Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art April 12th-May 12th 4 stars A gaudily attired couple sit astride some scaffolding watching the debris-ridden legacy the best minds of their generation inspired. Or at least that’s the sense you get of Dutch artist Folkert De Jong’s site-specific sculptural intervention, which looks to the gallery’s namesake and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, for inspiration. Looking for all the world like paint-spattered dayglo-punk charity-shop dandies, it’s as if the pair are occupying some building-site royal box while a cheap seat variety show plays out below. The effect is heightened by the figure of a woman sporting a hat which from a distance looks straight out of Cabaret holding on tight to two male figures, while beside the scaffolding a male figure holds on to a battered approximation of a wooden acoustic guitar. A solitary female figure stands astride a trestle table in the midst of some carefully choreographed dance of death. Positioned in the midst of more regularly classical statues, this is theatre as still life, captured for posterity and ready for their close-up. The List magazine, April 2012 ends
Myra McFadyen – Actress Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024 Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.” For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
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