Coffee-Table Notes

The decision by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and its assorted producing partners not to allow critics to review brand new musical, Ceilidh, during its Pitlochry run is a strange and baffling affair. As already highlighted by Brian Ferguson in the Herald, the new show by Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, aka Noisemaker, about Scotland’s ceilidh culture was originally announced to open in September on PFT’s main stage. A press night was set for October 1st. This was later moved without notice to Pitlochry Town Hall for an October run, with press invited on October 10th. London dates and a tour of Scotland’s cities follow.    For critics with an already packed schedule of theatre openings, the goalposts being shifted in such a way may have been irritating, but was manageable. Then came last week’s declaration that no reviews of Ceilidh would be allowed during its Pitlochry run. This was tempered by the offer to of an all expenses trip to London to review Ceilidh at Shoreditch Town...

Eva Marie Saint – Actress Born July 4, 1924; died October 6, 2026     Eva Marie Saint, who has died aged 102, was an actress who won an Oscar for her very first film role in On the Waterfront (1954). As Edie Doyle, the quietly determined sister of a murdered New York dockworker, Saint provided understated but steely ballast to the machismo of Marlon Brando’s punch drunk Terry Malloy in director Elia Kazan’s blue-collar epic. Brando may have ripped up the screen as Terry took on the mob-run union he’d become a patsy for, but it was Saint’s portrayal of Edie that gave the film its moral centre, as she became a translucent force for good in a brutalised world.   It was a startling big screen debut that gave a wider audience for Saint, who had already made her mark on stage and television, where she was spotted by Kazan in Horton Foote’s play, The Trip to Bountiful. Kazan cast Saint in favour of Elizabeth Montgomery. As well deserved as her Best Supporting Actress Oscar undou...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars Mothers and sons can be a toxic mix. So it goes in Jonny Donahoe’s emotionally charged new play, which will hopefully have a longer life beyond its lunchtime slot as part of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s latest season and its subsequent Edinburgh and Paisley dates.    When Mark Barrett’s presumably sole son and heir of Blythe Duff’s solitary matriarch turns up unannounced for the first time in eight months, he finds her burning her back pages on a garden bonfire. Given that some of those pages may involve him, this very Zen gesture of purging has an even greater if largely unspoken resonance. Given that the son’s arrival is because he has something to say to help find some kind of impasse beyond their estrangement, this is even more problematic. As the pair attempt to navigate their way around their differences over the next hour in what looks like an extended co-counselling session, some kind of bridges are eventually built.    As Duff and ...

Scottish theatre is on something of a roll just now in a series of hit shows that mark something of a return for big plays with big ideas that don’t tell you what to think. Long may it continue.   Tristan & Yseult  Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until 3 October; Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh,  2-24 October . Theatrical maverick Emma Rice scored an international hit back in 2003 with her epic take on the much adapted mediaeval romance about an illicit liaison between a Cornish knight and an Irish princess. If that sounds old hat, thing again, as Rice transforms the ancient yarn into a circus-like caper that roars with life in the show’s first outing for almost a decade in this latest reboot by Rice’s own Emma Rice Company.   The Steamie His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen until 3 October. King’s Theatre, Edinburgh,  5-10 October ; Pitlochry Festival Theatre,  20-24 October ; Alhambra Theatre, Dunfermline,  29-31 October ; King’s Theatre, Glasgow,  2-1...

Four stars   Speculative Fiction has been predicting the future for several centuries now. This is to the extent that much of the hi-tech machine age prophecy highlighted on the page and on screens great and small as they were invented is now science fact.    So it goes with the six short films produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and BBC Scotland currently on a short tour of cinemas prior to a digital release in January 2027. Developed as part of the NTS’ 20 th  anniversary, each commission pairs already accomplished stage writers and directors with equally skilled film makers.   B ed to the Future finds a male couple embark on purchasing a new bed to rest their weary heads, only for one of them to be lurched forward in time. Written and directed by James Ley,    the narrative sees  Martin Quinn    and    Jay Newton as the couple find comfort away from the future shock witnessed.   Broth finds Carmen Pieraccini’s TV news re...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four Stars   Showbiz secrets didn’t come much glitzier than those of Liberace, the piano playing artist christened Władziu Valentino, who dropped his first names and became a superstar. As the young writer who greets us at the start of Martin Sherman’s new play also makes clear, as far as he is concerned, Liberace’s refusal to acknowledge his homosexuality throughout his life was a betrayal of all those who were out and proud. His successful 1959 court victory over the Daily Mirror’s allusions to his sexuality is key to the writer’s contempt. Liberace’s death in 1987 from causes of AIDS with his gayness still unacknowledged fuels the writer’s ire even more.   As if accidentally summoning a genie, the writer’s angry ruminations about having to write about someone he hates prompts Liberace to swoop in from the heavens and grandstand his way into his affections. What follows in this production co directed by Pitlochry Festival Theatre artistic...