Coffee-Table Notes

If things had worked out differently, writer Ena Lamont Stewart would have lived long enough to bask in the overdue success of her 1947 play, Men Should Weep. As it is, by the time her searing depiction of Glasgow tenement poverty during the depression was first rediscovered by John McGrath's 7:84 company in 1982 as part of their legendary Clydebuilt season of lost working class masterpieces that also included Joe Corrie's In Time O' Strife and Robert McLeish's The Gorbals Story, Lamont Stewart was already seventy years old. Any sustained drive for writing she may have harboured would soon be lost with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease and her eventual death in 2006. By that time, Men Should Weep had long been regarded as a modern classic, and had been named as one of the hundred most important plays of the twentieth century in a list compiled by the National Theatre in London. If that company's 2010 production went some way to prove that Lamont St

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars Asylum seeking, as only those in the thick of things can fully realise, is a minefield. Just when you think you've found the UK's apparently promised land as a haven from whichever brutal regime you're on the run from, a brand new set of oppressions appear. So it goes in this semi-verbatim piece by director Sam Rowe, which looks at the hitherto unexplored complexities of seeking refuge on the grounds of sexual orientation rather than race or religion. Based on interviews with real-life refugees, through a trio of criss-crossing monologues Rowe's play lays bare a litany of institutionalised homophobia in countries which would rather sweep such ills under the carpet along with the rest of their human rights records. Where such true stories could be delivered with understandable anger, Rowe has his cast relate things with a matter-of-factness so calm it borders on meditation. In a piece too where simply putting a Senegalese,

Kings Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars Eighty years ago this Monday past, Celtic Football Club's twenty-two year old goal-keeper Johnny Thomson died from injuries sustained while saving a ball kicked by Rangers centre forward Sam English during an Old Firm game at Ibrox. This new work co-produced by CFC aims not only to homage one of the finest footballing talents of his generation, but to appeal for some display of unity as Scotland's sectarian shame is at last being challenged. Thomson, after all, was a Protestant. Opening with a coffin sitting at the centre of an otherwise empty, green-bathed stage, The Prince serves up a loose-knit biography of Fife-born Thomson, from his heroic rise to the tragic nature of his death. Our guides for this are a couple of likely lads called Billy and Tim, who help punctuate each sketch-like scene with a series of cabaret-style club anthem singalongs as a series of big-screen action replays are beamed out. Some might call it padding.

Oran Mor, Glasgow 3 stars You know you're a literary legend when you're referenced in the titles of other writers works. It happened to Alice B. Toklas and Virginia Woolf, and now, on the eve of a revival of her 1987 play, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Scotland's Makar receives similar treatment in Martin McCardie's new play. As you might imagine, this first of A Play, A Pie and a Pint's autumn season of lunchtime theatre is as appropriately theatrical as its title implies. Taking as its cue the reunion of three survivors of a fictional Highland tour of Lochhead's now classic Scots verse take on Moliere's Tartuffe a quarter of a century earlier, McCardie proceeds to unwrap a big daft post-modern in-joke tailor-made for west end thesps that takes in reality TV, the pecadilloes of arts funding and the ongoing promiscuity of insecure theatre types both in and out of work. Andy Gray's past-his-best Danny opts to play Tartuffe

Shauna Macdonald sees herself everywhere just now. As the former star of TV spy drama Spooks prepares to play the title role in a new production of Liz Lochhead's Mary Queen of Scots Got Her head Chopped Off, so ubiquitous around town are images of the iconic historical figure her character is based on that Macdonald might easily suspect a plot as labrynthine as the one told in the play. “Mary's on the back of all the buses,” Macdonald shrieks in only partially mock alarm. “I'm cycling to work thinking about my lines, thinking it'll all be alright, when suddenly Mary passes me on the bus and I'm like, Oh, God, the pressure.” The bus hoardings may be aimed at luring tourists into Holyrood Palace, where the twenty-two year old monarch once resided following her marriage to Lord Darnley in 1565, but the image remains captivating enough for Macdonald to feel a certain sense of responsibility in her version of Mary. “All the characters are complicated,

Edinburgh Castle 4 stars The pre-show soul soundtrack may be telling of former Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry's roots, but the wash of purple lighting and giant flashing lightbulb on the big-screen backdrop as Ferry's black-suited seven-piece band and silver-frocked vocal quartet arrive onstage appears infinitely more airbrushed. As does too the opening take on Screaming Jay Hawkins' I Put A Spell On You, which segues into ultimate 1980s softcore soundtrack, Slave To Love. As the accompanying film montages show off a series of soft-focus neon-lit city-scapes populated by mysteriously aloof women, the two flesh and blood young ladies bumping and grinding in pink-tasselled leotards beneath only add to the spectacle. From such a tastefully textured opening, Ferry confounds expectations by launching into If There Is Something, from Roxy Music's 1972 debut album. With sax player Jorja Chalmers moving centre-stage, the sheer drama of the extended riffing is

When the National Theatre of Scotland was launched five years ago, there were some who suggested that the scale of the company's resources would effectively kill off the chance for younger artists to develop, let alone find an outlet for their work on a shoestring budget. The launch of two new initiatives by the NTS, however, begs to differ. The New Directors Placement Programme and the Emerging Artists Attachment Programme will enable three directors and four emerging artists to work at close quarters with the NTS, either assisting on specific projects or else given the time and space to develop their own practice over the next year in a more recognisably holistic approach than simple traineeships. Crucial to these two schemes is the support of the Bank of Scotland Pioneering Partnership, itself a new venture. Long time champion of the Bank of Scotland Herald Angel awards and currently Managing Director of Lloyds Banking Group Scotland Susan Rice has been particula