Coffee-Table Notes

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   The dustsheets are covering the furniture and the paintings have been taken down in the family home where Lear holds court in Finn Den Hertog’s brutal and bloody version of Shakespeare’s all too human tragedy of power and loss. The chandelier too that will later resemble something between a wrecking ball and a guillotine is all wrapped up as the ageing matriarch indulges a last gasp chance to lord it over her three daughters. As the sisters gather, it looks for all the world like their mother is about to be carted off to what these days might be euphemistically be called a retirement home.    As Lear’s cry for attention seeks only flattery from her offspring, her oldest and middle daughters Goneril and Regan tell her what she wants to hear, and are duly awarded a slice of the queendom as their inheritance. Her youngest, Cordelia, alas, is having none of it. This not only drives Lear mad, but kicks off a full on war, while Cordelia p...

Botanic Garden, Glasgow Four stars   The seven seas are rocking at the start of Bard in the Botanics’ main stage flagship production to mark the stalwarts of outdoor Shakespeare’s silver jubilee year. Once the storm subsides, twins Viola and Sebastian are all washed up on a strange island, with Viola landing in what by way of Heather Grace Currie’s design appears to be the beer garden of the sort of docklands boozer where men are very much men. In the whirligig of dressing up box cosplay that follows, for a while at least, so are some of the women.    While her new pal Feste mainlines feelgood karaoke hits, Viola dons cap and trews like a sailor ashore, attracting the unwarranted attention of all comers. This includes handsome himbo Orsino, who treats his new sidekick like one of the boys, despite the pretty obvious truth staring him in the face.    The boozer’s regulars led by Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, meanwhile, belie their aristocratic origins ...

The workers have been out in force in Scottish theatre of late. On stage, at least, there seems to have been a dramatic rediscovery of working class culture and blue-collar history. This could be seen in the National Theatre of Scotland and Tron Theatre production of Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In, Frances Poet's musical inspired by the v1981 strike in Greenock. Then there was Sweat, a co-production between the Citizens Theatre Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh of Lynn Nottage's dramatisation of what happens to a small town when the industry that sustained it pulls out. Dundee Rep’s revival of Educating Rita, Willy Russell’s modern classic about a working-class hairdresser who enrols in an Open University literature course, is also indicative of a prevailing class divide. Offstage, meanwhile, in a reflection of sorts of the themes of these plays, it is getting harder to sustain a career in theatre. This isn’t just the case for the actors who are the public face of S...

As July sees the theatre season wind down into something of a calm before the August Edinburgh storm, there is nevertheless a fair bit of on stage action on offer. Bard in the Botanics and Pitlochry Festival Theatre lead the charge with at least one show that will feature a storm, so not that calm at all, really.   Twelfth Night  Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, Until 11 July. Lovers and Madmen is the theme for Bard in the Botanics’ silver jubilee summer season of outdoor Shakespeare. This new production of the bard’s contrarily sunny comedy probably falls very much in the former camp, as shipwrecked twins Viola and Sebastian are separated on the island of Illyria, embarking on assorted mistaken identity sired adventures until the inevitable happy ending brings them and their respective squeezes together once more. All this is likely to be upstaged, in Jennifer Dick’s production, mind you, by the figure of the yellow stocking clad Malvolio in a production featuring some Bard in the B...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Three stars   Arriving fashionably late is probably to be expected of a turn of the century clique of teen princess throwbacks. This is why  Tuesday night’s twenty minute delay to showtime for Tina Fey’s musical stage version of her 2004 film can be forgiven. Conceptually speaking, such divaish timekeeping is kind of in keeping with the classroom and cafeteria shenanigans new girl Cady lands in at the start of the show, but, y’know, whatevs.    Cady has just jetted in from Kenya, and after a girlhood in the wild, has a lot of catching up to do in terms of making friends. She soon falls in with Janis and Damian, the outsider duo who become Cady’s guide through the social minefield of high school, as well as our narrators. As for who rules the school, cue The Plastics, the drop dead gorgeous trio led by the divine Regina George, who appears to be the ultimate Queen Bee until Cady comes along.  What follows in this UK tour of Casey...

Botanic Garden, Glasgow Four stars   The Union Jack may not be everywhere in Gordon Barr’s new look at Shakespeare’s tragedy of jealousy and deceit, but it certainly makes its presence felt. This is the case whether on the camouflaged shoulders of the men of action who either engineer or become victims of macho power plays, or on the locker room doors where all their inner secrets are kept.   This is the world in which Manasa Tagica’s Othello has made it big, a black migrant success story who leads his men to victory, but who is never quite one of the gang. His marriage to Desdemona, Esme Bayley’s well to do white girl whose parents expected more of her, only serves to ramp up an inherent institutionalised racism even more. This is the thin line that provokes Adam Donaldson’s Iago to manipulate his way to destruction as he feeds misinformation, gossip and rumour to his boss, driving him demented enough to seek revenge of his own while Iago pulls the strings.    Perfo...