Coffee-Table Notes

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four Stars Pity poor Pauline, the wannabe nightclub singer with a complicated love life in this increasingly dark comedy written and directed by Catriona MacLeod. Here is a woman who feels all washed up, with only her state of art washing machine for company, but who over the next hour will hangout her dirty laundry for all to see. As for her SUPERMAX3000 – or just Max, if you will - mechanical patter soon turns to soft soap soothing before Pauline ends up in even more hot water than she bargained for.  French fancies and fabric softener coloured shots act as sweeteners on entry to the latest in Vanishing Point Theatre Company’s series of ‘Unplugged’ small-scale shows designed for easy touring. Co-produced with Mull based arts centre An Tobar and Mull Theatre, MacLeod’s play initially looks like a stand-up inspired extended sketch ideal for the show’s cabaret table set up.    In fact, Vanishing Point’s current associate director uses a classic specul...

Duncan Hendry – Producer, theatre manager, promoter Born November 9th 1951; died March 2 nd  2023     Duncan Hendry, who has died aged 71, was a producer, promoter and theatre manager who steered major venues to success in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. This followed Hendry’s tenure running Aberdeen Alternative Festival, which at one time was the second most popular arts festival in Scotland, with only Edinburgh Festival Fringe attracting bigger audiences.   A major coup for AAF saw Hendry bring soul legend James Brown to Scotland for the first time. This 1993 show was a one-off date that required Hendry to apply his considerable negotiating skills to the max. He continued to pioneer new ventures when he became the first chief executive of Aberdeen Performing Arts, which also oversaw the Music Hall.   A major venture saw Hendry produce a trilogy of Scottish literary classics for His Majesty’s Theatre. A restaging of Alastair Cording’s adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon...

Fun and games aplenty are to be had in this group show of sculptural works by twenty-two artists, brought together by Emma Hart and Dean Kenning as a collective show of class-conscious strength. The idea by Hart and Kenning is to seize the means of production in a more ad hoc way than the posh trappings of the mainstream art world may not always embrace.   The resultant counterblast to imposter syndrome is a workers playtime of a show, with an entertaining larkiness at its Fun Palace core that explores what Hart calls the ‘everyday thingness of sculpture… made of ordinary materials’. This ranges from the puppet-like figures aloft an iron bar in ‘ Oblivion’ (2021), Rosie McGinn’s small-scale reimagining of a rollercoaster ride; to  ‘Sulkamania’ (2019/2023), Aled Simons’ filmed re-enactment of how he became a bootleg Hulk Hogan.    Anne Ryan’s ‘Friday on My Mind’ (2022-23) is a floor level array of cut-out shapes depicting pleasure seekers in search of that elusive goo...

  When Kirkcaldy Galleries were dubbed the ‘Tate Gallery of Scotland’ in lectures by its first Convenor, local linen manufacturer John Blyth, the hype was due to the Galleries’ impressive collection of Scottish Colourist paintings. The accolade has stuck, and continues to capture the expanse of the Fife town’s main exhibition space. Not only does the gallery built in 1925 hold the largest collection of paintings by William McTaggart (1835-1910), it also has the second largest collection of works by Samuel Peploe (1871-1935) outside the National Galleries of Scotland, and many significant works by the Glasgow Boys.   More recently, an adventurous contemporary strand has been introduced, with works by the likes of Alison Watt now included in the collection. A £2.5m refurbishment of the building undertaken by Fife Council in 2013 has seen the Galleries expand operations, so it now houses a museum, library, PC suite, café and gift shop, as well as spaces for community and educatio...

Glasgow Film Theatre,  11 March, 9pm; 2 March, 12.45pm. Four stars When Camden Town indie-dance tearaways Flowered Up released Weekender in 1992, this snarling thirteen-minute dance culture anthem caused all sorts of bother. The just shy of twenty-minute film accompanying the record’s urgent paean to 24/7 working-class hedonism probably didn’t help. Only Channel 4 had the bottle to show it, as the gutter press frothed with predictably sensationalist ire.    An early outing from video director WIZ, aka Andrew Whiston, Weekender charted a big night out for likely lad Joe, played by TV actor Lee Whitlock, with all the highs, lows, pills, thrills and bellyaches that ensued. Some of the film’s mix of social-realist grit and chemically enhanced dreamscape may resemble the bleakness of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, with whom WIZ studied, but it also set the tone for a million mad-for-it movies to come. Danny Boyle apparently said there would have been no Trainspotting fi...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   Revolution can be a sexy thing, especially if you’re a crazily hormonal youth on the verge of some very personal changes of your own. This is the case for the six young people coming of age in this new play by Ahlam, set in Cairo during the optimistic aftermath of Egypt’s Arab Spring in 2011, before their hopes are dashed four years later as oppressive forces move in.   Katie Posner’s production sees a vibrant young cast embody the mess of emotions that drive their assorted trysts by way of a series of criss-crossing narratives that personify the pulse of the big city some will be forced to leave behind forever.   All are exploring the growing pains of first love, be it Osman writing his way through his anger, Rafik exploring his sexuality, or Osman’s kid sister Maya and her classmate Lina doing likewise. Tamer and Alia, meanwhile, have an extra added religious divide to deal with.   While such shenanigans might sound like...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars How do you escape from a hand-me-down legacy that both shaped you and tore you apart? This question is at the heart of David Ireland’s Belfast set play, which first exploded on to the stage in 2016, and has reverberated across the world ever since.     This Scottish premiere sees David Hayman play Eric, an unreconstructed Loyalist, whose entire being is defined by the Northern Irish Troubles of the previous decades. The uneasy peace that followed looks even more fragile in the years since the play first appeared.    The birth of a granddaughter should bring as much joy to Eric as it does for his wife Bernie and daughter Julie. Eric’s belief that the five-week-old baby is former president of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, however, suggests a mid-life crisis in extremis.    As Eric is interrogated by psychiatrist Bridget, he is revealed as a man out of time, unable to cope with anyone he sees as different to himself. Goaded on by Sha...

Four stars   Lindsay Anderson’s status as Britain’s great lost outsider filmmaker has long seen the anti-establishment auteur behind If… (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982) championed by the University of Stirling, which holds Anderson’s considerable archive. To marks the centenary of Anderson’s birth, the life and work of this self-styled anarchist shows rarely seen production stills, theatre programmes, press cuttings and writings, with each section punctuated by written commentary from key collaborators.   Anderson’s stage work at the Royal Court is acknowledged alongside his films, while his contribution to television is marked by angry broadsides from columnists outraged by his radical production of Alan Bennett’s play, The Old Crowd (1979). There are images too from The Whales of August (1987), Anderson’s final feature prior to his death in 1994. This brought together veteran Hollywood stars Lillian Gish and Bette Davis  in an elegiac swan...

Four stars   Rock’s rich tapestry is mythologised one more time in  Prime’s new mini series adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel. Following the rise and fall of the fictitious 1970s stadium-sized band that gives the show its title, the ten episodes are driven by the fractious relationship between bandleader Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) and his vocal foil and reluctant songwriting partner, Daisy Jones (Riley Keough).    The substance fuelled soap opera that follows charts all the  incestuous inter-band chemistry, intimate excesses and self-destructive largesse that have become as familiar in music biz fiction as in the real life crash and burn Greek tragedies it imitates. This is framed as a twentieth anniversary documentary that allows the straight-to-camera narration to emulate the book’s oral history style.    With a largely female writing team on board, Reese Witherspoon an executive producer, and real life girl in a band Kim Gordon a ...