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Dear Europe review – a tearful love letter from Scotland to the continent

SWG3, Glasgow
Originally planned to coincide with the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the National Theatre of Scotland’s night of cabaret and comedy was performed under a sombre cloud

Imagine organising a wake only to find the corpse is not quite cold. Planned to finish at the hour the United Kingdom was due to leave the EU, Dear Europe is a theatrical cabaret about Scotland’s continental connections. Despite the nightclub air of SWG3, the mood of the National Theatre of Scotland production is one of resignation, if not quite defeat.

The half-dozen acts begin in pantomimic mode with a piratical Tam Dean Burn considering the fate of Scottish waters. In Aquaculture Flagshipwreck, he gives extravagant renditions of poems by Matt McGuinn and Tom Leonard while encouraging us to throw scrunched-up pages from the Financial Times at an inflatable salmon and slipping in barbed remarks about a Scottish fish industry substantially owned by Norway.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2V5L70o

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