As the summer’s festival torrent gets ready to descend upon Edinburgh, the Royal Lyceum Theatre announces it’s 2013/2014, post fringe season. Of the seven plays being performed, four will be world premieres and among this quartet, the play that will probably garner the most media interest is Dark Road. Opening in September, this is first theatrical output from crime novelist Ian Rankin, created in partnership with the Lyceum’s Mark Thomson, who is also directing. While the project will involve Lothian and Borders Police, Scotland’s favourite curmudgeon detective will not be appearing. Instead the story will centre on Edinburgh’s first female Chief Constable, Isobel McArthur, played by Maureen Beattie.
Next to show, and keeping with the theme of lawlessness, is a new version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment penned by Chris Hannan. The piece will be directed by Dominic Hill of Glasgow’s Citizen’s Theatre where the play will open before transferring to the Liverpool Everyman Playhouse and continuing onto the Lyceum in October. Closing 2013 is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The Christmas Show has been adapted Neil Duffield and is to be directed by Andrew Panton, Associate Head of Performance, Musical Theatre at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Eugene O’Neill’s sombre family drama A Long Day’s Journey into Night begins the New Year, in a version directed by Tony Cownie. In February Martin Duncan will direct Private Lives, Noël Coward’s 1930’s comedy of manners about a divorced couple who accidently meet on their honeymoon. The next play, especially pertinent in a year holding a referendum for independence, is The Union a new work by Tim Barrow involving the 1707 Acts of Union and directed by Mark Thomson. The final show of the period is Pressure by David Haig and directed by John Dove. The narrative looks at Sir James Martin Stagg, the Scottish meteorologist in charge of analysing the weather conditions for the D-Day landings.
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