Review: Lear

It makes sense…to try and sort out your will before the big bell in the sky tolls. No surprises. No disappointment. A mere segue from this world to the next whereupon all parties concerned know their place when you depart centre-stage. And therein lies the problem: you are still very much centre stage, taking up time, taking up resource and now commanding emotional commitment. What makes the source text King Lear so riveting is that we can all imagine being an other-worldly presence at the reading of our will. How grateful do your offspring appear to be? is it at all commensurate with the bounty before them now? Has the miscreant finally learned their lesson? This is what lends Shakespeare’s totemic play such potency: family, betrayal, legacy, and madness…and all of it avoidable had Lear simply followed the normal course of events and shuffled of this mortal coil first. But Lear being Lear (the man that he usually is) instead watches in real time the deflation of his manifest eminence. By refusing to go to his grave first, his grave comes for all of them.

Review: Hadestown

And so it is that the unplanned road turns out to be every bit as intriguing as its least-travelled companion. When in 2018 I had happened upon an idea of weaving threads of The Odyssey with the toing and froing of the regulars of a Glasgow pub, it never occurred to me, not even fleetingly, that I might’ve supped from the deep well of Greek mythos. Unwittingly, I’d return. I really ought to have seen that coming…and would’ve had I not been as blind as Polyphemus. In short, writing and producing Dance The Colour Blue (2023), reduced my odds of being amongst this particular audience.

Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown weaves the hitherto unwoven stories of Eurydice and Persephone, loosely anchoring it in Depression-era New Orleans. The result is an intriguing juxtaposition, a dialectic which yields rich dividends.

Speech Action Studio

Iain McAleese (theatre director, actor, coach) has launched a new channel discussing all things related to theatre. This conversation is a wander through ideas, anecdotes and experience. A pleasure to speak so freely about theatre.

You can watch the full interview here:

Speech Action Studio

TheatreBurnham DramaturgyOctober 16, 2025Iain McAleese, Speech Action Studio, Theatre, DramaturgyComment

Review: Lost Lear

In the experience of sense, the question arises what happens when we dead awaken? There is; however, another question: what happens when awakening, it goes unnoticed? Lost Lear is a lament to the creeping grief witnessed by most families: dementia.

TheatreBurnham DramaturgyAugust 27, 2025Dan Colley, Venetia Bowe, Manus Halligan, Peter Daly, The Traverse, Lost Lear, King Lear, EdFringe 2025Comment

Review: Tom at the Farm

Just before the play commences, two figures emerge to unfold a massive brown tarpaulin across the stage. A couple of buckets are strategically placed and stage left there is a large chain sling connected to a commensurately sized hook. Fitting for a large industrial farm. Yet it looms menacingly. As the lights go up, they do so only insofar as to give off a brown industrial hue. The type that predictably drains all other colour from industrial sheds. All of this, of course, is the portent of things to come.

Review: Ascension

A man sits on a bare stage. He is preceded by a white bench…and however many days it has taken to reach this moment. As he contemplates existence, the audience contemplates him. This is how Ascension starts. The man, Dutch sailor Leendert Hasenbosch (Dan Hazelwood), has been exiled on an island as punishment for sodomy. The year is 1725. Probably. Hard to say for Ascension is uninhabited. What is certain is Leendert is dying. But he doesn’t want us to dwell on that right now. He’d first prefer for us to consider his story.

Review: Elon Musk - Lost In Space

Parodying people such as Elon Musk is not a trivial task. He already seems like a cartoon. Musk says and does ridiculous things in real life. Leaning yet more in that direction demands plutonium grade material so as not to replicate the version who frequently appears in the news. Elon Musk: Lost In Space is pencil lead grade.

TheatreBurnham DramaturgyAugust 18, 2025Elon Musk: Lost In Space, Space@Surgeons' Hall, EdFringe 2025Comment

Review: My Marlene

I know so little of Marlene Dietrich’s life that a mere trace of information would register as a new classification in my knowledge base. So, to come away with a rounded sense of Dietrich’s life during the war years in the space of an hour is a massive tribute to the talents of writer Tjaša Ferme.

A Drag Is Born

Physical transformation might be the ultimate in ‘show, don’t tell’. The power of speech is replaced with the universality of body language. The transition between the inner and outer self is dialogically framed to arrive at a shared understanding with the audience. This is powerfully projected by writer and performer Edu Díaz as he transforms from an everyday bloke into the queen of the carnival.

Review: Morning Star

Theatre 118 has got off to a flying start with their Play of The Week series which has delivered a new production for each week of July. It is a testament to their talent, ideas and utter dedication that they have pulled this off in so short a time without an iota of a hitch. In so doing, they have managed to create a community, a buzz, in an unused office block, just off Glassford Street.

Review: Suicide, and Other Acts of Selfishness

The view from a bridge catches people in different ways. For some it is a salve for that which has come before. For others it offers the promise of a way out. For all it is a displacement activity: some place other than here, now. Kieran Lee-Hamilton’s play explores both strands from near opposite ends of the age spectrum…

Review: Madonna / Whore

The first to disappear in any murder story is the person who has suffered fatal harm. They are reduced to an ethnically defined, gendered, life-styled archetype with a number pertaining to their age stamped on their forehead. Oh, and they are always warm, generous and friendly. To a fault. Which is perhaps the fault that finally denudes them of any real personality and renders them unseen. Woe betide anyone that says “Aye Jim, could be a carnaptious so-and so from time to time” or “Jacky could be obstreperous when the mood took her”. It would add colour to those perfect bones…adding flawed human flesh.

Review: Fools on a Hill

They walk amongst us in ever greater numbers. The Faithfull prefer to believe in some nebulous entity before countenancing us. They don’t care for your opinions. For they are beyond reproach. They walk the path of the righteous and you? Well, you are simply too messy. The thing about religion is that it is a great consumer of time. Time you could better use to consider (let alone act on) climate change, food banks or unethical wars…or any other number of atrocities playing out across the globe now. Say what you like about the Greek gods: Helios at least intervened when his golden cows were slaughtered…

Review: The Badly-behaved Poets' Society

It’s an unenviable task bringing together two lives which shared no earthly bond. And contrivances to achieve such ends rarely convince. But every now and then a performance breaks loose from the threads of the inevitable and becomes something else. The Badly Behaved Poets Society takes two erstwhile non-contiguous lives and skilfully synthesises the coordinates of coexistence. The result is a play which more than convinces, it enthrals.

Bauhaus Drama Launched!

I am delighted to announce that Bring Again The Now Of Then is now available for downloading and streaming. With approximately 30 revisions and 2 read-throughs, it has been the culmination of 5 years’ work. I am really happy with the outcome! Everybody involved has been thoroughly tremendous: Alex Bennett, Paul Gallagher, Jill Korn, Mark Coleman, Stuart Edgar, Andy Jones, Dani Heron, Lauren Downie, Iain McAleese, Julia Ndlovu, and Lorenzo Novani. It is slightly surreal to know the drama is complete. Now, I have to convince people to take a wee gamble and listen to the series. All episodes are available here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bring-again-the-now-of-then-the-bauhaus-in-weimar/id1799557549

bauhaus drama almost ready…

Burnham DramaturgyFebruary 7, 2025

Adding the world

This week I received the draft of the first two episodes of Bring Again The Now Of Then…and it sounds amazing! As the introductory music fades we hear the crackling of an open fire and bang…we’re in Gertrud Grunow’s study where she regales us with the story of the spiritual years of the Bauhaus as she goes about her paperwork.

Review: Cracked Tiles

Some memories are so vivid, so powerful as to remain with us for all time. Occasionally, living on beyond our own existence. Those memories involving loss go deeper, scarring our conscience and creasing the moments of recall. We are all reluctant collectors of such moments. We seek no claim of them, yet deep down we know a life without loss is like a bag of chips without salt n vinegar. Just not worth the pickle.

Review: Snake in the Grass

As you enter a performance space, more often than not, a set rushes at you with its questions. Where? A back-garden featuring an outhouse and a tennis courtyard. What? Tranquil birdsong belying a certain tension. Who? Well, exactly!

Burnham DramaturgyOctober 15, 2024Snake in the Grass, Alan AyckbournComment

Recording Bring Again the Now of Then

For me it’s walking. It’s when all my best ideas come. Their genesis, their development, and their resolution. It literally never happens whilst I am sitting at the PC. Something about the subconscious, I suppose. One day after watching a documentary on BBC 4, celebrating the centenary of the Bauhaus opening in Weimar, I went for a walk. I think you know what happened next…

KENNETH BURNHAM 2021. All rights reserved.

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