The Studio at Festival Theatre

The Bacchae

09/03/26

The Studio at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

“Bloody Greek tragedies are like bloody buses,
You wait for several years,
And as soon as one approaches your local theatre,
Another one appears.”
(With apologies to Wendy Cope)

Hot on the heels of Medea at the Traverse comes The Bacchae at the Festival Theatre’s Studio, a striking solo version of Euripides’ compelling – and many-peopled – play. Written and performed by Company of Wolves’ artistic director Ewan Downie, this is intelligently-condensed from the sprawling original.

Downie is Dionysus, the god of change – a conceit that lends itself well to the multi-rolling necessary here. The son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele, Dionysus both narrates his own story and transforms into a raft of other characters, all perfectly distinct thanks to Downie’s precise physicalisation.

Employing Ancient Greek specialist, Dr Michael Carroll, as a creative consultant is a masterstroke, lending this radical interpretation a sense of authenticity. The narrative is typically convoluted. When the pregnant Semele dies at the sight of her lover, Zeus, in his divine form, the god seizes the embryonic Dionysus and gestates him in his thigh. Raising a baby isn’t on Zeus’s agenda though, so he tasks Semele’s sister, Agave, with parenting the boy. She obliges, but her own son, Pentheus, is understandably jealous of his half-god cousin. This resentment follows the men into adulthood, leading Pentheus, now King of Thebes, to forbid his people from worshipping the increasingly popular Dionysus, who preaches liberation from social restraints, encouraging his followers to indulge in frenzied, wine-fuelled rituals. Where else can their enmity lead but to murder?

This is as much a piece of performance art as it is theatre: a visual spectacle set to poetry and song. Downie’s commitment is absolute, and it’s his sincerity and conviction that holds our attention. The contemporary set design (by Alisa Kalyanova) clashes with the millennia-old narrative, but I like this discordancy: it reflects the dissolution of boundaries highlighted by the queer subtext. The only off-note for me is the use of a plastic bottle of water. I’m sure there’s some reason behind the decision, but it looks pragmatic rather than intentional, unlike anything else on the stage.

Originally directed by the late Ian Spink and with Heather Knudsten now holding the reins, CoW’s The Bacchae is a fascinating, labyrinthine drama, anchored by an extraordinary central performance.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

Common Tongue

03/10/25

The Studio at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Writer-director Fraser Scott explores the knotty relationship between language and identity in this searing polemic, which – despite the complexity of the subject – is both accessible and very funny.

Bonnie (Olivia Caw) is fae Paisley, where she lives with her beloved Papa and speaks like him too. She’s sparky and clever and, as she grows up, keen to spread her wings and see the world.

Step one is St Andrew’s University, where her flatmates are all from England or Edinburgh – “aun a dinnae ken which is worse.” They tease Bonnie about the way she speaks, and she gives as good as she gets, mocking their accents in turn. But of course it’s not the same. The English girl who says, “You have to be okay with how we sound too,” is missing the point. The way she sounds isn’t always on the brink of being wiped out, has never been banned, will never disadvantage her. But Bonnie doesn’t yet have the words to articulate this point.

Step two is a year in the USA, where even those who enthusiastically claim their “Scotch” ancestry struggle to understand anything Bonnie says. She finds herself having to speak slowly and Anglicise her language, which seems harmless enough but it’s tiring. It takes its toll.

Back on home turf, a graduate now, killing time while she works out what she wants to do with her life, Bonnie is disconcerted by Papa telling her that she sounds different: “pure posh.” She realises she has to make a choice. Will she sacrifice her voice to achieve success in an unequal world, or will she roar at the injustice and fight to be heard on her own terms?

This is a demanding monologue and Caw’s performance is flawless, at once profound and bitingly funny: the jokes delivered with all the timing and precision of a top comedian; the emotional journey intense and heartfelt.

Patricia Panther’s sound design is integral to the production, and I especially like the use of multiple microphones, clustered to denote new places and people. Admittedly, there’s a lot of competition from Storm Amy raging outside and rattling the pipes, but it’s effective nonetheless.

Fraser makes his points cogently, probing both the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that the language we use shapes the way we think) and the repercussions of linguistic colonialism. As a Welsh woman, I’m familiar with historical tales of school-kids being punished for speaking Cymraeg, but the Scots issue is clearly ongoing. In fact, as I leave the theatre tonight, I bump into one of the teenagers who attends the drama club I teach. He tells me that he was sent out of class recently for saying, “I ken,” that his teacher deemed his language “cheeky.” I think his teacher needs to see this play.

Kinetic and engaging, Common Tongue has a lot to say and a braw way of saying it.

5 stars

Susan Singfield

Moments

30/01/25

The Studio at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

One of the UK’s leading visual theatre companies, Theatre Re focus on making “deeply moving non-verbal productions about universal human challenges and the fragility of life”. Their latest piece, Moments, lays bare the creative process, taking the audience on a journey from nothing to something, from the flicker of an idea to a compelling dramatic sequence.

The metatheatrical concept is made clear from the outset, as four performers – dressed in rehearsal blacks – stand in a line and introduce themselves. They are: Guillaume Pigé – conceiver, director, actor and mime; Dr Katherine Graham – lighting designer; Alex Judd – composer; and Anna Kitson – BSL interpreter. From the sound desk behind us comes the disembodied voice of Benjamin Adams. They describe their roles and what they each bring to a show.

And then they begin. A chair, at first simply functional, changes before our eyes, becoming a child and then a father. The mood switches, initially light and amusing, then emotionally charged. The intensity swells with the music; the lighting focuses our attention one way and another. There is dialogue but it’s in French, so – for me, at least, with my school level knowledge of the language – it’s more about tone and tenor than it is about the words.

There’s no denying how skilful these theatre-makers are: the performances are incredibly precise and absorbing, and it’s fascinating to see what they can do with a bare stage, no costumes and one prop. However, it feels more like a demonstration than a play; it’s an exemplar of how to develop a piece of drama but the final scene – the culmination of the process – is too brief to be satisfying.

Moments would work well as an introduction to a drama workshop for A level, Higher or Uni students. It’s a dynamic and engaging piece of work that would surely appeal to anyone interested in learning about the process of making theatre.

3 stars

Susan Singfield