Scottish Opera’s new season is short on big productions, but in revisiting its roots it’s hoping for a ‘leaner, fitter’ fresh start

The foibles and mores of the past are a rich seam from which to mine humour, as a revival of Patrick Barlow’s Buchan adaptation amply demonstrates

House music and voguing are more politically radical than you might think. Kirstin Innes on a festival where clubbing rubs shoulders with transgender theory and the avant garde

THE sun may have been shining but it was over the Leith boundary as over 500 dancers took part in filming today for upcoming musical Sunshine on Leith outside the National Gallery of Scotland.

THE 39 Steps has four actors playing 139 characters in 100 minutes. Quite how many Hitchcock gags are embedded in the script, however, is a question only opening stage act Mr Memory may be able to answer.

Comedy writer Eddie Braben, the “third man” behind the success of Morecambe and Wise, died yesterday at the age of 82.

A CONTROVERSIAL play, partly inspired by the Anders Breivik massacre, will be shown in Norway after its premiere in Edinburgh.

On the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth, opinion remains deeply divided over whether the quality of his music outweighs his unpalatable views on Jews, writes Michael Fry

EASTER Road, or to be precise, an old church hall off Easter Road, is where Gary Mackay made his stage debut. The actor, who attended Leith Walk Primary and Drummond High, was eight at the time.

SCOTTISH Opera will stage productions of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Mozart’s Don Giovanni in its 2013-14 season.

THIS week’s top events across Scotland, including the Perth Festival of the Arts, the Knockengorroch World Ceildih, the Burns an’ a’ That festival and the Electric Frog weekender.

AS ONE visually striking moment melts into the next, you start to realise that Sutra is as much a piece of visual art as it is performance. Which, given that the set was designed by British sculptor Antony Gormley, makes perfect sense.

Was English Touring Opera wise to take on such a dark and weighty chunk of Verdi as Simon Boccanegra? On last night’s evidence in Perth – a tail-end performance in this current Spring tour – it seems to have bitten off slightly more than it can chew.

IT WAS a salacious scandal that rocked the upper echelons of 19th-century Edinburgh society to the core. Two female teachers at an exclusive boarding school for girls had their careers ruined after being accused by a pupil of having an affair.

THE plot of Ghost the movie is, more or less, incidental to Ghost the Musical. It’s an excuse to put on an almighty stage show celebrating the exuberant zing of NYC with a barrage of light, sound and 80s casual wear. Kind of like one long MTV commercial beamed onto an iMax screen.

EDINBURGH amateur dramatic club St Serf’s Players, celebrate their 65th anniversary this year with a production of Tony Roper’s classic, bitter-sweet comedy, The Steamie.

HE is used to being booed as he stalks the stage as a panto villain or rolling back the years on Forth One’s golden hour – but now Grant Stott is out to show he has a serious side too.

Jimmy Savile is to be the subject of an “irreverant” play at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

ARE you angry? Do you let yourself get angry? If not - well, you might find yourself in the surrealist-noir world of this stylish new show by Angela Clerkin

IT’S probably no concidence that the story of Ghost – a smash-hit film, and now a mighty blockbuster musical – dates from the same period as Tony Kushner’s great millennial fantasy, Angels In America.