Coffee-Table Notes

Perth Theatre Four stars Casablanca has come on a bit since Morag Fullarton first adapted Michael Curtiz’s classic 1942 movie vehicle for Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman for the stage back in 2010. That was for a matinee slot as part of Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre season in Glasgow.  Fullarton’s bite size three-actor version stayed faithful to the essence of the film’s Second World War set romance while taking an irreverent approach that was part homage and not quite pastiche, as intrigue and in-jokes sat side by side in a show that travelled the world.  Fullarton’s scaled up revival opens out onto design coordinator Martha Steed’s faithfully recreated Rick’s Bar, where we’re greeted by singer Jerry Burns’s French cabaret Chanteuse. Accompanied by pianist Hilary Brooks, Burns sets the tone with a short set of torch song evergreens. This leaves plenty of time for actors to prepare, as Simon Donaldson, Kevin Lennon and Clare Waugh join in as if warmi...

A few weeks ago, artistic directors of Birds of Paradise Theatre Company past and present met up to take stock. It had been thirty years, after all, since the foundation of what has become Scotland’s premiere producers of theatre created and performed by disabled artists. With current company boss Robert Softley Gale gathering alongside his former co-director Garry Robson and their predecessors Morven Gregor and founding director Andrew Dawson on the eve of a tour of Rob Drummond’s dark comedy about the benefits system, Don’t. Make. Tea., this made for quite a summit meeting.   Among the many things discussed, Dawson reminded Softley Gale how he had visited Softley Gale’s school to present a workshop on the then freshly founded Birds of Paradise. Keen to get young people involved, Softley Gale was invited to take part, only to tell Dawson he was far too busy.   While Softley Gale’s interest in theatre developed while a student at the University of Glasgow studying Compute...

When Rosalind Main and her dad Graham decided to start Borrowed Nostalgia, a radio programme about Edinburgh’s lost music venues, they had plenty of material to play with. As an artist, model and researcher steeped in the local scene, Rosalind had been spoon-fed war stories of gigs past by her old man. The fact that Graham’s first hand experience came, not just from attending gigs as a music hungry teen dating back to the 1970s but, as bass player with auld reekie’s premiere art/punk combo, Fire Engines, playing some of them as well.   The result in Borrowed Nostalgia, which airs monthly on Edinburgh’s community radio station, EHFM, is a mix of historical inquiry, anecdotes and a series of top tunes associated with whichever venue is being investigated.   ‘Growing up with dad’s music was really important’, says Rosalind. ‘Driving round, he would point out places where he’d seen things, so I’d be listening to David Bowie in the car, dad would point out the Empire Theatre, which...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   The Pains of confinement come in many forms in this contemporary chamber pop song cycle – gig theatre if you prefer - devised by director Liam Hurley and singer songwriter Jo Mango. Working with a group of songwriters, they draw from material developed during Distant Voices: Coming Home, a four year research project set up by criminal justice based arts organisation Vox Liminis and three university partners. The fourteen songs co-written with a host of unnamed participants channel the real life experiences of those within the system preparing to return home.    Cosiness abounds on designer Claire Halleran’s array of rugs, lamps and armchairs spread out on a stage filled with musical instruments.  Here, Mango and fellow singer-songwriters Louis Abbot of Admiral Fallow, Kim Grant, aka Raveloe, Jill O’Sullivan of Sparrow and the Workshop, Bdy_Prts and more, Dave Hook, aka Solareye, plus bassist Joseph Rattray,...

Four stars The figure of Eduardo Paolozzi towers over the contemporary art world as much as his seven-metre tall sculpture of ‘Vulcan’ (1998-1999), Roman god of fire, does in its permanent residence in Modern Two’s café named after the artist. The Leith born pop auteur’s presence is similarly embedded into Edinburgh’s cityscape, be it through public sculptures, the locally brewed beer named after him, the football shirt for Leith Athletic, or the magnificent recreation of his studio in Modern Two.   The latter is the perfect conduit for this centenary exhibition, which rolls out sixty works that not only channel the throwaway detritus of Paolozzi’s collages, but show how his ultra moderne designs made their mark beyond the gallery. This is spread across two ground floor rooms, a library and a couple of corridor showcases. The first room, Paris & London, shows off some of his 1950s collages, sculptures, screenprints and experiments with ink. The second room, Pattern & Print,...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   “Immigrants,” West Indies born Alexander Hamilton and French émigré the Marquiss de Lafayette freestyle in unison in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s globe trotting hip-hop history musical. “We get things done.” American history has gone wild in the nine years since Miranda’s show came rhyming onto the stage like an old-skool block party on a grand scale. As Thomas Kail’s production arrives in Edinburgh for a two-month stint as part of its UK tour, Hamilton still possesses some of the unbridled optimism the Barack Obama era brought with it.   Here, after all, is the American dream writ large, as ‘bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman’ Hamilton hustles his way to power after arriving in eighteenth Century New York. Ushered into society by Sam Oladeinde’s Aaron Burr, who acts as MC, rival and eventually killer, Shaq Taylor’s Hamilton wants to be number one. As he networks all the big hitters,  words are his weapons, as he winds up ...