theatreSCOTLAND

19 April 2017 The Guardian

Coriolanus Vanishes

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit theatre review.

CHRIS has an identity crisis. Played by David Leddy in his own solo show, he is never the same man twice. To his wife, he is damaged and reckless, yet worthy of her unconditional love. To his adopted son, he is all talk – promising certainty but ever liable to disappear. To his lover, he is vulnerable and small, ready to be consumed. And to his colleagues in the international arms sales business, he is the acceptable face of ethical compromise. As Chris sees it, he is all these things and none. His restless shifting from one role to the other, like an actor trying on so many disguises, is an expression of his inability to fit in. However good the going gets, he always feels incomplete, compelled to flee. The death and violence around him, from family bereavements to terrorist atrocities, seem to be manifestations of his own psychological bad faith

24 August 2010 Scotland on Sunday

Sub Rosa

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

IF THE opening theatre production of the Edinburgh International Festival did nothing else, it challenged you to consider how you tell a story. To say the answer provided by New York's Elevator Repair Service was unconventional is an understatement. Having no interest in staging a regular adaptation of The Sun Also Rises, director John Collins challenged himself to use every last word of Ernest Hemingway's breakthrough novel, plus selected passages of first-person narration from Jake Barnes, a war-wounded US foreign correspondent in Paris.

24 January 2009 The Guardian

Sub Rosa

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

WAS ever a penny dreadful as lurid as David Leddy's Sub Rosa? A site-specific journey into the bowels of a theatre built in 1878, it is as if a rococo Victorian melodrama has been laced with the ugly authenticity of the in-your-face playwrights of the 1990s. By offsetting a story laden with murder, sexual exploitation and back-street abortions with a romantic promenade through wardrobes and scenery stores, Leddy creates a show that is as ravishing as it is unpleasant.

9 May 2007 The Guardian

Home Hindrance

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

IN the face of mass-media uniformity, theatre-makers are turning to intimate venues to offer us something unique. In Homemade, Chris Goode brought the show into his audience's living rooms, and in Spend a Penny, Andy Arnold's actors staged one-to-one sessions in the Arches' toilet cubicles. Here, we find ourselves on the top floor of a Glasgow towerblock, sharing a bathroom with actor Louise Ludgate as she strips off and nips into the shower. Theatre doesn't come more up close and personal than this.

15 August 2006 The Scotsman

David Leddy's Reekie

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

28 June 2006 The Guardian

Sussurus

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

PRODUCTIONS of A Midsummer Night's Dream are ten a penny. This month alone, there have been outdoor performances in both Glasgow and Edinburgh. Such cheery familiarity makes it too easy to glide over Shakespeare's troubling themes of desire, sexuality and death in favour of a funny Bottom.

1 June 2005 The Guardian

In the Shade

By David Leddy. A Fire Exit review.

AS a writer, David Leddy has something to say. As a performer, he has the means to say it. Yet somewhere between conception and execution his purpose has become obscured. Watching his latest one-man show is a draining experience: you see the effort that's gone into it, but get little in return. Sitting round cabaret-style tables, it initially seems we're in for another night of cross-dressing campery. Leddy appears in drag, garishly attired in clashing zebra stripes and leopard spots, and bolstered to emulate the shape of the beautiful black women he adores. As LaToya Levine, he presents himself as the world's only "psychic soul sister", able to channel the voices of the great divas, alive and dead, at will.

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