Coffee-Table Notes

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars When a solitary middle aged drinker called Tommy is distracted from his pint at Greenock Bowling Club by a Glasgow University student doing a dissertation on Britpop’s lesser known never-wheres, Tommy is stirred to rewind on his past gone mad. That was when he was songwriter and guitarist with Battery Park, the band he formed with his brother Ed and their drummer mate Biffy.   Confronted by another woman called Angie at their first gig, female singer Robyn is drafted in to pick up the slack. With success in their sights, however, old demons rear their ugly head. Thirty years on, Lucy wants to know where Tommy’s loyalties lie, and she’s not just talking about Oasis v Blur.   Andy McGregor’s new play is the latest in an ever-expanding rock family tree of dramatic evocations of small town bands that never quite make it. This sense of familiarity doesn’t take away any of the potty mouthed charm of McGregor’s drama, which he writes, directs and comp...

Perth Theatre Four stars Why Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Scottish Italian family saga has never been made into a film is a mystery. First seen in 1990, Di Mambro’s drama charts the lives of the extended Pedreschi clan from just before the Second World War to the 1950s. Through this we see an entire diaspora move from being the core of the local community to becoming pariahs once Italy sides with Germany. As peace falls, an international game of kiss-chase ensues as the play moves into rom-com territory.    At the heart of this are Massimo, Rosinella and their niece Lucia, who sets the tone as a small but defiantly strong willed child. Lucia bonds with local lad Hughie, who ends up helping out in Massimo’s ice cream shop while his sister Bridget steps out with Massimo’s brother Franco. Such alliances, alas, are shattered by war and the prejudices it provokes. For Rosalina and Bridget, the costs are even greater.     Ken Alexander’s production embraces the initial breeziness...

Phillip A. Bruno January 3 rd  1930 - September 22 nd  2023    When Phillip A. Bruno donated more than 70 artworks from his personal collection to the Hunterian Gallery in Glasgow in 2019, it was a hugely magnanimous way of celebrating his 90 th  birthday. The resulting exhibition, A Gift from New York to Glasgow, cemented the New York based gallerist’s relationship with both the Hunterian and the city that had become something of a second home.    This came about after the former Associate Director of the Marlborough Gallery was introduced to Clare Henry, the Scottish art critic and New York émigré with whom Bruno would go on to spend the rest of his life. The couple met in 1999 at a New York loft party. They married in 2002, putting the seal on a relationship in which art and life were entwined in a transatlantic adventure that continued for almost a quarter of a century.   The announcement of Bruno’s death aged 93 marks the end of a remarkable ...

When Sonica Surge takes over Tramway and The Hidden Garden in Glasgow for forty-eight hours this month, the intense feast of sound and vision this mini festival presents will be an all too fitting way to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Cryptic, the company behind it. Since it was founded by artistic director Cathie Boyd while still a student in Glasgow, Cryptic has become an ever-evolving artistic shape shifter that has moved from its roots as a leftfield music theatre company into the delirious melange of sonic art it has become today.   The company’s early focus was on staging literary classics, including Francoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse (1994) and Molly Bloom’s rapturous soliloquy from James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, in Parallel Lines (1996), and Virginia Woolf’s gender bending novel, Orlando (2010). From the start, Cryptic’s mission has been to ‘ravish the senses’, with internationalism at its heart. This has seen Cryptic present more than 2,000 artists to over 1.2 million...

Mike Travis – drummer, percussionist, actor Born December 2, 1944; died September 4, 2023     Mike Travis, who has died aged 78, was a drummer and actor, who was a creative force from London’s late 1960s and early 1970s jazz scene to Scotland’s thriving alternative theatre circuit and beyond. From residencies at Ronnie Scott’s London jazz club, becoming a founder member of prog band Gilgamesh and playing with former Soft Machine bass player Hugh Hopper, Travis worked extensively with theatre companies such as Wildcat and Communicado.   With the former, Travis appeared in shows such as The Beggar’s Opera (1986), 7:84 Scotland founder John McGrath’s epic, Border Warfare (1989), and The Celtic Story (1998). With the latter, he was a founder member of the Cauld Blast Orchestra, formed by clarinettist Karen Wimhurst to play her music for Jock Tamson’s Bairns, Liz Lochhead’s Robert Burns and Hugh MacDiarmid inspired play performed at Tramway as part of the 1990 Glasgow Year of ...

Doon Mackichan is an actress and writer who partly grew up in Fife. She has been a regular in iconic comedy shows on TV, including The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Brass Eye and Toast of London. co-created and starred with Fiona Allen and Sally Phillips in all-woman sketch show, Smack the Pony (1999-2003). On stage she has appeared at the Royal Court, the Royal National Theatre and on the West End, and brought her adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She starred in the first five series’ of Two Doors Down, and has just filmed the seventh. My Lady Parts is her first book.   Hi Doon, congratulations on My Lady Parts. You’ve just filmed the new series of Two Doors Down as well. How are you feeling about both?   I am extremely excited. I took a year off Two Doors Down last year, and it was wonderful to be back and to realise how much I've been missed. They say pride before a fall, but I'm very proud of this book, whic...

Kibble Palace, Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars If a king can’t follow rules, suggests Lear’s Fool turned gamesmaster to her old boss and his daughter at one point in David Henry Wilson’s play, it will be chaos. Wise words indeed, as Wilson fills in the gaps of Shakespeare’s historical tragedy, as we see what became of Lear’s much loved jester following their disappearing act mid way through Shakespeare’s play. That this came just as the king descended into madness makes one even more curious.   Bundled into a cell by clearly smitten guard, John, Nicole Cooper’s Fool is always ‘on’, keeping up the act whatever. The Fool’s reflex tomfoolery is used to disguise a huge intellect, a way with a metaphor and much more besides. This goes unappreciated by some audiences, including John. As with every soothsaying comic, however, there is a lot of serious stuff going on behind the mask. Wilson’s one act curio was first seen in 1994, and has been picked up for its Scottish premiere by the ...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars Winter is coming, and the weather turned in Glasgow on Wednesday night to add atmosphere before and after the National Theatre of Scotland’s new look at Bram Stoker’s endlessly reimagined gothic horror. So embedded into the collective psyche is Stoker’s mythic yarn concerning his eponymous Transylvanian vampire sucking the life out of all around that we think we know the story when likely as not we don’t.    This works to the advantage of writer Morna Pearson and director Sally Cookson, who conceived their version with Rosie Kellagher and an eight strong all woman and non-binary ensemble. Their telling duly becomes a show of strength, in which Dracula’s victims seize control of their own destiny.   Relocated to Aberdeen, and written in a rich and rollicking Doric, Pearson’s story opens with Mina and co incarcerated in an asylum, with only Mina’s former true love Jonathan’s journal for entertainment and enlightenment. Mina’s own experience...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Three stars The dead bird carried lovingly by the woman at the centre of Isla Cowan’s new play becomes an unwitting illustration of the dangers of everyday tragedies that might happen if the young stray too far from the nest. The woman is Beth, the absentee landlady who makes a prodigal’s return of sorts to the rural cottage she once called home.   Sitting tenant in the humble abode is Alf, who has embraced the hippy idyll of country life that is the complete opposite of Beth’s city slicker existence. This is the case even if Alf’s young partner Vee has something of the cuckoo about her in their stab at creating an Eden to call their own. While the walls aren’t the only things crumbling, if the cracks could talk beyond the new lick of paint that attempts to wipe out the past, the old ghosts that might emerge could tell quite a story.    Burning down the house in an act of purging looks like Beth’s only option in Cowan’s hour-long prime time psyc...