Coffee-Table Notes

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Man to Man

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars Survival is everything for Ella in German writer Manfred Karge’s play, making a prodigal’s return to Edinburgh with its original English language production’s creators after almost forty years. Don’t mistake this for a sentimental journey, mind, whatever the music in Stephen Unwin’s production might say to the contrary. For Unwin, the play’s late translator Anthony Vivis, designer Bunny Christie and especially its star Tilda Swinton, Man to Man – originally Jacke wie Hose – is an abstract confessional that teeters on the edge of mania. The result is something akin to Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic studies of aloneness brought to life by a shape shifting Mother Courage locked in the solitary confinement of her living room. Back in 1930s Germany, Ella’s response to the death of her crane driver husband Max is to become him. As grief pushes her to extremes, Ella also needs a living wage to get by. Pulling on Max’s tackety boots a...

Rollers Forever

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars When the Bay City Rollers toured America for the first time at the height of 1970s Rollermania, Edinburgh’s tartan trewed boy band made quite a splash. When the fab five heralded the U.S. release of their early anthem, Saturday Night, by playing to an audience of 30 million people on live TV, it did not go unnoticed in more underground circles. The result, so it is said, saw Saturday Night’s opening football terrace chant translated by proto punks The Ramones into their own defining call to arms of ‘Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!’ on their song, Blitzkreig Bop. Both the Rollers and the Ramones also covered pop classics from the Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector canon originally recorded by the Ronettes, so the umbilical links go even further. While none of the above is mentioned in Danny McCahon's Bay City Rollers inspired jukebox musical, the band’s American trip becomes the drive behind the play’s second half. McCahon's fo...

Othello

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The streets on the TV screens are burning, the country is at war over disputed territorial land grabs, and the squaddies victory dance sees them waving their Union Jacks to Come on Eileen, missing the point entirely of a Celtic rooted song. Welcome to this early 1980s set Othello, where the fallout of the Falklands War and the UK’s inner city riots that preceded it add a new dimension to Shakespeare’s tale of tough guys trying to outdo each other in a white man’s world. Central to this in Shakespeare’s play is General Othello’s secret marriage to Desdemona, the army brat who falls in love and ends up being caught in the crossfire of boys’ games. These are initiated by Iago, who is here a barrack room wide boy with ideas above his station. His slyness in playing everyone off against each other brings about everybody’s downfall, including his own. Anthony Almeida’s production makes full use of its late twentieth century histo...

Badhbh-Shith and The Storytellers

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars Stormy weather abounds both on and off stage in Kenny Boyle’s new Halloween themed play for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season. Sorcha and Evander find themselves seeking shelter in a highland bothy inbetween reaching the summit they are aiming for. Just what that is remains to be seen as they cosy in around the table to share ancient stories of a decidedly spooky kind. For the first half of Ben Harrison’s production, out-scaring each other seems to be the aim for MJ Deans’ Sorcha and Boyle himself as Evander. The series of yarns they spar with fall somewhere between those in Conor McPherson’s 1997 village pub bound play, The Weir, and a seasonal volume of ancient myths. The second half of the play lurches into less certain waters, as Evander and Sorcha seem to be in the midst of some elaborate role play exercise or else are taken over by something far darker. As the pair slip in and out of speaking G...

SoundFestival

Aberdeen Five stars Storms Boelo may have blown in to Aberdeen with biblical intent this weekend, but the most seismic events came by way of this year’s sound festival , north east Scotland’s festival of adventurous new music. Nowhere was this more evident than in Single Drop, Raydale Dower’s explosive sound work that saw a recording of a solitary drop of water looped, slowed down and stretched out to epic proportions. In just over five minutes, what begins as a guileless plop morphs with each play into a rolling thunder drawn from the deep. Initiated with the recently formed OFFBEAT organisation, whose aim is to present one-off arts events in neglected buildings, hearing Dower's 2013 work in Aberdeen’s now sadly unused Bon Accord Baths gave it an extra resonance. Here, after all, is one of the city’s great monuments to civic life now devoid of all the everyday noise of those who swam, bathed and dived its waters, with only echoes of that past remaining. As its magni...

Thanks for Being Here

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars A good night out at the theatre comes with a minefield of expectations. Most of these are confirmed as much as they are upended and reimagined in Flemish mavericks Ontroerend Goed’s latest wheeze investigating the felicities of human behaviour and the everyday performance that goes with them. This is done here in Alexander Devriendt’s typically playful production in a way that charms and disarms as the spotlight is turned on the audience. Fret not, however. No one has to do anything, even as we find ourselves staring back at each other as we are cast as the show’s main protagonists and silent partners in everything that follows. Forget any ideas about audience participation. This is a partnership in telling a different story every time. First seen on the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as with all their shows, Ontroerend Goed’s gentle exploration of ways of being relies on the complicity and trust of those who have ...