Lochgelly Centre Three stars If ever a strong political voice for the arts was needed, it is now. The fact that there isn’t currently one emanating from either Holyrood or Westminster brings shame on both Houses. What better time, then, to be reminded of Jennie Lee, the Fife firebrand who became the first ever Minister for the Arts, and who founded the Open University, championing education for all. Lee had quite a life before such epoch making activity, as is brought home in Matthew Knights’ epic dramatic biography, which premiered at the weekend a stone’s throw from his subject’s birthplace 120 years ago. Coming at a time when arts buildings are fighting to survive, it is telling too that Knights’ play opened in a venue that might not have existed without Lee’s vision. Knight sets out his store in Emma Lynne Harley’s production for the Angus based Knights Theatre in the variety theatre and hotel where Lee grew up, as the show’s three actors raid the dressing up box to tell her
Tramway, Glasgow Four stars Sound and Vision are the heart of director Neil Bartlett’s theatrical reimagining of Derek Jarman’s final film, completed four months before his death from an AIDS related illness in 1994. Featuring an Yves Klein hued blue screen for the film’s full 74-minute duration, Blue features a collage of voices speaking excerpts from Jarman’s diary as he gradually lost his sight. As Jarman ruminated on friends and lovers lost to what had been demonised as ‘the gay plague’, this opened up a bigger picture of a world that had been decimated. This was offset across several sections by a more impressionistic narrative. Thirty years on, Bartlett brings a new quartet of voices to recount what has now become a (self) portrait of a major moment in late twentieth century social and political history. More than that, as the cast of Travis Alabanza, Joelle Taylor, Jay Bernard and Russell Tovey line up on stools beneath the screen, it becomes a rhapsody to a time and a pl