Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
The smaller room at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica has been repurposed as a tavern with the audience seated at the bar or small round tables throughout the room. A quintet of rambunctiously versatile performers begin playing traditional melodies on the auld instruments on a postage stamp stage befitting a rustic pub, but all the world’s a stage for The National Theatre of Scotland as they present David Greig’s knowing appropriation of “Border Ballads,” Robert Burns and all manner of Gaelic culture, Highland and low. Audience participation will be demanded throughout, beginning with tearing up napkins to make “snow” for a blizzard to frequent interaction with the players, call-and-response and sing-a-longs.
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Bob Verini – ArtsInLA
Theatricality, that broad and vague but unmistakable quality, comes in many forms. When it’s embraced, and when the devices are wholly appropriate to the material at hand, it can offer excitement like almost no other entertainment source.
The National Theater of Scotland, which blew everyone’s socks off during its 2007 tour of Black Watch, is back with The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, currently occupying the smaller space at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage. Though the two productions are very different, both are marked by the same components of theatrical magic: that is, they delight us by putting to use the full range of technical means at their disposal; and they drive human actors to their vocal, physical, and emotional limits in order to get a story told. Read more…
Now running through February 8.