Coffee-Table Notes

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Here they come, some thirty-odd performers sashaying their way through the glitzy curtain that frames the stage, or else waking up in the middle of what might well be an even crazier dream that brings them out into the open to go wild. Bringing together the criss-crossing panache of three theatre companies -   Curious Seed, Lung Ha and Lyra – this movement-based extravaganza is a cradle to grave romp through life’s everyday jungle that unleashes a living menagerie of delight. At the back of the stage, live artist Yvonne Buskie makes a mini mural of wise-eyed owls on Karen Tennent’s set that leaves enough space for everyone to play with choreographed abandon. And play they do, as, accompanied by David Paul Jones and Kevin Lennon’s joyous live piano and guitar score and bathed in Simon Wilkinson’s shimmering lights, bodies in rest and motion proceed to jump, dance, sing and throw shapes in various permutations for dear unadulterated l...

SWG3, Glasgow Four stars It’s Friday night, five minutes after the UK failed to leave the EU as planned. Onstage at the end of the National Theatre of Scotland’s multi-artform compendium of short works intended to mark the occasion, Angus Farquhar, late of 1980s percussive provocateurs Test Dept and creators of monumental spectacle NVA is playing marimba with his comrade Cameron Sinclair. This follows a moving personal testimony of what Europe means to Farquhar in a piece called Second Citizen. Set to a techno beat, Farquhar’s performance sees him getting back to his roots in every way. Co-curated by NTS artistic director Jackie Wylie and Stewart Laing of Untitled Projects, the evening begins with compere Gary McNair asking why politicians can’t be like artists and work to the deadline they’ve been given. This is an all too pertinent gambit prior to opening act Tam Dean Burn appearing dressed as a pirate for Aquaculture Flagshipwreck, a comic dissection of Scotland’s fishing...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars It could be the warm-up to a ceilidh at the start of Kolbrun Bjort Sigfúsdóttir and Tom Oakes’ poetic meditation on what it means to build a home in the place you love, only to have the foundations of that home ripped from under you. And yes, even as the recorded accordion music plays, we’re very much talking Brexit here, as Iceland-born Sigfúsdóttir and English emigre Oakes relate in the quietest of terms how things have changed over the last three years. Sigfusdottir does this through a series of brief monologues spoken directly to the audience. Inbetween, Oakes plays a series of traditional and original tunes picked up on his travels on bouzouki and wooden flute. Finland, Morocco and beyond are all in the mix. While Oakes plays, Sigfúsdóttir kneels on the floor, building little miniature houses out of sand and clay, before breaking them down into nothing once more, only to keep on building it into something ever stronger. The exp...