Coffee-Table Notes

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars    When radical Italian farceur Dario Fo first performed his scurrilous solo take on biblically inspired yarns penned with Franca Rame back in 1969, revolution was in the air and the peasants were revolting against pretty much anything that was going. A 1970s TV production of Rame and Fo’s play even prompted the Vatican to take a dive into arts criticism when they dubbed it ‘the most blasphemous play in the history of television’.   When the late Robbie Coltrane took to the stage in 1990 with Joseph Farrell’s translation, Rame and Fo’s comic theological riffs were as damning of assorted establishments as ever. Three and a half decades on again, as Farrell’s new Scots version is brought to turbo charged life in this week’s edition of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s latest season of lunchtime theatre, not much has changed. Nevertheless, Lawrence Boothman’s rude intrusion as an anarchist on the run from the rioting outside the theatre he is seeki...

The Studio, Edinburgh Three stars   Art, life, and the blurring between the two are at the heart of Maria MacDonell’s play, in which MacDonell plays Estelle, a model at a life drawing class run by The Artist. He is the sort of pompous ass whose grand statements seem to have stepped out of the 1950s. As he waits for Estelle, some of the audience sit at easels on the stage as surrogate class members, while those in regular seats are similarly given pencil and paper to sketch out their impressions if they wish.    Only when Estelle arrives does The Artist’s high theory open up into flesh and blood material, as Estelle’s personal archive becomes crucial to her own art. This makes for an impressionistic and abstract self-portrait of bodies, ageing and a life that was once a blank canvas that has become shaded in by a life of incident and colour.    Not since Jacques Rivette’s 1991 film, La Belle Noiseuse, has the relationship between maestro and muse been so exposed,...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Take three plays, each around an hour in length, and all originally commissioned and performed at Glasgow’s Oran Mor venue as part of the lunchtime phenomenon that is A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Then put them into the Tron’s bijou Changing Room space with a trio of directors and a cast of three in a mini rep season of brand new productions and see what happens.  The result in Studio3, an initiative introduced by the Tron’s new artistic director Jemima Levick, is a bite size showcase of wildly different work.   Alright Sunshine is a monologue by Isla Cowan that sees police officer Nicky describes her life in a day patrolling Edinburgh’s Meadows. As Nicky recounts her observations, her initially chatty portrait takes an increasingly dark turn as a seemingly minor incident over a Frisbee gives way to all too justifiable anger.    Dani Heron is magnificent as Nicky in Debbie Hannan’s tautly paced production. As she delivers Cow...

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars   When Arthur met Jane, it was love at first spillage. In a crowded bar accidentally serenaded by a Frank Sinatra soundtrack, the red wine might have stained, but the merry dance the couple in waiting stepped out into was all part of Arthur’s plan. A lifetime and the onset of dementia later, alas, Arthur and Jane may sit next to each other like bookends, but Arthur can barely remember either of their names. As soon as their song comes on, however, they are loving each other to the moon and back once more.    Matthew Seager’s beautifully realised two-hander tackles the cruellest of illnesses and the redemptive power of music in exquisitely intimate fashion. Performed by Seager himself as Arthur and Lydia White stepping into Jane’s shoes, the power of Andy Routledge’s production comes in its quiet understatement. As Arthur becomes increasingly dependent on Jane, Jane is overwhelmed by a life she never planned. As Seager and White step out of...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh  Four stars   When Baz Luhrmann made Moulin Rouge in 2001, the last of the Australian auteur’s ‘Red Curtain Trilogy’ after Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet was an audacious fusion of turn of the nineteenth century Paris-by-night bohemianism and contemporary pop bangers. This made for the ultimate backstage musical. Almost a quarter of a century on, director Alex Timbers and writer John Logan’s delirious stage mash up has become a global sensation. First performed in 2018, productions in New York, London and Melbourne are still running, with the show’s first world tour opening in Edinburgh where it is in residence for the next six weeks.   This extensive back-story only goes some way to introduce the sheer scale, ambition and outrageous excess of the three hyperactive hours of  breathless spectacle that is the result. If plot is what you’re after, Logan’s book stays faithful to the film, as American dreamer in search of a scene Christ...

Dundee Rep Four stars   Faith and belief are at the heart of John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play, seen here for the first time in Scotland since 2010. Set in a Catholic school in the Bronx district of New York in 1964, Shanley’s play pointedly frames itself a year after the assassination of President John F Kennedy. This is highlighted in an opening sermon by the progressive Father Flynn, who questions putting what is sometimes blind faith in old certainties.    This is a red rag for Sister Aloysius, who rules the school with a tight-lipped authoritarianism that won’t allow room for any new ways of thinking, whatever Vatican 2 might say. This leads her to embark on a campaign against Father Flynn with the intent of ousting him from office. To do this, she manipulates her young charge Sister James into reluctant complicity with her damning claims regarding Father Flynn’s alleged conduct before what is effectively a trial by hearsay ensues.   This makes for an intense nin...