Tron Theatre, Glasgow Three stars You can tell things aren't going to turn out well in Megan Barker's contemporary new take on Henrik Ibsen's nineteenth century treatise on hand-me-down guilt and the long-term consequences of desperate actions. It's something about the way John Hogg's Osvald, the motorbike riding, film-making prodigal returning to his mammy's Highland home, kills a stag en route. For such a symbol of macho pride to be felled so cruelly seems to be a portent of Osvald's emasculation, even as it forms his opening monologue in Barker's richly poetic text. Osvald is greeted, not by his widowed town councillor mother, Helen, as played by Alison Peebles, but by Scarlett Mack's social-climbing young assistant Regina. Her plans are waylaid by her ex policeman father, Jacob, before Helen arrives with her political ally, Martin. With plans afoot to bankroll a care home in honour of Helen's late husband, it's a summit meeting to be rec
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.