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Dementia the Musical

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars   Growing old gracefully isn’t easy these days. Once you reach that difficult age you are either patronised or else shunted out of the way in the name of care. Some people, however, simply refuse to kowtow to the system they have no say in legislating.    This is the case for James, Agnes and Nancy, Dementia the Musical’s unrelenting trio who are beamed down into a world of bureaucratic regimes and high backed armchairs that are unlikely to have graced their own homes if they were still allowed to live in them.    What follows sees James, Agnes and Nancy put on trial for being dementia activists by the tellingly named Rigid System. As played by Pauline Lockhart, Ms System is a lady not for turning. James, Agnes and Nancy, meanwhile, have their own stories to tell beyond the TV news reports beamed out between each of their testimonies.    It is these stories that count in Lewis based poet Ron Coleman’s play, brought to life by director Magdalena Schamber
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The Events

Cumbernauld Theatre Four stars   Community spirit is everything in David Greig’s meditation on the aftermath of a mass shooting, revived after a decade in this new collaboration between Cumbernauld Theatre and the Glasgow based Wonder Fools company. As priest Claire attempts a forensic investigation into the reasons behind such a seemingly random attack by the young man who committed it, her quest involves conversations with her partner, her doctor, a right wing politician who may or may not have inspired the killer, and the boy himself.    Beyond this, the community choir she runs and which was decimated by the slaughter becomes a form of salvation. This is embodied by the seventeen-strong on stage ensemble drawn from real life North Lanarkshire communities who become the heart of Jack Nurse’s production.    Greig’s play may have been sired from the wreckage of Anders Breivik’s mass shooting of teenagers at a Norwegian summer camp in 2021, but in the ensuing decade events troublingly

Love Beyond

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   A haunting beauty pervades throughout Ramesh Meyyappan’s slow burning meditation on life, love and loss for this collaboration between the Vanishing Point and Raw Material companies in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts. The loss comes both physically and mentally for Harry, the old man at the heart of the piece. Harry has just taken up residence in a care home, with only his tireless carer May for company.    Harry can only communicate through sign language, which May can only half work out. As even that source of understanding starts to fade, Harry retreats into a world where past and present merge in an elegiac dreamscape shared with his true love, Elise.    Meyyappan’s starting point may be the debilitating effects of dementia, but in partnership with director Matthew Lenton he has created an emotionally driven tone poem full of light and shade. Much of the mood of the piece comes from Becky Minto’s set, which features a remarkable use of m

After Party

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Annie Lowry Thomas is flaked out on the sofa at the start of her new solo show for her Hacks company, coming down at the fag end of what was supposed to be the party to end them all. DJ Erfan Shojnoori is still playing in the corner and not all the balloons are burst yet. Thomas just needs a second wind to keep things going, is all. She’s just not sure where to turn and who to believe in anymore is all. Given the current state of the world, who can blame her?    What follows sees Thomas rewind to the New Labour landslide of 1997 that ended eighteen years of Conservative rule in the UK and was supposed to change everything. Thomas was five back then, and has been living its legacy ever since, right up to this year’s somewhat less euphoric Westminster victory that bookends her show.     Moving between the sofa and the microphone, Thomas delivers a frank and disarmingly funny autobiographical dissection of how we got to the state we’re in. Spoiler alert,

Tom Robinson - The Return of TRB

When the Tom Robinson Band stormed the barricades of the pop charts in 1978 with their hit single, 2, 4, 6, 8 Motorway, British society seemed on the verge of breakdown. As TRB became figureheads of Rock Against Racism, the organisation founded after Eric Clapton’s racist outburst during a 1976 Concert, rabble-rousing anthems such as Up Against the Wall and Glad to be Gay captured the uneasy spirit of the age. The title track of TRB’s debut album, Power in the Darkness, a call to arms punctuated by a monologue in the hysterical voice of a rabid right-winger, showed what punky youth were up against. Almost half a century on, and with the UK in a similar state of collapse, TRB’s songs might just have found their time again.   ‘ The two TRB albums came out of a time of uncertainty,’ says Robinson, who brings a new TRB line up to Scotland for three dates. ‘There was mass unemployment among the youth for the first time, and nobody really knew where the country was going. We didn't know

To Save the Sea

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When Greenpeace activists occupied the Shell UK owned decommissioned Brent Spar oil store off the coast of Shetland in 1995 to prevent it being sunk in the North Sea, little did anyone know that thirty years later it would inspire a new musical. This is exactly what the  Sleeping Warrior company have done, however, transforming the Brent Spar story into a rousing radio friendly pop drama that chimes with the times while remaining easy on the ear.    Writer/directors Andy McGregor and Isla Cowan set out their store on Brent Spar itself, brought to life by designer Claire Halleran as an iron and steel arena the Greenpeace activists make their own. The group are a motley mix of idealism and experience as epitomised by Matthew McKenna’s de facto leader Karl and Katie Weir’s hard liner Engel, with enthusiastic new recruits Colin, played by Nathan French, and Kara Swinney’s young mum Rachel also in tow. As personal and political commitments are tested and s

Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands

  Five stars As the historicisation of Scotland’s pop back pages runs on apace, Blair Young and Carla J. Easton’s study of the women too often written out of that history is a vital and necessary labour of love. From the 1960s pop adventures of Edinburgh sisters The McKinleys, Since Yesterday talks to post punk sheroes across the decades before pointing the way to the future in a mix of history lesson, personal essay and manifesto.   Drawing from her own experience as driving force of Teen Canteen, Easton’s narration unearths a hidden history of sisters doing it for themselves in a misogynistic music industry. Post punk auteurs such as The Ettes, Sophisticated Boom Boom, Sunset Gun and The Twinsets tell their stories, paving the way for 1990s home grown mould-breakers such as Hello Skinny, Lung Leg, Pink Kross and Sally Skull, with the likes of The Hedrons picking up the baton. And lets not forget Strawberry Switchblade’s bona fide pop stardom, as the only Scottish girl band to make th