There was a very clever re-working of The Marriage of Figaro at the Lyceum last week.  The lecherous Almaviva was transformed into a randy Edinburgh banker and Figaro a young hedge fund entrepreneur on the make.  Beaumarchais' play stood up well to the treatment and provided lots of farcical highlights including the appearance of an accountant dressed in a penguin suit.  It was beautifully staged and I loved the transformation from bank boardroom to Princes Street Gardens.  

As usual I was too mean to buy a programme and the theatre was too mean to provide a cast list so I can't congratulate by name the actor who played Figaro on how well he did in singing various arias from the opera to cover scene changes.

Neither can I congratulate the lady behind me who not only had failed to silence her phone but answered a call and then spent ten minutes grappling with the phone, I assume in an attempt to switch it off, during which time it emitted a series of irritating beeps.

That's matinee audiences for you.

No such shenanigins either on stage or off at the Traverse where the new artistic director's work was on show for the first time.   For Once is a set of three interwoven monologues that could have been presented Becket style with three chairs and three spotlights as Orla O'Loughlin admitted was her first reaction to the script.  Instead she has placed them in a realistic domestic setting with a practical sink and an iron that emits steam as the mother gets through a pile of shirts in the course of the play.

But until the last moment when they come together the actors while physically existing and moving in the same space don't so much as acknowledge one another's presence.  You know from the start that something awful has happened but it's a while till it's revealed and the tension that is built up in that process is held throughout despite a number of moments of humour.

I liked the performances very much and the treatment but I'm not sure that I go all the way with what I am led to believe is the play's argument that bad things happen because teenagers have nothing to do.