Latest news with #BardintheBotanics'
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Reboot of Sherlock Holmes is 'captivaating and whipsmart'
**** The ongoing reboots of Arthur Conan Doyle's genius detective has kept his creation on trend well into the twenty-first century. Jennifer Dick's boutique stage version for Bard in the Botanics' latest non-Shakespeare outing stays true to the forensic peccadilloes of Conan Doyle's original while putting a feminist spin on things. Dick weaves together three stories; The Adventure of Abbey Grange, A Scandal in Bohemia, and The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton. At the centre of these is Irene Adler, aka The Woman, the former actress and opera singer who left her mark on the Conan Doyle canon after getting the better of Holmes. As both seasoned Sherlockians and Wikipedia will tell you, however, Irene only ever appeared in one original Holmes story. That was A Scandal in Bohemia, first published in the Strand magazine in1881 as the first of 56 Holmes missives following two novels. Dick's considerable liberty taking with her source material to make Irene a recurring character not only works, but her talent for reinvention provides extra-added intrigue to both her own story and her relationship with Holmes. The first tale finds Irene working as a maid who becomes chief witness to the murder of a drink fuelled wife beater. The second sees her move up in the world enough to be able to manipulate the fate of the womanising King of Bohemia. The third reunites Irene with Holmes and Watson to take on a vicious blackmailer who has already destroyed several women's lives. Read More: The result is a captivating and whip-smart concoction that moves briskly over its ninety-minute duration in a manner as classy as the string based musical accompaniment and the furniture of Heather Grace Currie's set. Seen up close in the Kibble Palace, the merry dance Holmes and Watson are led on by Irene sees the dynamic duo bumbling and fumbling around as Holmes lets his new nemesis off the hook several times over. Stephen Arden makes a stoic and long suffering Watson, and Adam Donaldson's Holmes is a hyper-smart if somewhat foppish sociopath who can't stop Irene seeing through his disguise every time. James Boal, meanwhile, steps up first as the indefatigable Inspector Lestrade before morphing into assorted sailors, monarchs and blackmailers. All three play second fiddle to Rebecca Robin's shape shifting turn as Irene, who champions womankind like some steam punk Valerie Solanis by way of Modesty Blaise. As the tension between Irene and Holmes simmers, the result is an unsolvable case of Sherlock in love as the great detective finally meets his match.
The Herald Scotland
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Shakespeare's sauciest rom com is a right old carry on
Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Don't be fooled by the sound of thunder that opens this seasonal outdoor take on Shakespeare's sauciest rom-com, already seen in several different guises over the last twenty-four years of Bard in the Botanics' summer takeover of Glasgow's leafiest gardens. The sound effect is likely just an in-joke on how many times rain has stopped play over the years. This weekend, however, the gods - and more importantly, the sun - shone on Gordon Barr's Celtic tinged affair that both sartorially and spiritually seemed to look to the early 1970s free festival scene. This was a time when assorted hippies, freaks and seekers after enlightenment jumped aboard the New Age caravan to get their collective heads together in the country. Read More: Much of this styling is down to Carys Hobbs' extravagant set and costume design, a magnificent multi coloured patchwork of faux regal exotica. The sound travelling from the two outdoor concerts in Glasgow on Saturday night was also an accidental fit, even if the venue wasn't a muddy field in 1971 in which it looked like Fairport Convention might be lurking behind the curtains. Once Benjamin Keachie's mercurial Puck has done introductions, we are launched into a freethinking queendom in which love - free love at that - is very much in the air. This is the case for those leading the tribe as much as it is for the four ingénues who have their minds expanded over one very trippy night in the forest. As Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena play a narcotically induced game of kiss-chase after being intoxicated at Puck's careless hand, the real fun comes with who Keachie's sprite has fall head over heels for the star turn of the local am-dram group. The twist from Shakespeare's original makes for a right old carry-on that recalls the more mainstream flipside to all that 1970s counter culture by way of prime time sit-coms. This all makes for quite a romp, from the comic sparring between Star Penders as Helena and Lola Aluko's Hermia, to James Boal having a ball as Oberon. Claire Macallister as Titania, meanwhile, has Keachie's Puck run rings round them all. The Mechanicals too indulge in some serious knockabout, with Bailey Newsome's would-be literary genius Peter Quince desperate to explain the play wot he wrote, while Alan Steele's Bottom is an attention seeking old luv who at one point appears to channel an old Frankie Howerd routine. Quince's royal command performance itself resembles a Crackerjack pantomime in a comic counterpoint to what used to be called the promiscuous society at the end of what turns out to be a good old fashioned sex comedy writ large.
