Coffee-Table Notes

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars   Growing old gracefully isn’t easy these days. Once you reach that difficult age you are either patronised or else shunted out of the way in the name of care. Some people, however, simply refuse to kowtow to the system they have no say in legislating.    This is the case for James, Agnes and Nancy, Dementia the Musical’s unrelenting trio who are beamed down into a world of bureaucratic regimes and high backed armchairs that are unlikely to have graced their own homes if they were still allowed to live in them.    What follows sees James, Agnes and Nancy put on trial for being dementia activists by the tellingly named Rigid System. As played by Pauline Lockhart, Ms System is a lady not for turning. James, Agnes and Nancy, meanwhile, have their own stories to tell beyond the TV news reports beamed out between each of their testimonies.    It is these stories that count in Lewis based poet Ron Coleman’s play, brought to life by director Magdalena Schamber

Cumbernauld Theatre Four stars   Community spirit is everything in David Greig’s meditation on the aftermath of a mass shooting, revived after a decade in this new collaboration between Cumbernauld Theatre and the Glasgow based Wonder Fools company. As priest Claire attempts a forensic investigation into the reasons behind such a seemingly random attack by the young man who committed it, her quest involves conversations with her partner, her doctor, a right wing politician who may or may not have inspired the killer, and the boy himself.    Beyond this, the community choir she runs and which was decimated by the slaughter becomes a form of salvation. This is embodied by the seventeen-strong on stage ensemble drawn from real life North Lanarkshire communities who become the heart of Jack Nurse’s production.    Greig’s play may have been sired from the wreckage of Anders Breivik’s mass shooting of teenagers at a Norwegian summer camp in 2021, but in the ensuing decade events troublingly

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   A haunting beauty pervades throughout Ramesh Meyyappan’s slow burning meditation on life, love and loss for this collaboration between the Vanishing Point and Raw Material companies in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts. The loss comes both physically and mentally for Harry, the old man at the heart of the piece. Harry has just taken up residence in a care home, with only his tireless carer May for company.    Harry can only communicate through sign language, which May can only half work out. As even that source of understanding starts to fade, Harry retreats into a world where past and present merge in an elegiac dreamscape shared with his true love, Elise.    Meyyappan’s starting point may be the debilitating effects of dementia, but in partnership with director Matthew Lenton he has created an emotionally driven tone poem full of light and shade. Much of the mood of the piece comes from Becky Minto’s set, which features a remarkable use of m

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Annie Lowry Thomas is flaked out on the sofa at the start of her new solo show for her Hacks company, coming down at the fag end of what was supposed to be the party to end them all. DJ Erfan Shojnoori is still playing in the corner and not all the balloons are burst yet. Thomas just needs a second wind to keep things going, is all. She’s just not sure where to turn and who to believe in anymore is all. Given the current state of the world, who can blame her?    What follows sees Thomas rewind to the New Labour landslide of 1997 that ended eighteen years of Conservative rule in the UK and was supposed to change everything. Thomas was five back then, and has been living its legacy ever since, right up to this year’s somewhat less euphoric Westminster victory that bookends her show.     Moving between the sofa and the microphone, Thomas delivers a frank and disarmingly funny autobiographical dissection of how we got to the state we’re in. Spoiler alert,