show sofa, gently corrects her when she says it all began when she and her husband “got into a financial dispute”. “You were conned out of everything you had,” he says sympathetically. “You might not be able to say it but I can.”

The Winns’ audacity is breathtaking. According to Hadjimatheou, the real con-artist is Raynor, aka Sally Walker. Aka embezzler of £64k from her employer; aka borrower of £100k to pay back her ill-gotten gains and thus avoid a criminal trial. When their house was repossessed, it wasn’t because a good friend betrayed them; it wasn’t a naïve business investment gone wrong. It was the simple calling-in of an unpaid debt, ratified by the courts. Did Walker and her husband Ti-Moth-y really believe the truth would stay buried as they appeared on national television to publicise their untruths?

So how gullible were we, really? Like many, we believed the basic premise. Why wouldn’t we? Sure, it was clear that the exact circumstances of the couple’s slide into destitution were being glossed over, and of course their story was shaped into a neater narrative than real life provides. But we had no reason to doubt the fundamentals. (How could anyone have guessed they had a ‘spare’ property in France?) In fact, my interest piqued by the movie, I went on to read Winn’s books. I liked The Salt Path, although I was disappointed not to learn more about the calamitous investment. I found books two and three (The Wild Silence and Landlines) less interesting: just more of the same, but – now that the couple were housed and embracing successful careers – without the jeopardy. In these sequels, the focus shifts to Moth’s terminal illness, corticobasal degeneration, and the miraculous curative effect that hiking has for him. While the first book tentatively suggests that strenuous exercise might be beneficial for those with this rare condition, by the third we’re deep into dubious ‘wellness’ territory, with Winn’s ‘own research’ supposedly trumping anything a neurologist might purport to know.

Still, we won’t be taking down our review (you can read it in full below). We stand by it as a reaction to a well-acted and nicely-crafted film that we enjoyed. Of course, its message of grit in the face of adversity doesn’t have quite the same potency it did, now that we know the protagonists are a pair of grifters, but, if we can steel ourselves to view it as a work of fiction, it’s an affecting and moving piece.

Susan Singfield and Philip Caveney

01/06/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

I’ve often remarked that real-life stories, depicted as fiction, would more often than not be the case for raised eyebrows. Take the case of Raynor and Moth Winn, for example: a married couple who, after a badly-judged business investment went tits up, found themselves evicted from their family farm, unable to obtain any financial help, bar a paltry £40 a week benefit. Around the same time, Moth was diagnosed with a rare (and inoperable) degenerative brain condition. Their response? To set off to walk the South West Coastal Path, a trip of hundreds of miles, telling themselves that if they just kept walking, something was sure to turn up…

Okay, so in a move they could surely never have anticipated, the book that Raynor wrote about the experience eventually went on to sell two million copies… but it would be a hard-hearted reviewer who begrudged them this success.

In this adaptation by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, we first encounter Raynor (Gillian Anderson) and Moth (Jason Isaacs) as they fight to save their last real possession – a small tent – from the ravages of the incoming tide. The couples’ back story is told in a series of fragmentary flashbacks, though director Marianne Elliott is less interested in the events that brought the couple to this sorry situation, than exploring the possibilities of what their newfound freedom brings them.

As the two of them progress on their journey, struggling at first but gradually adapting to a different kind of life, it becomes clear that there is something to be said for casting off the familiar shackles of a home and a mortgage. The couple find an inner strength they didn’t know existed and, along the way, they rediscover what drew them together in the first place. This could easily have been overly -sentimental but manages to pursue a less obvious route.

The story takes the duo across some jaw-dropping locations around Cornwall and Devon and the majesty of the scenery is nicely set against Chris Roe’s ethereal soundtrack. Anderson and Isaacs make a winning duo, conveying the real life couple’s indomitable spirit and genuine devotion to each other, while the various situations they stumble into range from the comical to the deeply affecting.

The film’s final drone sequence cleverly encapsulates its central message in one soaring extended shot. There have been some mean-spirited early reviews for The Salt Path but I find it genuinely moving and a cinematic journey worth sharing.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney and Susan Singfield